No Living Man

[Aiwendil]

Feanor of the Peredhil wrote:

is kind of... loopholed. Very open to changes. Example: what would have happened if a crow (they like shiny things) had swiped Merry's sword and, finding it too heavy, dropped it as it was flying over the Witchking's head? Not by the hand of man... it's by the claw of a bird, that the Witchking would be stabbed. Entertaining notion, yes?

I must say that this line of inquiry seems pointless to me. Glorfindel made a statement about what would happen, not what could happen. In the event, that statement turned out to be true. I don't understand what a "loophole" is in the context of such a statement, nor why he would want to avoid them.

The Saucepan Man wrote:

I see it as quite possible that Glorfindel's "prophecy" came to the Witch-King's attention and that he misinterpreted it as a condition rather than an instance of foresight.

Actually, once the prophecy has been made, presuming that everyone agrees it is true, it seems to me that there is no difference between condition and foresight. If Glorfindel has made the prophecy, then the Witch-king knows that he will not be killed by a living man. The reason people get confused by this is, I think, that to state it that way is to reverse the causality. Properly, one might say that if the Witch-king was killed by a living man, Glorfindel would not have made the prophecy.

The confusion that so often surrounds this prophecy is, I think, the same as the confusion that surrounds the issue of the "counterfactual" in philosophy of meaning and philosophy of science. It is my opinion that you get into trouble anytime you closely consider a statement of the form "if X had happened then Y" when in fact X did not happen.