View, God’S Meticulous Providence Is, in Part, a Function of His Essential Omniscience

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2017 Modified Molinism: A Source-Based Solution to the Problem of Human Freedom and Divine Foreknowledge Benjamin K. (Benjamin Keith) Kimmell

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

MODIFIED MOLINISM:

A SOURCE-BASED SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF

HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE

BENJAMIN K. KIMMELL

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2017 Benjamin Kimmell defended this dissertation on March 20, 2017. The members of the supervisory committee were:

David McNaughton Professor Directing Dissertation

Philip Bowers University Representative

Alfred Mele Committee Member

John Roberts Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

Fides Quaerens Intellectum To Anna, I couldn’t have done it without you. Proverbs 31.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to all who have been with me, supported me, and encouraged me through the long years of graduate school. I begin with Rex Butler who was an incredible mentor and advisor through my seminary years. I am grateful to Jeremy Evans who encouraged me to pursue philosophy in graduate school and for his inspiration to pursue intellectual excellence. I am grateful to Michael McKenna for pushing me and believing in me, even when I didn’t yet believe in myself. I thank the members of my committee, especially David McNaughton for relentless encouragement and helping me to believe this project was achievable. I thank many fellow graduate students who also provided guidance and encouragement along the way. I am especially grateful to Brandon Warmke and Justin Capes for being mentors in the early days. I am grateful to Matt Flummer for his friendship and support through the seminary and FSU grad-school days. I am also grateful to have studies alongside Dan Miller for many years. I am deeply grateful to the people of Calvary Baptist Church in Perry, FL for many years of unwavering support. I thank you all for the confidence you have placed in me, and I treasure your affection and love. I would like to thank my parents, Ed and Nonnie Harvey, for their guidance and the investment they have made in my life. I thank my dad for showing me the mysteries of philosophy and instilling a profound curiosity about this amazing world in which we live. And finally, I thank my wife and children. I thank Jeremiah, Lena, and Luke for the joy they bring to my life. But above all, I thank Anna. I am so deeply humbled and grateful to have you in my life. You believed in our direction when others doubted. You stood by me, encouraged me, supported, and loved me through so much. I simply could not have done it without you. I am forever in your debt.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vi

1. THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL FATALISM ...... 1

2. TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL FATALISM .....20

3. MOLINISM ...... 40

4. SOURCE INCOMPATIBILISM ...... 76

References ...... 100

Biographical Sketch ...... 107

v ABSTRACT

Two tenets associated with major strands of classical Christian orthodoxy assert both that God is meticulously provident and that humans have libertarian free will. On this view, God’s meticulous providence is, in part, a function of His essential omniscience. God, on this view, is said to be all knowing. Classically, this has been construed to mean that God is infallible and that God exhaustively knows every detail of the past, present, and the future. But if God infallibly knew, in the past, what we would do in the future, then it looks like there may be a conflict with libertarian free will, at least insofar libertarian free will has traditionally been understood to include the ability to do otherwise. It is my aim to provide a slightly new solution to this longstanding and deeply perplexing problem. In Chapter 1, I will delineate and attempt to motivate what I will call, the Problem of Theological Fatalism. I will then describe a very recent solution that has attracted many philosophers in recent years: Open Theism. I will then argue that, although the open theists’ challenge to more traditional solutions is formidable, the case for Open Theism is hardly decisive. In Chapter 2 I will survey two historically significant responses to the Problem of Theological Fatalism. The first response is known as the Boethian solution that attempts to leverage the notion of God’s alleged atemporality to avoid complications with the necessity of the past. Although this view has a number of able defenders, I ultimately reject Boethianism due to parallel worries about the necessity of eternity. I then turn to the second historically significant solution that has resurfaced in recent decades, the Ockhamist Solution. This solution relies on distinguishing between facts that are in part about the past and facts that are strictly about the past in order to show that God’s past beliefs are not saddled with the necessity of the past. Though Ockhamism has been vigorously defended in recent years, I will ultimately reject this solution as untenable. Chapter 3, however, is a detailed analysis of the Molinist solution. Here, I raise and respond to the most pressing objections against Molinism, but insist on a key revision to standard Molinism. I argue that God does have Middle Knowledge, but I reject the common Molinist claim that we have counterfactual power over God’s past infallible beliefs. Thus, I conclude that God’s foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian free will as historically conceived.

vi From there, I conclude in Chapter 4 by attempting to motivate a source-incompatibilist view of human free will that preserves a strong sense of moral responsibility. I argue that the conjunction of Modified Molinism and source-incompatibilism yields a philosophically tenable and theologically satisfying resolution to the Problem of Theological Fatalism.

vii CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL FATALISM

Contemporary discussions of the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge often begin with a citation of St. Augustine’s dialogue with Evodius in his On Free Choice of the Will. In Book III, chapter ii, Evodius says the following:

I am deeply troubled by a certain question: How can it be that God has foreknowledge of all future events, and yet we do not sin of necessity? Anyone who says that an event can happen otherwise than as God has foreknown it is making an insane and malicious attempt to destroy God’s foreknowledge. If God therefore foreknew that a good man would sin…the sin was committed of necessity, because God foreknew that it would happen. How then could there be free will when there is such inevitable necessity?1

This perplexing question has been around in one form or another throughout most of Western intellectual and religious history. The issues connected with it cover a broad range of complex and interrelated issues. As William Lane Craig observes, “An adequate assessment of this problem will take one into a study of future contingent propositions, multivalent logic, the truth status of future contingent propositions, logical fatalism, tense logic, temporal necessity, backward causation, time travel, precognition, Newcomb’s Problem [i.e. Paradox], counterfactual logic, justification, middle knowledge, and so forth.”2 Certainly, any exhaustive treatment of the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge will take one into all of these areas and more, but it is my hope that an adequate treatment may gloss over the details of some of these issues and focus in on certain key areas of concern. That, at least, is what I aim to do in what follows. In this chapter, my concern will be to formulate the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. I will then briefly explicate certain features of the problem, such as the notions of essential omniscience and accidental necessity in order to render the relevant issues more perspicuous. I will also explain how the

1Augustinus, On Free Choice of the Will. trans. Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, Inc., 1964), pp. 88-89. Zabzebski begins her book with this quote from Evodius. See Linda Zabzebski,The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3. Robert Kane also begins his discussion of the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge by citing Evodius. See Robert Kane A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will: Fundamentals of Philosophy Series (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 150. 2William Lane Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism: Omniscience, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History. General Editor: A.J. Vanderjagt. vol. 19 (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1991), xii. My brackets.

1 problem of theological fatalism is distinct from (and more threatening to) Christian theism than is the problem of logical fatalism. I will try to explain why the problem of free will is important in general and why the problem of free will and divine foreknowledge is important to Christian theists in particular. Following these preliminaries, I will consider and reject one influential contemporary solution to the problem, Open Theism. I will conclude that though the Open Theist’s case is impressive, it is not decisive and that there remain strong, positive reasons for continuing to attribute definite and exhaustive foreknowledge to God. In chapter 2 I turn to a survey of two influential attempts to resolve the problem of freedom and foreknowledge: (1) The Boethian solution, and (2) The Ockhamist solution. To anticipate just a bit, I will explain and reject solutions (1) and (2). In the third chapter I will offer a defense of a key feature of the Molinist solution, specifically Middle Knowledge. I will then argue that the Molinist solution is incomplete because despite the protestations of contemporary Molinists, once God creates a world based on His Middle Knowledge, there is an important sense in which agents are not able to do otherwise than what God knows they will do. Thus, there remains a worry concerning alternative possibilities on the Molinist picture. To address this worry, in chapter 4 I will deploy a Frankfurt-inspired libertarian solution that rejects alternative possibilities as a necessary condition for free will and thus moral responsibility. I will present and endorse the views of contemporary source incompatibilists who reject the need for alternative possibilities for free and morally responsible action, but who also reject the claim that determinism is compatible with free and morally responsible action. Even though agents in a theistic world cannot do otherwise than what God knows they will do, we are still free and morally responsible in an incompatibilist sense. We can offer a principled rejection of causal determinism as compatible with free will and moral responsibility. And although we cannot do otherwise, source-based libertarian incompatibilism avoids manipulation worries that trouble compatibilist and semi-compatibilist accounts of free will and moral responsibility. So the picture that will emerge will be a hybrid; leveraging traditional features of Simple Foreknowledge and Middle Knowledge views. Simple Foreknowledge advocates, such as David Hunt, advance a source libertarian view to solve the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge. But Simple Foreknowledge is, in my view, subject to devastating worries concerning its usefulness for divine providence. The Middle Knowledge of Molinism, on the other hand, seems

to provide for God’s providential care of the world, yet with the unnecessary baggage of committing itself to the implausible affirmation that agents are free to do otherwise even in light of God’s exhaustive and infallible foreknowledge. My view will include no such baggage. Source libertarianism with Middle Knowledge preserves the strong sense of providence that many classical theists have historically affirmed while also preserving incompatibilist human freedom and moral responsibility. As Craig indicated, the issues relevant to the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge are legion. So my aim is not to offer an exhaustive assessment of the problem and comprehensive defense of my view. Mine is a more modest goal—to set out what I think is a principled and defensible view that reconciles seemingly inconsistent traditional theistic affirmations (i.e. that God is essentially omniscient and that we are sometimes free and morally responsible in an incompatibilist sense). I will, therefore, limit myself to raising and responding to the most pressing objections to my view.

The Dilemma Delineated

In order to render the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge3 perspicuous, let us imagine the following scenario.4 Imagine that you have a lunch appointment with a co-worker scheduled for 12:00 p.m. the following day. Suppose that you will make the appointment or you will not, thus it is true that you will make the appointment or it is true that you won’t. Suppose also that there is a being, G, that infallibly believes whether or not you will make the appointment.5 That is, G cannot be mistaken about whether or not you will make the appointment. If it is true that you will make the appointment, then G knows it. If it is true that you will not make the appointment, then G knows that. But if it is impossible for G to be mistaken about what you will do tomorrow, then it seems that you cannot do other than what G knows you will do. So if it is true that you will make the 12:00 meeting tomorrow, and G infallibly knows that you will do so, then it seems as if you will not make the meeting freely.

3Also known as the problem of theological fatalism. I will use this label as well. 4This informal and the following formal description of the problem follows Linda Zagzebski’s characterization in Zagzebski (1991), 8 and “Foreknowledge and Free Will.” Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will- foreknowledge/. Accessed 1 Aug. 2013. 5The problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge has variously been formulated as foreknowledge and fore-belief. In what follows, I will assume that knowledge entails belief so that a being that foreknows X also forebelieves X. But infallible fore-belief is all that is needed to generate the worry.

This problem can be generalized to all future acts that are infallibly foreknown. And thus if there is a being that infallibly knows every future act, then it seems that no human action is free. This, of course, is problematic for Christian theists who have traditionally held both that God exists and is essentially omniscient and that humans are free in a libertarian sense (i.e. that we are free in a sense which includes the ability to do otherwise). If you cannot do other than make the 12:00 appointment, then it seems that there is some freedom-undermining necessity that is attached to that action. But if you can do other than make the 12:00 appointment, then it seems that you do have the ability to render false an item of foreknowledge held by a putatively infallible foreknower.6 If so, then that being is not essentially omniscient and therefore, not God.7 This is the worry generated by the problem of theological fatalism. To be able to consistently affirm essential omniscience, it has been thought that we must either abandon belief in a libertarian conception of free will or that we must give up the notion of essential omniscience as a property of God. I will refer to those who think that essential omniscience is incompatible with a libertarian view of free will as divine foreknowledge (DF) incompatibilists, and I will refer to those who think that essential omniscience is compatible with a libertarian view of free will as divine foreknowledge (DF) compatibilists. These labels will be useful to distinguish them from views in the secular free will debates. In those discussions, theorists who affirm that libertarian free will is incompatible with causal determinism are considered incompatibilists. I will refer to these theorists as CD incompatibilists.8 Those who affirm that causal determinism is compatible with free and morally responsible action are considered compatibilists. These I will refer to as CD compatibilists. I have now used the phrase “essential omniscience” several times. A being who is essentially omniscient is a being who not only knows the truth values of all propositions, but essentially so. That is, O is essentially omniscient just in case it is impossible that O exist and fail to know the truth value of any proposition.9 O is essentially infallible just in case it is impossible for O to fail

6Nelson Pike advances the problem along these lines in his influential “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action” The Philosophical Review, vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1965), pp. 27-46. 7At least this has seemed so to many Christians throughout history. Augustine states that “To acknowledge the existence of God, while denying him any prescience of events, is the most obvious madness.” See St. Augustine The City of God, Bk. V Ch. IX. trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 190. David Hunt cites Augustine approvingly in “The Simple Foreknowledge View” Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views. See also Pike (1965). 8Following Tina Talsma Sherman designations in Free Will and Divine Omniscience. Ph.D. Dissertation at Florida State University, 2012. 9This definition should be understood to comprehend propositional knowledge. 4

to be infallible. That is, for any proposition P, if O believes P at any time in any world, P is true in that world. Essential omniscience entails essential infallibility, but is not entailed by it.10 And it seems to me that there is strong motivation within the Christian tradition for affirming that God is essentially omniscient.11 But the infallibility entailed by essential omniscience renders the problem of theological fatalism a direct threat to DF compatibilism. We are now in a better position to formulate the problem of theological fatalism (PTF) more precisely: (1) Necessarily, if God believes at T1 that I will do S at T3, then I do S at T3. (Implication of Essential Omniscience) (2) It is accidentally necessary at T2 that God believes at T1 that I will do S at T3. (Necessity of the Past) (3) If (1) and (2), then it is accidentally necessary at T2 that I do S at T3. (Transfer of Necessity Principle) (4) It is accidentally necessary at T2 that I do S at T3. (from 1, 2, & 3) (5) If it is accidentally necessary at T2 that I do S at T3, then I cannot do other than S at T3. (Entailment of Accidental Necessity) (6) I cannot do other than S at T3. (from 4 & 5) (7) If I cannot do other than S at T3, then I do not do S freely. (From the Principle of Alternative Possibilities) (8) Therefore I do not do S at T3 freely. (from 6 & 7)

Note that the problem here is not subject to a common modal fallacy: (A) Necessarily, If God knows at T1 that I will do S at T3, then I do S at T3. (B) God knows at T1 that I will do S at T3. Therefore (C) Necessarily, I will do S at T3. That would be a fallacious move of the form:

Necessarily, If X then Y X Necessarily Y.

It would be like arguing as follows:

Necessarily, if Bob is a bachelor, Bob is unmarried. Bob is a bachelor. Therefore, Bob is necessarily unmarried.12

The real problem is the conjunction of the statements:

10Zagzebski (1991), 5. 11I will return to explore these motivations below. 12William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 72.

Necessarily, if God knows X, then X AND Necessarily, God knows X (where the type of necessity in this necessity operator is the necessity of the past).13

This conjunction yields: Necessarily, X. This is the Transfer of Necessity Principle (TNP) where the necessity in question is accidental necessity.14 I have already discussed the notions of essential omniscience and infallibility. But a few remarks concerning the notion of accidental necessity are in order. The basic idea behind accidental necessity is that there are forms of necessity weaker than logical necessity. Accidental necessity is often thought of as the type of necessity associated with the past. That is, there is nothing anyone can do about events or states of affairs that are in the past. They are beyond our power to affect.15 Thus, the familiar locution “There’s no use crying over spilled milk.” What’s done is done and we may as well come to terms with what is past since there’s nothing we can do about it now. Therefore, past contingent actions are now-necessary in the sense that there is nothing we can now do about them. This is the type of necessity at issue in the problem of theological fatalism. If God knows at T1 that I will do X at T3, then at T2 it is too late for us to do anything about the contents of God’s beliefs at T1. Thus, by T2 it is accidentally necessary that I do X at T3.

13I want to be clear that I am not claiming that it is a matter of logical necessity that God knows X. For X may be true in one world but false in another—and if false, then it is clear that God cannot be said to know X, necessarily or otherwise. As Plantinga has rightly noted, “If God is essentially omniscient, then He is omniscient in every possible world in which He exists. Accordingly there is no possible world in which He holds a false belief. Now consider any belief that God does in fact hold. It might be tempting to suppose that if He is essentially omniscient, then He holds that belief in every world in which He exists. But of course this doesn’t follow. It is not essential to Him to hold the beliefs He does hold; what is essential to Him is the quite different property of holding only true beliefs. So if a belief is true in Kronos but false in some world W, then in Kronos God holds that belief and in W He does not.” Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardmans Publishing Company, 1974), 72. My thanks to Al Mele for urging me to be clearer about this issue. 14See Zagzebski (1991), p. 7 for more on TNP. But the intuitive idea is that: □(X →Y) □ X ˫□ Y.

A stronger version of this principle would be: □ (X ↔Y) □ X ˫□ Y.

I will be content to deploy the weaker of the two principles. 15For an illuminating discussion on accidental necessity as distinct from both logical and causal necessity, see Zagzebski (1991), 17-21.

David Hunt explains accidental necessity with the example of pitching a stone over a cliff. It is not necessary that I pitch the stone. Things could have turned out differently. But once I pitch the stone over the cliff it is no longer possible for me not to have pitched the stone. So past events are, in this sense, accidentally necessary. Not only are past events necessary in this sense, but so also are the certain consequences of these events. Having pitched the stone off the cliff, there is nothing I can do to prevent the fact that the stone will soon be at the bottom of the cliff. Thus, for contingent human actions foreknown by God prior to their occurrence, there is nothing I can do about God’s past infallible beliefs, and there is nothing I can do about the consequences of these infallible beliefs.16 Accidental necessity is sometimes derided as a “peculiar modality” and therefore highly suspicious as no theological fatalist has elucidated a perspicuous account of it.17 But this is true for many of our most basic concepts (e.g. causation, personhood, disposition). And the mere fact that these notions are in want of rigorous philosophical analysis does not mean that there are no causes, persons, or dispositions.18 Indeed, says Hunt, “The idea that the past is over and done with is a datum, not something that must (or even could be) argued.”19 Neither should we regard this necessity as causal necessity. God’s past (or present) knowledge of future events does not cause those events to happen. God’s past beliefs are necessary in the same way that other past events or states of affairs are necessary. But in the case

16Hunt (2001b), 75-76. David Lewis explains that a necessity operator “in general, is an operator that acts like a restricted universal quantifier over possible worlds. Necessity of a certain sort is truth at all possible worlds that satisfy a certain restriction. We call these worlds accessible, meaning thereby simply that they satisfy the restriction associated with the sort of necessity under consideration. Necessity is truth at all accessible worlds, and different sorts of necessity correspond to different accessibility restrictions…In the case of physical necessity, for instance, we have this restriction: the accessible worlds are those where the actual laws of nature hold true. Physical necessity is truth at all worlds where those laws hold true; physical possibility is truth at some worlds where those laws hold true.” See David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1973), 4-5. With accidental necessity, we might have this (very rough) restriction: the accessible worlds are those in which we have no power over past events. Much more will be said about the analysis of accidental necessity in chapter 2 in the discussion of Ockhamism. As Lewis explains, for every necessity operator there is a corresponding accessibility relation, and that relation serves to restrict quantification over worlds in giving the truth conditions for that necessity operator. Thus, “For any possible world i, and sentence φ, the sentence □φ is true at the world i if and only if, for every world j such that j is accessible from i, φ is true at j.” (Lewis, 5). So to claim that it is accidentally necessary that John mows his lawn in some world w, is to claim that John mows his lawn in every world that is accessible from w. And in every accessible world where, say, God knows (or believes) at t1 that John will mow his lawn at t2, John mows his lawn at t2. So in w it is accidentally necessary that John mows his lawn at t2. This seems to be roughly what Lewis had in mind in his characterization of “a kind of time-dependent necessity” (Lewis, 7). 17Craig (2001) 131. 18Hunt (2001a), 151. 19Hunt (2001a), ibid.

of God’s beliefs, they are essentially infallible. Thus, foreknown acts are necessary insofar as they are inevitable due to God’s infallible past beliefs concerning them, past infallible beliefs over which we have no control.20

Logical & Theological Fatalism

If it is true that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning, then it was true yesterday or, for that matter, it was true five years ago that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning. And the past fact that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning cannot be changed. Therefore, Charlie cannot do other than check the mail tomorrow. If Charlie has the power to refrain from checking the mail, then he has the power to make the statements “Charlie will check the mail” and “Charlie will not check the mail” both true. Or Charlie has the power to make the statement “Charlie will check the mail” false after it was true. But it’s clear that Charlie can’t make a contradiction true or change the truth value of a statement that was true in the past.21 This, then, is the problem of logical fatalism. It seems that the truth of future-tense propositions is itself enough to generate a fatalistic conclusion concerning future human actions. Indeed, a number of philosophers have endorsed a similar claim, not least Alvin Plantinga who writes, “Clearly enough the argument [for theological fatalism] can be transformed into an argument for logical determinism…”22 Craig emphatically endorses this position when he claims that “theological fatalism is simply a variation of logical fatalism. That is to say, the addition of God’s foreknowledge to the argument does not add anything that is not implied by the simple fact that certain future-tense statements are true.”23 But one might be suspicious of these claims. A standard reply is simply to note that for Charlie’s action to be saddled with accidental necessity, the relevant proposition would need to be true at times. But if

20Here, I must quibble with Tina Talsma Sherman’s (Sherman, 3) characterization of the relevant necessity. She claims that “God’s foreknowledge renders S’s actions at t2 necessary insofar as it renders them non-voluntary. Namely, S has no choice but to A at t2, even though she is not caused to do so and in other possible worlds she fails to A.” It doesn’t seem to me that a case of such non-causal necessity is also non-voluntary since, by hypothesis, the agent’s own deliberative and intention formation machinery is productive of the action. I will, however, return to this point in much greater detail in later chapters. 21Craig (2000), 67. 22Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out” Faith and Philosophy Vol. 3 No. 3 July 1986. p. 239. My brackets, italics in original. 23Craig, (2000), 67. Craig (2000, p. 67 notes 1 and 2) cites Richard Taylor, “Fatalism,” Philosophical Review 71 (1962): 57 and Susan Haack, “On a Theological Argument for Fatalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974): 158 as affirming that the problem of theological fatalism “is just a dressed-up form of ancient Greek logical fatalism, which was based on the simple fact that certain future-tense statements are true.” Craig (2000) p. 68.

8 propositions are timeless things that are not true at times, then Charlie’s action cannot be said to be accidentally necessary since the proposition “Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning” is itself not true at a time.24 It might also be questioned (though I will not pursue it here) whether accidental necessity is even applicable to propositions since it’s conceptual roots are so tied into the Aristotelian act/potency distinction that applies to events and not propositions.25 Now, some might think that propositions can be true at times, that perhaps truth-values of propositions are omnitemporal. If so, then the proposition “It was true at 7:00 p.m. that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning” is not just true at a time, it is true at all times. And if it is true before tomorrow morning, which it would be if propositions are omnitemporally true, then it would seem that Charlie’s checking the mail is accidentally necessary. For the argument from logical fatalism relies on the idea that propositions about the past are accidentally necessary. So, according to William Hasker, the way forward for the future-truth compatibilists is to note that the proposition “It was true at 7:00 p.m. that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning” is not “about the past.”26 This is where the distinction between hard facts and soft facts becomes important. Roughly, the grammar of a soft fact about the past points to the past, but the content of the fact is at least partly about the future (i.e. it is not currently settled by an actual state of affairs). For example, suppose it is true that Adam will sin this afternoon. So the proposition “Adam will sin this afternoon” is true at any time before this afternoon. So

(A): It was true this morning that Adam will sin this afternoon.

is true. And (A) is a soft fact since the grammar points to the past but the content of the fact (that Adam will sin) is about the future.27 Once Adam sins this afternoon, then it will become a hard fact because it is settled by an actual state of affairs that is not even, in part, about the future. And soft facts about the past are not accidentally necessary as are hard facts about the past, since they are in part about the future. So the proposition “It was true at 7:00 p.m. that Charlie will check the mail tomorrow morning” is a soft fact about the past that does not render Charlie’s

24Zagzebski (1991) p. 25, seems sympathetic to this reply. 25Zagzebski (1991), 25. 26William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1989), 76. 27David Hunt (2001), 76.

action accidentally necessary. The problem of logical fatalism advances from the position that future truth confers necessity on future actions—if the past is accidentally necessary, then so is the future. But soft facts about the past are not settled in the way that hard facts about the past are settled, since they are in part about the future. Thus, the future truth of propositions does not confer necessity on future actions. The problem of logical fatalism, therefore, does not seem to pose as serious a threat to human freedom and moral responsibility. But it is not at all clear that the same can be said concerning God’s foreknowledge. God’s past beliefs look like paradigm cases of hard facts.28

Why Worry?

In recent years, enormous effort has been directed at untangling the thorny issues surrounding questions of human freedom, both in secular and non-secular venues. But we might pause to consider the motivation for these efforts. Underlying these inquiries are concerns related to the conditions for moral responsibility. At least two primary conditions are widely considered necessary for moral responsibility: a freedom condition and an epistemic condition. With respect to the epistemic condition, one might think that an agent must have some understanding, or at least the ability to understand the moral implications and significance of her behavior. Imagine that an assassin pulls the trigger to shoot Davis. During the flight of the bullet, a child nearby is reading a book of magic spells. The child utters the words of a particular spell that, by the most incredible coincidence, has the ability to stop speeding bullets in mid-air. The child utters the words, the bullet is stopped, and Davis’s life is saved. And yet the child is no hero because the child did not know, indeed had no way of knowing, what the spell was for, that it would actually work, and that an assassin was at that moment attempting to kill Davis. It was sheer luck, so we do not praise the child as a hero. She is not morally responsible for saving Davis’s life.29 With respect to the freedom condition, it seems plausible that an agent must be in control of her action in order to be (and to be held) morally responsible for it. As Widerker and McKenna note, “If what she did, she did not do freely, it is hard to see how she could have been expected to comply

28More will be said about the hardness of God’s past beliefs in the discussion on Ockhamism. 29David Widerker and Michael McKenna, “Introduction” in Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays in the Importance of Alternative Possibilities. Widerker and McKenna eds. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003 & 2006), 2.

with the demands of morality…”30 The notion of control is itself a highly contentious issue. But those who take the problem of theological fatalism seriously generally understand this notion of control to involve alternative possibilities. That is, an agent has control over her actions. She can A or not A, and whatever she does is not determined by the state of the world and the laws of nature—that is, things over which she has no control. This sort of control is often associated with those who affirm a libertarian view of free will and moral responsibility. Libertarians have traditionally affirmed that freedom-level control should be understood as the ability to do otherwise than what the agent actually does. A freedom condition of this sort is based on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) which, of course, is the sort of control at issue in premise (7) of PTF.31 Thus we see the significance of the freedom condition for morally responsible agency. But moral responsibility itself is part of a broader issue that concerns the nature of persons. To be a morally responsible agent is to be a person, though not all persons are morally responsible agents. Think, for example, of small children, the mentally handicapped, or those who suffer from debilitating psychological disorders.32 The question of moral responsibility, therefore, has implications for how we see ourselves and our place in the world. But if human freedom is critical to secular concerns regarding moral responsibility, it is even more urgent for Christian theists. Christian theism has traditionally presupposed a retributivist view of moral responsibility with eternal rewards and punishment depending on one’s deserts.33 Thus it is imperative for Christian theists that we are fully responsible for our actions in this life. So the motivation for Christians to articulate a view of robust freedom and moral responsibility is clear. Without it the coherence of Christian anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology are severely jeopardized. Having articulated and motivated PTF, I now turn to one of the more influential contemporary responses to the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge.

30Ibid. 31Harry Frankfurt famously defined PAP as follows: A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. See his “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy, 46 (December) 1969: 829-839. Frankfurt’s article will loom large in the solution that I will offer to PTF. 32Widerker and McKenna, 1. 33Here I set aside considerations related to divine grace involved in Christian soteriology. Thomas Flint makes a similar point in his Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 28.

Open Theism

The first solution I will examine is a relative newcomer into the debate—Open Theism. This view secures libertarian freedom by denying the traditional doctrine of essential omniscience. Thus, we might construe open theism as a form of DF incompatibilism since it resolves PTF by denying one of the two traditional theistic affirmations (the two being exhaustive foreknowledge and libertarian freedom) that generate the dilemma. But open theists reformulate, rather than reject, the claim that God is essentially omniscient. On this view, God simply does not know the future because the future does not exist to be known. If God does not know the future, then a fortiori, God does not know the future infallibly.34 This, however, is no indictment of essential omniscience since open theists often regard the future as unknowable.35 God knows everything that can be known and is, according to the open theist, therefore omniscient. It has long been held by theists that logical coherence concerning the explication of divine attributes is no limitation or implies no imperfection. For instance, most theists do not believe that God’s inability to create a squared circle is a threat to omnipotence. It does not imply weakness or imperfection, rather, the task itself is incoherent. And if logical coherence is no threat to issues concerning omnipotence, then neither should it be considered a threat to omniscience. If the future cannot be known, then to say that God does not know the future is not to ascribe to God an imperfection. In support of their view, open theists, specifically Christian open theists, appeal to Scripture to substantiate their view. After all, the Bible is, for most Christians, a normative authority for Christian theology.36 Open theists cheerfully acknowledge that Scripture portrays God as sovereign, who is in control of creation, and is unsurpassably knowledgeable. But they also see in Scripture another, equally compelling motif that, as one prominent defender explains, “…celebrates God’s creative flexibility in responding to open aspects of his creation. In this motif, God asks questions about the future, speaks of the future in conditional terms, regrets the

34I should note that open theists acknowledge that God does know certain parts of the future, parts that He intends to bring about unilaterally or parts of the future that are causally determined. What God does not know with certainty is which future contingent events will occur. 35Open theists may claim that there are no future contingent truths to be known, or they may claim that if there are future contingent truths, then they are unknowable. 36 Scriptural fidelity is often claimed as a strength, by open defenders, of their view of omniscience over the traditional view. “Though I would argue that sound philosophy also supports the openness view, the motivating force behind the openness view is a desire to be faithful to the witness of Scripture.” Boyd, 47.

outcome of decisions he has made, changes his mind in response to changing situations, and so on.”37 The fact that traditional theism is forced to take all such passages of Scripture as metaphorical accommodations of God’s nature and activity to our finite human understanding reveals the biblical inadequacy of the traditional view. Open theists charge that the traditional view minimizes vast swaths of revelation as anthropomorphic and non-literal. Thus, they believe that their view is more faithful to the Bible. Not only do open theists believe their view to be more faithful to Scripture, but they also believe that classical Christian theism has been inordinately influenced by ancient Greek philosophy and that the result has been a biblically inadequate portrait of God as thoroughly immutable and impassable—a portrait that results in an unbiblical Hellenic distortion of God that is not only biblically, but also religiously unsatisfying.38 To further substantiate their view, open theists, in recent years, have mounted sophisticated philosophical attacks on traditional explications and affirmations of divine foreknowledge—claiming that none of the standard views succeed in avoiding PTF.39 Moreover, according to open advocates, their view helps mitigate the force of the problem of evil. Calvinism, of course, endorses a high view of divine sovereignty and providential control of the world. On this view of ‘meticulous providence’ not only does God create the world, but God actually causes every event. That is, not only does God choose which world becomes actual, but God deliberately causes all the evils that occur in the world. Molinism also provides for meticulous providence, although on this view God does not cause every event. But according to one prominent open theist, on Molinism there is still “an uncomfortably close connection between the will of God and specific instances of evil.”40 For instance, God specifically chose to create this world knowing full well what Hitler’s counterfactuals of freedom were. But, Hasker protests, “…we are left to wonder (without much

37Boyd, Four Views, 23. 38See John Sanders “Historical Considerations” and David Basinger “Practical Implications” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, Clark Pinnock et. al (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1994). See also John Sanders The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2007), second edition. 39See William Hasker (1994) “A Philosophical Perspective” in The Openness of God, especially pp. 147-149. See also Hasker (1989). A number of philosophers have endorsed the open view in recent years. Hasker (1994), note 48, p. 198, identifies the following: A. N. Prior, “The Formalities of Omniscience,” Philosophy 32 (1962): 119-129; J.R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), and The Future: An Essay on God, Temporality and Truth (London: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Peter Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1977). Of course this is not an exhaustive list. 40Hasker (1994) , 152.

hope of an answer) what ‘greater good’ was achieved as a result of these horrible events.”41 The open theist, however, claims that God is not on the hook for planning or causing such evils since, on his view, God elects to create and govern the world through ‘general strategies,’ the detailed consequences of which cannot be foreseen. But the case for open theism has not gone unchallenged. Indeed, there is, in my view, a strong prima facie, though not decisive case to be made for traditional, exhaustive foreknowledge. Following several other critics of open theism, I will now advance a summary of the case for the traditional view. This case will take the form of a response to the three-pronged case identified above for the open view. I will, therefore, offer a brief biblical, historical/traditional, and theological/philosophical case for God’s exhaustive knowledge of the future. First, there is ample biblical evidence for affirming exhaustive foreknowledge.42 The prophet Isaiah says:

"Present your case," the LORD says. "Bring forward your strong arguments," The King of Jacob says. Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former events, declare what they were, That we may consider them and know their outcome. Or announce to us what is coming; Declare the things that are going to come afterward, That we may know that you are gods;43 Indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together. Behold, you are of no account, And your work amounts to nothing; He who chooses you is an abomination. (Isaiah 41:21-24)

And again:

"Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: 'I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me. 'Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; Yes, let him recount it to Me in order, From the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming And the events that are going to take place. 'Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.'" (Isaiah 44:6-8)

In the first passage, the knowledge of future events is taken to be the mark which distinguishes the true God from false gods. And it would undermine the emphasis of the passage if we were to

41Ibid. 152. 42Here I follow the biblical case as delineated by Craig (2000), 25-37. 43My italics.

construe this foreknowledge as mere inference from present cause to future effect—that is, nothing more than what any human may infer as a finite rational agent. The second Isaiah passage is referenced multiple times in the book of Revelation. John the Revealer reports his vision of Jesus identifying himself with the God of Isaiah 44—as “the first and the last” (Rev. 1:17) and later “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). The idea here is that biblical history is thoroughly teleological with Christ as the source, sustainer, and centerpiece of it all. Thus the apostle Paul speaks of the “mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things…in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus…” (Eph. 3:9;11). The Christian gospel, then, is not God’s ad hoc reaction to the surprise fall of man. Rather, it was God’s plan for mankind because of his foreknowledge that humanity would fall into sin. The atonement, through “the blood of Christ…was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you” (1 Peter 19-20). Thus could the apostle Peter declare to the crowds at Pentecost:

Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. (Acts 2:22-24)44

Not only is foreknowledge apparently presupposed as an undergirding feature of biblical history, but there are numerous additional affirmations of divine foreknowledge throughout Scripture. Deuteronomy 18:22 establishes success in foretelling future events as the mark of a true prophet through whom God speaks. The authors of the New Testament were convinced that the advent and work of Christ, as well as the giving of the Spirit to the church, were foretold by ancient prophets (Acts 2:15-21; Joel 2:28-29). Jesus himself foretold of his own betrayal, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. God foretold the captivity, exodus, and rebellion of his covenant people. Joseph was given the power to interpret dreams concerning future events. During the Israelite monarchy, numerous prophets announced God’s coming judgment on both

44It might be urged by the open theist that even if God cannot foreknow with certainty that humanity would fall into sin, God would know that such an eventuality would be highly probable. This must be granted, but the tone and tenor of the cited passages (especially 1 Peter 1:19-20) seem to more readily lend themselves to God definitely knowing that humanity would so fall. 15

the northern and southern kingdoms through Assyrian and Babylonian invaders. God knows the future of his people, the future of pagan nations, and God is said to foreknow even the most intimate of our own thoughts. In an admittedly poetic expression of worship and adoration of God, the psalmist declares:

O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all…Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:1-4;16)

These and many other passages have been adduced to affirm exhaustive divine foreknowledge. Thus, there is strong biblical warrant for affirming the view that God knows, is sovereign over, and at times discloses, both macro and micro features of the future. Not only is there a solid biblical case to be made for the traditional view of exhaustive foreknowledge, there is also the overwhelming weight of the classical tradition. Virtually all major Christian theologians and apologists from the Patristic era and following have affirmed exhaustive, infallible foreknowledge of the past, present, and future.45 In the second century, Justin Martyr wrote that God forebears divine judgment on the world because “He foreknows that some are to be saved by repentance, some even that are perhaps not yet born.”46 Concerning prophecy, Justin declares that it does not involve fatal necessity, but “God foreknowing all that shall be done by men, and its being His decree that the future actions of men shall all be recompensed according to their several value, He foretells by the Spirit of prophecy…”47 Likewise, in the process of responding to criticisms of the Marcionites who claimed that God was the author of sin for blinding Pharaoh and his servants, Irenaeus affirmed God’s comprehensive foreknowledge, which includes his foreknowledge of those who would not believe.48 In response to the claims of Marcion, Tertullian defends the traditional divine

45Chad V. Meister catalogues a number of these major figures and refers to many others in “Open Theism” in Reasons for Faith: Making a Case for the Christian Faith, Norman Geisler and Chad V. Meister eds. (Wheaton, Il: Crossway Books, 2007), pp. 188-190. 46Justin Martyr, The First Apology, Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), vol. 1, ch. 28 “God’s Care for Men” Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds. Available at Christian Classics Ethereal Library; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.xxviii.html. Accessed Nov. 11, 2013. 47Ibid. ch. 44, “Not Nullified by Prophecy” http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.xliv.html. 48Irenaeus, Against Heresies, ANF 1.4.29.2. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.xxx.html.

attributes of goodness, foreknowledge, and power. Regarding foreknowledge, Tertullian writes, “But what shall I say of His prescience, which has for its witnesses as many prophets as it inspired?” God, claims Tertullian, foreknew that man would sin, for “If He had not foreknown this, He would not have proclaimed a caution against it under the penalty of death.”49 In the post-Nicene era, Augustine forcefully affirmed God’s foreknowledge. In response to Cicero’s rejection of foreknowledge, Augustine writes, “To acknowledge the existence of God, while denying him any prescience of events, is the most obvious madness.” Cicero, says Augustine, believed that “either there is some scope for our will, or there is foreknowledge. He thinks both cannot be true…” And in order to resist “the overthrow of all human life” Cicero rejects foreknowledge. Augustine notes that “…in seeking to make men free, he [Cicero] makes them irreverent. For the religious mind chooses both, foreknowledge as well as liberty; it acknowledges both, and supports both in pious faith.”50 To Augustine, we could add Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, and more. In the Reformation era, the list of theological titans that affirmed exhaustive foreknowledge includes Luther, Calvin, Arminius, and Edwards. Therefore, in light of the overwhelming weight of this impressive tradition, it seems that Christian philosophers and theologians should abandon exhaustive foreknowledge only with great caution. The claim that Christian theology has been inordinately influence by Greek philosophy, however, should not be lightly dismissed. And in fact, a number of conservative evangelical scholars agree that the picture of a wholly immutable and impassible God is excessive and inconsistent with Scripture. Wayne Grudem, an influential conservative evangelical theologian, defines God’s unchangeableness as follows: “God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.”51 And he notes that the strong impassibility affirmed in, for example, chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession, is predicated on faulty exegesis of Scripture. Likewise, the conservative theologian Millard Erickson notes that the constancy of God has often been expressed as strong immutability. But he rejects that characterization as having

49Tertullian, Against Marcion, ANF 3.2.5. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.v.iv.iii.v.html. Of course, the open theist may very well allow that God could foresee that man might sin and therefore proclaim a caution against it. But they may then wonder why God would proclaim a caution against something he knew was going to happen. My thanks to David McNaughton for making this point. 50Augustine, City of God 5.9. In 11.21 Augustine affirms God’s atemporal, comprehensive knowledge of past, present, and future. See also Augustine’s discussion with Evodius as noted in the introduction. 51Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 163.

17 been taken from Greek ideas that are inconsistent with the biblical portrayal of God. Erickson states that “the biblical view is not that God is static but stable. He is active and dynamic, but in a way that is stable and consistent with his nature.”52 So it seems that conservative evangelical theologians accept the claim that earlier Christian theology was inordinately influenced by Greek thought, but they deny that redefining God’s omniscience is the required remedy. There are, then, strong biblical and historical reasons for affirming that God possesses exhaustive foreknowledge. Are there compelling philosophical reasons for denying the traditional view? As previously noted, open theists claim that the traditional view runs into considerable philosophical difficulty with respect to PTF and the problem of evil. The bulk of this work will take up the former, so here I will briefly address that latter. On the traditional view God foreknows every event. So whether one is a Calvinist or, say, a Molinist, God knowingly actualized this world in full view of every horrible event that has ever happened or ever will. The open theist claims, however, that God governs the world through general strategies that are ordered for the good of creation. This does allow for particular instances of evil, but they are, at least in many cases of moral evils, unhappy and unforeseen consequence of this providential strategy.53 The open theist, therefore, need not retreat to ‘greater good’ defenses in the face of such evils. Much could be, and has been, said about this sort of reply by the open theist. For, say, on the Molinist picture, God creates a world based on natural and middle knowledge, the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not set by God, but are used by God in deciding what world to create. The counterfactuals of freedom delimit the set of feasible worlds, so any world that is feasible for God to create may be just the sort of world that the open God creates. On neither picture is God directly causing evil. But at least on the Molinist picture, we can be absolutely confident that God’s purposes will definitely prevail. More importantly, it is not at all clear that the open theist really is in a dialectically superior position with respect to the problem of evil. Open theists explicitly conceded that, insofar as God has the power to intervene in the affairs of the world, there is much to explain concerning why he does not do so in particular cases of evil.54 For example, Greg Boyd imagines

52Millard Erickson, Christian Theology 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998), 305. 53Hasker (1994), 152. 54Hasker (1994), note 50 (p. 198) admits as much.

a parent whose child has been kidnapped. He asks, “How does the belief that God always knew this would happen, and intentionally allowed (or ordained) it for a higher purpose help you to cope with this nightmare? Would it not make God a co-conspirator with the kidnapper?”55 But it is not at all clear how open theism is supposed to help. Presumably, God becomes aware of contingent events as they happen, and can even make highly reliable inferences about near-term events given his exhaustive knowledge of the present. Why, then, does God not intervene when he detects the formation of the kidnapper’s intention? Why does God not intervene as the kidnapper is driving the girl away in his windowless van? Why? If God’s permission of these events is now to be explained by the open theist by recourse to greater goods like allowing for robust human freedom and soul-making and the like, then it isn’t at all clear why these would be inadequate for the traditional theist.56 The debate between open and classical theists is multi-faceted and there is an impressive amount of literature on these issues. I do not claim to have presented an exhaustive case for or against either view. I only claim that the debate is far from settled. The criticisms of the traditional view are not decisive, and there are strong, positive reasons for affirming the classical view. The question I will now pursue is whether PTF will force the traditionalist to abandon exhaustive foreknowledge and retreat to the open view. In the next chapter I turn to a survey of two standard attempts by traditional theists to solve PTF.

55Boyd (2001), 45-46. 56Hunt (1994) offers a similar line of response on p. 53.

CHAPTER 2

TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS TO THE

PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL FATALISM

The Boethian Solution

The Boethian solution to PTF boasts of a long and impressive history which is often traced back to the 6th century Roman philosopher Boethius. In subsequent centuries, the Boethian solution has been developed and defended by such philosophical luminaries as Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and more recently, Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, and Brian Leftow.57 The Boethian solution would reject premise (1) of PTF since, on the Boethian account, God is timeless. On this view, God does not have any temporal properties. So God’s beliefs, God’s actions, even God’s existence cannot be characterized in temporal terms. Thus, if God does not have beliefs in time, then God cannot be said to know anything at particular times. Most importantly, God cannot be said to know or believe anything prior to the free acts of his creatures. A timeless God literally does not foreknow anything. According to Boethius: It is the common view of all who live by reason that God is eternal. So we must ponder what eternity is, for this will clarify for us his divine nature and his knowledge alike. Eternity, then, is the total and perfect possession of life without end…So what does rightly claim the title of eternal is that which grasps and possesses simultaneously the entire fullness of life without end; no part of the future is lacking to it, and no part of the past has escaped it. It must always appear to itself as in the present, and as governing itself; the unending course of fleeting time it must possess as the here and now….58

Boethius continues….

Therefore, since every judgment which is made comprehends things lying before it according to its own nature, and since God’s status is abidingly eternal and in the present, his knowledge too transcends all movement in time. It abides in the simplicity of its present, embraces the boundless extent of past and future, and by virtue of its simple comprehension, it ponders all things as if they were being enacted in the present. Hence your judgment will be more correct should you seek to envisage the foresight by which God discerns all things not as a sort of foreknowledge of the future, but as knowledge of the unceasingly present moment. For this reason it is better to term it providentia (“looking forward spatially”) rather

57Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae; Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann. “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy, 78 (August) 1981: 429–58; Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1991). 58Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy translated by P.G. Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 110-111.

than praevidentia (“looking forward in time”), for it is not set far apart from the lowliest things, and it gazes out on everything as from one of the world’s lofty peaks.59

For Boethius, a being that knows can know only in the particular way that it exists. God exists eternally and therefore knows or judges eternally. Thus God’s knowledge is not in time.60 But Boethius uses a temporal metaphor to claim that God’s knowledge comprehends all things in an “unceasing present.” And God “looks forth” to see all events. But this “looking forth” is not “foreseeing” in any temporal sense. As a traveler can only see certain portions of the road she travels, so temporal agents can only experience the present and remember the past. But an observer positioned on top of a mountain can see not only the location of the traveler on the road, but the entire road which is being traveled. This spatial metaphor is alleged to be analogous with how God knows all of temporal reality (past, present, and future) from his exalted, atemporal perspective. Another common metaphor concerns a circle. Each point on the circumference of a circle is equally “present” to its center. Likewise, each moment of time is atemporally present to God. Given divine timelessness, God cannot be said to know anything at any time—a fortiori God cannot be said to know anything at all times. And if God cannot properly be said to know at t1 that S will do A at t2, then the threat of S’s action being accidentally necessary at t2 is abated. Strictly speaking, this is not a solution to PTF, but rather it is a dismissal of it. Despite its long and honorable history, the Boethian solution has been the target of severe criticism. In the remainder of this section, I will raise two difficulties for the Boethian view that seem to me most pressing. The first difficulty, or rather set of difficulties, concerns the notion of timelessness itself or its consequences. The second suggests that adoption of the Boethian view, while avoiding the threat of accidental necessity present in PTF, actually raises a parallel dilemma based on the necessity of the timeless realm. Pressing objections to the Boethian view have been advanced with respect to the notion of timelessness itself. Richard Swinburne claims that divine timelessness involves an inner incoherence that renders the view untenable. According to Swinburne, the doctrine of divine timelessness means that God exists at all moments of human time—simultaneously. But simultaneity is a transitive relation. Thus, God is said to exist at and be a witness of events at t1, t2, t3, etc. But if t1 is simultaneous with t2, with t3, etc., then all these times would be

59Ibid. 111-112. 60I take that which is eternal to be that which is timeless, rather than that which is omnitemporal.

simultaneous with each other.61 This, says Swinburne, is clearly nonsense.62 And of course, if we look closely at Boethius’ explication of eternity, then there does seem to be some warrant for Swinburne’s criticism. But if we construe the claims of “simultaneous” and “present” possession of complete life as temporal metaphors it seems that we may be able to avoid the absurd consequences that Swinburne notes. Indeed, the criticism from simultaneity is a bit perplexing, given that Swinburne himself construed God’s eternity as God existing “outside the stream of time.”63 If that is the case, then worries about simultaneity would seem inappropriate as a criticism of divine eternity since simultaneity is a temporal concept. Eternity may be a very obscure, even mysterious notion, but it does not, at least not obviously, have the absurd consequence that all moments are simultaneous. That’s where the spatial metaphors may be more helpful. A truly timeless God does not exist or know before, after, or simultaneously with any time. In the same way that God’s spacelessness does not involve condensing all space to some divine “here,” God’s eternity does not reduce all times to a literal divine “now.” Swinburne offers a second objection to divine timelessness from the fact that timelessness seems inconsistent with many of the things that theists want to say about God. While timelessness may seem appropriate for some things, such as abstract objects like propositions, numbers, sets, and the like, these entities are usually thought to be impersonal and causally inert. But of course, classical theism, specifically Christian theism, construes God as the ultimate personal and causally potent being. And many of the features of personhood seem to be essentially temporal in nature. God, we say, sometimes brings about things. God forgives, punishes, or warns. As Swinburne notes, “If we say that P brings about x, we can always sensibly ask when does he bring it about? If we say that P punishes Q, we can always sensibly ask when does he punish Q?”64 So the problem for the defender of the timeless solution is whether or not she can make sense of divine personhood. William Hasker offers the following criterion for “God is timeless” to be a meaningful assertion. He says that for “God is timeless” to make sense, then it must be possible to claim that he knows, acts, and responds to the actions of temporal beings. Hasker asserts that if the eternalist can meaningfully ascribe to God knowledge,

61Let’s say that times t1-3 correspond to Monday-Wednesday of some week. 62Richard Swinburne (1993), 228. 63Ibid., 223. 64Ibid., 228.

action, and responsiveness, then she can also affirm of God other things that would be required for full-blooded theism.65 Now, knowing does not seem to present an insuperable obstacle to divine timelessness. We generally do not think of knowing as a time-consuming process unless we understand knowing to include the process of learning or coming to know. But it doesn’t seem to be an analytic truth that knowing involves “having come to know.” What about acting? Can a timeless God produce temporal effects? What I have to say here may, for some, amount to explaining that which is difficult to understand in light of the utterly obscure. Nevertheless, many Christian theists have traditionally affirmed mind-body dualism. For Descartes, minds and bodies are ontologically distinct yet intimately united with one another. Minds are essentially thinking things while bodies are essentially extended things. Cartesian minds do not have spatial extension or location, but they are causally related to the extended realm. That is, Cartesian minds are spaceless, but they produce effects in space. But if a theist is willing to grant that God, or even finite minds which do not exist in space, can be the cause of effects in space, then it isn’t obvious why we should believe that a God which exists outside time can’t act so as to produce effects in time. And if a timeless God can be the cause of temporal effects, then it seems that God could timelessly act such that the temporal effect is a response to what God (timelessly) knows a temporal agent will do at any given temporal index. Thus it seems intelligible to suppose that a timeless God could exhibit attributes of personhood; that is, a timeless God could know, act, and even respond.66 Obviously, the foregoing discussion of divine timelessness and its alleged negative implications is merely a sketch of issues that have been written about extensively. But let it suffice to register my own conviction that neither worries about the coherence of timelessness itself or its alleged incompatibility with the personhood of God constitutes a decisive refutation of the Boethian view. I turn now, however, to a worry that I do think is a serious problem for the defender of divine timelessness. This worry is generated from the strong immutability entailed by divine timelessness. Paul Helm offers the following informal characterization of the problem of human freedom and divine immutability:

65Hasker (1989), 151-152. 66Hasker (1989), 153-158.

There is a further argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom which rests upon considerations about time and timelessness which might be deployed at this point. If God’s knowledge of our future is timeless then it is not necessary merely because it was true yesterday, but in a further sense, namely that nothing can happen, now or at any time, to alter God’s cognitive state, since to alter God’s cognitive state by bringing it about that he knows that p is false and not true would be to make God undergo real change. But God cannot undergo real change if he is timeless. So that if God timelessly knows that I am going to mow my lawn tomorrow then I cannot be in a position not to mow my lawn tomorrow, since to do so would be to bring it about that God has changed, and God cannot change if he is timeless. Given a timeless being, whatever that being knows he unchangeably knows.67

Helm’s argument appears to be take the form of a reductio ad absurdum:

1-X can do other than what God (timelessly) knows X will do. (Assumption) 2-God is timeless.(entailed by the Boethian position) 2a-If God is timeless, then nothing can make God undergo change. 2b-Nothing can make God undergo change. (MP 2, 2a) 3-If X can do other than what God knows X will do, then X can alter God’s cognitive state. (Assumption) 3a- Therefore X can alter God’s cognitive state. (MP 1, 3) 4-If X can alter God’s cognitive state, then something can make God undergo change. 4a-Therefore something can make God undergo change. (MP 3a,4) 5-Therefore it is not the case that X can do other than what God knows X will do. (Reductio 2b, 4a)

So if God (timelessly) knows that X will A at temporal index T, then (5) seems to entail that X cannot do other than A at temporal index T. And of course, if X cannot do otherwise than A at temporal index T, then it looks like X does not A freely if PAP is, indeed, a necessary condition for free and morally responsible action. Brian Leftow also raises a problem for the timeless view given the immutability of God. Here is the problem and Leftow’s reply:

Again, if God is immutable, His cognitive state cannot be changed. Hence I cannot change His cognitive state, and so, if God is essentially omniscient and holds that I do A at t, it follows that I do A at t: for if I did something else at t, it would change God’s cognitive state, or else God would not be omniscient. But that I will do A at t entails not that I could not have done otherwise, but just that I will not. For God’s unchangeable knowledge does not have the relation to my action at t which would render it a determining condition of the act: it does not exist before I act.68

67Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 105-106. 68Brian Leftow (1991), 254-255.

So Leftow apparently does not think that timeless, immutable, and infallible knowledge constitutes determining conditions for act A, conditions which would confer freedom- undermining necessity. Apparently, Leftow thinks that the only determining relation between God’s knowledge and act A is if God knows that I will A temporally prior to my A-ing. And if God’s eternity is more like our future than our past, then Leftow may be correct. Indeed, William Hasker thinks he has an argument for why we can conceive of God’s eternity as we conceive of the future—that is, as open and therefore what God timelessly knows concerning our future as soft rather than hard facts. Hasker asks, “If God, in eternity, sees an act as already having occurred and therefore as inalterable, how can that act remain open and contingent as I consider whether to perform it or not?”69 He then claims to find a solution in A.N. Prior which is credited to Anselm:

Anselm observed that the unchanging “presence which…all things have to God, is in some ways less like our own present than our past. Looking back over what has happened, we can distinguish what was bound to happen as it did from what could have happened otherwise, though of course none of it can now, by the time we look back on it, have happened otherwise. It is in some such way as this that God distinguishes necessities from contingencies even though there is no contingency left in the latter in the form in which they reach His gaze.70

From this, Hasker claims that

…if God in his eternity looks upon our time as one would look back on the past, it follows that in a certain respect we can view, or rather conceive of, eternity as we conceive of the future! To be sure, the temporal references as such must be eliminated: there are no temporal relationships between a timeless being and temporal beings. But eternity is like the future, and unlike the past, in that it is still open to our influence. And so our question is answered; facts about God’s eternal knowledge and activity are not hard facts.71

So for both Leftow and Hasker, God’s timeless knowledge is less like the past and more like the future. The relationship between God’s timelessly eternal knowledge and my future actions does not, therefore, constitute a determining condition of my act.

69Hasker (1989), 175. 70Arthur N. Prior, “The Formalities of Omniscience,” in Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 43-44. Quotation taken from Hasker (1989), 175. 71Hasker (1989), 175-176.

Leftow, however, gives us little reason to think that God’s timeless knowledge of acts which are future to us do not constitute, what he calls, a determining condition. Presumably a determining condition for Leftow is any condition that entails that one could not do otherwise. Clearly he thinks God’s temporally prior knowledge of a future act would be just such a condition. But since there is no such relation between a timeless God’s knowledge and any agential acts, such a determining condition does not obtain. And I confess that I am unable to follow the reasoning by which Hasker concludes that God’s eternal knowledge and activity are not hard facts. If God in eternity looks upon our time as a temporal agent would look back on the past it follows, he says, that we can view or conceive of eternity as we conceive of the future. How, exactly, does it follow? I see no reason at all to make such an inference. And I think I see very good reason to regard God’s timeless knowledge as a distinct threat to an agent’s ability to do other than what God timelessly knows she will do. For while it is true that timeless knowledge would not confer accidental necessity on an agent’s act when construed as the necessity of the past, there may be good reason to think that accidental necessity* would threaten an agent’s ability to do otherwise when construed as the necessity of the timeless realm.72 Accidental necessity is a temporally relative sort of necessity.73 Historically, the notion of necessity per accidens was distinct from logical necessity in that events that are necessary per accidens were not always necessary. Suppose I went to the store yesterday. It was not logically necessary that I should go to the store. But now, having gone to the store, my so going is necessary per accidens. This notion of necessity is grounded in both philosophical and common sense notions of the asymmetry of the past and future. This asymmetry is both ontological and modal. We often think of the past as, in some sense, real, whereas the future is not. The past is related to the present but the future is not since it is not there to be so related. One reason for widespread suspicion concerning the possibility of backward causation may simply consist in the belief that the future does not exist and is therefore not a candidate for being a relata in a causal relation. This ontological asymmetry may be what grounds our intuitions about the modal asymmetry of past and future. It is commonly thought, as noted in chapter 1, the past is necessary

72Accidental necessity* will be described below as a type of necessity that will be grounded in the actuality of the timeless realm. 73For this paragraph and the next I am indebted to insights taken from Zagzebski (1991) 15-20, 60-61.

in a way that the future is not. There is no use in crying over spilled milk precisely because there is nothing we can do about what has happened in the past. It seems natural to think that there is now only one possible past but an indefinite number of possible futures. It seems that it is now impossible that the past be different than it is. The connection between the ontological and modal asymmetry can be seen when we say that the past is “fixed” and the future is “open.” The past is fixed precisely because it is ontologically real, determinate, and complete. But if the future lacks the ontological reality of the past, then it remains undetermined and open. Zagzebski notes that this ontological difference between the past and the future has been historically construed according to the Aristotelian act/potency distinction. The past has been actualized, but the future exists only in potency. Once an event occurs or a state of affairs is actualized, there is no further ontological potency for the opposite. Accidental necessity, then is grounded in the actuality of certain events or states of affairs and in the fact that there is no potency for its opposite. This is the difference, then, between the accidental necessity of the past and causal and logical necessity. Recall Leftow’s claim that God’s unchangeable knowledge does not have the relation to my action at t which would render it a determining condition of the act: it does not exist before I act. Since accidental necessity only applies to events in time, it would seem that Leftow is correct. If the entire past is, indeed, fixed and unalterable, that would in no way tell against the Boethian solution to PTF precisely because God’s knowing is timeless. But if ontological determinacy is what truly drives the notion of accidental necessity, then it would seem that we could easily develop a notion of accidental necessity* that is grounded in the actuality of the timeless realm. One might very plausibly think, contra Hasker, that the timeless realm is more analogous to the past than to the future precisely because it is timelessly actual and therefore ontologically real and thus without potency for the opposite. The same reasons for affirming the necessity of the past appear to tell equally in favor of the necessity of the timeless realm and hence accidental necessity*. As Zagzebski notes, “the intuition that there is nothing I can do now about God’s eternal immutable beliefs about my future acts is about as strong as the intuition that there is nothing I can do now about God’s past immutable beliefs about my future acts.”74 So it is not at all clear that there is any potency in the timeless realm for God’s knowledge of my acts to be different than it is. To say that S can do other than what God knows is presumably to say that if S did otherwise, then God would have timelessly known that. But we are not concerned here

74Zagzebski (1991), 61. 27

with what God would have known, but rather with what God does timelessly know. And given that God timelessly knows that I will X, there does not seem to be any timeless potency for God’s knowing ~X. I conclude, therefore, that Helm is correct. It is not the case that X can do other than what God (timelessly) knows X will do.

The Ockhamist Solution

The Ockhamist solution to PTF has probably been the most widely discussed and debated solution since Nelson Pike provoked interest in this issue with his classic 1965 article “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action.” There, Pike issued the following challenge to DF compatibilism:

(PC): If God existed at t1, and if God believed at t1 that Jones would do X at t2, then if it was within Jones’s power at t2 to refrain from doing X, then (1) it was within Jones’s power at t2 to do something that would have brought it about that God held a false belief at t1, or (2) it was within Jones’s power at t2 to do something which would have brought it about that God did not hold the belief He held at t1, or (3) it was within Jones’s power at t2 to do something that would have brought it about that any person who believed at t1 that Jones would do X at t2 (one of whom was, by hypothesis God) held a false belief and thus was not God—that is, that God (who by hypothesis existed at t1) did not exist at t1.75

Since then, numerous philosophers have deployed a solution to this problem inspired by the work of the medieval philosopher William of Ockham (1287-1347). Unlike the Boethian solution to PTF, the Ockhamist solution accepts the claim that God is in time. It also concedes that the genuine, or strict, past is accidentally necessary (i.e. fixed). But it rejects the further claim that God’s past beliefs about future free actions are, in fact, strictly past. The general Ockhamist strategy is to show that, while some facts about the past are, indeed, fixed, there are others that only appear to be about the past but are, in part, about the future. This latter class of facts is then thought not to be fixed; thus, we have the voluminous contemporary discussion concerning the distinction between hard and soft facts. In this section, I will summarize and raise objections to the two most important Ockhamist strategies that have emerged in the literature in recent years. The first Ockhamist approach, initiated by Marilyn McCord Adams’ 1967 article “Is the Existence of God a ‘Hard’ Fact?” relies on being able to clearly distinguish the set of propositions that are genuinely, or strictly about the past (hard facts) from the set of propositions

75Pike (1965).

that are about the past, but also, in part, about the future (soft facts).76 It then attempts to show that propositions about God’s past beliefs about future free actions (or even God’s own existence) are in the class of soft facts. Let us call this first Ockhamist approach O1. The second Ockhamist approach that I will discuss abandons any attempt to define accidental necessity in terms of the distinction between hard facts and soft facts. But rather, it simply defines accidental necessity in terms of a lack of human power—that is, the accidentally necessary is, roughly, that which we have no power over. And it attempts to show that it is at least possible that God’s past beliefs about future human actions are not accidentally necessary.77 Let us call this second Ockhamist approach O2. O1 appears to be the earlier strategy for diffusing PTF. Philosophers writing on Ockhamism often point to Ockham’s own words in Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents:

Assumption 3. Some propositions are about the present as regards both their wording and their subject matter. Where such propositions are concerned, it is universally true that every proposition has [corresponding to it] a necessary one about the past—e.g. “Socrates is seated,” “Socrates is walking,” Socrates is just,” and the like. Other propositions are about the present as regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future, since their truth depends on the truth of propositions about the future. Where such [propositions] are concerned, the rule that every true proposition about the present has [corresponding to it] a necessary one about the past is not true.78

Those propositions “about the present as regards both their wording and their subject matter” are hard facts. “Socrates is seated” is strictly about the present and if true at some time t, then it is the case that “Socrates was seated” will be accidentally necessary at all times later than t. Those propositions that are “about the present as regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future” are soft facts. For example, suppose that in 2014 “The sun will rise in 2015” is true.

76Marilyn McCord Adams “Is the Existence of God a ‘Hard’ Fact? The Philosophical Review, 76 (1967): 492-503. Reprinted by permission in Fischer (1989). 77This class of the accidentally necessary should be distinct from the logically or causally necessary. But even if this second approach succeeds in demonstrating that it is possible that we have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs, this is merely a negative solution to PTF. And ideally, we should want a solution with positive content. See Zagzebski (1991) ch. 3. 78William of Ockham, Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, trans. by Marilyn Adams and Norman Kretzmann, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983, Assumption 3, p. 46. Translators’ additions in brackets. Ockham’s Assumptions appear in a number of contemporary treatments of Ockhamism, including Fisher (1989) “Introduction,” Zagzebski (1991), and Plantinga (1986).

This proposition is, in 2014 “equivalently about the future.”79 It is a soft fact because it is, in part, about 2015, and only becomes accidentally necessary after the sun rises in 2015. For Ockham, propositions are true in virtue of something that occurs at some time or another. That is, a proposition is true at all times, so long as it is settled by the actuality or occurrence of something at some time or other, whether past, present, or future. But if a true proposition is about something in the future, there is still potency for that proposition to be false. The causes and laws operative in the present do not determine or entail that the future event will occur. Therefore, the truth of a contingent proposition about the future only becomes accidentally necessary when that future event actually occurs.80 Now, Pike took it that all three options in the consequent of (PC) were unacceptable due either to basic principles about the nature of time or due to essential features of God’s nature. The basic principle concerning time that rendered features of (PC) unacceptable was formulated by Fischer as follows:

(FP): For any action Y, agent S, and time t, if it is true that if S were to do Y at t, then some hard fact about the past (relative to t) would not have been a fact, then S cannot Y at t.81

But rather than deny (FP), defenders of O1 attempt to show why God’s past beliefs about the contingent future are not hard facts. Marilyn Adams was the first to attempt to offer a perspicuous distinction between hard and soft facts. She claims that the relevant distinction can be articulated in terms of a statement’s being “about a given time.”

79Plantinga (1986), 246. 80Zagzebski (1991) cites the “Introduction” to Adams and Kretzmann as well as Marilyn Adams’ William of Ockham (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), ch. 27. 81Fischer (1989), 6. An earlier formulation appeared in Fischer’s “Freedom and Foreknowledge” The Philosophical Review, 92 (1983): 67-79, reprinted in Fischer (1989) p. 88 as follows

(FPC): It is never in any person’s power at a time t so to act that the past (relative to t) would have been different from what it actually was.

Zagzebski (1991), 71 suggests the following as an intuitive defense of (FP) and (FPC). She writes that “the common belief that the past is necessary is connected with the view that it is possible that the world end now, in which case there would be no future but, no matter what happens, it is not possible that there is no past. In fact, it is not now possible that anything other than the actual past be the past, although even if there is an actual future, it is possible now that something other than the actual future be the future. Past events cannot now not have happened; future events can now not happen. And this asymmetry between past and future means that whereas I have it in my power now to act so that the future will be different from what it actually will be, I do not have it in my power now to act so that the past would be different from [what] it actually was.” [my brackets]

(B) “Statement p is at least in part about a time t” = df. “The happening or not happening, actuality or non-actuality of something at t is a necessary condition of the truth of p.”82

From (B), Adams claims that:

(C) “Statement p expresses a ‘hard’ fact about a time t” = df. “p is not at least in part about any time future relative to t.”83

Thus, on Adams’ account, hard facts are not, even in part, about the future where the relevant notion of “about” the future requires that a necessary condition for the proposition’s truth is the occurrence or non-occurrence of something in the future. Now, Adams’ took the term “God” to indicate a title. And her approach was to analyze the term “God” in two ways: (1) Such that God’s essential everlastingness meant that it is analytically true that whoever is God is essentially everlasting or (2) Being everlasting is essential to the personal identity of the person who occupies the role picked out by the term “God.” Adams then proceeds to argue, contra Pike, that on (1) and (2) God’s existence is a soft fact at any relevant time. I will not delve too deeply into the details of this strategy for responding to (PC), other than to endorse Fischer’s contention that it is theologically implausible to construe the existence of God as counterfactually dependent on possible human actions. God has traditionally been construed in most western theistic traditions as a se. That is, God is wholly independent of anything external to Himself. He is the metaphysical ground and source of all other being. So it would seem to violate widely shared intuitions about the divine nature to accept the view that God is not “counterfactually independent of possible human action.”84 But Adams’ account of the distinction between hard and soft facts is still relevant to any (more plausible) form of O1 that would deploy it to show that God’s past beliefs about future human actions are soft, rather than hard facts about the past. We will therefore consider her account with some care. Fischer restates Adams’ account as follows:

(A) (1) A fact F is about a time t1 if and only if F’s obtaining entails that something occur at t1; (2) A fact F about t1 is a soft fact about t1 if and only if F’s obtaining entails that something (contingent) occurs at some later time t2; (3) A fact F about t1 is a hard fact about t1 if and only if it is not a soft fact about t1.

82Adams (1967) in Fischer (1989), 75. 83Adams, Ibid., 76. 84Fischer (1989, p. 9) explains this notion of “counterfactual independence of possible human action” with the following principle: (CI) If God exists, then no human agent can act in such a way that God would not exist.

Now, consider the statement: God believed at t1 that S would X at t2. According to (A), a fact is soft just in case its obtaining entails that something contingent occurs at t2. So God’s believing at t1 that S would X at t2 is a soft fact about t1 since it entails S X-ing at t2. Thus, Fischer notes, that (A) appears to affirm an “Entailment Criterion of Soft Facthood.” And the fundamental problem with such a criterion is that it appears to classify all facts as soft. Fischer asks us to consider the fact “Jack is sitting at t1.” This, it seems, is a clear case of a hard fact about t1. But “Jack is sitting at t1” entails the further fact that “It is not the case that Jack sits for the first time at t2” which itself entails that Jack does not sit for the first time at t2. So “Jack is sitting at t1” appears to be a soft fact after all. And this result is generalizable to all putative hard facts since all facts entail some such fact about the future. 85 Much of the literature on O1-type Ockhamism is an attempt to refine the entailment criterion of soft facthood. David Widerker claims that even if “Jack is sitting at t1” entails that “It is not the case that Jack sits for the first time at t2,” this second fact does not entail that t2 occur. The latter fact entails only that “If there is a t2, Jack does not sit for the first time at t2.”86 The intuitive idea here is that hard facts are supposed to be compatible with the world going out of existence, whereas soft facts about some time entail that the world persists after the time which they are about. Widerker, therefore, advances a revision of (A) that relies on this intuition and avoids the problems with the original account.

(A’) (1’) A fact F is about a time t1 if and only if F’s obtaining entails both that t1 occurs and that something occurs at t1; (2’) A Fact F about t1 is a soft fact about t1 if and only if F’s obtaining entails that some later time t2 occurs.87

(A’) appears to deliver the correct result in many cases. For instance “God believed at t1 that S would (exist but) not do X at t2” is a soft fact about t1 since it entails that t2 occurs. But Fischer raises an objection to (A’) as well. This objection exploits the entailment criterion included in (A2’). Notice that the fact (call it F1) that God believed at t1 that S would not do X at t2 is a soft fact about t1. But consider a further fact (F2) that “Exactly seven persons believed at t1 that S would not do X at t2.” It seems plausible that since (F1) is soft, (F2) should be soft as well (at least in worlds where God is among the seven believers). But it turns out that (F2) is a

85Fischer (1989), 35-36. 86Zagzebski (1991), 72. 87(A’) is Fischer’s modified version of Widerker’s definition. Fischer (1989), 36.

hard fact about t1 because it does not entail that t2 occurs. There are some worlds where time stops at t1 and in those worlds God is not among the relevant believers. Moreover, Fischer further urges us to assume that (F1) and (F2) are facts. Now, suppose that if S did X at t2, only God’s belief would have been different than it actually was. Thus, if S did X at t2, God would have had a different belief than the one He actually held at t1. So far, so good. (F1) is a soft fact, after all. But in worlds where God is among the seven believers, only He would have had a different belief and thus (F2) a hard fact, would therefore be false. This indicates that on (A’), S has the power to make it the case that a hard fact about the past is not a fact, which Ockhamists deny.88 An impressive literature has grown up around clarifying the distinction between hard and soft facts. The revised definitions have become increasingly subtle and complex. Widerker and Zemach attempt to isolate hard facts by relying on the intuitive notion that hard facts at t are the set of facts compatible with the world ending at t.89 Freddoso attempts to generate the set of those facts that are “accidentally necessary” at t from “the set of present tense, atomic, and temporally indifferent facts.”90 Hasker likewise attempts to isolate hard facts beginning with the set of facts that are “atomic and future indifferent.”91 He defines atomic, future-indifferent propositions as those which are consistent with there being no times after t and also consistent with there being times after t. And Hoffman and Rosenkrantz attempt to define hard facts as those present-tense facts at t—facts that are “unrestrictedly repeatable” but which do not entail that such facts obtain at times after t.92 These are but a sample of the various, and increasingly complex attempts to advance a principled distinction between hard and soft facts. Zagzebski complains that on Jonathan Kvanvig’s account “If the definition were written out together with all its subdefinitions, the result would be well over a page in length.”93 It is beyond the scope of

88Fischer (1989), 37-38. Fischer calls facts in such cases—cases where falsifying a soft fact would also require the falsification of a hard fact—“hard-core soft facts.” 89Eddy Zemach and David Widerker “Facts, Freedom, and Foreknowledge,” Religious Studies, 23 (1988): 19-28. Reprinted by permission as chapter 6 in Fischer (1989). 90Alfred J. Freddoso, “Accidental Necessity and Logical Determinism,” Journal of Philosophy, 80 (1983): 257-78. Reprinted by permission as chapter 8 in Fischer (1989). 91William Hasker “Foreknowledge and Necessity,” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985): 121-157. Reprinted by permission as chapter 11 in Fischer (1989). 92Fischer (1989), 40-41. See Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rozenkrantz “Hard and Soft Facts,” The Philosophical Review, 93 (1984): 419-434. Reprinted by permission as chapter 7 in Fischer (1989). 93Zagzebski (1991), 74 concerning Jonathan Kvanvig’s The Possibility of an All-Knowing God (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 102-109.

the present project to attempt to evaluate them all. But even if it is the case that with enough time, patience, and creativity, an elaborate set of conditions could be established that would (a) resist all counterexamples with the result that (b) God’s past beliefs about the future were soft, we still might worry that the project itself is, perhaps, misguided. It appears that the only thing motivating these sophisticated accounts is the fact that God’s past beliefs appear to pose a problem. If that were not the case, then past beliefs of persons would obviously count as hard facts. So elaborate attempts to exclude God’s past beliefs about the future from the hard past begin to appear desperately ad hoc. Even if a definition could be contrived that accomplished (a) and (b), it isn’t at all clear that this would mark out a real, rather than a merely nominal distinction. So it seems to me that Zagzebski is correct to complain that “Since the underlying intuition [about the necessity of the past] is a fairly ordinary one…we should find that the definition illuminates the underlying notion. Simplicity is also a virtue. The less simple the definition, the more nervous it should make us. Furthermore, it should be explanatory. It should be helpful, not only to the foreknowledge issue, but to other issues arising from temporal asymmetry as well. If it does not do these things moderately well, it is ad hoc, and it seems to me that this is a much more serious problem for the approach than the question of whether we can find any counterexamples to the proposed definitions.”94 Therefore, in my view, O1 is not a promising solution to PTF. Due, perhaps, to the sort of weariness I’ve expressed toward O1, a different Ockhamist approach has emerged in the literature, O2. This approach was first advanced by Alvin Plantinga in his 1986 article “On Ockham’s Way Out.”95 Plantinga’s rich exposition of PTF locates the issue within its historical context. He then, with characteristic style and precision, offers an exposition and endorsement of Ockham’s solution based on the hard fact/soft fact distinction. He notes that facts “genuinely” and “strictly” about the past are hard facts which are necessary per accidens. Plantinga then concedes, however, that the notion of aboutness is “at best a frail reed” so the notion of being “strictly about” is even more tenuous. 96 Nevertheless, he continues, we do have at least a rough and intuitive grasp of the relevant distinction and can apply it in many cases. It is not the case, then, that all facts about the past are hard facts, therefore not all facts

94Zagzebski (1991), 76. 95Plantinga (1986). 96Plantinga (1986), 247.

about the past are accidentally necessary. But rather than attempt to give a definition of hard and soft facts by which to offer an account of accidental necessity, Plantinga suggests offering an account of accidental necessity directly in terms of human power. He writes:

Perhaps we can make some progress as follows. In explaining accidental necessity, one adverts to facts about the power of agents—such facts, for example, as that not even God can now bring it about the Abraham did not exist; it’s too late for that. Furthermore, in the arguments for logical and theological determinism, accidental necessity functions as a sort of middle term. It is alleged that a proposition of some sort or other is about or strictly about the past; but then, so the claim goes, that proposition is accidentally necessary—in which case, according to the argument, it is not now within the power of any agent, not even God, to bring it about that it is false. Why not eliminate the middle man and define accidental necessity in terms of powers of agents?97

Plantinga then advances the following account of an accidentally necessary proposition:

(31) p is accidentally necessary at t if and only if p is true at t and it is not possible both that p is true at t and that there exists an agent S and an action A such that (1) S has the power at t or later to perform A, and (2) if S were to perform A at t or later, then p would have been false.98

Plantinga claims that although Ockham never gave an explicit account of accidental necessity, it seems plausible that he would have endorsed something like (31). (31), moreover, gives us the result that many soft facts turn out not to be accidentally necessary. For example:

(32) Eighty years ago it was true that Paul would not mow his lawn in 1999.

Plantinga claims that even if (32) is true, it is not accidentally necessary for, he claims, that it is obviously possible that Paul have the power to mow his lawn in 1999.99 The same is true for

(33) God believed eighty years ago that Paul would mow his lawn in 1999.100

So far, so good. But Plantinga notes that on (31), many hard facts about the past are not accidentally necessary on (31). Consider the following scenario (CA):

Let us suppose that a colony of carpenter ants moved into Paul’s yard last Saturday. Since this colony hasn’t yet had a chance to get properly established, its new home is still a bit

97Plantinga (1986), 253. 98Plantinga (1986), 253. 99Recall that this piece was written in 1986. 100I will contest this claim about human power in what follows.

fragile. In particular, if the ants were to remain and Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, the colony would be destroyed. Although nothing remarkable about these ants is visible to the naked eye, God, for reasons of his own, intends that it be preserved. Now as a matter of fact, Paul will not mow his lawn this afternoon. God, who is essentially omniscient, knew in advance, of course, that Paul will not mow his lawn this afternoon; but if he had foreknown instead that Paul would mow this afternoon, then he would have prevented the ants from moving in. The facts of the matter, therefore, are these: if Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, then God would have foreknown that Paul would mow his lawn this afternoon; and if God had foreknown that Paul would mow this afternoon, then God would have prevented the ants from moving in. So if Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, then the ants would not have moved in last Saturday. But it is within Paul’s power to mow this afternoon. There is therefore an action he can perform such that if he were to perform it, then the proposition

(34) That colony of carpenter ants moved into Paul’s yard last Saturday

would have been false. But what I have called the “facts of the matter” certainly seem to be possible; it is therefore possible that there be an agent who has the power to perform an action which is such that if he were to perform it, then (34) would have been false—in which case it is not accidentally necessary. But (34) obviously enough, is strictly about the past; insofar as we have any grasp at all of this notion, (34) is about as good a candidate for being an exemplification of it as anything we can easily think of. So, contrary to what Ockham supposed, not all true propositions strictly about the past—not all hard facts—are accidentally necessary—not, at any rate, in the sense of (31).101

It turns out that very few hard facts about the past are accidentally necessary in the sense of (31).102 Who knows what sorts of ways God would have acted differently in the past if I were to do any particular future action? This result seems generalizable to most human actions rendering much of the hard past not accidentally necessary. This, of course, is problematic for an account of accidental necessity which is supposed to account for our common intuitions about the asymmetry between the past and future with respect to human power. Before moving on to consider Plantinga’s attempt to remedy this defect, I want to raise a fundamental worry about his account of accidental necessity. According to Plantinga, (CA) shows us that it is within Paul’s power to act such that a proposition strictly about the past would have been false. In (CA), God, for reasons of His own, would have prevented the colony from moving into Paul’s yard if He had known that Paul would mow his lawn this afternoon. But,

101Plantinga (1986), 254. Plantinga then considers a variation on Newcomb’s Paradox in which he claims that it is within an agent’s power to perform an act such that a proposition strictly about the past would have been false. (p. 257) 102Only exotic propositions to the effect that, there is an action that I can perform such that if I were to perform it, then I would never have existed, turn out to be accidentally necessary.

claims Plantinga, Paul does have the power to mow his lawn this afternoon. But why think that Paul does have the power to mow his lawn given that an essentially omniscient being foreknew that he would not? Plantinga only tells us that “what I have called ‘the facts of the matter’ certainly seem to be possible; it is therefore possible that there be an agent who has the power to perform an action which is such that if he were to perform it, then (34) would have been false.” So now we have a clash of intuitions about what is possible with respect to the past. To say that a proposition is not accidentally necessary on (31) is to say that:

(31a) There exists an agent S and an action A such that (1) S has the power at t or later to perform A, and (2) if S were to perform A at t or later, then p would be false.103

This appears to be a simple denial of (FP). Recall that (FP) assumes that: For any action Y, agent S, and time t, if it is true that if S were to do Y at t, then some hard fact about the past (relative to t) would not have been a fact, then S cannot Y at t. The intuition behind (FP) is that (31a) is not possibly satisfied for any S, A, t, and p, where p is about the past relative to t.104 As Zagzebski notes, “Those who worry that necessary features of the structure of time preclude the counterfactual dependency of the past on the future will not have their worries laid to rest by being told without argument that there might be something A that S can do that is such that if S were to do it the past would have been different….It seems to me unconvincing as a defense of the possibility of this situation simply to declare that it ‘seems possible.’ The contrary intuitions expressed by those who think it is intuitively obvious that FPC is a necessary truth should be confronted directly.”105 It was noted above that Plantinga recognized that (31) does not “illumine our deep intuitive beliefs about the asymmetry of past and future—the fact that the future is within our control in a way in which the past is not; for far too few propositions turn out to be accidentally necessary.”106 In order to remedy this defect, Plantinga proposes to strengthen the final clause such that an accidentally necessary proposition entails that no one (not even God) can cause it to be false.

103Zagzebski, 78 104Ibid., 78. 105Ibid., 78-79. Zagzebski takes (FP) to be a putative necessary truth. I take it that she has metaphysical necessity in mind. Note that (FPC) was an earlier formulation of (FP). 106Plantinga (1986), 258.

(39) p is accidentally necessary at t if and only if p is true at t and it is not possible both that p is true at t and that there exists an action A and an agent S such that (1) S has the power at t or later to perform A, and (2) necessarily if S were to perform A at t or later, then p would have been false.107

Plantinga thinks that (39) vindicates Ockham’s claim about the accidentally necessary being connected with the strict past. For it appears that on (39), a logically contingent proposition about the past is accidentally necessary just in case it is true and strictly about the past. Suppose that

(40) Eighty years ago, the sentence “Paul will mow his lawn in 1995” expressed the proposition Paul will mow his lawn in 1995 and it expressed a truth

is true. But (40) (say before 1995) was not strictly about the past. And there is something that an agent can do that entails that (40) is false—Paul can not mow his lawn in 1995. Now consider

(41) Paul didn’t mow his lawn in 1984.

It seems that it is not possible for any agent to act such that his so acting entails that (41) is false.108 Perhaps there is some world where God knows that Paul will perform some act X, but if he failed to perform X, then God, for reasons of His own, would have arranged things so that Paul didn’t mow his lawn in 1984. But even if there are such worlds, there are still worlds where there is no such divine arrangement. Presumably the actual world is just such a world.109 So for there to be some agent S and action A that entails (41) is false, (41) must be false in every S & A world. And clearly, there are some S & A worlds where (41) is false and others where it is not. Therefore on (39), (41) is accidentally necessary. Now, (39) was intended to capture our deep intuitive beliefs about the asymmetry of the past and future. And yet, according to Plantinga, there might be something someone can do such that (41) is false, even if there is nothing anyone can do that entails that (41) is false. In fact, all contingent propositions about the past might be such that there is something that someone could do such that they are all false. But this doesn’t at all seem to accomplish Plantinga’s purpose of illuminating our deep intuitions about the

107Ibid., 259. 108Plantinga (1986), 259-260. 109Fischer notes (Fischer, 1989, p. 37), the definition of entailment is as follows: p entails q if and only if q is true in all the possible worlds in which p is true.

asymmetry of past and future and that’s what we are really interested in.110 It seems that Plantinga has merely asserted that one has the power to act otherwise than as God foreknew she would act. This is not an argument, but rather a dismissal of a fundamental intuition, (FP), that drives PTF. For this reason I do not think that O2 is promising solution to PTF. This concludes my survey of contemporary Ockhamism.

Conclusion

At this point, we have surveyed the two most influential DF compatibilist approaches to the resolution of PTF. I have concluded that each of these alternatives appear untenable. I therefore conclude with Open Theists that definite, exhaustive, infallible foreknowledge is not compatible with human freedom construed in a traditional libertarian sense. The dialectical situation, therefore, appears to be as follows: either I must reject the traditional construal of divine omniscience and embrace Open Theism, or else I must develop an alternative view which preserves traditional foreknowledge but which is consistent with the heart of what libertarians value about free will. In the next chapter I will begin to formulate such an account by relying on the resources of a medieval view of divine providence known today as Molinism. I will attempt to show that Molinism provides the resources to preserve traditional foreknowledge. But contrary to the claims of contemporary Molinists, Molinism itself is not a solution to PTF. For that, in chapter 4, I will leverage the resources of contemporary source incompatibilists for an account of human freedom that I believe preserves the heart of what libertarians value about free will. The conjunction of Molinism and this alternative conception of free will, I contend, successfully meet the philosophical challenge posed to traditional theism by PTF.

110Zagzebski (1991), 79-80.

CHAPTER 3

MOLINISM

We now turn to the Molinist “solution” to the problem of theological fatalism.111 The advent of modern Molinism is traced back to Alvin Plantinga’s reinvention, or rather, presupposing the doctrine in his The Nature of Necessity.112 It was Plantinga’s contention that the logical problem of evil, itself, presupposed the existence of certain true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. His task was then to show that, possibly, there are no worlds where the relevant counterfactuals are such that there is moral good but no moral evil.113 Since Plantinga’s resurrection of Molinism, there has been an enormous revival of interest in not only Molinism itself, but in traditional problems in the philosophy of religion. Historic Molinism, however, finds its roots in the work of the 16th century Jesuit theologian Louis de Molina (1535-1600). Molina was a principal figure in doctrinal disputes concerning divine grace, providence, foreknowledge, and predestination. The publication of his Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis, Divina Praescientia, Providentia, Praedestinatione et Reprobatione Concordia114 [The Compatibility of Free Choice with Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation] set off a fierce debate concerning these doctrines. In the first section of this chapter, I will attempt to lay out Molina’s views with some care, and discuss Molinism’s theoretical advantages. In section 2, I will present the infamous “Grounding Objection” to Molinist middle knowledge and offer a detailed response. In section 3, I will then briefly respond to a related concern that raises doubts about Molinism’s consistency with the standard Lewis-Stalnaker possible world semantics for counterfactual

111I place the word solution in quotes because it will later emerge that traditional Molinism is not, itself, a distinctive solution to PTF. Indeed, traditional Molinism appears to simply assume a solution to PTF. I will explain why this is so later in the chapter and deny this crucial assumption. And in the following chapter I will advance a conception of libertarian freedom that does not rely on the relevant assumption but that, I contend, retains what libertarians value about human freedom. 112Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). See chapter 9. 113Alvin Plantinga: Profiles, eds. James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), 48-52. According to Plantinga, he presented a version of the Free Will Defense at a conference in 1973 in which he presupposed the existence of true counterfactuals of freedom. Anthony Kenny was present at the conference and declared that Plantinga was a Molinist. Note that modern Molinism is generally explicated according to the possible-worlds semantics of Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. See Robert Stalnaker, “A Theory of Conditionals,” pp. 98-112 in Nicholas Rescher, ed., Studies in Logical Theory (Oxford, 1968) and David Lewis, Counterfactuals (1973). 114Louis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Hereafter referred to simply as Condordia.

conditionals. In section 4, I will present William Hasker’s important reductio argument against the truth of Molinism and offer a reply. I will not attempt to present a thorough, positive case for the truth of middle knowledge. I will content myself with responding to the most pressing objections to it.115 And finally, in section 5, I will identify what I take to be a simple, but important weakness in the Molinist “solution,” which will lead us to the solution advanced in the next chapter.

The Molinist View

Molinism is a doctrine of meticulous divine providence. Divine providence has traditionally been explained roughly as follows: God freely and knowingly plans, orders, and provides for all effects that constitute the created universe and its entire history. God executes his creative purposes by playing an active, causal role that is sufficient to ensure the exact realization of his plan. No detail, however small, escapes God’s providential decrees. Whatever exists and whatever events occur are, therefore, said to be specifically decreed by God. That is, each effect produced in creation is either specifically intended by God or specifically, and knowingly permitted by God, and ordered by God toward some end that He desires.116 So divine providence involves the twin notions of divine foreknowledge and divine sovereignty. It is God’s foreknowledge that, in some sense, informs God’s own decisions concerning what to create or what states of affairs to actualize. But at the same time, sovereignty implies that what is true of the world depends, in some sense, on what God wills.117 Molinism is an account of divine providence that preserves a strong notion of divine omniscience and sovereignty as well as a

115The literature surrounding Molinism has exploded in the last 40 years. This chapter will be sufficiently long and tedious without my trying to explain and reply to every objection that has been raised against it. I will not address what may be considered the “Might Argument” or the “Tie Argument” though these are important objections to Molinism. For these, see William Hasker (1989) and “The Non-existence of Molinist Counterfactuals” in Ken Perszyk ed. Molinism: The Contemporary Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), as well as David Hunt (2001a), pp. 153-154. For a very technical and detailed reply, see Mares and Perszyk “Molinist Conditionals” in Ken Perszyk ed. Molinism: The Contemporary Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 116Alfred J. Freddoso (1988), p. 3. My presentation of the Molinist view relies largely on Freddoso’s excellent “Introduction” to his translation of the Concordia. Ken Perszyk explains traditional providence as follows: “This account entails the thesis, put roughly, that everything that happens is ‘specifically’ intended, or else permitted, by God. God’s providence is not restricted to having general strategies or contingency plans for the world; God takes no risks in creation and so nothing that happens can take him by surprise. God exercises complete sovereignty over, and has complete and certain knowledge of, everything that actually occurs; and his foreknowledge must in part be a function of his control.” See Ken Perszyk, “Introduction” in Ken Perszyk ed. Molinism: The Contemporary Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 4. Hereafter referred to as Molinism. See also Thomas Flint (1998), p. 12. 117Molinism’s own formulation of how this is so will become clear below.

strong sense of human freedom.118 Ken Perzyk notes that it is nearly universally assumed that libertarianism is essential to Molinism.119 And William Hasker has claimed, “If you are committed to a ‘strong’ view of providence, according to which, down to the smallest detail, ‘things are as they are because God knowingly decides to create such a world,’ and yet you also wish to maintain a libertarian conception of free will—if this is what you want, then Molinism is the only game in town.”120 In order to set out Molina’s view in careful detail, I will follow Freddoso by first introducing some technical machinery, specifically with respect to various notions of modality that will be important for the explication of this view. First, there is what we might call, metaphysical modality. This modality is the strongest form of necessity and impossibility. It is also the weakest form of contingency. For instance, a metaphysically necessary truth might be a mathematical truth like 1+1=2. It also includes other basic logical truths. In modern parlance, necessary states of affairs obtain in every possible world. But metaphysically contingent states of affairs simply might obtain. John Roberts is currently the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. But this state of affairs might have failed to obtain. Things could have been different than they actually are. On Molinism, God’s natural knowledge is knowledge of all metaphysically necessary states of affairs. Indeed, by His natural knowledge, God knows the metaphysical modality of every state of affairs since that modality is itself, necessary. Since it is God’s nature to know every metaphysically necessary state of affairs, this knowledge is dubbed natural knowledge. God, by His natural knowledge, then, perfectly comprehends the natures (essential properties) of all possible entities which includes their active and passive causal powers.121

118See Molina, Concordia Disputation 53, pt. 2, sec. 17. See also Freddoso (1988), p. 24ff. Flint (1998), ch. 1. 119Ken Perszyk, (2011), p. 2. The sort of freedom at issue here is that God’s prior creative activity in conjunction with God’s causally concurring activity does not determine the actions of indeterministic agents. Perszyk, “Introduction,” p. 4. Thomas Flint claims that the twin pillars of Molinism are 1) Its commitment to a strong, traditional view of divine providence and 2) The claim that human freedom requires indeterminism. See Flint (1998), p. 3 120William Hasker, “Response to Thomas Flint” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 60, No. 1/2, (1990), pp.117-126. See pp. 117-118. For concurring opinions concerning the aptness of Molinistic providence for those committed to meticulous divine sovereignty and libertarian freedom, see Flint (1998), pp. 75-76 and Trenton Merricks, Truth and Ontology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), p. 155. 121Freddoso (1988), 11-12. Note that “possible entities” can be philosophically infelicitous given the well-known problems associated with the identity, say, of possible individuals. Thus, some of Molinism’s expositors aver to “creaturely essences.”

Temporal modality is another important notion with implications for Molina’s view. Temporal or accidental modality has not to do with the natures of things, nor the providential arrangement and exercise of their causal powers. But rather, this modality, as seen in the section on Ockhamism (see Chapter 2), is associated with the mere passage of time. The idea here is that some metaphysically contingent states of affairs become, in an important sense, necessary simply because they are fixed and unalterable constituents of the history of the world. So, it is thought, even free actions of agents become, in this sense, necessary once they have occurred. A state of affairs is accidentally contingent if it can still be caused to obtain or caused not to obtain. But note that the notion of contingency here is not strong enough to rule out other forms of necessity. Accidentally contingent states of affairs might still be wholly determined by the exercise of causal powers of things. Freedom, therefore, needs a stronger notion of contingency.122 And that brings us to causal modality. Molina’s notion of causal contingency and necessity was grounded in medieval Aristotelian metaphysics. The created world is a dynamic system of interacting substances that have certain causal powers which can be exercised under appropriate conditions. On this view, deterministic causation is, roughly, the automatic exercise of causal powers of substances when in the appropriate causal conditions. If I place a kettle of water over a flame, then, under normal conditions, this is the initiation of a causal chain that will deterministically result in the water’s boiling at a later time. What we have is an all-things- considered propensity for certain effects to be the result of certain causes. Freddoso calls this propensity a deterministic natural tendency. So when the water boils, the state of affairs of the water’s boiling obtains by a necessity of nature. This rough characterization will hopefully motivate the following (equally rough) account of causal or natural necessity:

S is naturally necessary (or obtains by a necessity of nature) at T iff S obtains at T by virtue of the world’s having at T* (at or before T) a deterministic natural tendency toward S at T.

S is naturally contingent at T iff S is (i) metaphysically contingent, and (ii) accidentally contingent at T, and (iii) neither naturally necessary nor naturally impossible at T.

Medieval Aristotelians thought that when God acted to produce a particular effect by himself, then God acts as a particular cause. Against the occasionalists, they believed that creatures themselves have genuine causal power (they are secondary causes). But in order for a

122Freddoso (1988), 13-14.

creature to produce an effect, its causal contribution must also be supplemented with God’s causal cooperation or concurrence. That is, God cooperates with secondary causes as a general cause to make the creature’s causal contribution efficacious. But God’s concurrence is not, itself, according to Molina, sufficient for the effect. (Molina’s Banezian rivals disagreed here.) This is God’s general concurrence. This account of contingency, however, needs to distinguish between contingent and necessary effects of secondary causes. So we might say that an effect is contingent if and only if it is either produced immediately by God alone or has the action of an indeterministic secondary cause somewhere in its causal history.123 We are now in a position to delineate four categories of contingent effects distinguished in Molina’s writings:

Category A: Particular acts that God alone produces (i.e. creation) Category B: Effects that God alone produces but that were done in conditions created by indeterministic secondary causes (granting sight to the man born blind) Category C: Effects that are naturally contingent at the time they were produced directly by indeterministic secondary causes (free choices) Category D: Effects that occur by natural necessity but they have the action of indeterministic agents in their causal history (ex. The water boiling because I put it in the pot over the fire.)124

Now, to explain the controversy that exploded between Molina and his Banezian critics, let S be a present-tense categorical state of affairs and Ft(S) the state of affairs of its being the case that S will obtain at t, where t designates a time; and let Ft(S) on H be the state of affairs of its being the case that S would obtain at t if hypothesis H were to obtain at t.125

Ft(S) on H is from eternity a conditional future contingent if and only if (i) Ft(S) on H obtains from eternity; and (ii) S, H, and Ft(S) on H are all metaphysically contingent; and (iii) it is true from eternity that if H were to obtain at t, then S would be a contingent effect produced by secondary causes (Category C or D).126

123Presumably God is the paradigm free agent and so any act of God is therefore contingent. 124Freddoso (1988), 17-20. 125Note that H includes a total description of the causal history and contemporaneous causal circumstances that might directly or indirectly impinge on the relevant effect. The following characterization of conditional future contingents is borrowed from Freddoso (1988), p. 22. 126It will be clear that counterfactuals of human freedom are instances of conditional future contingents. That is, a counterfactual of creaturely freedom (CCF) is a subjunctive conditional with a “complete” antecedent, where a complete antecedent specifies the complete set of non-determining circumstances in which a creature is placed. See Flint (1998), 40. The notion of completeness is included since counterfactuals do not obey strengthening. Also note that the creaturely referent of the antecedent should be understood as an uninstantiated creaturely essence. Thus, a CCF should be understood as a counterfactual of the following form:

The distinctive and controversial contribution of Molina was the affirmation that such conditional future contingents were prevolitionally known by God. That is, it is not an act of God’s will that makes these conditional future contingents true. Molina’s Banezian rivals thought this an unacceptable limitation of God’s sovereignty over creation. But in affirming that God knows conditional future contingents prevolitionally, Molina avoided the obvious problems for human freedom that would emerge if God set the truth-values of counterfactuals of human freedom.127 Now, God’s natural knowledge provides Him with knowledge of what indeterministic secondary causes (such as human agents) are able to do, but not what they would do in all possible circumstances in which that secondary cause could act. And even though actions by secondary causes require God’s general concurrence, Molina believed, contra his Banezian critics, that God’s concurrence was not intrinsically efficacious, and therefore did not uniquely determine the effects of secondary causes. So Molina’s view of God’s prevolitional knowledge of conditional future contingents, combined with his view of God’s concurrence with secondary causes seemed to preserve a robust view of secondary indeterministic causal agency. God does not set the conditional future contingent truths; specifically, He does not set the truth values of conditional future contingents of human freedom, and His concurrence does not uniquely determine the effects of secondary causes—the secondary causes themselves uniquely determine their own effects. But for God to be meticulously provident, He must have knowledge of what effects would be produced by the possible indeterministic secondary causes He might create in the various possible circumstances He might create them in. That is, God must know, prevolitionally, conditional future contingents. Given conditional future contingents are metaphysically contingent, then this knowledge cannot be part of God’s natural knowledge. But since it is prevolitional, it cannot be part of God’s free knowledge.128 God’s knowledge of

If creaturely essence P were instantiated in nondetermining complete circumstances C at time T, the instantiation of P would (freely) do A. See Flint (1998), pp. 46-47. 127Cf. Thomas Flint (1998), claims that “to be a genuine libertarian, [one] can hardly view such counterfactuals as under divine control, for if God were to determine the truth or falsity of such conditionals, they could not rank as conditionals of freedom, at least not of the sort of freedom that libertarians cherish.” p. 75. My brackets. 128God’s postvolitional knowledge is said to be “free knowledge” because it is a consequence of the conjunction of God’s natural knowledge, middle knowledge, and the knowledge of what contingent states of affairs He freely wills to actualize. So God knows the actual future (absolute future) because of His knowledge of His own causal contribution to creation.

conditional future contingents stands, therefore, in the middle, between His natural and free knowledge. This knowledge is, therefore, divine middle knowledge.129 Freddoso summarizes:

On Molina’s view, then, the source of God’s foreknowledge of absolute future contingents130 is threefold: (i) His prevolitional natural knowledge of metaphysically necessary states of affairs, (ii) His prevolitional middle knowledge of conditional future contingents, and (iii) His free knowledge of the total casual contribution He himself wills to make to the created world. By (i) He knows which spatio-temporal arrangements of secondary causes are possible and which contingent effects might emanate from any such arrangement. By (ii) He knows which contingent effects would in fact emanate from any possible spatio-temporal arrangement of secondary causes. By (iii) He knows which secondary causes He wills to create and conserve and how He wills to cooperate with them via His intrinsically neutral general concurrence. So given His natural knowledge, His middle knowledge, and His free knowledge of His own causal contribution to the created world, He has free knowledge of all absolute future contingents. That is, He has within Himself the means required for knowing with certainty which contingent effects will in fact emanate from the actual arrangements of secondary causes.131

In order to flesh this out further, following Freddoso, let us say that God is in a creation situation when He has prevolitional knowledge but has not yet decided what to will or permit. Banezians would say that God’s knowledge is, at this stage, constituted by natural knowledge.132 There are no contingent truths to be known since God hasn’t set those contingent truths by an act of will. So according to Banezians, there is only one creation situation which is the set (N) of all

129Molina, Concordia, Disputation 52, section 9. See also, Freddoso (1988), 23 and Flint (1998), 38. Some philosophers claim that this is the central Molinist thesis. See Ken Perszyk (2011), p.1. It is the claim that God has middle knowledge that has been the center of controversy in Molinism’s contemporary revival. 130 Ft(S) is from eternity an absolute future contingent if and only if for some H, (i) Ft(S) on H is from eternity a conditional future contingent and (ii) it is true from eternity that H will obtain at t. See Freddoso (1988), p. 22. 131Freddoso (1988), 24. Freddoso claims that Molinism is distinct from Ockhamism insofar as the latter seems to imply that creatures have the power to cause God to know (or to have known) things. Whereas on Molinism, the picture is that God knows the future simply because of his prevolitional knowledge and the knowledge of what He Himself wills to causally contribute to the actualization of a world. (Freddoso (1988), 6). Strictly speaking, on Molinism, it isn’t the agent that has the relevant power to cause God to know. Flint explains that “God’s foreknowledge is neither the effect nor the cause of our free actions. Foreknowledge follows immediately from God’s conjoining his creative act of will to his prevolitional knowledge; he has no need to observe or to be causally impacted in any way by the events he foreknows in order to know them. Even so, that foreknowledge should not be seen as in any sense the cause of that which is foreknown. God’s foreknowledge and contingent events foreknown are, in effect, two separate consequences of the creative act of will God selects. Indeed, foreknowledge is virtually epiphenomenal, in the sense that it is the causally impotent byproduct of a causally cornucopian act of divine will.” See Flint (1998), pp. 44-45. 132Note that when Molinists speak of creation situations they often speak in temporal language to refer to the progression through the stages of God’s knowledge. For example, in creating the world it is said that in the first “moment” God has natural knowledge, in the second “moment” He has middle knowledge, and in the third “moment” God has free knowledge. But Molinists are quick to note that the temporal language is only metaphorical and refers to logical moments since in God there is, allegedly, no temporal succession. 46

necessary states of affairs. By contrast, a Molinist creation situation includes N, but it also includes a full set of mutually compossible conditional future contingents (which includes counterfactuals of human freedom because these truths are prevolitional and thus not set by God). That is Ft(S) on H obtains prevolitionally for the Molinist whereas Ft(S) on H only obtains postvolitionally for the Banezian. God, on their view, wills whether or not Ft(S) on H obtains. According to Molinists, there are uncountably many possible creation situations. But there is only one that obtains.133 The creation situation that obtains defines the set of possible worlds that are, in Plantinga’s terminology, antecedently feasible for God to create. If it is true that Adam would freely sin if place in the Garden, then it is not antecedently feasible for God to create a world in which He places Adam in the Garden and Adam does not freely sin. That Adam can be placed in the Garden and not sin is possible, but not feasible for God.134 So a creation situation reflects the contents of God’s prevolitional knowledge. For Molinists, that includes necessary truths as well as conditional future contingent truths. Creation situations constitute the antecedent frameworks within which God operates as a cause. Now, for Banezians (and many Reformed theologians), Molina’s view places unacceptable limits on God’s power. But defenders of Molinism point out that, on their view, there is massive conceptual space for the operation of divine power. It is up to God whether to create anything at all. Given Molina’s view of divine concurrence, it remains true that no secondary cause can create even the slightest effect without God willing to supply His general concurrence. No evil act can be committed without God’s antecedent permission. So despite the fact that God has no control over which creation situation obtains, He still controls each effect that becomes actual. God is, therefore, perfectly provident over the actual world.135 For these reasons, William Hasker, perhaps the chief contemporary critic of Molinism, rightly notes that “middle knowledge provides the key to a uniquely powerful conception of the operation of

133The idea here is that for any pair of conditional future contingents Ft(S) or Ft(not-S), one obtains and one does not. This, of course, requires the truth of the law of conditional excluded middle. And even if this is a questionable assumption, with certain qualifications, the Molinist can get by with the weaker law of bivalence (Ft(S) on H or not- [Ft(S) on H] obtains). But I will not linger over these complications. For detailed discussion of the laws of conditional excluded middle and bivalence, see Craig (1991), especially pp. 43-53, and concerning Adams’ interpretation, see pp. 247-249. 134For more, see Alvin Plantinga (1974a), ch. 5 and his (1974b), ch. 9. 135Freddoso (1988), pp. 47-50.

divine providence, almost certainly the strongest view of providence that is possible short of complete theological determinism.” 136 This is Molina’s stunningly original, middle-knowledge-based, view of divine providence. If successful, Molina’s view of God’s providence is compatible with both meticulous sovereignty and libertarian freedom. Advocates of Molinism believe that this view not only explains how God knows the contingent future with certainty, but also reconciles that knowledge with the contingency of the objects and events foreknown. Molinism would be theologically superior to Open Theism insofar as it secures a strong view of divine providence.137 It would also seem to better accommodate the biblical data that strongly, if not directly, suggests that God has comprehensive foreknowledge.138 Molinism, moreover, seems to avoid the problems with an Augustinian-Calvinist view wherein God foreknows the future because God foreordains the future. On this traditional CD compatibilist view, it is hard to resist the conclusion that God Himself is the direct cause of evil and sin. And it is equally difficult to see how God could hold someone responsible for actions, the determining causal antecedents of which, trace back to factors beyond the agent’s control. Molinism is touted by its defenders as a tenable via media between Open Theism and the Augustinian-Calvinist view.139 Indeed, defenders of middle knowledge hardly restrain their exuberance in declaring its originality and “remarkable fecundity.”140 William Lane Craig states that “The strongest arguments for the Molinist perspective are theological. Once one grasps the concept of middle knowledge, one will find it astonishing in its subtlety and power. Indeed, I would venture to say that it is the single most fruitful theological concept I have ever encountered. In my own work, I have applied it to the issues of Christian particularism, perseverance of the saints and biblical inspiration. Thomas Flint has used it to analyze infallibility; and Del Ratzsch has used it to explore evolutionary theory…[and] middle knowledge provides an illuminating account of divine foreknowledge and providence.” 141,142

136 Hasker (1989), 19. 137That is, insofar as it seems that such a view is preferable to the risk-taking God of Open Theism. 138Cf. Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 3:9-11; 1 Pet. 1:20. 139For a more detailed discussion on Molinism’s alleged theological advantages, see Craig (2001), p. 135. 140J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 522. 141Craig (2001), p. 125. 142In addition to its theological fecundity, supporters of Molinism take themselves to have ample biblical warrant for the truth of Molinist middle knowledge. They point to counterfactual assertions made in such passages as 1 Samuel 23:6-13 and Matthew 11:20-24. 48

Nevertheless, despite its tremendous theoretical upside, Molinism has generated intense debate in the last 40 years and has been subject to detailed and sustained philosophical criticism. The criticisms are varied and sophisticated. But, in general, they can be divided into two main camps.143 The first camp claims that there can be no true counterfactuals of freedom required by the Molinist view of providence. Either all such counterfactuals are false, or they simply lack truth value. This is because there is nothing that grounds the relevant counterfactuals or makes them true. On Molinism, God does not will the truth of CCFs and the middle knowledge of CCFs is prevolitional, that is, prior to God’s willing the existence of any creature. So CCFs are not grounded in the existence or activity of creatures they are about. Another form of grounding worry is that even if there are some true counterfactuals, they cannot be true prior to God’s creative act. And if they are not true prior to God’s creative act then they cannot play the action- guiding role necessary for the exercise of providential control over the world. Now, it is important to separate these sorts of metaphysical objections from other (closely related) objections raised about the suitability of the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for Molinist counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. As Mares and Perszyk point out, the grounding and priority problems are metaphysical, the suitability problem is semantic.144 In addition to these standard lines of objection against Molinism, William Hasker has advanced what we might call a reductio argument which attempts to show that Molinism is committed to premises that are inconsistent with libertarian principles. In the remainder of this chapter, I will explain and respond to these most pressing objections to the key feature of Molinism, the claim that God has middle knowledge.

The Grounding Objection

Robert Adams was the first, and perhaps most sophisticated, critic to raise what has come to be known as the infamous grounding objection to the claim that there are true contingent future conditionals in general, and true CCFs in particular.145 In “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” Adams refers to the biblical account of David at the city of Keilah in 1 Samuel 23. Jesuit theologians, following Molina, saw this a proof-text for the claim that God has middle

143Perszyk (2011), p. 7. 144Edwin Mares and Ken Perszyk (2011), p. 97. 145Going forward, I will refer specifically to CCFs in discussion of the grounding objection.

knowledge. In the passage, David liberates the city of Keilah from the rival Philistines. King Saul hears that David is there and raises an army to attack the city in order to kill David. So David inquires of the priestly ephod concerning whether or not Saul would come down to besiege the city. God said, “He will come down.” David further inquired, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me into the hands of Saul?” And God said, “They will surrender you.” Given these affirmations, David and his men fled the city. Now, since David fled, Saul never actually besieged the city, and the men of Keilah never surrendered David to Saul. Defenders of Molinism took the ephodic affirmations, therefore, to show that God knew the following two propositions:

(1) If David stayed in Keilah, Saul would besiege the city. (2) If David stayed in Keilah and Saul besieged the city, the men of Keilah would surrender David to Saul.146

I will now quote Adams at length:

I do not understand what it would be for any of propositions (1)-(4) to be true, given that the actions in question would have been free, and that David did not stay in Keilah. I will explain my incomprehension. First, we must note that middle knowledge is not simple foreknowledge. The answers that David got from the ephod—“He will come down,” and “They will surrender you”—are not understood by the theologians as categorical predictions. If they were categorical predictions, they would be false. Most philosophers…have supposed that categorical predictions, even about contingent events, can be true by corresponding to the actual occurrence of the event that they predict. But propositions (1) and (2) are not true in this way. For there never was nor will be an actual besieging of Keilah by Saul, nor an actual betrayal of David to Saul by the men of Keilah, to which those propositions might correspond. Some other grounds that might be suggested for the truth of (1) and (2) are ruled out by the assumption that the actions of Saul and the men of Keilah are and would be free in the relevant sense. The suggestion that Saul’s besieging Keilah follows by logical necessity from David’s staying there is implausible in any case. It would be more plausible to suggest that Saul’s besieging Keilah follows by causal necessity from David’s staying there, together with a number of other features of the situation which in fact obtained. But both of these suggestions are inconsistent with the assumption that Saul’s action would have been free.

146Adams will deny the truth of (1) and (2), but he will also deny the truth of: (3) If David stayed in Keilah, Saul would not besiege the city. and (4) If David stayed in Keilah and Saul besieged the city, the men of Keilah would not surrender David to Saul.

Since necessitation is incompatible with the relevant sort of free will, we might seek non-necessitating grounds for the truth of (1) and (2) in the actual intentions, desires, and character of Saul and the Keilahites. It does appear from the Biblical narrative that Saul actually intended to besiege David in Keilah if he could. Perhaps proposition (1) is true by virtue of its corresponding with Saul’s intention. One might also suppose that (2) was true by virtue of correspondence with the desires and character of the leading men of Keilah, if not their fully formed intentions. Maybe they were cowardly, untrustworthy, and ungrateful… But the basis thus offered for the truth of (1) and (2) is inadequate precisely because it is not necessitating. A free agent may act out of character, or change his intentions, or fail to act on them. Therefore the propositions which may be true by virtue of correspondence with the intentions, desires and character of Saul and the men of Keilah are not (1) and (2) but

(5) If David stayed in Keilah, Saul would probably besiege the city. and (6) If David stayed in Keilah and Saul besieged the city, the men of Keilah would probably surrender David to Saul.

(5) and (6) are enough for David to act on, if he is prudent; but they will not satisfy the partisans of middle knowledge. It is part of their theory that God knows infallibly what would definitely happen, and not just what would probably happen or what free creatures would be likely to do.147

So it is clear, then, that for a counterfactual to be true, according to Adams, that counterfactual needs to be properly grounded. It needs something to make it true. Furthermore, any such grounds must be necessitating. Because the counterfactual acts of Saul and the men of Keilah did not actually occur, they cannot be the appropriate grounds for the relevant counterfactuals, simply because they never existed. And since character dispositions and intentions, presumably, are not necessitating, the best we can do in terms of true counterfactuals is along the lines of propositions (5) and (6). But of course, such counterfactuals could not be the sort of foundation upon which to build a doctrine of divine providence, at least not a doctrine of providence with meticulous pretensions of the sort described at the beginning of this chapter. Anthony Kenny raised a similar worry:

147Robert Adams, “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vo. 14, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 109-117. See pp. 110-111.

Molinist could retreat to the position that God’s knowledge of the counterfactuals is simply groundless knowledge for which no explanation is possible or necessary. The problem is that what makes the counterfactuals true is not yet there at any stage at which it is undecided which world is the actual world. The very truth-conditions which the possible-world semantics were introduced to supply are absent under the hypothesis that it is undetermined which world the actual world is to be. But if the truth-conditions are not fulfilled, the propositions are not true; and if they are not true not even an omniscient being can know them…In advance of the decision to create, then, God cannot know which of the relevant counterfactuals are true. In the absence of this knowledge, he cannot know which world it is in his power to actualize; and in the absence of that knowledge in its turn it seems that his decision to create can hardly be the all-wise one which Molinists have always claimed it to be.”148

Adams later restates the problem as follows:

(4) If p were in c, p would freely do s.

“Counterfactuals of freedom…are supposed to be contingent truths that are not caused to be true by God. Who or what does cause them to be true? Not p, for p may never exist. God is supposed to rely on His knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom in deciding whether to create the free creatures they are about; and therefore the truth of counterfactuals of freedom should be prior, in the order of explanation, to the existence of those creatures, and should not be caused by their choices. Perhaps it could be maintained that some counterfactuals of freedom just happen to be true, without anyone or anything having caused them to be true. That seems to be a consistent position; but it would be very unpalatable, not only to determinists, but also to those indeterminists who believe that facts that are not completely determined causally must be due to the activity of beings endowed with spontaneity.”149

To this chorus of grounding objectors, William Hasker adds:

Middle knowledge is not a straightforward implication of omniscience, because it is not evident that the truths postulated by this theory exist to be known. In ordinary foreknowledge, it may be argued, what God knows is the agent’s actual decision to do one thing or another. But with regard to a situation that never in fact arises, no decision is ever made, and none exists for God to know. And if the decision in question is supposed to be a free decision, then all of the circumstances of the case (including the agent’s character and prior inclinations) are consistent with any of the possible choices that might be made. Lacking the agent’s actual making of the choice, then there is nothing that disambiguates the situation and makes it true that some one of the options is the one that

148Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 70. Bold emphasis mine. 149Robert Adams, “Plantinga on the Problem of Evil” Alvin Plantinga: Profiles eds. James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), 232. My bold font to indicate the grounding worry. And it is this worry that Plantinga picks up on in his (1985) reply.

would be selected. This line of argument indicates the single most important objection that the proponent of middle knowledge must seek to answer.150

After citing mundane examples of allegedly true counterfactuals of freedom and competing interpretations of them, Hasker says, “Still, the proponent of middle knowledge needs to address the question mentioned earlier: How is it possible for counterfactuals of freedom to be true? What is the truth maker for these propositions?”151 This is not a question of how we, or even God, could know the truth of a counterfactual of freedom. This is not an epistemic question, it is a metaphysical question. “The question, rather, is What makes the counterfactuals true— what is the ground of their truth?”152 Character and psychological tendencies should not be thought to entail the truth of the relevant counterfactuals since that would render the agent unable to do otherwise and therefore unfree. But then if they do not entail the truth of the counterfactual, then character and psychological tendencies are too weak to ground the truth of a would counterfactual. The general principle behind the grounding objection, then, seems to be that truth must depend, in an important sense, on the way the world is. So we might, as Adams does, consider a reply by Molina’s defender an exponent, Francisco Suarez. According to Adams, Suarez appeals to a primitive understanding of what it is for the relevant CCFs to be true. Indeed, he explains that for Suarez, A is a possible agent who either has a property of being a possible agent who would, in circumstances C freely do S, or A has the property of being such that, in circumstances C, A would freely refrain from S.153 Such properties, to be sure, would be able to stand as the relevant relatum in a grounding or making true relation such that the truth of the counterfactual would then depend on the way things are, and the Suarezian properties would appropriately necessitate the counterfactual truth. But of course, such Suarezian properties would seem to be ontologically extravagant and therefore, ad hoc. Adam’s however, says

My principal objection to Suarez’s defense of the possibility of middle knowledge is not based on ontological considerations, however. I do not think I have any conception, primitive or otherwise, of the sort of habitudo or property that Suarez ascribes to possible agents with respect to their acts under possible conditions. Nor do I think that I have any other primitive understanding of what it would be for the relevant subjunctive

150Hasker (1989), p. 20. 151Ibid., pp. 23-24. 152Ibid., p. 29. 153Here we might translate talk of possible agents into talk of individual essence.

conditionals to be true. My reason for saying that Suarez’s defense is of the least clearly unsatisfactory type is that it is very difficult to refute someone who claims to have a primitive understanding which I seem not to have.154

A theorist may deem Suarez’s contention a satisfactory solution to the demand for grounding, but its dialectical power is, obviously, doubtful. Alvin Plantinga offered this reply to Adams’ grounding objection:

Suppose I claim that if Curley had been offered a bribe of $35,000, he would have (freely) accepted it. If I’m right, the antecedent neither entails nor causally necessitates the conclusion. It is both logically and causally possible that the antecedent be true and the consequent false. So what, Adams asks, makes this counterfactual true? To investigate this question properly, we should have to investigate the implied suggestion that if a proposition is true, then something grounds its truth, or causes it to be true, or makes it true. Is this supposed to hold for all propositions? What sorts of things are to be thought of as grounding a proposition, and what is it for a proposition to be grounded by such a thing? What grounds the truth of such a proposition as this piece of chalk is three inches long? I don’t have the space to enter this topic; let me just record that the answers to these questions aren’t at all clear. It seems to me much clearer that some counterfactuals of freedom are at least possibly true than that the truth of propositions must, in general, be grounded in this way. But suppose we concede, for purposes of argument, that propositions must be thus grounded…Suppose, then, that yesterday I freely performed some action A. What was or is it that grounded or founded my doing so? I wasn’t caused to do by anything else; nothing relevant entails that I did so. So what grounds the truth of the proposition in question? Perhaps you will say that what grounds its truth is just the fact that I did A. But this isn’t much of an answer; and at any rate the same kind of answer is available in the case of Curley. For what grounds the truth of the counterfactual, we may say, is just that in fact Curley is such that if he had been offered a $35,000 bribe, he would have freely taken it.155

Plantinga’s reply is two-fold. First, he claims that it isn’t obvious that all true propositions must be grounded as Adams demands. But even if we conceded the grounding requirement, it looks like Plantinga thinks that a Suarezian reply would adequately meet the demand. What makes it true that Curley would take the bribe? Well, Curley is such that, had he been offered a $35,000 bribe, he would have freely taken it. On this interpretation of Plantinga’s remarks, it seems that Curley has a primitive property, the property of being such that if offered the bribe, he would have freely taken it. But another reading of Plantinga’s comments suggests

154Robert Adams, “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), 109-117, p. 112. 155Plantinga (1985), “Replies,” p. 374.

that he is asserting the trivial truth that if it is true that Curley would have accepted the bribe, then it is true he would have accepted the bribe simply because he would have accepted the bribe had it been offered. On this interpretation, it seems that Plantinga joins a host of other Molinists who reject the need for CCFs to have truthmakers, which is surprising since the denial that CCFs have truthmakers is the principal objection raised by anti-Molinists. Critics and defenders of Molinism seem to agree on this point. So the disagreement appears not to be whether or not CCFs are grounded or have truthmakers. The disagreement appears to be over whether or not CCFs must be so grounded. And this is the point at which I wish to resist the advocates of the grounding objection. William Hasker takes Plantinga’s reply to Adams to be a Suarezian reply to the grounding objection. He then attempts to flesh out the intuition that motivates Adams’ doubts. Hasker claims that, “In order for an (contingent) conditional state of affairs to obtain, its obtaining must be grounded in some categorical state of affairs. More colloquially, truths about “what would be the case…if” must be grounded in truths about what is in fact the case.”156 So here is another clear example of the demand that the relevant conditionals be grounded…that the relevant truth values must depend, in some substantive way, on the way the world is. Adams thought that there must be some existing thing to which true propositions correspond. He demanded a ground for their truth. He later asks, concerning the relevant counterfactuals, “Who or what makes them true?” Anthony Kenny stated that “what makes the counterfactuals true is not yet there at any stage at which it is undecided which world is the actual world.” And likewise, as we’ve seen, Hasker repeatedly assumes that there must be some ground for the truth of CCFs, there must be something that makes them true. But is this demand misguided? Is the assumption that all true propositions be grounded a valid assumption? Must there be someone or something, for every true proposition, that makes it true? I will now argue that that answer is, no. I will now attempt to show how Adams’ claim that counterfactuals are true only if grounded is equivalent to the claim that they are true only if they have truthmakers. Adams states that the least unsatisfactory answer to the grounding objection is the Suarezian approach. Recall that Francisco Suarez posited possible free creatures (or let us say, creaturely essences) which have certain properties. So, for some creaturely essence C, and a possible free action A, in a possible situation S, C has the property which is either being a creaturely essence that would, in

156Hasker (1989), p. 30. 55

S, freely do A; or C has the property of being a creaturely essence who would, in S, freely refrain from doing A in S. According to Adams’ exposition of Suarez, C has one of these properties, although there is nothing either internal or external to C, except the property itself, which would make or determine C to have one of these properties rather than the other. Such properties would necessitate the relevant CCF. But Adams deems such properties to be dialectically, as well as ontologically, suspicious. Now, one way a theist may try to ground the relevant CCF might be to claim that it is grounded in the state of affairs God believes that C would A in S. Such a state of affairs would necessitate the counterfactual and it would, for that reason, be a superior ground than other properties or states of affairs associated with the agent’s character since agents can, and do, act out of character. But then the state of affairs God believes that C would A in S runs into another problem. It is not appropriately about the relevant CCF. So the ground for a CCF, or that which makes it true, cannot be 1) a suspicious property,157 2) it must necessitate the CCF, and 3) it must be appropriately about the relevant CCF. These three conditions just are the conditions set forth in a theory which attempts to show that truth depends substantively on being. This theory, known as Truthmaker theory (TT), is the thesis that each truth has a truthmaker. For each truth, there is some entity that, by its mere existence, makes the claim true. I will argue that the grounding objection is simply TT by another name. But if TT is false, then the grounding objection loses its force. In order to flesh out TT and explain my reasons for rejecting it as a substantive, general theory for how truth depends on being, I will now explain TT, what motivates it, and what the relevant truthmakers must be like. I will then offer counterexamples to TT which, I contend, undermine its suitability as a general theory for articulating truth’s substantive dependence on being. These reasons will be independent of the Molinism debate. I will, therefore, attempt to offer independent reasons for rejecting the Truthmaker Theory in general. By doing so, I thereby show that the grounding objection itself poses no special threat to Molinist middle knowledge.158 Truthmaker theory is a widely endorsed view concerning how truth depends substantively on being.159 David Lewis states that TT is an attempt to secure something “right

157Merricks, (2007), pp. 148-150. 158Much of what I say here relies heavily on arguments advanced in Trenton Merricks (2007), though I will make frequent appeals to counterexamples identified by David Lewis. 159As supporters and defenders of TT, Merricks (2007) cites William Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Kit Fine, “First-Order Modal Theories III-Facts”, Synthese, 53: 43-122; E.J. Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); and most

and important and underappreciated. What’s right, roughly speaking, is that truths must have things as their subject matter.”160 But little argument is advanced for the truth of TT as a general theory. It seems, rather, to be motivated by the intuition, as noted by Lewis, that truth depends non-trivially on what there is, on being, on the world, etc.161 Indeed, that Fido is brown is true because Fido is brown. That Kimmell is left handed is true because Kimmell is left handed. But that truth depends this way on the way things are is trivially true. TT is an attempt to articulate the view that truth depends, non-trivially, on being. Moreover, TT is thought to be a litmus test that other philosophical theories must pass in order to be taken seriously. That is, TT is supposed to help catch theoretical cheaters. For instance, a closely related notion concerning how truth depends substantively on being is the thesis that all truth supervenes on being (TSB).162 Now, presentism is a substantive metaphysical theory of time. It claims, roughly, that the whole of being comprises that which exists at the present time alone. So given presentism’s commitments, obvious truths like that the Trojans were conquered cannot be adequately grounded. For on presentism, all presently existing objects, their properties, and relations are all that exist. And that the Trojans were conquered cannot be said to locally supervene on these existing objects, properties, and relations. Therefore, presentism is false and advocates of presentism are theoretical cheaters when they try to affirm such truths.163 More generally, TT and TSB are formulations of the intuition that truth depends on being, and any violation of that dependence is cheating. So, it seems, TT and TSB are tools for selecting live theoretical options, and thereby doing responsible philosophy.

strenuously David Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Truth and Truthmakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 160Lewis, (1992), 218. Even though he rejects Armstrong’s truthmaker principle and instead endorses the view that truth supervenes on being. 161Merricks (2007), 2. 162TSB is alleged by David Lewis to articulate the thesis that truth depends substantively on being, but without the undesirable consequences of TT. See Lewis (1992), pp. 216-218. More will be said about TSB below. 163Merricks (2007), 74-79. In this regard, David Lewis writes, “All too often, philosophical positions posit truths that fail to supervene on being. Consider phenomenalism, with its brute counterfactual truths about nonexistent experience. Armstrong has told us how Charlie Martin long ago persuaded him to smell a rat…Right! But the way Martin explained the bad smell, namely as the stink of truths without truth-makers, cast suspicion not only on the ratty counterfactuals that well deserved it, but also on innocent negative existentials and predications. By all means find something wrong with phenomenalist counterfactuals. But if my denial that there are arctic penguins is likewise true without benefit of any truth-maker, true just because there aren’t any artic penguins to make it false, then is it really a companion in guilt?” See David Lewis, “Critical Notice” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1992), 70:2, 211-224; see pp. 218-219. We will revisit the issue of negative existentials in detail below. I only note Lewis’s complaint as an example of TT being used to catch cheaters.

What then, does TT actually claim? First, TT claims that a necessary condition for a truthmaker is that it necessitates the relevant truth. More precisely, Necessitarianism states:

For all X and all P, X is a truthmaker for P only if X’s mere existence is metaphysically sufficient for the truth of P

A number of prominent philosophers have defended this or similar claims. We will, therefore take it to be a necessary condition for TT.164 Indeed, this is probably the most theoretically important and widely affirmed feature of TT since it is the failure to necessitate certain truths that TT advocates cite as cheating. Now, one might worry that the necessitation requirement runs into trouble when it comes to necessary truths. Lewis offers his own expression of Necessitarianism, which he identifies as the Truthmaker Principle: For any proposition P, there exists something T such that T’s existence strictly implies (necessitates) P.165 He then notes that all necessarily true propositions are necessitated by whatever exists. So a necessary mathematical truth is necessitated by the existence of my left toe.166 More formally, for all X and all P, necessarily, P is true implies necessarily, if X exists, then P is true. Necessitarianism, according to Lewis, seems to apply trivially to necessary truths. Because of this consequence, other theorists scale back the scope of TT such that they deny that it applies to necessary truths at all. Now, suppose you deny the existence of mathematical entities and properties, but you affirm that 2+2=4 is true. You might be charged by truthmaker theorists with cheating since on your view there is nothing that exists that could make the statement true. Now, you point out that each existing thing necessitates the truth of such a necessary truth. So my left toe, then, necessitates the truth of 2+2=4. But of course, it seems clear that this is cheating. It is cheating because even if truthmakers apply trivially to necessary truths, it seems clear that my left toe has nothing at all to do with making 2+2=4 true. Remember, if my left toe really was a truthmaker

164Merricks, (2007) cites David Armstrong “Truthmakers for Modal Truths,” in Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereya (eds), Real Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 12 and his (2004), pp. 6-7. See also Fine (1982), p. 69; John F. Fox, “Truthmaker,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, (1987), 65:188-207; George Molnar, “Truthmakers for Negative Truths,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2000), 78:72-86. Note that Necessitarianism, as stated, seems to imply the existence of abstract propositions, so a physicalist might reformulate Necessitarianism as conditional Necessitarianism—the denial of Necessitarianism in conjunction with (CN): For all X and P, if X is a truthmaker for P, then, necessarily, if both X and P exist, then P is true (Merricks, (2007), p. 9). Nothing much should hinge on this complication in what follows. 165David Lewis, “Truth-making and Difference-Making,” Nous, (2001) 35: 602-615. See p. 604. 166Lewis, (2001), 206.

for 2+2=4 then it would stand as a refutation of the charge of cheating. And clearly, it does not. So we should not require necessary truths to have truthmakers and at the same time accept trivial truths as truthmakers. Indeed, as Merricks notes, such truths only require trivial truthmakers just in case they don’t require truthmakers at all.167 TT, therefore, should not accept trivial truthmakers. But, if we follow other theorists who want to restrict the scope of truthmaking merely to contingent truths, then we run the risk of eviscerating the cheater-catching capabilities of TT. For if the scope of TT is scaled back to apply only to contingent truths, then other theorists who end up affirming truthmakerless truths can make a similar move and simply exempt their truths from the demands of TT. And it’s not obvious that TT makes no demand on necessary truths after all. Suppose that God exists is not only true, but necessarily so. It seems clear that we would count God’s existence as the truthmaker for this truth. The point is, TT advocates would certainly accept a truthmaker for a necessary truth if one could be found. So it seems that the move to exempt necessary truths from TT is motivated by the difficulty associated with finding truthmakers for them. Thus, restricting the scope of TT to contingent truths is itself ad hoc and unprincipled. It would undermine TT’s ability to catch theoretical cheaters and thereby undermine its primary motivation.168 Necessitation is a key condition for TT. But the troubles with necessary truths point to another important condition for being a genuine truthmaker. Clearly, there is more to making true than mere necessitation. Recall Lewis’s contention that “What’s right [about TT], roughly speaking, is that truths must have things as their subject matter.” For an entity (or the state of affairs of the entity’s having a certain property or set of properties) to serve as a genuine truthmaker, the entity should be appropriately about the entity.169 Barry Smith argues that “A truthmaker for a given judgment…must be more than a mere necessitating part of that portion of reality to which the judgment corresponds. It must be, of its nature, the right sort of part. It must be part of that which the judgment is about, must satisfy some relevance constraint.”170 This idea can only be fleshed out using what appear to be clear examples. But roughly, TT asserts, or should assert, that there is an aboutness relation such that for every true proposition P (or whatever your preferred truthbearer) there is some X such that P is so related to X. I have little

167Merricks (2007), 23-24. 168Ibid., 24-26. 169Ibid., 26. 170Barry Smith, “Truthmaker Realism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1999), 77:3, 274-291; see p. 279.

hope for formulating a perspicuous analysis of this aboutness relation. But TT advocates should sympathize with this requirement and affirm a workable grasp of this aboutness relation or else concede that we can make no sense of TT itself.171 So we have identified two necessary conditions for TT: 1) That any putative truthmaker necessitates the relevant truth and 2) A putative truthmaker must, in some reasonable sense of about, be appropriately about the truth it makes. This brings us to a third necessary condition I wish to identify for a truthmaker: the requirement that the relevant truthmakers may not be suspicious properties. Consider the claim by some presentists that even though there are no existing past states of affairs, there are still truths like that the Trojans were conquered. They ground this truth by observing that one of the currently existing things is the whole world, the totality of existing things which can have properties. One of the current properties of the world is that the Trojans were conquered. So the state of affairs of the universe’s being such that the Trojans were conquered is the truthmaker for that the Trojans were conquered. The identified state of affairs would necessitate and be appropriately about the relevant truth. But it seems suspicious. TT advocates claim that presentists cheat by invoking such properties to ground their truth claims. But of course, a fully articulated TT must identify for us which properties are suspicious and which properties are not. It is important to note that TT is itself anything but a neutral theoretical gatekeeper.172 So when Robert Adams identifies Suarezian properties as suspicious, it seems that he is actively legislating which sorts of theories are permitted and which are not. And he does so as a theoretical partisan, and not an indifferent observer. Now, to summarize, the grounding objection requires some existing entity that necessitates the relevant truth. The truth must be appropriately about what it grounds. And, according to Robert Adams, the ground cannot be suspicious properties. This, I take it, is precisely what Truthmaker Theory demands. So the demand for grounding just is to assume the truth of TT. I will now attempt to show that TT is false. I will offer counterexamples to TT as a general theory that requires, or should require, that every truth be made true by some existing thing. I claim that there are some truthmakerless truths. That there are no unicorns is true. That there are no fire-breathing dragons is true. That there are no winged horses is true. That there are no hobbits is also true. That there are no artic

171Merricks (2007), 33-34. 172Merricks (2007), 35-38.

60 penguins is true, and cannot be made true by any existing thing since there are no artic penguins to make the claim true. 173 David Lewis points to true negative existentials as a serious, indeed, decisive objection to TT as a general theory for all truth. Negative existentials, says Lewis, are not true “because things of some kind do exist, but rather because counterexamples don’t exist. They are true for lack of false-makers.”174 As Lewis says,

The special case of a negative existential is the exception that proves the rule. Exactly because there are no things of the appropriate sort, very little is true about them. The whole truth about arctic penguins is: there aren’t any. Whereas the whole truth about antarctic penguins would fill many a book. Indeed, a subject matter can be empty. That’s one way for it to be—just one way. But a subject matter can be non-empty in ever so many different ways.175

As with necessary truths, many truthmaker theorists want to restrict the scope of TT to exempt TT from applying to negative existentials. But we noted that the main motivation for exempting necessary truths from the truthmaker requirement was simply that it was difficult to find truthmakers for them. If truthmakers could be found for necessary truths, then it seems likely that defenders of TT would readily embrace them. So too with negative existentials. If appropriate truthmakers for negative existentials could be found, then it seems likely that advocates of TT would gladly endorse them. Exempting negative existentials from the mandates of TT, therefore, seems to be motivated purely by the fact that there do not seem to be any truthmakers for negative existentials. And again, suppose other theorists find themselves committed to truthmakerless truths. What principled grounds do defenders of TT have for refusing to accept these truths given that they, themselves, exempt necessary truths and negative

173David Lewis (1992), p. 216. 174Ibid., 216. 175Lewis (1992), 218. Lewis takes this as a reason to reject Armstrongian truthmakers and embrace Bigelow’s theory that truth supervenes on being. See John Bigelow, The Reality of Numbers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 132-133 and 158-159. The idea here is that truth supervenes on what exists, but also on how it exists. Truth supervenes on existing entities and also the properties and relations that existing entities instantiate. So on TSB, no two possibilities can differ about what’s true without also differing with respect to what things there are and how they are. And, according to Lewis, TSB avoids Armstrong’s illicit, and impossible, demand for truthmakers for negative existentials while also doing justice to the insight that motivated it, namely, that “truths are about things, they don’t float in a void.” Now, TSB, as a thesis about global supervenience, turns out to be a trivial, not a substantive view of how truth depends on the world. But when interpreted as a thesis of local, world-wide supervenience, then TSB looks very much like TT and is subject to all the same problems that suspicious properties and negative existentials pose to TT. I will, therefore, continue to work on the assumption of TT. For a lengthy and detailed discussion, see Merricks (2007), chapter 4.

existentials from truthmaker requirements? Exempting negative existentials from the requirements of truthmakers undermines its ability to catch theoretical cheaters. Now, consider the following dispositional conditional:

(DC) If glass G were struck, then G would shatter.

It is true that if G were struck, then G would shatter. But David Lewis imagines that a powerful sorcerer has taken an unusual liking to G.176 The sorcerer then resolves to observe G throughout its existence and should G ever be struck, then quick as a flash, the sorcerer changes the micro structure of G such that it would not shatter. In this case, (DC) is false. Or consider another, more mundane example. Suppose that G is struck, but that G is surrounded by packing material. In this case, again, (DC) turns out false. So, if (DC) were true—that is, if G were struck and G shattered, that would mean that there was no sorcerer there to fink the disposition. Likewise, it would also mean that there was no packing material there to mask the disposition. Now, if there is a truthmaker for (DC), that truthmaker necessitates not only (DC) but every proposition entailed by (DC). So if there is a truthmaker for (DC), then there is a truthmaker for that there is no sorcerer who intends to keep G from shattering. The truthmaker for (DC) would necessitate that there is no packing material surrounding G. But if there is nothing that, by its mere existence, necessitates the truth of the negative existentials entailed by (DC), then there is nothing that, by its mere existence, necessitates (DC). So dispositional conditionals provide yet another counterexample to TT.177 Now, it has been suggested that there are truthmakers for negative existentials. Perhaps the totality of the way things are, somehow, makes negative existentials true.178 So we might point to, say, the positive, intrinsic character of the universe, together with the universe having

176David Lewis, “Finkish Dispositions,” The Philosophical Quarterly (1997) 47:143-158. The sorcerer case is a case of a “finkish” disposition. A finkish disposition is one such that the very conditions that are supposed to trigger its manifestation are also the very conditions that remove the disposition. See C. B. Martin “Dispositions and Conditionals,” The Philosophical Quarterly 44: 1–8. The packing material case is what is called a case of “masking.” In masking cases, the intrinsic properties of the glass remain unchanged. This sort of example shows that Lewis’s revised conditional analysis of dispositions is subject to serious counterexamples. Alexander Bird’s ‘antidotes’ are cases of masking. See Alexander Bird, “Dispositions and Antidotes,” The Philosophical Quarterly, (Apr., 1998) Vol. 48, No. 191, pp. 227-334. For an excellent overview of the issues surrounding the various conditional analysis of dispositions, see Sungho Choi and Michael Fara (2012) “Dispositions” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dispositions/. 177Merricks (2007), 39-42. 178Armstrong (1997), 200-201.

the property of being such that there is nothing more in the universe as a totality state of affairs that grounds all true negative existentials.179 But insofar as TT rules out suspicious properties, it would seem to rule out the universe’s having the property of being such that there is nothing more in the universe. Merricks quotes Ted Sider in this regard who writes:

What seems common to all the cheats is that irreducibly hypothetical properties are postulated [as truthmakers], whereas a proper ontology should invoke only categorical, or occurrent, properties and relations. Categorical properties involve what objects are actually like, whereas hypothetical properties ‘point beyond’ their instances.180

However we understand Sider’s objection that such ontological cheaters ‘point beyond their instances,’ it seems clear that the totality state property of the universe’s being such that there is nothing more in the universe is precisely just such a property. This primitive totality property, then, seems clearly suspicious. But if the TT defender denies that the relevant totality property is suspicious, it seems that she can only do so at the cost of allowing other theorists to do the same when they, like Suarez, attempt to ground certain truths in properties that make them uneasy. And this, of course, would undermine TT’s ability to catch cheaters.181 So the best hope for truthmakers for negative existentials is ruled out by the requirements of TT itself. Therefore, it seems, that negative existentials are truthmakerless truths. Necessary truths have problems with the necessitation and aboutness requirements of TT. Negative existentials appear to have no truthmakers at all. The best attempt to ground negative existentials is in suspicious totality properties. And dispositional conditionals seem to entail an indefinite number of negative existentials. That there are truths of each sort seems very plausible. And insofar as TT is a general theory which claims that all truths are made true by the mere existence of some entity, necessary truths, negative existentials, and dispositional conditionals all appear to be counterexamples to this thesis. Therefore Truthmaker Theory is false. But insofar as the grounding objection to Molinism is precisely to assume that Truthmaker Theory is true, it seems that the grounding objection to Molinism is, itself, groundless. Defenders and critics of

179Such a state of affairs would be required to ground, not only negative existentials, but also general statements like all ravens are black. For such a general statement could be made true by a large conjunction of states which included each raven that exists along with its being black. But such a claim could easily be made false by the state of affairs of a raven existing and being white. So there needs to be some sort of and nothing more property to exclude such possibilities. See Merricks (2007), 39-40. Note also that this nothing more property must be primitive. 180Theodore Sider, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 41, quoted in Merricks (2007), p. 60. 181Merricks (2007), 60-61.

Molinism agree that CCFs are ungrounded, truthmakerless, truths. The grounding objectors insist, however, that CCFs must be grounded. That insistence is based on the assumption of TT which, we have good reason to believe, is false. That Fido exists is true because Fido exists. That 2+2=4 is true because 2+2=4. That hobbits do not exist is true because hobbits do not exist. To these trivial truths, I add another, that S would do A in C is true because S would do A in C. To those who raise against the Molinist the charge of theoretical cheating, but whose own systems end up committed to truthmakerless truths, I simply reply, tu quoque! That is not to say that there are no truthmakers for any truths. My existence makes true that Kimmell exists. The point here is simply that, while there are truthmakers for truths about existing things—non-suspicious truthmakers that necessitate the truths they are about—there are also other truths that do not have truthmakers. My view, then, is not that CCFs are grounded by suspicious Suarezian properties, but rather that—like necessary truths, negative existentials, and dispositional conditionals—there are true subjunctive counterfactuals of human freedom that are not made true at all. Recall that Anthony Kenny’s formulation of the grounding objection appealed to its putative incompatibility with the truth conditions for counterfactuals set forth in the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterfactual conditionals:

But prior to God’s decision to actualize a particular world those counterfactuals cannot yet be known: for their truth-value depends…on which world is the actual world. It is not simply that God’s knowledge of these counterfactuals cannot be based on a decision which has to be taken subsequent to knowledge of them: were that the only problem, a Molinist could retreat to the position that God’s knowledge of the counterfactuals is simply groundless knowledge for which no explanation is possible or necessary. The problem is that what makes the counterfactuals true is not yet there at any stage at which it is undecided which world is the actual world. The very truth- conditions which the possible-world semantics were introduced to supply are absent under the hypothesis that it is undetermined which world the actual world is to be…”182

Kenny’s contention here is an instance of a common conception of CCFs as being ungrounded precisely because they are allegedly inconsistent with the truth conditions set forth in the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterfactual conditionals. On that semantics, a counterfactual is true just in case all worlds where the antecedent and the consequent are true are closer to, or more similar to, the actual world than any world where the antecedent is true and the

182Anthony Kenny, 70. Bold emphasis mine.

consequent is false. But as Edwin Mares and Ken Perszyk have very recently pointed out, there are two problems raised by Kenny’s remarks.183 The first question concerns the truth conditions for CCFs. And the second issue concerns what makes the relevant counterfactuals true. The first question concerns whether we can appropriately apply a standard semantics for conditionals that is compatible with there being true CCFs. This is a semantic issue. The second issue is metaphysical. I have argued that CCFs are truthmakerless truths. I therefore deny that CCFs are made true by anything, a fortiori, I deny that that CCFs are made true by certain features of the standard semantics for counterfactual conditionals. I therefore deny that the priority problem, identified above, is a problem for Molinist CCFs. But this does raise an important problem for Molinism concerning the suitability of the standard semantics, a problem that leads to other important semantic-based objections to Molinism. It is to that problem that I now turn.

The Semantic Problem

As far back as 1988, in the “Introduction” to his translation of part IV of Molina’s Concordia, Alfred Freddoso wrote:

The position I am urging has some far-reaching consequences for the semantics of subjunctive conditionals. I am suggesting, in effect, that when such conditional propositions are not probabilistic, the connection between antecedent and consequent is not reducible to any logical or, more important, causal connection. This suggestion cuts against the spirit, if not the letter, of the standard possible-worlds semantics for subjunctive conditionals. For it is usually assumed that the similarities among possible worlds invoked in such semantics are conceptually prior to the acquisition of truth-values by the subjunctive conditionals themselves… I will not tarry over the moot question of whether the standard possible-world semantics for subjunctive conditionals in fact implies or presupposes that the acquisition of truth-values by such conditionals is conceptually posterior to and dependent on the determination of which world is actual. It is clear, however, that on the Molinist view the dependency runs in just the opposite direction when the conditionals in question are conditional future contingents. For Molinists hold that conditional future contingents delimit prevolitionally the range of worlds God is able to actualize. If the standard possible-world semantics for subjunctive conditionals presupposes otherwise, then Molinists will have to modify it or propose an alternative capable of sustaining realism with respect to conditional future contingents…And I freely admit that the positive task of elaborating a metaphysical and semantic foundation for this doctrine is enormous and has hardly yet begun.184

183Mares & Perszyk, 97. 184Freddoso (1988), 74-75.

Freddoso’s comments clearly concede the incompatibility of the standard semantics for counterfactuals with Molinist CCFs. Other Molinists have suggested that if the Lewis-Stalnaker (LS) semantics is inconsistent with prevolitionally true CCFs, then so much the worse for LS. But I regard this as a sort of theoretical nuclear option. Indeed, the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics purports to provide truth conditions for counterfactuals in terms of similarity relations between possible worlds. But LS is a formal theory that does not indicate the features of the world upon which these similarities supervene. LS does not provide the grounds Molinists allegedly need for CCFs. Now, I deny that Molinist CCFs need such grounds, but even if they did, a semantic theory is just not the sort of thing that can solve metaphysical problems anyway. 185 What LS tells us is simply that the CCFs that are prevolitionally true in a given world correspond to the similarity relations that this world holds to other worlds.186 LS, then, can be used by Molinists as a heuristic for discovering the truth values of some relatively mundane prevolitionally true conditional future contingents.187 For the Molinist, LS should be construed as a post hoc epistemic tool which can help us discover the truth values of many other garden-variety counterfactual conditionals. Alvin Plantinga, in his “Reply to Robert Adams” gestured in this direction:

A world W in which there are no free creatures at all can be more similar to one in which there are free creatures who make more right than wrong choices, than to one in which there are free creatures who make more wrong than right choices; all that’s needed is that the relevant counterfactuals be true in W. Of course this means we can’t look to similarity, among possible worlds, as explaining counterfactuality, or as founding or grounding it. (Indeed, any founding or grounding in the neighborhood goes in the opposite direction.) We can’t say that the truth of A‰C is explained by the relevant statement about possible worlds, or that the relevant similarity relation is what makes it true. But it doesn’t follow that the possible worlds account of counterfactuals is viciously circular or of no use. In the same way we can’t sensibly explain necessity as truth in all possible worlds; nor can we say the p’s being true in all possible worlds [is] what makes p necessary. It may still be extremely useful to note the equivalence of p is necessary and p is true in all possible worlds: it is useful in the way diagrams and definitions are in mathematics; it enables us to see connections, entertain propositions and resolve

185Mares & Perszyk, 97. 186Ibid., 98. LS could only hope to provide metaphysical grounds for the truths of counterfactuals if it is construed as a metaphysical reduction project, which by my lights is, itself, an extreme form of realism. But if we construe the semantic project as the search for a counterfactual truth-tracker, then complaints such as Kenny’s lose their force. 187For instance, let us suppose that it is prevolitionally true that if Adams asked the butcher for a pound of ground beef, then the butcher would sell it. The standard semantics could be applied here by making reference to the butcher’s character, context, and motivations in discovering the correct truth value of the prevolitionally true CCF.

questions that could otherwise be seen, entertained and resolved only with the greatest difficulty if at all.188

So it’s not at all clear that the standard LS semantics should be dismissed by Molinists. Indeed, once we reject the demand for grounding that is motivated by a misguided commitment to Truthmaker Theory, we are free to deploy LS as a means to retroactively discover the truth values of certain prevolitionally true counterfactual truths.189 Now, this view will certainly not sit well with some critics. William Hasker acknowledges that this Plantiga-style reply suffices as a formal answer to the objection. But he thinks this raises a further, major problem. How are we to explain the alleged fact that some counterfactuals are true and others are not? And the only answer I give to someone who demands to know why it is prevolitionally true that S would A in C rather than that S would refrain from A in C is that S would A in C because S would A in C. This seems a trivial explanation, but all attempts to articulate a substantive view of how truth depends on being fail. Hasker’s query is to simply re-assume Truthmaker Theory. He complains:

So we are confronted with this vast array of counterfactuals—probably, thousands or even millions for each actual or possible free creature—almost all of which simply are true without any explanation whatever of this fact being given. Is this not a deeply puzzling, even baffling state of affairs?190

To this complaint, I reply that, on the one hand, yes, there is an air of mystery here. But there are many philosophical problems that leave us similarly perplexed. On the other hand, I reply that the prevolitional truths of CCFs is no more mysterious than necessary truths, true negative existentials, and true dispositional conditionals. Indeed, it isn’t obvious to me that prevolitionally true CCFs are any more mysterious than any truth. That Fido is brown is true because Fido is brown. And S would A in C because S would A in C.

188Alving Plantinga, “Reply to Robert Adams,” in Tomberlin and Van Inwagen (1985), p. 378. 189This sort of response to the priority problem is rather different than that which is sometimes offered. Following Plantinga (1974), 169, William Lane Craig (1991), pp. 263-267, attempts to show that the logical moments through which the world is progressively instantiated provide the truth conditions for CCFs even on the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics. 190Hasker (1989), 38.

Hasker’s Reductio

In a series of published writings beginning with his 1986 “A Refutation of Middle Knowledge,” William Hasker has sought to show that certain Molinist commitments turn out to be incompatible with the sort of libertarian freedom that is vital to Molinism.191 He argues that Molinist counterfactuals are supposed to be true even if their antecedents are false. So if an arbitrarily chosen CCF is true, its truth is not brought about even by the agent performing the action specified in the consequent of the CCF under conditions specified in the antecedent. Therefore, agents do not bring about the alleged truths of CCFs. And if agents do not bring about the truths of CCFs in general, then an agent cannot bring about the truth of a CCF that specifies that the agent refrains from the act under the conditions specified in the antecedent. This, in conjunction with an appropriate power entailment principle, allegedly shows that agents cannot freely refrain from doing what they actually do. If agents cannot freely refrain from what they do, then they do not act freely. And this conclusion, it is suggested, is fatal to the Molinist thesis that there are true CCFs. The first main step of Hasker’s argument attempts to show that S does not “bring about” the truth of:

(1) If S were in C, S would freely do A.

Let us assume for reductio that (1) is an arbitrarily chosen true counterfactual of freedom. Let us assume, again for reductio, that S is in C and that S freely does A. Now, both the antecedent and the consequent of (1) are true. Hasker then advances two arguments to show that S does not bring about the truth of (1).192 According to Hasker, (1) would have been true even if its antecedent had been false.193 So he argues that (1) would have been true even if S hadn’t freely done A in C. And if (1) would have been true even if S hadn’t freely done A in C then the truth

191See “A Refutation of Middle Knowledge,” Nous 20 (1986): 545-557. His argument has been reformulated and republished several times, including Hasker (1989) pp. 39-52; “Middle Knowledge: A Refutation Revisited,” Faith and Philosophy, 12, 223-236; “A New Anti-Molinist Argument”, Religious Studies, 35, 291-297. I will be concerned to interact with the Hasker (1989) version. 192The first argument for the conclusion that S does not bring the truth of (1) concerns the relative closeness of possible worlds. According to Hasker, the truth of subjunctive conditionals should be weighted so heavily that all such conditionals are true in possible worlds in which their antecedents are false. Hasker then argues that CCFs would be true even if their antecedents were false because CCFs are not under God’s control so they should be weighted more heavily than counterfactuals backed by laws of nature, which are, presumably, under God’s control and very likely probabilistic See Hasker ((1989), 40-48). 193See Hasker (1989), pp. 39-48, especially pp. 47-48.

of (1) was not brought about by S’s freely doing A in C.194 Now, if the truth of (1) is not brought about by S’s freely doing A in C, then, for Hasker, S doesn’t bring about the truth of (1) at all.195 In general, then, the performance of the action specified in the consequent under the conditions specified in the antecedent of a CCF does not thereby bring about the truth of the relevant counterfactual. The second step of Hasker’s reductio is to show that if S doesn’t bring about the truth of (1), then S cannot bring about the truth of

(1*) If S were in C, S would freely refrain from doing A.

Now, if, as Hasker claims, the only possible way to bring about the truth of a counterfactual is for the agent to perform the action specified in the consequent under the conditions specified in the antecedent—and it is also true that doing so does not, in fact, bring about the truth of the counterfactual—then no agent brings about the truth of any counterfactual of freedom. And that includes (1*). The third step of Hasker’s argument is to show that if S cannot bring about the truth of (1*) then S cannot freely refrain from doing A in C. This step of Hasker’s argument relies on his Power Entailment Principle. (PEP) If it is in A’s power to bring it about that P, and “P” entails “Q” and “Q” is false, then it is in A’s power to bring it about that Q.196

If an agent cannot bring about a truth necessitated by the performance of an action then the agent cannot perform that action.197 According to Hasker’s PEP, if S cannot bring about the truth of (1*) then S cannot freely refrain from doing A in C.

194If the counterfactual is true, even if the antecedent were false, then it follows, by Hasker’s definition of what it is to bring about the truth of a proposition that (1) is independent of whether or not S does A in C. Hasker (1989, 42) explicates “bringing about the truth of a proposition” as follows: If E brings it about that “Q” is true, then E is a token of an event-type T such that (some token of T occurs)‰Q and ~(some token of T occurs)‰~Q, and E is the first token of T which occurs (and if E were not to occur, no other token of T would occur). When an event and proposition do not satisfy this condition, Hasker claims that the truth of the proposition is independent of the event in question. 195According to Hasker (1989, 40), partisans of Middle Knowledge claim that the agent herself brings about the truth of the counterfactual in those possible worlds where the antecedent is true. Indeed, he claims, the only possible way for an agent to bring about the truth of a counterfactual is to perform the action specified in the consequent under the conditions stated in the antecedent (p. 40-41). 196Hasker (1989), 49. 197This is Merricks’ (2013, p. 55 n. 6) characterization of Hasker’s principle.

Now, given the two assumptions that seem to be perfectly acceptable to Molinists, if Hasker’s arguments for step 1 succeed, then the relevant CCF would have been true even if the antecedent were false. That is, if the second assumption were false (if S did not A in C), (1) still would have been true. Hasker thinks that implies that (1) was not brought about by S freely A- ing in C. Since this CCF was arbitrarily chosen, the result generalizes. It is not the case that the truth of any CCF is brought about by the agent performing the action specified in the consequent under the conditions specified in the antecedent. Therefore S cannot bring about the truth of (1*). And if S cannot bring about the truth of (1*), then S cannot freely refrain from A-ing in C.198 But the conclusion that S does not freely A in C contradicts that earlier assumption that S freely A’s in C. More perspicuously, the argument might read as follows: (i) The following counterfactual of freedom is true: (1) if S were in C, S would freely do A. (assumption for reductio) (ii) S freely does A in C. (assumption for reductio) (iii) If (i) and (ii) are true, then S does not bring about the truth of (1). (iv) If (ii) is true and S does not bring about the truth of (1), then S cannot bring about the truth of (1*): If S were in C, S would freely refrain from doing A. (v) If S cannot bring about the truth of (1*), then S cannot freely refrain from doing A in C. (vi) S cannot freely refrain from doing A in C. (vii) It is not the case that S freely does A in C.199

Of course (ii) contradicts (vii). The contradiction shows that either we must give up the claim that agents act freely, or we must give up the claim that there are true CCFs. Hasker, himself a libertarian, rejects (1).200 I will now attempt to show that, under certain plausible Molinist assumptions and Hasker’s own account of “bringing about,” premise (iii) is false.201 Recall that truth depends on

198My own presentation of Hasker’s very complex argument follows Merricks’ simplified version in Merricks (2013) where he sees the argument involving the three main steps I indicated in the text. 199Merricks (2013), 54. 200In the next chapter I will raise doubts about what I take to be a suppressed premise in Hasker’s argument. In order to license the inference from (vi) to (vii), we need (vi*) If S cannot freely refrain from doing A in C, then S does not freely A in C. This premise is an expression of what Harry Frankfurt called “The Principle of Alternative Possibilities” or (PAP): A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Typically, an agent is responsible for an action only if the action was free. And an action is considered free only if the agent could have done otherwise. I will question that principle in my own solution to PTF. 201Merricks (2013) shows that, given certain plausible assumptions, Hasker’s reductio proves too much. According to Merricks, Hasker’s reductio refutes Molinism only if it refutes the joint possibility of free will, centering (or restricted centering), and incompatibilism. But since there are good reasons for endorsing centering (or restricted

the world. This is an uncontroversial, yet trivial thesis concerning the fact that truth depends on what there is. It is not an endorsement of the controversial Truthmaker Theory or the theory that truth supervenes on being (TSB), the problems with which we observed above. But it is uncontroversial that that there are no leprechauns is true because there are no leprechauns. Now assume that S brings about the truth of

(2) S freely does A in C. by freely doing A in C. We might add that (2) is true because S freely A’ed in C. We might now say that S brings about the truth of (2) by causing it to be the case that S freely does A in C. But if it is denied that S causes it to be the case that S freely does A in C by freely doing A in C— then it must be denied that S brings about the truth of (2) in Hasker’s sense of ‘bring about.’ In a later version of the ‘bring about’ argument, Hasker defines ‘bringing about’ as follows:

A brings it about that Y if and only if: For some X, A causes it to be the case that X, and (X & H)ÏY, and ~(HÏY), where ‘H’ represents the history of the world prior to its coming to be the case that X.202

On Hasker’s definition, then, to ‘bring about’ the truth of a proposition is to cause something that strictly necessitates the truth of the proposition and which is required for its truth. Now, according to Merricks, if we bring together Hasker’s notion of bringing about the truth of a proposition with the uncontroversial thesis that truth depends on the world, then if S brings about the truth of (2), S does so as follows: S causes it to be the case that S freely does A, which necessitates the truth of (2). Suppose this is correct. Then we arrive at Merricks’ own account of bringing about the truth of a proposition: an agent brings about the truth of a proposition by way of causing what the proposition’s truth depends on.203 Suppose it is true that

(1) if S were in C, S would freely do A

centering) one should worry that Hasker’s reductio threatens incompatibilist free will itself. I will not, here, pursue the matter further. My attempt to show that premise (iii) is false is owed to Merricks (2013), 62-65. 202William Hasker (1999), 291. The Ï symbolizes strict (broadly logical, or metaphysical) necessitation. See also William Hasker “The Non-Existence of Molinist Counterfactuals” in Perszyk (ed.) (2013). 203In the uncontroversial way that truth depends on the world.

Given the assumption that S brings about the truth of (2), then if S were in C, S would cause it to be the case that S freely does A in C. Thus, if S were in C, S would cause it to be the case that: if S were in C, S would freely do A. If (1) is true and it is the case that S is in C, then S causes that on which (1)’s truth depends. Therefore, if (1) is true and S is in C, then S brings about the truth of (1). So, given Hasker’s definition of ‘bringing about’ the truth of a proposition in conjunction with the uncontroversial thesis that truth depends on the world, it appears that if we assume that (1) is true and (2) is true, then S brings about the truth of (1) after all. And this shows that

(iii) If (i) and (ii) are true, then S does not bring about the truth of (1)

is false. And if (iii) is false then Hasker’s reductio is unsound. I, therefore, conclude that Hasker’s refutation of Molinism fails.

Molinism & Counterfactual Power over the Past

In this chapter I have explained the Molinist view of divine providence. This view secures the strongest form of providence available which is also compatible with libertarian free will.204 I have attempted to defend the key Molinist doctrine of middle knowledge from the most pressing objections. I deny that all propositions must be grounded, as it is often alleged. That is not to say that no propositions have truthmakers or TSB-satisfying supervenience bases. But there are truths that appear not to have truthmakers—necessary truths, negative existentials, universal generalizations, and dispositional conditionals. Suggestions that these truths be exempted from the general mandates of Truthmaker Theory undermine its motivations in terms of catching theoretical cheaters. So I conclude that TT is false as a general theory and the grounding objection is itself groundless. It is not at all obvious to me that there cannot be prevolitionally true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that God could know by His middle knowledge. I also deny that the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for possible worlds is a genuine metaphysical reduction of counterfactual conditionals. And without that radical project, there is no good reason for Molinists to reject the standard semantics as an epistemic truth tracker for counterfactuals. So I deny that the priority problem is a problem for Molinism after all. The semantics for counterfactual conditionals is a formal theory and cannot, itself, provide

204Indeed, some critics complain that Molinist providence is too strong. 72

metaphysical grounds for truth values of counterfactual conditionals, nor should it be meant to do so. It simply tells us that true CCFs in a given world correspond to similarity relations that the actual world holds to other worlds. I have also tried to resist Hasker’s reductio refutation of middle knowledge by advancing Trenton Merricks’ conception of what it is to ‘bring about’ the truth of a proposition. This conception was based on the fact that truth depends on being and Hasker’s own notion of ‘bring about.’ But this conception shows that premise (iii) of Hasker’s own argument against middle knowledge is false. Thus, if God has middle knowledge, this, along with his free knowledge, secures a traditional notion of definite, exhaustive foreknowledge of every event in the actual world, both past, present, and future. It’s a key ingredient in God’s providential control over the world, a meticulous providential control that is beyond the control offered under Open Theism. But Molinism, as it has been described—while defending the contention that God does have definite foreknowledge—has only assumed that the actions God foreknows are, indeed, free. Molinism does not explain how the actions God foreknows can remain free, it simply assumes that they are. This point has only very recently been appreciated in the relevant literature. John Martin Fischer has recently pointed out that although the key components of Molinism “can profitably be employed in seeking to understand God’s providence over the world, they (contrary to what many philosophers apparently think) cannot be invoked to provide a solution to the problem posed by the relationship between God’s omniscience and human freedom. In a nutshell, Molinism does not provide such an answer—it presupposes it.”205 The problem is that PTF purports to show that creatures are not free, after all, to do otherwise than what they actually do. But the CCFs of Molinism claim just that—that creatures act freely. Indeed, all contemporary Molinists with which I am familiar hold that there are true CCFs—that is, that there are truths about what agents would freely do in all possible circumstances in which they could act. These Molinists take actual agents to have the power to do otherwise than what God previously knew they would do. And if they did so, then God would have known that they would so act and would have had an appropriately different belief. Molina himself, in his explication of middle knowledge, claims that God knew “of each faculty of free choice, He saw in His own essence what each such faculty would do with its

205John Martin Fischer, “Putting Molinism in its Place” in Perszyk (2013), p. 208. 73

innate freedom were it to be placed in this or in that or, indeed, in infinitely many orders of things—even though it would really be able, if it so willed, to do the opposite…”206 He continues, “For if created free choice were going to do the opposite, as indeed it can, then God would have known that very thing through this same type of knowledge, and not what He in fact knows.”207 Freddoso acknowledges that given the truth of

(X) If Peter were in H, he would deny Christ and the supposition that Peter is in H, “Molinists contend that even though, given the truth of (X), Peter in fact denies Christ in H, he nonetheless has the power to refrain from deny Christ.”208 William Lane Craig writes, “The Molinist is quite glad to admit that nothing I can do now will cause or bring about the past. But he will insist that it does lie within my power to freely perform some action a, and if a were to occur, then the past would have been different than it in fact is.”209 Alvin Plantinga famously defended agents’ counterfactual power over God’s past in “On Ockham’s Way Out.”210 Ken Perszyk writes that even though God knows the future

This doesn’t allegedly rob us of freedom, for while we cannot do otherwise in the sense that it cannot be the case both that God believes p and ~p, there is still a (relevant) sense in which we can do other than what God has always foreknown we will do. We have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs: we have the power to act in such a way that, had we so acted, a true counterfactual of freedom about us would have been false, 211 and God would not have believed what he in fact believed.

And Thomas Flint writes:

So Molinists think that a creature such as A can have the power to do something such that, were she to do it, God never would have believed, and never would have acted on,

206Molina, Concordia, Disputation 52, section 9, p. 168. Note that Molina himself took God’s past beliefs to be as accidentally necessary as any other truths about the past. He thought that human action was free, however, because he believed that “an agent P freely performs an action A at a time t only if P’s performing A does not obtain at t by a necessity of nature, where what occurs at a given time by a necessity of nature is a function of the causal history of the world at that time.” For Molina, since God’s foreknowledge plays no part in the causal history of absolute contingent events, he can hold that God’s past beliefs are accidentally necessary and yet the agent acts freely. Freddoso (1988), p. 59. Although Molina construed accidental necessity to preclude any sort of causal power over the past, it does appear that his view is consistent with an agent having causal power to contribute to acting otherwise than how God believed that he would act, and thus have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs. See Freddoso (1988), p. 60 207Ibid., pp. 168-169. 208Freddoso (1988), p. 76. 209Craig (2001), p. 126 ff. see especially p. 13. 210See Plantinga (1986), especially pp. 253ff. 211Perszyk (2013), “Introduction,” p. 5.

the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom he in fact believed and acted on, but instead would have believed and acted on other counterfactuals of creaturely freedom; and had he acted on them, some of the causal consequences that in fact followed from his actual beliefs and actions might well not have occurred.212

Therefore Molinism is a thesis about God’s foreknowledge, but also the thesis that agents have counterfactual power over the past. That is, Molinists think that agents have the power to do otherwise that what they actually do. It offers a distinctive view of how God knows the future and therefore, if successful, secures a strong sense of divine providence. But it does so at the expense of begging the question against the advocate of PTF. Indeed, it appears that since Molinism assumes that agents have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs, then Molinism is little more that the conjunction of the doctrine of middle knowledge and the second Ockhamist solution surveyed and rejected at the end of chapter 2. My view, then, is that God does have middle knowledge of CCFs, but since I rejected the Ockhamist claim that creatures can act otherwise than how God knew they would act—that is, I rejected the thesis that agents have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs—then either I must abandon the belief that agents act freely in light of God’s past infallible beliefs or I must offer an alternative conception of freedom in which agents are construed as acting freely even though they have no counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs…that is, that agents can still be free even if they cannot do otherwise. In the next chapter I will articulate a modified libertarian view that I do think is compatible with what libertarians value most about free action but that is also consistent with my denial of Molinism’s contention that agents have the ability to do other than what God foreknows they will do.

212Flint (2011), p. 43.

CHAPTER 4

SOURCE INCOMPATIBILISM

In chapter 3 I argued that the grounding objection and the priority problem both fail to show that God does not have prevolitional knowledge of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.213 I closed that chapter, however, by arguing that traditional Molinism appears to be the conjunction of the claim that God has middle knowledge and the second Ockhamist solution surveyed and rejected in chapter 2, namely the Ockhamist contention that free agents can do otherwise than what God, in the past, infallibly believed they would do. Molinism is the claim that God has middle knowledge and that free agents have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs. I have denied, however, that creaturely agents have this counterfactual power over God’s past, infallible beliefs. In this chapter I will offer an alternative to the PAP-based construal of CD-incompatibilism that I believe captures what the traditional libertarian wants to affirm about free and morally responsible agency, but does not require the presence of alternative possibilities. It will be a source-based CD-incompatibilist view that will avoid problems for libertarians that emerge with the denial that free creatures have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs. It will be, then, a DF-compatibilist view that I will call “Modified Molinism.” I begin this chapter by presenting Harry Frankfurt’s groundbreaking argument against the principle of alternative possibilities. I will then survey the history of the ensuing debate. I will endorse a source-incompatibilist solution to the problem of free and morally responsible action. I conclude this chapter by delineating what I take to be the strengths my source-based Modified Molinist view over its competitors.

Frankfurt’s Challenge to PAP

In his seminal 1969 article “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” Harry Frankfurt famously rejected what he called “the principle of alternative possibilities” (PAP). PAP states that a “person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.”214 Until Frankfurt, this principle was shared by compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. Frankfurt noted that “People whose accounts of free will or of moral responsibility are

213I have not provided much of a positive case for the existence of true counterfactuals of freedom. But see Freddoso (1988), p. 68ff, Craig, Four Views p. 120, and Craig (1991) ch. 4. 214Frankfurt (1969), 829.

radically at odds evidently find in it a firm and convenient common ground upon which they can profitably take their opposing stands.”215 Frankfurt also noted that PAP has seemed so overwhelmingly plausible that some philosophers have taken it to be an a priori truth.216 Frankfurt sought to demonstrate the falsity of PAP by offering a thought experiment in which a person is in circumstances that render her unable to do otherwise but yet she seems to be morally responsible for what she has done, precisely because the circumstances that rendered the agent unable to do otherwise played no causal role in the production of the action. That is, the circumstances remove alternative possibilities, but play no role in bringing the action about.217 Frankfurt’s contention contrasts with other control undermining circumstances, like compulsion or coercion that not only eliminate alternative possibilities, but also play a causal role in bringing about the relevant action. To illustrate the possibility of such a scenario, Frankfurt advanced the following thought experiment:

Suppose someone—Black, let us say—wants Jones to perform a certain action. Black is prepared to go to considerable lengths to get his way, but he prefers to avoid showing his hand unnecessarily. So he waits until Jones is about to make up his mind what to do, and he does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is an excellent judge of such things) that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what he wants him to do. If it becomes clear that Jones is going to decide to do something else, Black takes effective steps to ensure that Jones decides to do, and does do, what he wants him to do. Whatever Jones’s initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way…Now suppose that Black never has to show his hand because Jones, for reasons of his own, decides to perform, and does perform the very action that Black wants him to perform. In that case, it seems clear, Jones will bear precisely the same moral responsibility for what he does as he would have borne if Black had not been ready to take steps to ensure that he did do it. It would be quite unreasonable to excuse Jones for his action, or to withhold the praise to which it would have entitled him, on the basis of the fact that he could not have done otherwise. This fact played no role at all in leading him to act as he did. He would have acted the same if it had not been a fact. Indeed, everything happened just as it would have

215Ibid. 216Ibid. 217David Widerker characterizes such a scenario as an IRR-situation:

IRR: There may be circumstances in which a person performs some action which although they make it impossible for him to avoid performing that action, they in no way bring it about that he performs it.

See David Widerker “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 104, No. 2. (April 1995) 247-261. See p. 248.

happened without Black’s presence in the situation and without his readiness to intrude into it.218

It would seem, then, that Jones is morally responsible for his choice even though he could not have done otherwise. Thus, Frankfurt is alleged to have contrived a counter-instance to PAP. Jones is morally responsible for what he does despite the fact that he could not have done otherwise. Alternative possibilities are not, after all, a necessary condition for moral responsibility. PAP, therefore, is false. This basic thought experiment stands at the center of a hotly contested debate about the freedom condition on morally responsible action. If successful, then whatever the freedom condition on morally responsible action might be, it cannot be explicated in terms of PAP. The conditions that rendered Jones unable to do otherwise had no causal influence on Jones at all. Indeed, had Black not been present in the situation, Jones would still have acted in the way that he did. Jones cannot appeal to the conditions that rendered him unable to do otherwise to justify his actions precisely because they played no causal role in its production, unlike in typical cases of such justifications (e.g. coercion or compulsion) that do play a causal role in the production of the action. The key features of this case are that the agent (allegedly) could not do otherwise, the agent acted on his own, and he knew nothing of Black’s intentions or presence. Widerker and McKenna note that if Frankfurt’s case (or a suitably modified case) is successful, then there are a number of significant theoretical and dialectical implications.219 First, it would affect both CD-compatibilists and CD-incompatibilists since both originally held that PAP was true. They simply analyzed the “can” of “can do otherwise” differently. Both would need to find another way to explicate the freedom condition for morally responsible action. The second implication is that the falsification of PAP would undermine a very powerful argument against the truth of CD-compatibilism:

(1) An agent is morally responsible for her action only if she could have done otherwise (PAP). (2) If determinism is true, no agent can do otherwise. (3) Therefore, if determinism is true, no agent is morally responsible for what she does.

218Frankfurt (1969), 835-836. 219Here I borrow from Widerker’s and McKenna’s (2003) “Introduction,” p. 5-7. In the following summary of the history of the debates surrounding PAP, I will follow the general contours of their very excellent and concise presentation (7-10).

Of course, CD-compatibilism is simply the thesis that free and morally responsible action is compatible with the truth of determinism. But if PAP is false, the argument is unsound and CD- incompatibilists must now find alternative ways of explaining why no agent is morally responsible in a deterministic universe. A third implication is that, assuming Frankfurt’s case succeeds, the dialectic between the CD-compatibilist and CD-incompatibilist appears to shift in favor of the compatibilist. For under the assumption that PAP is true, the intuitions seem to favor the CD-incompatibilist. The fourth implication is that without PAP, the compatibilist can grant the truth of (2) but still claim that agents are morally responsible for what they do. Even if one cannot do otherwise in a deterministic world, it does not follow that they are not morally responsible. This view has become known in the literature as semi-compatibilism. Fifth, even if an agent cannot do otherwise than what God knows she will do, it does not follow that the agent is not morally responsible for her action. I will now present a brief summary of the contemporary debate over the viability of PAP in light of the various Frankfurt-style counterexamples.

Libertarian Replies to Frankfurt-style Cases

Widerker and McKenna cite three basic sorts of replies by defenders of PAP in response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples. The first relies on the fact that, despite appearances to the contrary, Frankfurt-style counterexamples do not rule out all alternative possibilities. This strategy has been called “The Flicker Defense.” A second strategy that has posed perhaps the most serious challenge to Frankfurt cases attempts to show that Frankfurt-style cases are not, after all, genuine examples of IRR situations. This second approach has come to be known as “The Dilemma Defense.” A third strategy makes use of an agent-causal approach to diffuse the threat posed by Frankfurt cases.220 The general contours of the flicker defense rest on the fact that Frankfurt examples do not rule out all alternative possibilities. Although the typical alternatives to his action are not open to Jones, an alternative, a flicker of freedom, does seem to be built into the example. Perhaps Jones exhibits some neurological pattern that would reliably indicate that he is going to act against Black’s wishes. If Jones does exhibit that particular neurological pattern then Black intervenes

220This third strategy has not received nearly the attention of the Flicker and Dilemma defenses. Due to matters of scope, I will not explore it in what follows.

and Jones does not act on his own. This flicker of freedom appears to be a morally relevant and significant alternative since Jones would then not be acting on his own. John Martin Fischer surveys three specific forms the flicker strategy has taken in the literature.221 Following Fischer I will discuss Backward Flickers, Forward Flickers, and Acting on One’s Own. The backward flickers strategy involves supposing that going back further in the actual sequence, we might find a sign which reliably indicates, say, Jones’s decision. Suppose that Jones would reliably blush red prior to initiating any process of decision-making iff he were about to choose to act against Black’s wishes. Thus, Black could prevent Jones from even beginning to make the relevant choice or decision. But even here Jones has the power to show the relevant sign. So it is hard to see how any Frankfurt example could eliminate all possibilities. The second strategy, forward flickers, relies on an essentialist principle of event individuation. Intervention results in a different event particular than in the actual sequence.222 According to one construal of the essentialist principle, all events that lead up to the event in question are essential to its event identity. On this view, the event in the alternative sequence is not identical to the event in the actual sequence. It is false, then, to claim that Jones could not have done otherwise. By showing a sign of doing other than what Black wanted him to do, he triggers Black’s intervention and thereby the ultimate production of a different event particular. This is the flicker of freedom. The first two strategies focus on the alternative sequence. This third strategy, acting on one’s own, focuses on the actual sequence to discern what it is we are responsible for. What we really hold Jones responsible for is not, say, voting for Clinton, but ‘voting for Clinton on his own.’ If this is so, then Jones has the alternative possibility of not “voting for Clinton on his own.” Following Fischer, I will begin an assessment of the various flicker strategies by sketching a response to the second flicker strategy and then applying it to the others.223 Fischer concedes that there is an alternative here (a different event particular). But his basic worry is that it is not sufficiently robust to ground attributions of moral responsibility. Flicker theorists need to show that these alternatives play a certain role in the appropriate understanding of the cases. It

221John Martin Fischer (2003) “Responsibility and Alternative Responsibility.” For the survey of the flicker strategy I rely on his presentation, pp. 31-34. 222See Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 166-171. 223Fischer (2003), 34-39.

needs to be shown that alternative possibilities ground our attributions of moral responsibility. And this is what Fischer finds puzzling and implausible. Consider the picture of control that underlies the alternative possibilities view. There are multiple possible paths into the future. The agent herself is alleged to have control over which path into the future becomes actual. But Fischer contends that it is very puzzling and unnatural to suppose that it is the existence of various alternative pathways along which the agent does not act freely that demonstrates that one has control of the kind in question. How, he asks, can the existence of alternatives into the future in which the agent does not act freely ground attributions of freedom on the relevant act in the actual sequence? According to Fischer, the flicker theorist insists that there is no moral responsibility if there is only one path into the future. But how, we ask, by adding additional pathways by which the agent does not act responsibly, does this transform a case of lacking responsibility into a case of responsibility? This, claims Fischer, seems to be a case of pure alchemy. He continues:

On the traditional alternative possibilities picture, it is envisage that an agent has a choice between two (or more) scenarios of a certain sort. In one scenario he deliberates and forms an intention to perform an act of a certain kind and then carries out this intention in an appropriate way. In at least one other possible scenario, he deliberates and forms an intention to perform a different kind of act (or no act at all) and carries out this intention in an appropriate way. This is what is involved in having robust alternative possibilities, and certainly this is the natural way to think about the sort of alternatives that allegedly ground moral responsibility.224

But flickers are not this kind of alternative. These flickers do not seem robust enough to ground ascriptions of moral responsibility. From these considerations concerning robustness, one might think (as Fischer does) that similar worries apply to the other flicker strategies. In the ‘acting on one’s own’ flicker strategy, the alternative possibilities similarly lack robustness. In the alternative sequence Jones does not freely refrain from ‘voting for Clinton on his own.’ Indeed, he does not freely behave in any fashion, and he certainly does not deliberate about and choose the possibility of not voting for Clinton on his own. Thus the alternatives lack robustness. A possible reply here by flicker theorists will lead us to back to the first flicker strategy. One might claim that if we go back in the alternative sequence we see Jones beginning to freely choose to vote for Bush (even though he fails to complete the choice). So there is something in

224Fischer (2003), “Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities,” p. 36.

the alternative sequences that is freely done which may ground responsibility. But Fischer responds that we can push even further back and posit some sign that precedes the initiated action and thus intervention comes even before the initiated action. McKenna and Widerker claim that a condition for robust alternatives is that the alternative has to be within the agent’s control.225 And the evincing of such a sign is not an action and certainly not robust enough to itself ground responsibility because this alternative is not within the scope of the agent’s control. Fischer’s basic contention, then, is that in principle there is no decisive objection to specifying all Frankfurt examples such that there is a sign that would ‘give away’ the future choices. That is, they are all to involve some prior involuntary sign that would that is not under the agent’s control and thus not sufficiently robust to ground ascriptions of moral responsibility. Thus, Fischer concludes that moral responsibility does not require regulative control.226,227 Fischer complains that the possibility of deciding not on one’s own is no help to defenders of PAP because ‘this alternative possibility is not sufficiently robust to ground the relevant attributions of moral responsibility.’ In order for the existence of alternative possibilities in Frankfurt counterexamples to neutralize the threats to PAP, he says, the alternatives must be able to account for why an agent would, in virtue of possessing these alternatives, be thereby morally responsible for what he has done. According to Fischer, “It needs to be shown that these alternative possibilities ground our attributions of moral responsibility.” But Michael Robinson more recently notes that Fischer argues against PAP from traditional Frankfurt cases that rely on a prior sign. These signs are involuntary, and thus outside the agent’s control. They are not sufficiently robust to ground attributions of freedom and responsibility. But these prior sign cases are challenged by the dilemma defense. That was the motivation for moving to modified Frankfurt cases to begin with.228 So worries about robustness can only emerge in traditional Frankfurt scenarios where determinism is a problem. He writes:

225Widerker and McKenna (2003) “Introduction,” p. 8. 226Fischer has notably described two different notions of control. The first is regulative control where the agent has control over her actions. The second is guidance control where the agent has control of her actions. See Fischer (2003), pp. 28-29. 227Michael Robinson has responded to Fischer’s worries in “Modified Frankfurt-type Counterexamples and Flickers of Freedom” Philosophical Studies (2012) 157:177-194. Note also that Justin Capes and Philip Swenson have also very recently defended the flicker strategy in “Frankfurt Cases: The Fine-grained Response Revisited” Philosophical Studies (2016). Available online at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-016-0726-z 228We will see this progression below.

The significance for the flicker strategy of the rejection of prior signs in the construction of modified Frankfurt-style counterexamples is that it ensures that up until the moment of decision, it is possible for the agents in these cases to realize one of the alternative possibilities that remain. Because these possibilities are available up until the moment of choice (the locus of free action) and within the range of agents’ voluntary control, it is far from obvious that they are insufficiently robust to help ground ascriptions of moral responsibility—at least for the reasons Fischer provides. Thus regardless of how successful Fischer’s objection is in attenuating the flicker defense of alternative possibilities against traditional Frankfurt-type counterexamples, when employed in defense of modified scenarios, it falls flat. (190-191).

Indeed, Robinson rejects robustness worries even when it comes to traditional Frankfurt-style cases. I point out Robinson’s reply simply to acknowledge that the debate here is far from settled, and although I have little to offer to advance the current dialectic, I am inclined to side with Fischer, McKenna, and Widerker in this exchange. Widerker and McKenna do not think the flicker defense is viable.229 Indeed, they say, the current debate over Frankfurt-style counterexamples just is the ongoing debate surrounding the Dilemma Defense.230 It is to that powerful response to Frankfurt that I now turn.

The Dilemma Defense

The most prominent line of defense against Frankfurt’s attack on PAP is known as the dilemma defense. Robert Kane and David Widerker have both advanced defenses of this sort.231 Kane claims that if the Frankfurt case assumes a deterministic setting, then the incompatibilist cannot be expected to judge Jones morally responsible for what he does. If, on the other hand, an indeterministic setting is assumed, and Jones’s decision is not deterministically caused, Black cannot know in advance what Jones will do. So either Black intervenes or he does not. If Black does intervene and forces Jones to vote Democratic, then he is not morally responsible for what he does. But if Black does not intervene, then Jones may well decide otherwise than Black wants him to decide, thus preserving alternative possibilities.

229Widerker and McKenna (2003), p. 8. 230Ibid., 9. 231 Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 142-143, 191-192; David Widerker “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 247-261. My presentation of the dilemma is indebted to Al Mele and David Robb “Rescuing Frankfurt-Style Cases,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 107, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 97-112.

David Widerker raises a similar worry. He points to the presence of a prior sign in the Frankfurt case. Perhaps Jones exhibits a certain involuntary twitch that Black recognizes as a sign that Jones will vote for Clinton. In this case, Black does not intervene. But according to Widerker, if the involuntary twitch is a deterministic cause, or is associated with a deterministic cause for Jones’s voting for Clinton then the case is not an IRR situation. For indeed, the circumstances under which Jones performs the action play a crucial role in its production. If, however, the involuntary twitch is not part of (or associated with) a deterministic process that results in Jones’s action, then clearly Jones could have done otherwise than decide to vote for Clinton. A number of philosophers take the Kane/Widerker dilemma to be a powerful critique of traditional Frankfurt-style criticisms of PAP. In response, there have been various attempts to construct Frankfurt cases that avoid worries associated with tacit determinism that original Frankfurt cases appear to presuppose. In what follows I will describe, and briefly evaluate three such strategies that have emerged in the literature. The first strategy, deployed by Mele and Robb, features direct causal preemption (trumping).232 The second is a strategy by David Hunt that features complete blockage. The third and final strategy I will consider is a necessary- condition strategy advanced by Derk Pereboom.

Trumping

To avoid dilemma worries, Mele and Robb have developed a Frankfurt case that does not rely on a prior sign.

Our scenario features an agent, Bob, who inhabits a world in which determinism is false. That is not to say that no events are deterministically caused at Bob’s world…At t1, Black initiates a certain deterministic process P in Bob’s brain with the intention of thereby causing Bob to decide at t2…to steal Ann’s car. The process, which is screened off from Bob’s consciousness, will deterministically culminate in Bob’s deciding at t2 to steal Ann’s car unless he decides on his own at t2 to steal it or is incapable at t2 of making a decision…The process is in no way sensitive to a prior “sign” of what Bob will decide. As it happens, at t2 Bob decides on his own to steal the car, on the basis of his own indeterministic deliberation about whether to steal it, and his decision has no

232Note that Fischer classifies this as a ‘blockage’ example. I take it to be significantly different from the other blockage examples in the literature (Hunt’s complete blockage, McKenna’s limited blockage based on deliberatively significant alternatives, and Widerker’s own recent limited blockage example that features blockage of only actionally accessible alternatives).

deterministic cause. But if he had not just then decided on his own to steal it, P would have deterministically issued, at t2, in his deciding to steal it.233

In another paper defending their case, Mele and Robb point out the following: (1) In this case, Bob appears to be responsible for deciding to steal the car at t2 since the cause of his decision is his own indeterministic decision-making process (process X). P makes it impossible for Bob to avoid deciding at t2 to steal Ann’s car, and it can only be preempted by X. (2) All of the nomologically possible worlds after t1 are worlds in which Bob decides at t2 to steal Ann’s car. So P makes Bob’s decision inevitable, but since P does not cause Bob’s decision, it is an IRR situation. (3) In the actual scenario, P is preempted by X at t2. P is preempted (or trumped) only at the very moment that Bob makes his decision.234 Mele and Robb illustrate the case by supposing that there are decision nodes in Bob’s brain. The ‘lighting up’ of node N1 represents Bob’s deciding to steal the car, and the ‘lighting up’ of N2 represents his deciding not to steal the car. If it were the case that both P hits N1 at t2 and X does not hit N1 at t2, then P would light up N1. If both P and X were to hit N1 at t2, X would light up N1 and P would not. If X and P diverged at t2, so that X hits N2 and P hits N1, P would light up N1 and X would not light up N2. Why? Because by t2, P has neutralized N2 and all its cognate decision nodes. So P ensures that N1 will light up at t2, and blockage ensures that the other relevant nodes will not light up at t2. A number of worries have been raised against the Mele/Robb example. I will briefly note two of these worries and possible replies to them. First, some theorists worry that blockage which eliminates all alternatives is just another description of deterministic causation. One might think that since all other paths are blocked then such blockage constitutes causally sufficient conditions for the action. This general worry can be pressed by what I shall call the Nomic Subsumption Objection, which states that if the presence of P, the laws of nature, and the circumstances at t2 entail that Bob will decide at t2 to steal Ann’s car, then the scenario is causally sufficient for Bob’s decision. Mele and Robb, however, can simply agree that on the nomic subsumption (and certain counterfactual) models of causation, Bob’s decision can be described as having sufficient causal antecedents. But they can still flatly deny that P cause the

233Mele and Robb (1998), pp. 101-102. 234Al Mele and David Robb (2003), “Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases,” pp. 128-129.

decision. To see the import of the case, imagine that in this indeterministic world, both Black and P were absent from the scenario. In that case, the same indeterministic process that resulted in Bob’s decision would still have been effective. Add back both Black and P and nothing has changed in terms of Bob’s decision or its causal antecedents. Just because his decision is inevitable, it isn’t at all clear that this equates to deterministic causation rendering the agent not responsible for his action. Remember, the circumstances that rendered Bob unable to do otherwise (process P) had no causal connection with his decision.235 Some wonder if the Mele/Robb case is coherent given its commitment to direct preemption.236 Widerker and O’Connor worry that at t2 it is too late for P to be preempted.237 In reply, Mele and Robb ask us to consider the following machine, M:

The machine, designed by a specialist in machine art, produces artistic widgets of different shapes and colors. The colors of the widgets produced are determined by the color of a ball bearing (bb) that hits the machine’s receptor at the relevant time. The machine, M, is surrounded by several automatic bb guns, each containing bbs of various colors. The relevant aspect of M’s mechanical design, for our purposes, is relatively simple. First, with one qualification, if a bb of color x hits M’s receptor, and M is not already in the process of making a widget, M at once starts the process designed to result in the production of an x-colored widget. Second, because two or more bbs sometimes hit the receptor simultaneously, the artist has designed his machine in such a way that whenever this happens (while M is not busy making a widget) M at once starts a process designed to result in the production of a widget the color of the right-most bb. No other striking of M’s receptor at the same time plays a role in triggering M.238

Mele and Robb then add further details about M’s receptors designed to aid the reader see the possibility of such preemption more clearly:

M’s receptor is a see-saw-like device with a right-bias…There’s a horizontal, pressure- sensitive, color-reading strip under the cups, so that when a bb strikes one of the cups at t, the seesaw quickly presses down on that side. This pressing is part of the process of M’s making a widget of that bb’s color. We understand the beginning of the widget-making process as the machine’s becoming committed to making a widget of a specific color. M

235Mele and Robb (2003) p. 130. 236I say, ‘direct’ to indicate that the deterministic process is preempted at the very time of action. 237Timothy O’Connor, Persons & Causes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.83-84. See also David Widerker, “Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: A Further Look,” Philosophical Perspectives (2000) 14:181-201. 238Mele and Robb (1998), p. 103.

is committed to making a widget of a specific color at the moment of bb impact, given its design.239

Bob’s psychological constitution is relevantly analogous to M. He happens to be so constituted that when P and X hit N1 at t2, X, rather than P, causes N1 to light up. Widerker and O’Connor appear to merely insist that at t2 it is too late for X to preempt P. So, it seems that until motivated countervailing considerations emerge, we should conclude that the current dialectic in the debate favors the Mele/Robb position.

Complete blockage

David Hunt’s complete blockage example also eschews counterfactual intervention. 240 Instead, Hunt opts for what he calls ‘passive blockage’ in the actual scenario. Like the Mele/Robb example, Hunt’s view does not rely on a prior sign that allows non-robust flickers of freedom or raise worries about the prior sign being connected with a deterministic sequence that produces the relevant action. Hunt imagines that Jones is a paragon of free agency; and he considers the actual sequence (S) of Jones’s relevant states, mental and otherwise, leading up to his voting for Clinton.241 Sequence S exemplifies the actual virtues a sequence must possess if the agent is to demonstrate free agency, whatever they may be. Now, says Hunt, add to this picture a “super-duper passive alternative eliminator.” This passive alternative eliminator does not actively control what the agent does. Instead, it operates on Jones’s neural connections by blocking whatever alternative neural paths that would normally be accessible from S. All alternatives to Jones voting for Clinton have been blocked, but the passive blockage has not interfered with Jones’s actual decision in any way. There are, therefore, no grounds for thinking that Jones would have acted differently if the alternative eliminator had been absent. Note also that there was no coercion, and Jones’s decision was caused in a relevantly appropriate libertarian way. Hunt concludes, “In short, there are no grounds for thinking that Jones’s free agency has been affected in any way, save for a prior commitment to PAP.”242 One might worry, again, that blocking all alternatives does not leave room for causal indeterminism and that such scenarios are determinism in disguise. But it is not clear to me that

239Mele and Robb (2003), p. 135. 240David Hunt (2003), “Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Frankfurt.” 241 Ibid., 171. 242Ibid., 172.

this is so since we may suppose that Jones votes for Clinton as a result of his own indeterministic deliberation. There is no deterministic causation in the actual sequence. The lesson from Mele/Robb is instructive here. Even if nomic subsumption and counterfactual models of causation indicate that the circumstances entail causal sufficiency, it isn’t clear to me that this is identical to deterministic causation. A perspicuous distinction, if there is one to be made, between causal sufficiency and deterministic causation, would involve significant argument in the metaphysics of causation. Here, I simply register my conviction that even if such blocking or trumping cases possess insufficient dialectical power to persuade the convinced PAPist, they do seem to aid the source incompatibilist in terms of highlighting their central contention, that regardless of whatever alternatives there may or may not be, the real value of indeterministic agency is that it shows the agent, himself, to be the appropriate source and originator of his actions, the causal antecedents of which do not trace back to factors beyond his control. Jones did not know that he was unable to do otherwise. For all he knew, voting for Clinton or Bush was open to him. His practical deliberation proceeded in the normal way. Jones voted for Clinton on his own, for reasons of his own. And it is for these reasons that we hold him responsible for doing as he did.

Necessary Condition

Derk Pereboom thinks the dilemma defense succeeds for original, prior-sign Frankfurt cases. He advises any proponent of the Frankfurt strategy to develop cases in which there is clearly no deterministic causal explanation of the action in virtue of any prior sign. So Pereboom recommends cases that do not exhibit a robust flicker of freedom, and in which the actual causal history is not deterministic. Thus he offers his Tax Evasion (2) case:

Joe is considering whether to claim a tax deduction for the substantial local registration fee that he paid when he bought a house. He knows that claiming the deduction is illegal, that he probably won’t be caught, and that if he is, he can convincingly plead ignorance. Suppose he has a very powerful but not always overriding desire to advance his self- interests regardless of the cost to others, and no matter whether advancing his self-interest involves illegal activity. Crucially, his psychology is such that the only way that in this situation he could fail to choose to evade taxes is for moral reasons. (The phrase failing to choose to evade taxes is meant to encompass not choosing to evade taxes and choosing not to evade taxes.) His psychology is not, for example, such that he could fail to choose to evade taxes for no reason or simply on a whim. In addition, it is causally necessary for his failing to choose to evade taxes in this situation that he attain a certain level of

attentiveness to these moral reasons. He can secure this level of attentiveness voluntarily. However, his attaining this level of attentiveness is not causally sufficient for his failing to choose to evade taxes. If he were to attain this level of attentiveness, Joe could, with his libertarian free will, either choose to evade taxes or refrain from so choosing (without the intervener’s device in place). More generally, Joe is a libertarian free agent. But to ensure that he choose to evade taxes, a neuroscientist now implants a device, which, were it to sense the requisite level of attentiveness, would electronically stimulate his brain so that he would choose to evade taxes. In actual fact, he does not attain this level of attentiveness, and he chooses to evade taxes while the device remains idle.243

Joe’s only alternative appears to be the non-robust alternative of attaining higher levels of attentiveness to moral reasons. This alternative is necessary, but not sufficient for Joe’s failing to evade taxes. The alternative is non-robust in the sense that it is not the case that by achieving some higher level of attentiveness to moral reasons Joe would have avoided responsibility for his decision. And Joe did not believe that if he had achieved the requisite level of attentiveness he would thereby have been precluded from responsibility for his decision.244 Widerker has complained that the main problem with this example is that Joe’s decision is causally determined.245 Here’s why: At the time of decision, a causally necessary condition for his not making that decision (i.e. his attaining the requisite level of attentiveness to moral reasons) is missing, which means that there obtains a causally sufficient condition for his making the decision he does. We might put this objection as follows:

D(E) = Deciding to evade taxes A = Attaining a certain level of attentiveness to moral reasons

~D(E) ‰ A

243 Derk Pereboom (2003), “Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities,” p. 193. 244Note that Pereboom construes an alternative as being robust if it meets the following condition:

Robustness: For an alternative possibility to be relevant per se to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility for an action it must satisfy the following characterization: she could have willed something other than what she actually willed such that she understood that by willing it she would thereby have been precluded from the moral responsibility she actually has for the action.

See Pereboom (2003), p. 188.

245David Widerker, “Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will 2nd ed. Robert Kane editor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 267-283. Widerker then develops his own limited blockage case (that does not rely on a prior sign) to avoid this very problem. In Widerker’s Brain Malfunction Case, not all causally possible alternatives are blocked, only those actionally accessible to the agent, thus he takes himself to avoid the problems of causal sufficiency in cases like Pereboom’s and Hunt’s. See pp. 269ff.

But by transposition:

~A ‰ ~~D(E)

Therefore:

~A ‰ D(E)

Failing to attain a certain level of attentiveness to moral reasons is, therefore, causally sufficient for Joe’s decision to evade taxes. And this, says Widerker, means that the decision is causally determined.246 I have already noted my skepticism concerning whether or not causal sufficiency amounts to deterministic causation. But even if Widerker is correct in his assessment, he offers his own Frankfurt-inspired case that leverages what he calls “actionally accessible alternatives” but that avoids worries about causally sufficient conditions obtaining.247 There are, of course, many other objections raised against these revised Frankfurt-style counterexamples to PAP in the recent literature, and the debate shows no signs of slowing. I have presented several different types of Frankfurt-inspired counterexamples to PAP, and responses by its defenders, in order to register my own conviction that Frankfurt’s challenge to PAP at least provides grounds for source incompatibilists to rationally reject PAP and underwrite the view that alternative possibilities are not, per se, relevant to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility for her action. It seems reasonable, in light of Frankfurtian arguments against PAP, to hold that “the part the causal history plays in explaining an agent’s moral responsibility is independent of facts about alternative possibilities.”248 I take source incompatibilism to be a viable alternative to traditional leeway incompatibilism.249 Though I doubt that the examples I have surveyed will compel the determined PAPist to lay down his arms and abandon PAP.

Motivating Source Incompatibilism

I will now attempt to provide further justification, or at least explanation, of the source- incompatibilist conviction that alternative possibilities are not the central concern for libertarian

246Ibid., pp. 271-272. 247David Widerker, (2012), p. 269 ff. 248Pereboom (2003), p. 186. 249Pereboom explains that incompatibilists who incline towards the view that an alternative possibilities condition has the more important role in explaining an agent’s moral responsibility are leeway incompatibilists. Those predisposed to maintain that an incompatibilist condition on the causal history of the action plays the more significant part are source incompatibilists. Ibid., p.186.

free agency and moral responsibility. Indeed, according to one representative source incompatibilist (David Hunt) the lesson from Frankfurt’s attack on the principle of alternative possibilities is that

…there may be just as much scope for a new libertarianism instructed by Frankfurt’s attack on PAP as there is for a new compatibilism no longer engaged in producing strained and implausible conditional analyses of ‘can’ and ‘could.’ The essential insight conveyed by Frankfurt-style counterexamples to PAP is that threats to alternate possibilities, insofar as these are located outside the actual sequence leading to Jones’s action, are irrelevant to Jones’s actual exercise of agency; and there is no reason why a libertarian cannot accept this this moral as well. This is because the libertarian, even if forced to acknowledge conditions in which free agency is compatible with inevitability, can continue to distinguish herself from the compatibilist through her insistence that free agency is incompatible with causal determinism. 250

Derk Pereboom251 notes that the claim that moral responsibility for an action requires that an agent could have done otherwise is surely attractive.252 But Pereboom thinks that the lesson from Frankfurt examples is that alternative possibilities are largely irrelevant to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility for an action. Rather, the pivotal explanatory role is assigned to features of the causal history of the action, and not to the availability of alternative possibilities. Even John Martin Fischer, himself a fierce semi-compatibilist and opponent of PAP writes:253

250David Hunt (2003), p. 162. 251Here I note Pereboom’s source incompatibilism, but I also note that he is not a libertarian. Pereboom is a hard incompatibilist. He writes:

According to the hard incompatibilist view I defend, we human beings would not have the sort of free will required for moral responsibility if causal determinism were true of our universe. We would also lack this sort of free will if determinism were false, and our actions were indeterministically caused exclusively by states or events. For such indeterministic causal histories of actions would be as threatening to this sort of free will as deterministic histories are. However, it could be that if we were undetermined agent-causes—if we as substances had the power to cause decisions without being causally determined to cause them—we would then have this type of free will. But although our being undetermined agent causes has not been ruled out as a coherent possibility, it is not credible given our best physical theories.

See Derk Pereboom, “Further Thoughts about a Frankfurt-style Argument,” Philosophical Explorations, Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2009, 109-118. See p. 109. 252Here I summarize Pereboom’s (2003), pp. 185-199. 253According to Fischer, “The doctrine of semicompatibilism is the claim that causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, quite apart from whether causal determinism rules out the sort of freedom that involves access to alternative possibilies.” See John Martin Fischer, “Compatibilism,’ in Four Views on Free Will by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kan, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 56.

The kernel of truth in Frankfurt’s example is that responsibility attributions are based on what happens in the actual sequence; an incompatibilist about responsibility and determinism can agree with this and thus admit that, if determinism is false, an agent who couldn’t have done otherwise might be responsible for his action. But of course this doesn’t show that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility; determinism is a doctrine about what happens in the actual sequence. The point could be put as follows: there are two ways in which it might be true that one couldn’t have done otherwise. In the first way, the actual sequence compels the agent to do what he does, so he couldn’t have initiated an alternate sequence; in the second way, there is no actual-sequence compulsion, but the alternate sequence would prevent the agent from doing other than he actually does. Frankfurt’s examples involve alternate-sequence compulsion; the incompatibilist about determinism and responsibility can agree with Frankfurt that in such cases an agent can be responsible even while lacking control, but he will insist that, since determinism involves actual-sequence compulsion, Frankfurt’s examples do not establish that responsibility is compatible with determinism.254

Pereboom believes Fischer’s contention to be correct. For this reason, he endorses source rather than leeway incompatibilism and offers the following causal history requirement for one to be morally responsible for an action:

CH: An action is free in the sense required for moral responsibility only if it is not produced by a deterministic process that traces back to causal factors beyond the agent’s control.

The relevant condition is about origination which is further explained as follows:

O: If an agent is morally responsible for her deciding to perform an action, then the production of this decision must be something over which the agent has control, and an agent is not morally responsible for the decision if it is produced by a source over which the agent has no control.

O, thinks Pereboom, is the most fundamental and plausible incompatibilist intuition about how an agent’s moral responsibility is grounded. It also helps explain why one might think that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility.255 For similar reasons, David Widerker, formerly a leeway incompatibilist and staunch defender of PAP, has more recently embraced a source-incompatibilist view. 256 In the past,

254John Martin Fischer, “Responsibility and Control,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 24-40. See pp. 33-34. 255Ibid., 186. See also Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1- 22. 256David Widerker (2012).

Widerker vigorously resisted the conclusion the Frankfurt and his defenders had successfully articulated IRR-scenarios. He resisted it by noting what he called the “Moral Assumption” of Frankfurt’s argument against PAP.

(M): An agent who, in an IRR-scenario, deliberately performed a morally wrong act is blameworthy for it, even though he could not have avoided performing that act.

Widerker argued against (M) by drawing attention to the intuitive link between attributing blame to an agent and expecting of the agent that he not have done what he did. When we consider someone blameworthy for some act, we believe that morally speaking, he should not have done what he did, and we blame him because he has not met this expectation. But sometimes adopting such an expectation would be unreasonable (i.e. in situations in which it is clear that the agent could not have avoided doing what he did). In that case, to expect the agent to not have done what he did is to demand of him the impossible, and would, therefore, be irrational. Hence, Widerker’s proposed necessary condition on moral blame:

Principle of Alternative Expectation (PAE): An agent S is morally blameworthy for performing a given act V only if in the circumstances, it would be morally reasonable to expect of S not to have done it, or it would be morally reasonable to expect of S to have done something such that had he done it, he would not be blameworthy for performing V.

PAE explains why someone may want to reject (M). Widerker finds PAE appealing, but thinks that it is possible to present a libertarian-based alternative that captures the intuitive force behind (M). Widerker now thinks he can offer an explanation for the Frankfurt-inspired intuition that an agent is blameworthy for a wrong action even if he could not have done otherwise.257 To see this we need to view the sequence of events in Frankfurt-style cases from the relevant agent’s epistemic perspective.258 If an agent cannot do otherwise (although he does not know that he cannot do otherwise), but chooses on his own to perform a morally wrong act, he has thus acted contrary to the way suggested, or even demanded, by moral considerations. Therefore he is morally to blame for what he did. Our assessment of Jones isn’t changed by knowing that he could not have decided otherwise because he chose on his own to act contrary to what morality

257See Widerker (2012). 258Widerker (2012), pp. 276-277.

requires. Such agents show a lack of respect (concern) for morality and that reveals something significant about them qua moral agents. There is, therefore, is a reasonable avoidability- independent account of moral blame. But if unavoidability itself doesn’t absolve an agent from responsibility, then is the libertarian justified in absolving the agent from blame in a deterministic sequence? The answer is that in the deterministic scenario, the agent’s act was causally determined by factors beyond his control, factors for which he is not to blame. In such cases whatever blame there might be for the action attaches to those factors and not to the agent.259 Thus, Widerker endorses what he calls, Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism. Although for the Frankfurt-Friendly libertarian (FFL), avoidability per se doesn’t exonerate, this does not mean that avoidability has no role to play in exculpating an agent under determinism. Consider an agent S in a deterministic world who performs wrong act A for selfish reasons. The FFL must say that unavoidability exonerates here, so it is not wholly irrelevant. The fact that in a deterministic world the agent’s act was causally determined by factors beyond his control entails that the act was unavoidable. So, unavoidability of an action, grounded in its being causally determined by factors for whose obtaining he is not to blame, is what exonerates for the FFL.260 Nevertheless, John Martin Fischer finds it hard to see why determinism would threaten moral responsibility apart from considerations related to alternative possibilities.261 Why, exactly would causal determinism be thought to pose a threat to moral responsibility if it were not in virtue of undermining the notion that we have alternate possibilities? One reason that causal determinism may be thought to pose such a threat to moral responsibility is that moral responsibility requires agents to be ‘active’ or ‘creative.’ But Fischer doesn’t see why an agent whose action is part of a deterministic sequence cannot be active and creative in any sense plausibly taken to be required for moral responsibility. Someone might insist that moral responsibility for an action requires that action to be the agent’s own. Fischer thinks an action that is part of deterministic sequence can be the agent’s own. Some might say that someone must be creative in the sense of being a ‘self-originator’ and this requires the absence of causal

259Ibid., p.278. 260Ibid., p. 278. See also David Widerker, “A Defense of Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism,” Philosophical Explorations, Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2009, 87-108. 261John Martin Fischer (2003), p. 41ff.

determinism. Fischer thinks that such a requirement is the result of thinking that moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities, but is not required apart from that prior commitment. One might affirm that determinism precludes moral responsibility even though the absence of alternative possibilities does not because determinism precludes a certain ‘initiating capacity.’ The idea here is that indeterministic agents’ actions make a difference to the world that was not already in the cards. If causal determinism were true, we lack originative value. Fischer, however, thinks that Frankfurt cases show that it is not the case that ‘due to the agent’s action different value consequences occur in the world than otherwise would.’ Thus, there is no good reason, says Fischer, to think that determinism itself, apart from considerations relevant to alternative possibilities, would rule out moral responsibility. Al Mele offers what I take to be a compelling reply to Fischer’s concerns in Free Will and Luck.262 According to Mele, libertarians can suppose that some agent in a deterministic world who A-s on the basis of careful deliberation satisfies the most robust and plausible set of sufficient conditions for having A-ed freely and being morally responsible for A-ing that a compatibilist can offer. According to Mele, it remains open to libertarians to affirm certain tenets of various compatibilist accounts of free and morally responsible action as important contributions to a sound theory of free and morally responsible agency. But these libertarians think that these tenets only tell part of the story. What is needed to complete the account is that the agent be a “suitably indeterministic initiator of his action.”263 Mele further notes that for some libertarians, Frankfurt cases have helped them to identify why they think determinism itself poses a decisive threat against free and morally responsible action. More than merely rendering the agent unable to do otherwise, these libertarians see that determinism in the actual sequence is what renders the agent unable to do otherwise, rather than Frankfurt-style interveners in the unrealized counterfactual sequence. Mele writes, “A libertarian may see an agent’s indeterministically initiating some actions of his as crucial to his being a free, morally responsible agent, and although determinism precludes indeterministic initiation, Frankfurt-style cases do not.” 264 Mele continues:

262Al Mele, Free Will and Luck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), see ch. 4 “Frankfurt-style Cases, Luck, and Soft Libertarianism” pp. 81-104. See especially pp. 93ff. 263Ibid., 93. 264Ibid., 94. Note that Mele offers this discussion in the context of his account of “Soft Libertarianism” which he explains as follows:

What some libertarians want may be a causal bearing on some of their actions that they would lack in any deterministic world. They may desire something that requires their being able to make a causal contribution to some of their actions, the making of which is not entailed by any true description of the laws of nature and the state of their world at some time prior to their having any sense of the apparent options but does not require their having robust alternative possibilities…they believe that a more desirable freedom and moral responsibility require that our actions not be parts of the unfolding of deterministic chains of events that were in progress even before we were born…And they take the power to be an initiator of this kind—an indeterministic initiator—to be required for a more desirable freedom and responsibility…265

It seems to me that Mele puts his finger on the central incompatibilist motivation. What we want is independence from the causal nexus. We want to make a difference in the world that was not already in the cards of the laws of nature and a true description of the physical states of the universe. And although Mele advances these initiating considerations in the context of a discussion about soft-libertarianism, a form of libertarianism that does not completely reject the possible truth of compatibilism, I take it that these initiating considerations can be deployed by hard-line libertarians, especially source libertarians who believe that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with the truth of determinism. And although source- incompatibilism is very close, in some respects, to compatibilism, it seems to me that the various manipulation arguments that have been raised in recent years against compatibilism tell in favor of the source-incompatibilist position.266 In light of Frankfurt-inspired challenges to PAP (and its cognates), as well as the threat that determinism is very plausibly taken to pose to free and morally responsible agency, I take source-incompatibilism to be a viable theoretical alternative.267

Traditional libertarians are hard-line incompatibilists. They claim that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. I call them hard libertarians. A softer line is available to theorists who have libertarian sympathies. A theorist may leave it open that free action and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism but maintain that the falsity of determinism is required for a more desirable brand of moral responsibility. This is a soft libertarian line. Soft libertarians would be disappointed to discover that determinism is true, but they would not conclude that no one has ever acted freely and that no one has ever been morally responsible for anything (Ibid., 96).

265Ibid., 96, 97. 266For these see Derk Pereboom’s “Four Case Argument” in Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See also Mele’s “Zygote Argument” in Mele (2006), pp. 188-195. 267It seems to me that source-incompatibilism may also be superior to PAP-motivated versions of leeway incompatibilism insofar as leeway incompatibilism appears to run into serious worries about luck. See Mele (2006), ch. 1. Source incompatibilists do not require that agents have the ability to do otherwise. Most source incompatibilists will grant that alternative possibilities are derivatively important insofar as they are a necessary consequence of the presence of causal indeterminism. But the lesson from Frankfurt is that alternative possibilities

Conclusion: Advantages of Modified Molinism

In this closing section I will briefly lay out my source-based, modified Molinist view, and point out what I take to be its main strengths. The view itself is based on the key Molinist doctrine of middle knowledge and a narrow-source incompatibilist construal of human freedom and moral responsibility. On my view, God has prevolitional middle knowledge of all true counterfactuals. In conjunction with God’s natural knowledge of all necessary truths, God then decides what world to actualize. With the addition of His free knowledge, knowledge of what causal contribution God wills to make, God then knows all the truths of the actual world, including the future free actions of His creatures. Modified Molinism secures the strongest form of divine providence short of Banezian or Calvinistic doctrines of divine sovereignty. It is a doctrine of meticulous sovereignty and is consistent with a libertarian view of human freedom. Molinism’s key feature, divine middle knowledge, survives its most serious challenges in the grounding objection and the priority problems. I rejected the arguments advanced for the conclusion that counterfactuals of creaturely freedom must be grounded in the ways Molinist critics suggest. I also rejected the claim that the standard possible-worlds semantics is inconsistent with Molinist commitments. The claim that God has middle knowledge has not, therefore, been defeated. In addition to my view that God has middle knowledge, I rejected the key Ockhamist contention that human agents have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs about our future actions. There are no viable extant conditions for distinguishing hard vs. soft facts. And Plantinga’s arguments for the claim that human agents have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs appear to be a mere denial of a profoundly intuitive principle that the past is irrevocably fixed. On my view, human agents are not able to do otherwise than what God, in the past, infallibly believed they would do. This conviction would appear to put me in the DF-incompatibilist camp, so long as human freedom is construed as leeway libertarianism based on the principle of alternative possibilities. But Frankfurt-style counterexamples to PAP rationally underwrite a source-

qua alternative possibilities are not required for free and morally responsible action. In a theistic universe, where all our actions are accidentally necessary, there are not even the non-robust flickers of ability to do other than what God, in the past, infallibly knew that every agent would do. But, I see no bar to endorsing what Kevin Timpe has called narrow-source incompatibilism over wide-source incompatibilism. See Kevin Timpe, Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013), pp. 147ff.

incompatibilist position. Narrow-source libertarianism over a traditional leeway libertarianism avoids the need for doing otherwise than what God, in the past, foreknew that we would do. I take the source solution to be superior to compatibilist construals of human freedom and moral responsibility due to the dialectical threat posed by contemporary manipulation arguments. This, then, is Modified Molinism. Mine is not the only source-based solution to PTF. David Hunt has also advanced a source-based libertarian position.268 Hunt, however, rejects Molinism due to semantic worries,269 and instead affirms what has been called the “Simple Foreknowledge” view.270 Simple foreknowledge (SF) is simply the claim that God has complete and infallible knowledge of the future. And, according to Hunt, this knowledge is “by itself wholly compatible with human freedom, divine agency, and enhanced providential control.”271 By simple foreknowledge, God knows beforehand what free choices His creatures will make in the future. This contrasts with Molinists who also believe that God knows what choices His creatures would make under all sorts of non-actual circumstances. But critics have raised serious challenges to SF by questioning its usefulness to God in His providential control over the world. Consider some event E at some time T. Imagine that Mary is praying at T-n about her expectation that E will soon occur. She asks God to intervene so that E does not happen. Now, if God knows that E will happen, even if God prefer that E not happen, it is not the case that God can do anything to bring it about or cause E not to occur. If God did intervene, then an item of God’s knowledge, that E will happen, will turn out to be false, and God will have held a false belief. This result generalizes. If God uses His simple foreknowledge to intervene in any event of the future, then that event will not occur, which will falsify God’s beliefs. This means that God cannot use His simple foreknowledge to intervene in any future event. Thus, God’s simple foreknowledge is useless in His providential guidance over the world and in response to the petitionary prayer of His people. Molinism, of course, by the doctrine of middle knowledge, has the resources for understanding how God can maintain providential control over the world and even build into His world events

268“On Augustine’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy 16 (January 1999), pp. 3-26. 269See David Hunt (2001a), pp.149-154. 270David Hunt (2001b), pp. 65-103; “Divine Providence and Simple Foreknowledge” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993), 394-414. 271Hunt (2001b), p. 67.

or states of affairs in response to things for which He knew that His creatures would freely petition. Source-based Modified Molinism, then, is a slightly new twist on a very old problem. It secures meticulous divine providence, preserves libertarian freedom, and out-performs its source-based cousin, the doctrine of Simple Foreknowledge. The challenges posed by Open Theism are potent, not least the problem of theological fatalism. But it seems to me that Modified Molinism rises to meet these challenges and is uniquely positioned to account for things that the traditional theist affirms of both divine and human natures.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Ben Kimmell is a native of Perry, FL, and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He received his B.S. in Management Information Systems from Florida State University in 2001 and subsequently worked as an information technology consultant. In 2005 he abandoned corporate interests to pursue graduate studies in theology and philosophy. He received his Master of Divinity with Specialization in Christian Thought from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 2008. In 2011, he received his M.A. in philosophy from Florida State University and Ph.D. in 2017. Ben currently resides in Perry, FL with his lovely wife, Anna, and their three children where he is currently the senior pastor at Calvary Baptist Church.

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