The grounding objection to middle knowledge revisited

Religious Studies 39 (1):93-102 (2003)
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Abstract

The Molinist doctrine that God has middle knowledge requires that God knows the truth-values of counterfactuals of freedom, propositions about what free agents would do in hypothetical circumstances. A well-known objection to middle knowledge, the grounding objection, contends that counterfactuals of freedom have no truth-value because there is no fact to the matter as to what an agent with libertarian freedom would do in counterfactual circumstances. Molinists, however, have offered responses to the grounding objection that they believe are adequate for maintaining the coherence of middle knowledge. I argue that these responses to the grounding objection are not adequate, and that what I call the ‘generic grounding objection’ still poses a serious challenge to middle knowledge.

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Steven Cowan
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Citations of this work

The Free Will Defense Revisited: The Instrumental Value of Significant Free Will.Frederick Choo & Esther Goh - 2019 - International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 4:32-45.
Recent Work on Molinism.Ken Perszyk - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (8):755-770.
Counterfactuals of divine freedom.Yishai Cohen - 2016 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79 (3):185-205.
Richard Swinburne's False Dilemma.Owen Crocker - 2020 - UBC Journal of Philosophical Enquiries 1 (1):63-80.

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