This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
There is danger of terminological confusion here. If ‘middle knowledge’ is defined as knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom, then I hold (given the view of freedom to be defended below) that God can have such knowledge. If, on the other hand, freedom is understood (as many think Molina does understand it) to be such that two agents identical in all respects of history, circumstance, and physical and psychological makeup at t can make opposing choices, then I claim that such counterfactuals lack truth conditions and God can’t know them. Christoph Jäger (unpublished manuscript) has recently argued, however, that since Molina was committed to a Thomistic conception of God as atemporal, His knowledge of what an agent does or would do is grounded in God’s atemporal awareness of what the agent in fact does do (in the actual world or in any agent-containing possible world) at time t. Hence, counterfactuals of freedom have as their truth-makers the actions and inactions themselves that occur at t in the relevant possible world. The fundamental problem for Molinists on this account is that it is inconceivable how God could know such a thing except by way of perceiving free acts when they occur, and this explanation comes a cropper on at least three counts. First, Molina holds (with Thomas) that God is impassible; hence, He does not have perceptual relations with the world, for these involve world/God causal influence. Second, it seems clear that there can’t in any case be causal relations between a temporal world and an eternal God (see Stump & Kretzmann, Craig, Fales, Swinburne). And third, it’s hard to conceive of what it would be for God, whether eternal or temporal, to perceive what happens in some otherwise-specified non-actual possible world (what God would perceive is irrelevant: we are concerned with what God does know).
One could allow that the relevant factors jointly do not determine S’s decision, but only determine a probability for a given choice. But then one will have to allow that knowledge of what S will do can be predicated upon knowledge of those probabilities; and even a latitudinarian view of knowledge will not survive in cases in which the probabilities (say of S’s doing A versus not doing A) are not very significantly different.
Does the agent-causation theory of libertarian freedom escape this line of reasoning? I think not: to the precise extent that agent-causation is efficacious in producing an action, knowledge of what the agent will/would do eludes divine FK, for there is literally nothing about the agent or his/her circumstances that provide God with that kind of knowledge. The whole point of agent-causation, the point that distinguishes it from ordinary event-causation, is that it involves the efficacy of a substance independently of any of its properties or relations.
Hobart, R. E., 1934. “Free Will as Involving Indeterminism and Inconceivable Without It,” Mind, 43: 1–27.
See Robert Kane, “Libertarianism,” Chap. 1 of John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derek Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008): 5 – 43. At the core of Kane’s position is the question of the relation between reasons and choice – a question that also besets agent-causation views. In Kane’s case, the best that can be said is that the competing lines of reasoning that lead to rational impasse and correspond to their (deterministic and physical) supervenience bases are such as to frame the issue for the agent in terms of setting which alternative courses of action are serious contenders. But the triumph of one such line of reasoning over its rivals in producing what Kane calls a Self-Forming Act is random. Pace Kane, I suggest that this leads to an etiolated conception of freedom; and not only because the story seems applicable only in cases in which something approaching a genuine rational stalemate between choices is reached.
I mean this in the quite ordinary sense: I can, in this sense, do something when the action is something that’s within my reach to perform, should I set myself the task. Possibilities are always with respect to some determiner; in the case of actions the determiner from among physically possible actions is reason. So initially reason faces alternatives, and then it eliminates some. (But is there more than one physical possibility, in the circumstances? – on this, see my concluding remark.)
Explanation by reasons offers the libertarian a natural response to the Frankfurt examples that have caused so much libertarian hand-wringing. What rational deliberation presupposes is that alternative actions be available to the subject in two senses: first, that she rationally takes a prospective action to lie within the range of her physical abilities and skills, under the circumstances, to execute; and second, that each prospective action be such that, for all she knows prior to deliberation, it may prove to be the best of the available options. That is, every alternative must be, as we might say, a rational possibility for her; the purpose of the deliberation is (ideally) to eliminate all of these initially rational possibilities but one. Choosing (accepting the conclusion of a practical syllogism) is done freely just when there are such alternative possibilities, and the deliberation is successfully and properly carried through; i.e., the reasons lead, rationally and non-deviantly, to the choice in question. A free choice is subject to contravention, in the sense that knowledge how she should act isn’t sufficient for the performance of the action: action may be thwarted or derailed by temptation. Moreover, the falsity of the beliefs that inform deliberation does not undermine free choice – though it may undermine freedom of action; e.g. if, pursuing a free choice, S is forestalled by the unforeseen. But the choosing itself will have been free.
Take, then, the standard Frankfort case, where S deliberates whether to leave the room or stay, and Mad Scientist, remote control and brain monitor in hand, stands at the ready: should S arrive at the point of deciding to leave, Mad Scientist will intervene at the eleventh hour and thwart formation of that intention. (Such intervention must appear odd to rational S: she was on the verge of concluding that leaving is the preferred option; suddenly, she finds herself intending to stay – presumably for no satisfactory reason.) Now if S decides on her own accord, and for good reasons, to stay, then her false belief about her options does not infringe upon her freedom. False beliefs can, of course, lead to choosing the impossible, but they need not constrain the ability freely to choose as such. Imagine the extreme case: someone who has every reason to think he is physically normal though his body has, in fact, become totally paralyzed. Such an unfortunate can rationally choose to perform any number of actions that he cannot in fact perform. He is in a sense the opposite of God, who allegedly can accomplish whatever He sets His heart upon; but, as Descartes observed, his will is as free as God’s.
In “Molinism” (Chap. 2 of Jonathan Kvanvig, ed., Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)), John Martin Fischer has elegantly argued that Molina’s theory of middle knowledge does not answer, but rather presupposes an answer to, the problem of how divine foreknowledge can be compatible with human freedom. If the problem directly to be mentioned below cannot be solved, then I think Fischer is correct also about divine foreknowledge as I have explained it. But if it can, then EBR libertarianism provides an explanation of the compatibility, by showing how the truth-makers for counterfactuals of freedom are on the one hand knowable (many of them) by God, and on the other compatible with a properly understood PAP. Obviously, in offering this solution, I do not mean to be attributing it to Molina, nor is the present paper an attempt at Molina exegesis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fales, E. Is Middle Knowledge Possible? Almost. SOPHIA 50, 1–9 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0211-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0211-7