Ontological Determination and the Grounding Objection to Counterfactuals of Freedom

Faith and Philosophy 25 (4):394-415 (2008)
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Abstract

Alvin Plantinga’s reply to the grounding objection to propositions now called counterfactuals of freedom, originally made by Robert Adams, can be interpretedas follows: if, for the sake of argument, we require counterfactuals of freedom to be grounded in something that makes them true, we can simply (and trivially) say that there are corresponding counterfactual facts that ground them. I argue that such facts, together with the facts about the situations in which moral agents find themselves, would ontologically determine that the agents perform their acts, rendering these acts unfree. Thus, I maintain that, contrary to Plantinga’s intent, allowing the grounding facts into the divine creation situation entails the falsity of Molinism. If there is no other way that God can know what free creatures would do than through counterfactuals of freedom, divine foreknowledge of human acts is inconsistent with human freedom and moral responsibility.

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Citations of this work

Recent Work on Molinism.Ken Perszyk - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (8):755-770.
Foreknowledge and Free Will.Linda Zagzebski - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:online.

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References found in this work

Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1977 - American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (2):109-117.
Anti-Molinism is Undefeated!William Hasker - 2000 - Faith and Philosophy 17 (1):126-131.
On Hasker’s Defense of Anti-Molinism.William Lane Craig - 1998 - Faith and Philosophy 15 (2):236-240.

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