Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams

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Abstract

The Molinist posits 'brutely true' conditionals about what individuals would or will do if put in certain circumstances (called the Molinist's conditionals 'conditionals of freedom' or 'CFs') The circumstances in question are indeterministic ones, since Molinists are libertarians; if a creature is really free in a given set of circumstances, then the laws of nature and prior states of the world do not determine which among a number of alternatives is chosen. The point of positing CFs is to allow God absolute, 'risk free' providential control. He has to know the end from the beginning; the Molinist's conditionals put God in a position to make an initial creative choice, knowing in advance what would happen on each alternative. So long as he also arrives at settled intentions about what to do when free creatures do what they will do, all of the future is deducible from his initial choice of a world-type. This chapter discusses the sort of 'priority' CFs must have in the order of explanation, if not the temporal order. God must be able to take them into account 'before' he decides what to do - although this 'before' is generally not supposed to be a temporal one. This chapter constructs a new anti-Molinist argument. It argues that the Molinist has to admit the possibilities of worlds in which the CFs would give God too much control over every possible creature. If one of these worlds had been actual, God would not have been able to create free creatures. And this is a highly undesirable result, from a theological point of view.

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Newlands, S., & Jorgensen, L. M. (2010). Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams. Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams (pp. 1–432). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542680.001.0001

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