The biggest problem with Molinism is the grounding problem: there is nothing in reality wherein the subjunctive conditionals of free will (“middle truths”) could be grounded. As Reuben perceptively noted in a recent comment, the problem is especially big if God is simple, as then the middle truths can’t even be grounded in God.
Anyway, it seems to me that there might be some benefit to Molinists to think about what one might call Individually Grounded Weak Molinism (IGWM). On IGWM, there are no middle truths about the free actions of non-actual persons, but there are middle truths about the free actions of actual persons, which are grounded in properties of these very persons. Thus, “when” (in the explanatory and not temporal sense) God is deciding whether to create Curley, there is no fact of the matter whether Curley would accept a $5000 bribe in circumstances C. But “as soon as” Curley is actual (on eternalism, this will be the case even before Curley temporally exists—maybe as soon as God decides to create Curley), there will be a fact of the matter whether he would accept that bribe in C.
On IGWM, there is an “ontological home” for the middle truths. Moreover, IGWM ameliorates another problem for standard Molinism: the problem of evil. On standard Molinism, God presumably has a vast amount of knowledge that he can use in optimizing the world. E.g., God knows that Adam and Eve would sin, but there is a vast number of couples almost exactly like Adam and Eve, and it seems very unlikely that they would all have sinned in Adam and Eve’s circumstances, so why didn’t God create them? But on IGWM, God only knows that Adam and Eve would sin in the Garden of Even once he decides to create them. One might objet that are presumably a vast number of gardens almost like Eden that God could put Adam and Eve in, and on IGWM God middle-knows how they would behave in each garden, and it would seem surprising if Adam and Eve would have sinned in all of them. Not so. For it might be that there are close correlations between middle-truths about how Eve (say) would act in circumstance C1 and how she would act in C2 if C1 and C2 are very similar.
But IGWM still has enough bite to yield some of the advantages of Molinism. First, we have the biblical cases. Granted, these could be interpreted in a non-Molinist way, but a Molinist way seems particularly neat. For instance, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, God tells the rich man that his brothers wouldn’t repent even if someone came back from the dead to talk to them. On IGWM, this conditional makes sense, and is grounded in the rich man’s brothers. (Granted, this is a parable, so it’s not a prooftext for Molinism.) Second, we still have the nice story about how God can work in our lives and achieve his gracious goals without undercutting our freedom: God knows what we would choose in which circumstances, and can control the circumstances we are in. Third, the Molinist account of efficacious grace works on IGWM with no changes. Fourth, and this is the immediate motivation for my post, my Molinist defense of hell works just fine on this story.
IGWM does not solve all the problems with Molinism. The Adams circularity argument continues to be problematic. Suppose I freely choose A in circumstances C, and God put me in C because he middle knew that I would freely choose A in C. It’s surely note a coincidence that both (a) I freely choose A in C and (b) I would freely choose A in C. There needs to be some kind of explanatory connection between (a) and (b). If (b) is explanatorily prior to (a), then it seems that the middle facts about me explain my actions, and that seems to undercut my freedom. But if (a) is explanatorily prior to (b), then we have a circularity. For (b) is prior to C, and C is prior to (a).
And there may be a way in which the freedom worry about Molinism feels bigger on IGWM. If it’s a property of me that I would freely choose A in C, rather than just being an ungrounded truth, then it looks a bit more like that property constrains me and takes away my freedom.
Thanks for the mention, Dr. Pruss 😄
ReplyDeleteIn my last comment, I mentioned how I find Molinism confusing and can't wrap my mind around it. Your new version of Molinism reinforces my confusion about Molinism 😄
Maybe I'm being wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of Molinism, but, to my mind, all different versions of Molinism have some very problematic implications.
If we assume that there are no middle truths about non-existent persons and the middle truths about Curley only come into existence once God decides to create Curley, what does this even mean?
I see 2 possibilities:
1) when God decides to create Curley, a random soul-making mechanism is activated and generates the middle truths about Curley like a dice roll. (Apparently, even God doesn't know the outcome of this dice roll that generates the middle truths of Curley!) Then, God examines those middle truths and decides in what kind of circumstances to make Curley be born. This view is so problematic for obvious reasons.
2) when God decides to create Curley, God is fully responsible for shaping Curley's character and the middle truths about Curley are fully under God's control. But this view makes Molinism completely redundant and we collapse right back into compatibilism, where God fully chooses and shapes the things that we are going to freely desire.
But, again, maybe I'm just confused and fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of Molinism.
It probably has to be something closer to 1 than to 2.
DeleteOr one just denies PSR. There is no process. There are just the middle truths.
DeleteI'm trying to wrap my mind around how it would be possible for a human to be the ground of her own middle truths before she starts existing. Or how it would be possible for God to have a middle-truth folder whose contents even He doesn't know before He starts creating.
DeleteI don't like Molinism 😂
@Reuben Is the problem with version 1 of IGWM that God doesn't know something before He decides to create? If THAT is the problem in question, then this isn't just a problem for this form of Molinism, but for Ockhamism, Eternalism and other models, because they all place God's knowledge of free choices logically posterior to deciding to create
Delete@Wesley C., I just struggle to wrap my mind around views where the truths about what free creatures would do are independent of the divine will. Under such views, it seems like there is a folder containing data about human libertarian choices, and the folder does not exist at all until God decrees to create the human; at the moment of the decree, the folder springs into being, already full, with contents God did not determine.
DeleteThe difficulty is that nothing explains what is in it. The folder's contents are not the product of the divine will. So what generates the determinate content?
Saying that the contents are grounded in the human herself sounds like sidestepping the issue rather than providing a satisfying answer.
@Reuben It depends on what being determined by the divine will means. It seems from what you wrote that you think of determination as something akin to physical premotion where God literally causes people to make choices and determines what choices will be actualised before creating.. But that depends on a fairly contested view of the will's motion. If, by contrast, the will is truly able to move itself without God causing that to happen directly, then those things don't need to be the direct product of God's will. Assuming source incompatibilism, it also wouldn't be a mystery as to how God knows free choices before creation in that case - because all individuals can only make one specific choice in a specific set of internal and external circumstances, which is baked into their nature, which God knows from eternity. Yet they are still the source of their choices, not God.
DeleteThis btw shows how God can know something without directly actualising the effect. Now libertarian free will adds to self-motion the element of indeterminism, meaning at least in some cases, libertarianly free agents could have chosen otherwise in the same internal and external circumstances, in principle, even if one is more likely than the other.
But if God doesn't need to actualise the specific choices Himself in order to know what creatures would choose, then it's possible He could also know what creatures would choose even in a truly libertarian-free-will scenario too. At least that's my reasoning for it.
FYI: I endorse a view like this one in my book 'Not a Hope in Hell,' in chapter 4. I understand this as a modification of Banezianism, because I think incorporating Banezian elements can help avoid the circularity worries.
ReplyDeleteScooped!
DeleteWow, this has some similarities to the Ockhamist-inspired models I've read about. Most importantly, the idea that truths about what humans will freely choose emerge only AFTER God decides to create. Several questions are worth adding. On this IGWM, would the middle facts only be CONTINGENTLY true, meaning they could've been otherwise? If so, I guess an IGWM defender could respond to the Adams circularity problem by saying that the fact it's a property of you that you would freely choose A in C is only a contingent property of you, and it could've been otherwise
ReplyDeleteBut I guess it could be further responded to this that if your free choices follow from a property you have, even if that property could have been otherwise, it still seems to make your choices not something that flows from your own will and specific act of choosing, but from a property distinct from your own will?
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ReplyDeleteA potential modification of IGWM just occurred to me. If middle truths are grounded in the person's future free choices that they will actually make, meaning such middle truths are logically posterior to non-middle facts about free choices, then this would allow for God to know middle truths, just without the ability to alter the course of history or providentially model the world on that basis, because non-middle facts about free choices only obtain because the free agent WILL indeed make those choices in the future, and those can't be undone or changed.
ReplyDeleteI guess this comes at the larger cost of God not being able to make direct providential use of such middle facts, but it does still allow for Scriptural passages where God says what would've happened counterfactually to be based on some form of middle knowledge