{"id":743,"date":"2021-12-03T16:11:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T21:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=743"},"modified":"2023-07-10T09:17:34","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:17:34","slug":"a-quick-refutation-of-molinism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2021\/12\/a-quick-refutation-of-molinism\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quick Refutation of Molinism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my <a href=\"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=726\">previous post<\/a>, I discussed the grounding objection to Molinism and also briefly touched on another problem having to with divine aseity. In this post I want to try to cut to heart of the matter and show as simply and directly as I can that <strong>Molinism is necessarily false because it is <em>internally inconsistent<\/em><\/strong>. The inconsistency arises from two of its core commitments, so this is not a problem that can be solved by merely &#8220;tweaking&#8221; the system. Here are the two commitments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Creaturely libertarian freedom<\/em>: some creatures in at least some indeterministic circumstances have the intrinsic power to choose among two or more alternatives. When they so choose, it is in some ultimate, buck-stopping sense <em>up to the individual creature<\/em> which of the alternatives they choose.<\/li>\n<li><em>Pre-volitionality of middle<\/em><em> knowledge (MK)<\/em>: for every possible free choice situation (C) that any possible creature (S) could be in and any alternatives (A or not-A) that S could have had in C, it was determinately true <em>independently of God&#8217;s will<\/em> and therefore\u00a0<em>independently of creation<\/em> either that &lt;If C then S would freely do A&gt; or that &lt;If C then S would freely do not-A&gt;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My quick and simple refutation pits these two aspects of Molinism against each other.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li dir=\"auto\">If S is free in circumstance C to A or not-A, then it is <strong>at least partly up to S<\/strong> whether &lt;If C then S would freely do A&gt; is true or not. (At the very least S could <em>falsify<\/em> that conditional by choosing to not-A.)<\/li>\n<li>If Molinism is true, however, then &lt;If C then S would freely do A&gt; is <strong>not even partly up to S<\/strong>. (Because that conditional is included in God&#8217;s middle knowledge, its truth value must be determinate pre-volitionally and therefore <em>independently of whether S even exists<\/em>.)<br \/>\nTherefore,<\/li>\n<li>If Molinism is true, then S is not free in circumstance C to A or not-A.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>In short, the middle knowledge component of Molinism conflicts with creaturely libertarian freedom. Molinism entails fatalism.<\/p>\n<div class=\"o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql\">\n<p>It is easy to show that the argument is logically valid. Just contrapose the first premise and you&#8217;ve got a standard hypothetical syllogism.<\/p>\n<p>Some Molinists might try denying (2) by saying in Ockhamist fashion that actual creaturely choices are explanatorily prior to the truth of MK conditionals. But this won&#8217;t work for two reasons. <strong>First<\/strong>, it lands the Molinist in a <em>vicious explanatory circle<\/em>: God&#8217;s MK concerning S is explanatorily prior to His creative decree \u2192 God&#8217;s creative decree is explanatorily prior to S&#8217;s existence \u2192 S&#8217;s choices are explanatorily prior to God&#8217;s MK concerning S \u2192 etc. <strong>Second<\/strong>, if S&#8217;s actual choices inform God&#8217;s MK, then God can&#8217;t turn around and\u00a0<em>use<\/em> that MK to exercise providence over S&#8217;s actual choices. The information comes &#8220;too late&#8221; in the explanatory order for God to do anything about it. In short, Ockhamism and Molinism don&#8217;t mix. If you try to combine the two, then you gut Molinism of any providential advantages it might have had over Ockhamism (and over open theism too, for that matter).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post, I discussed the grounding objection to Molinism and also briefly touched on another problem having to with divine aseity. In this post I want to try to cut to heart of the matter and show as simply and directly as I can that Molinism is necessarily false because it is internally\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2021\/12\/a-quick-refutation-of-molinism\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,106,129],"tags":[13,111,52],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fatalism","category-molinism","category-ockhamism","tag-fatalism","tag-molinism","tag-ockhamism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}