How does Molinism not imply Theological Determinism?
If God knows every counterfactual that lead to Hitler mass murdering Jews and yet still decides to create the type of universe and puts Hitler in exactly the type of circumstances in which this indeed happens, how is it in any way different from picking what Hitler does?
I think Molinists tend to affirm libertarian free will, and it's a (to me, weird) way to try to preserve that, while also keeping to an otherwise extensive account of divine providence. They're opposed to things being determined, so they just have the things happen arbitrarily, and have God know what arbitrariness is going to happen in whatever circumstance.
I don't know how this relates to the early debates; I haven't looked into those properly. I think often people talking about free will several hundred years ago are focused more on moral matters (are we free to do good?) and less on determinism, though they are often connected enough that it takes some effort to tell.
> I think Molinists tend to affirm libertarian free will
How?
Libertarians are unsatisfied even with deterministic natural world where their actions can only be determined by executing *their* decision making algorithm - the fact that it's still possible to determine their actions in the first place, is the deal breaker for them.
Here it's not only possible to determine their actions in principle, it's even possible without execution of their decision making algorithm! At this point even some compatibilist may start to turn to the no-free-will camp.
> They're opposed to things being determined, so they just have the things happen arbitrarily, and have God know what arbitrariness is going to happen in whatever circumstance.
In what sense is it arbitrary if it's possible to know which thing happens in which circumstances with absolute certanity? What is even meant by "determined" and "arbitrary" at this point?
Imagine I have a machine which for every "determinist" thing can figure out what happens and for every "arbitrary" thing it can also figure out what happens. Why do we need these two labels? What meaning do they add? How this is not just a machine that for every thing can figure what happens?
If I know you have a weakness for doughnuts, and I put doughnuts in the coffee room at your work, and I believe with high confidence that you will eat some of those donuts, then does that mean that I "picked" what you would do? Or that I controlled your actions? Or that you had no choice?
Certainly you can make an argument that God may be morally responsible for Hitler murdering the Jews, insofar as he "brought the donuts" but that's a different question from whether God caused Hitler to do it.
This actually goes into why most Christian ethics are virtue ethics based on improving our characters, and less focused on our specific actions. Our circumstances do affect our choices, and we often did not choose those circumstances: God did. C. S. Lewis wrote on this in Mere Christianity, and on how God will judge each soul fairly, taking the circumstances God chose to place them in into account:
"If you are a poor creature—poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels—saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion—nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends—do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrapheap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all—not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)"
> Certainly you can make an argument that God may be morally responsible
Obviously he is, but that's beside the point.
> If I know you have a weakness for doughnuts, and I put doughnuts in the coffee room at your work, and I believe with high confidence that you will eat some of those donuts, then does that mean that I "picked" what you would do? Or that I controlled your actions? Or that you had no choice?
To a degree of your confidence it indeed means that you've picked for me to eat the donuts. If you were rightfully certain that I will eat the donuts this particular time if you placed them in my vicinity, by doing so you indeed *determine* that the donuts will be eaten. As a compatibilist, I don't see it as an issue for my free will - I'd still be executing a decision making algorithm and making a choice, even if you already know what choice I'll make. But this is clearly a determinist situation as there is a way to determine in principle with full confidence what action I'll make before I make it. And apparently it's not even needed to execute my decision making algorithm to do this!
I don't think I disagree, insofar as I think Molinism and compatibilism make the most sense and work well together. I don't think determinism is really escapable (since only one possible choice will actually occur in any case, and that choice will be based on something), but compatibilism seems to work better in a Molinist universe than the other options.
Some theological determinists recognize the difference between Molinism and determinism but argue that if God is morally responsible for the immoral actions of causally determined human actions, he is also morally responsible for human free actions he knew they would do. Personally, I find these critiques interesting, and I haven't read any Molinist responses so far.
In theological determinism, God causally determines the actions of Hitler; that is to say, the prior conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions. But in Molinism, God creates the prior conditions in which Hitler would do x, but the prior conditions would not necessitate his actions; his actions are underdetermined. He freely (in the libertarian sense) acts. In Molinism, Hitler could do not-x, but in theological determinism, he could not do anything differently. In theological determinism, God knows what Hitler will do (because his will necessitates future actions), but in Molinism, God knows what Hitler would freely do if he were placed in those conditions, and if he would do something different, he would have known it. On determinism, God knows the truth value of future or counterfactual propositions because he determines it. On the contrary, in Molinism, God knows the truth value of counterfactual and future propositions because omniscience is the attribute of knowing all true propositions. As someone else puts it, it depends on God in which world you are created, but it depends on you what you do in the world you were created in.
> In theological determinism, God causally determines the actions of Hitler; that is to say, the prior conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions. But in Molinism, God creates the prior conditions in which Hitler would do x, but the prior conditions would not necessitate his actions; his actions are underdetermined
I don't see the difference. In both cases God creates the conditions which lead to Hitler doing x. In both cases God is absolutely certain that x will be done and is right about it. So what does it mean that in the first case "conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions" while in the second case "conditions would not necessitate his actions"?
> In Molinism, Hitler could do not-x, but in theological determinism, he could not do anything differently.
In both cases Hitler "could do not-x" in the sense that while executing his decision making algorithm while he has not yet decided between x and not-x both actions are marked as possible in his own mind.
In both cases he "could not do not-x" because God knows that x will be done and indeed x is done. So what the actual tangible difference, other than using different words for no reason?
> As someone else puts it, it depends on God in which world you are created, but it depends on you what you do in the world you were created in.
Of course. The fact that someone knows what action I'll make doesn't absolve me from the necessity to make my own choice about the situation. My choice and God's knowledge about my choice are perfectly correlated, but it doesn't make my choice meaningless any more than it makes God's knowledge of my choice meaningless. From one perspective we can say that God's nowledge determines my choice, while from the other that my choice determines God's knowledge. Both statements are talking about the same thing. This is true for both Molinism and Determinism.
> "Finally, I think once the theist accepts that God is free—which they should, to account for his choice to create whichever particular world he did, rather than a different one—accepting that we are free isn’t much of an extra cost."
Are we sure that God is free? Doesn't God do the best possible action at any given time? Even if we posit that God *could* do evil and just chooses not to (what would this mean?), this seems like a very different kind of freedom compared to human freedom.
And why do we think God created only one particular world, rather than the set of all good worlds? Don't your anthropic precommitments force you to believe that God created the set of all possible good worlds, since those have the most possible people compatible with God's goodness?
It may be different in various ways but it's still definitely a kind of freedom. I have the ability to stick my fingers in electrical sockets, but never choose to do so because I see it's a bad idea. Does this make me unfree? No, I don't think so.
I think the set of all good worlds is slightly the wrong way to think about things. Rather, God creates all possible agents and places them all in good worlds. This pareto dominates just creating all the good worlds and avoids various weird challenges like the fact that if God creates every possible good world, that probably collapses induction because there are lots of ways to destroy the world in ways that make it good overall (everyone has ten seconds of infinite bliss and then is turned into a cloud of smoke).
I think I consider you free because, even though you are constrained to a single path regarding electrical sockets, there are many other areas of life where you have lots of options and I can't predict your behavior. If your choice was to follow one specific path for your entire life with zero deviations - determined down to individual muscle micro-movements - or else receive an electrical shock, this to me at least challenges the concept of freedom.
What is the difference between God and gravity? Gravity always acts in accordance with the inverse square law; God always acts in accordance with the greater good; both are equally predictable. If someone says "gravity only pulls things down because it always, invariably, feels like it, but it COULD do whatever it wanted" is this a meaningful claim?
It seems like God probably doesn't even consider doing evil, since a being who had some slight tendency toward evil but overcame it would be less good than one who didn't. When I say "I could have hit my wife, but didn't", I mean there are parts of me that could raise the possibility, consider it as a live option, and then back down from it. I'm not sure God should be considered as having those parts.
I don't know, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Imagine some really dedicated effective altruist reads the writing of Peter Singer and dedicates their life to maximizing the good at all times. They still seem free in the relevant sense.
What's the difference between God and gravity? God acts in accordance with his will, not determined by anything outside it. Gravity doesn't have a will.
God, knowing everything, knows that he could do evil but doesn't seriously consider it in the same way that I don't seriously consider sticking my fingers in electrical sockets. That doesn't seem to rob me of my freedom.
If there was a P-zombie that acted like me, it wouldn't have free will. This doesn't mean I don't, even though my free will behavior is identical to its will-less behavior.
> And why do we think God created only one particular world, rather than the set of all good worlds?
If by "world" you mean universe - rather than one particular part of the universe - God created only one world by definition. If anything exists it is part of the universe (which is the collection of all things that exists). If we believe in an triple-omni God, we should expect him to create the best possible universe (in this very sense).
I use "universe" to mean "places that are accessible from one another through normal space travel". I think it's meaningful to talk about multiple universes in the sense of "a parallel universe where I have blue hair" or "a parallel universe where the South won the Civil War". I think if God exists, He probably created many such universes, since doing so frees us from the "why did He create this universe rather than others" problem and lets Him do all possible good things.
>places that are accessible from one another through normal space travel
I don't think it's coherent to imagine a place that is spatially disconnected. The way I understand space is the background of the universe where everything happens. I don't know what it means for space to not exist in a certain place. I think this is also why David Lewis's modal realism is a bad theory - the mechanism by which possible worlds are supposed to be individuated relies on an unintelligible notion of "not spatially connected." I don't think that's meaningful, in the same way "the event that took place before time existed" isn't meaningful or "walk north of the north pole" isn't meaningful.
Good stuff, and especially good points against simple foreknowledge! But while I do lean towards molinism too, I don't think open theism is as dead in the water as you suggest. In fact, if there is genuine indeterminacy, I think it is very probably the best option.
While we can have very high certainty that you will eat breakfast tomorrow, I don't think it is true that you *will* eat breakfast tomorrow, if there is genuine indeterminacy. After all, it seems like for a statement "X will happen" to be true, it must be that X will happen in all possible continuations of the present. Suppose we are about to roll a dice, and I say "it will hit a 6", and suppose that it is a genuinely random, fair dice. In that case it just seems I uttered a false statement--it *will* not hit a 6, but it *can* hit a 6.
Likewise, suppose I have a genuinely random coin, it would here too be false to say "it will land heads". Even if we make it very unfair, such that it has a 99.9999% chance of heads, it still would be false to say that it *will* land heads, since it can also land tails.
Another way to see this is if I say "it will land heads", and you say "it will land tails (i.e., not-heads)". These are contradictory statements, so at most one can be true. The most reasonable candidate for being true is the former, since there is a 99.9999% chance it happens. But suppose that the coin actually happens to land tails. Well, it doesn't seem right to say that my statement was true and that it didn't land heads. But then it just turns out that my statement was always false, since it was always genuinely open whether the coin would land tails or not.
More generally this means that all future contingents are false, and so it is no arbitrary limit on God's knowledge that he doesn't know them. He can of course know probabilistic things about future contingents--e.g. that there's, say, a greater than 90% chance that you will eat breakfast tomorrow--but he cannot actually know whether you will eat breakfast tomorrow.
Why can't God make it 100% the case that a future event happens? This seems like an arbitrary limitation on his omnipotence, considering he created the universe and time with it.
I certainly think he could, even under an open theist picture. I guess the idea is that there are certain things, such as libertarian free will, that are important/valuable enough to warrant God giving up certain knowledge of the future.
> The fact that in 3,000 BCE it was true that I’d board my plane doesn’t mean I can’t do otherwise—it just means that if I were to do otherwise, the fact in 3,000 BCE would have been different.
Uh no. It very straightforwardly means you can’t do otherwise. If I tell you that in 3000 BC it was true that you would board your plane today, then it’s literally impossible that you would not board the plane.
“The fact in 3000 BC would have been different” changes nothing. Yes. It would have been different. Doesn’t change the fact that once it’s known, you have zero ability to choose otherwise.
On this view, the future facts only describe what actually happens. So if you tell me that in 3000 BC I will board the plane and I don’t, then you were simply mistaken.
If God tells you, you will end up boarding the plane of your own free will.
One idea might be that it’s metaphysically possible that you would do otherwise, but not what will happen in this particular world.
Suppose you blackout drinking one night and the next day your friend is recounting your antics to you. At one point in the story you exclaim, “that IS what I would do.” The idea that there’s a fact of the matter about what you would do in a particular state doesn’t conflict with the idea that your action was freely chosen.
> If God tells you, you will end up boarding the plane of your own free will.
Incorrect. It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise. No free will.
> One idea might be that it’s metaphysically possible that you would do otherwise
No. If this metaphysical possibility happened, it would generate a contradiction with God’s nature. So it’s metaphysically impossible.
> Suppose you blackout drinking one night
I don’t drink.
> At one point in the story you exclaim, “that IS what I would do.”
Completely distinct. You’re equating a casual figure of speech with metaphysical certainty. People tend to make these kinds of equivocations when they are losing arguments.
> The idea that there’s a fact of the matter about what you would do in a particular state doesn’t conflict with the idea that your action was freely chosen.
The notion that such a fact can be known with certainty in advance, very clearly does conflict with free will.
> Incorrect. It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise. No free will.
It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise AND the proposition about your future self to be true. The causal arrow moves in the other direction.
> No. If this metaphysical possibility happened, it would generate a contradiction with God’s nature. So it’s metaphysically impossible.
This reasoning proves too much. Take a non-controversial contingent fact, like “electrons exist.” If Omni-God exists, He believes “electrons exist.” But we couldn’t say that electrons not existing is metaphysically impossible because it would generate a contradiction with Omni-God’s infallible belief that electrons exist. Obviously if electrons didn’t exist Omni-God would just have different beliefs.
Open theism seems very plausible to me. God knows all of the facts that can be known, so he is omniscient. It just so happens that what free creatures will freely do are not among facts that can be known.
It’s important when God’s properties are debated to keep in mind that God is literally omnipresent and timeless.
There’s no need to characterize him except for the sake of making the examples clearer to understand (which I completely support). Making ‘him’ take action and even using cause-and-effect logic is a byproduct of this personification of an external being/force. I think this is the root of views that seemingly constrain God’s ability.
Based on the way you contrast it with theological determinism, it sounds like you're treating Molinism as involving libertarian free will. But if libertarianism is true, it seems obvious that counterfactuals of freedom don't exist. After, all if libertarianism is true, what could it possibly mean to say that, if non-actual scenario S were to occur, agent A would have made choice C? It can't be true in virtue of any feature of the scenario S - otherwise S would determine A's free choice, contra libertarianism. It can't be true in virtue of A's dispositions either, since A's dispositions do not determine A's choice under libertarianism. The only thing that can make it true that A chooses C under libertarianism is the fact that A chooses C - there's no prior cause that determines this. But in a non-actual scenario, there is no "A chooses C" to determine the counterfactual. It's simply true that in S, A could have chosen C, but they also could have chosen not-C. There is no fact of the matter as to which option A would have chosen because such a fact of the matter can only exist if it is determined by A's free choice, and A's free choice in scenario S can only occur if scenario S actually occurs.
The argument you give against this is, "It's true that something would happen." But that doesn't imply that any particular thing would happen. If I were to place a particle at the exact top of Mexican-hat potential well, it's true that it would fall to one of the lower-energy states, but it's false that it would fall to any particular state - in the scenario described, it could fall in any direction with equal probability.
Of course, you can still talk about probabilistic counterfactuals. You might say, "If A was in scenario S, they would have most likely chosen C." But these types of counterfactuals aren't enough for Molinism, and they don't solve any of the problems related to God's action. We could imagine that God looks at the probabilistic counterfactuals about what will happen if he creates Hitler. He finds that, if he creates Hitler, there's a 90% chance that he will become an artist, and his art will indirectly prevent a genocide. But there's a 10% chance that he gets rejected from art school and goes on to become a genocidal dictator himself. He creates Hitler based on this knowledge, but then the 10% chance comes up. Now he needs to zap Hitler out of existence before he becomes a dictator, except, if he does that, it leads to a contradiction, because he can only know that the 10% chance will come up if it actually will come up (i.e., if he doesn't zap Hitler out of existence).
Of course, I think the easiest solution for theists is to just accept compatibilism. Then theological determinism poses no problems, and counterfactuals of freedom can still exist without issue, so Molinism could be technically true as well. Compatibilism is also a more coherent view in general than libertarianism, and it coheres especially well with God's freedom (On libertarianism, how can God be free if he's guaranteed to only perform the best possible action?) and the freedom of people in Heaven if you also believe in that.
This whole discussion exceeds my intellectual capacity. But I'll recklessly jump in.
If we're talking about a Biblical view of God, the pastor I learned from (who had taught both theology and logic at the seminary level) used to say this. God is absolutely sovereign. Man is as free as he needs to be accountable.
As I tried to teach that concept to my children, I said it this way.
1. God is absolutely good.
2. God is absolutely sovereign.
3. If you have a problem with #2, refer to #1.
I realize my contribution doesn't have the complexity or nuance of all the preceding discussion. But sometimes simplicity helps the clarity. ( Or maybe reveals that I am speaking out of my league. )
The core idea here seems to be that there ought to be a way to have meticulous providence and libertarian free will. But I haven't seen any good reason to think that's true, and lots of reasons (namely the best class of anti-molinist arguments, the ones that argue that Molinist commitments undermine libertarianism about free will) to think those two are probably not jointly satisfiable.
Does Molinism imply that there always is a fact of the matter as to what would have happened, given any counterfactual antecedent? Or just that, whenever there is such a fact, God knows it?
The latter seems the better way to go. Sometimes counterfactuals are indeterminate. Suppose I never flip a coin. If I *had* flipped a coin, would it have landed heads? Depends on very precise details about how I would have flipped it, and the antecedent doesn't specify those details. There may be no determinate fact of the matter about how I "would" have flipped the coin - perhaps several candidates are all equally likely (or happen in equally "nearby" possible worlds).
There's no known way to do that that is (a) non-determining and (b) maximally informative, for basically the same reason that AGM has no way to define a unique contraction operator.
If you know the outcome of an act before you commit the act, and you chose that act, you intended that outcome. If God knew before creation, all the possible worlds, all the counterfactuals, and chose to create the world we have, he intended for those outcomes to occur. God, in his omniscience, knew everything that would happen, before it happened, and created the universe so that it would happen. Therefore, he intended for it to happen. Also, it must happen just as God foresaw it happening, because he created the universe in which those things did happen. Therefore, we have no choice but to act in the ways God foresaw, and created the universe in which those things did happen. For God to be both omniscient and omnipotent, we lose free will, (at least that's how I see it - hard determinism).
>If God knew before creation, all the possible worlds, all the counterfactuals, and chose to create the world we have, he intended for those outcomes to occur.
That's why they call it Providence! No argument here.
>Therefore, we have no choice but to act in the ways God foresaw, and created the universe in which those things did happen.
Does not follow. Knowing what someone will do, and choosing to put them in a position where they will do it, doesn't mean that they don't have free will. It just means that God is ultimately responsible for what happened, since that's the universe He chose. But the question here is not on moral responsibility, but whether humans can choose anything at all, and if God is choosing which universe to make based on what we would choose, then clearly we have choice.
What would you call something along the lines of God knowing the natural law that governs choices (game theory, systematic attractors, archetypes...) without specific knowledge. God has a strong handle of how the system works, what types of things will form within the system and the eventual consequence. There is no actual determinism in the substrate, so no knowledge of which electrons have which spin or whether a free agent picks left or right. God knows a few Hitlers will come to pass and knows how they will mold culture. God knows Job, the just man.
God both has vague foreknowledge and general sense of alternative paths. Open theism with deep predictive wisdom?
I've landed here because deep specific knowledge of the substrate seems to devolve to pantheism: very little difference between knowing the state of every particle at all times and being that system.
as soon as reading the title I thought to myself "I'm getting my money's worth with this Substack subscription"
How does Molinism not imply Theological Determinism?
If God knows every counterfactual that lead to Hitler mass murdering Jews and yet still decides to create the type of universe and puts Hitler in exactly the type of circumstances in which this indeed happens, how is it in any way different from picking what Hitler does?
I think Molinists tend to affirm libertarian free will, and it's a (to me, weird) way to try to preserve that, while also keeping to an otherwise extensive account of divine providence. They're opposed to things being determined, so they just have the things happen arbitrarily, and have God know what arbitrariness is going to happen in whatever circumstance.
I don't know how this relates to the early debates; I haven't looked into those properly. I think often people talking about free will several hundred years ago are focused more on moral matters (are we free to do good?) and less on determinism, though they are often connected enough that it takes some effort to tell.
> I think Molinists tend to affirm libertarian free will
How?
Libertarians are unsatisfied even with deterministic natural world where their actions can only be determined by executing *their* decision making algorithm - the fact that it's still possible to determine their actions in the first place, is the deal breaker for them.
Here it's not only possible to determine their actions in principle, it's even possible without execution of their decision making algorithm! At this point even some compatibilist may start to turn to the no-free-will camp.
> They're opposed to things being determined, so they just have the things happen arbitrarily, and have God know what arbitrariness is going to happen in whatever circumstance.
In what sense is it arbitrary if it's possible to know which thing happens in which circumstances with absolute certanity? What is even meant by "determined" and "arbitrary" at this point?
Imagine I have a machine which for every "determinist" thing can figure out what happens and for every "arbitrary" thing it can also figure out what happens. Why do we need these two labels? What meaning do they add? How this is not just a machine that for every thing can figure what happens?
If I know you have a weakness for doughnuts, and I put doughnuts in the coffee room at your work, and I believe with high confidence that you will eat some of those donuts, then does that mean that I "picked" what you would do? Or that I controlled your actions? Or that you had no choice?
Certainly you can make an argument that God may be morally responsible for Hitler murdering the Jews, insofar as he "brought the donuts" but that's a different question from whether God caused Hitler to do it.
This actually goes into why most Christian ethics are virtue ethics based on improving our characters, and less focused on our specific actions. Our circumstances do affect our choices, and we often did not choose those circumstances: God did. C. S. Lewis wrote on this in Mere Christianity, and on how God will judge each soul fairly, taking the circumstances God chose to place them in into account:
"If you are a poor creature—poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels—saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion—nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends—do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrapheap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all—not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)"
> Certainly you can make an argument that God may be morally responsible
Obviously he is, but that's beside the point.
> If I know you have a weakness for doughnuts, and I put doughnuts in the coffee room at your work, and I believe with high confidence that you will eat some of those donuts, then does that mean that I "picked" what you would do? Or that I controlled your actions? Or that you had no choice?
To a degree of your confidence it indeed means that you've picked for me to eat the donuts. If you were rightfully certain that I will eat the donuts this particular time if you placed them in my vicinity, by doing so you indeed *determine* that the donuts will be eaten. As a compatibilist, I don't see it as an issue for my free will - I'd still be executing a decision making algorithm and making a choice, even if you already know what choice I'll make. But this is clearly a determinist situation as there is a way to determine in principle with full confidence what action I'll make before I make it. And apparently it's not even needed to execute my decision making algorithm to do this!
I don't think I disagree, insofar as I think Molinism and compatibilism make the most sense and work well together. I don't think determinism is really escapable (since only one possible choice will actually occur in any case, and that choice will be based on something), but compatibilism seems to work better in a Molinist universe than the other options.
Some theological determinists recognize the difference between Molinism and determinism but argue that if God is morally responsible for the immoral actions of causally determined human actions, he is also morally responsible for human free actions he knew they would do. Personally, I find these critiques interesting, and I haven't read any Molinist responses so far.
In theological determinism, God causally determines the actions of Hitler; that is to say, the prior conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions. But in Molinism, God creates the prior conditions in which Hitler would do x, but the prior conditions would not necessitate his actions; his actions are underdetermined. He freely (in the libertarian sense) acts. In Molinism, Hitler could do not-x, but in theological determinism, he could not do anything differently. In theological determinism, God knows what Hitler will do (because his will necessitates future actions), but in Molinism, God knows what Hitler would freely do if he were placed in those conditions, and if he would do something different, he would have known it. On determinism, God knows the truth value of future or counterfactual propositions because he determines it. On the contrary, in Molinism, God knows the truth value of counterfactual and future propositions because omniscience is the attribute of knowing all true propositions. As someone else puts it, it depends on God in which world you are created, but it depends on you what you do in the world you were created in.
> In theological determinism, God causally determines the actions of Hitler; that is to say, the prior conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions. But in Molinism, God creates the prior conditions in which Hitler would do x, but the prior conditions would not necessitate his actions; his actions are underdetermined
I don't see the difference. In both cases God creates the conditions which lead to Hitler doing x. In both cases God is absolutely certain that x will be done and is right about it. So what does it mean that in the first case "conditions necessitate Hitler’s decisions" while in the second case "conditions would not necessitate his actions"?
> In Molinism, Hitler could do not-x, but in theological determinism, he could not do anything differently.
In both cases Hitler "could do not-x" in the sense that while executing his decision making algorithm while he has not yet decided between x and not-x both actions are marked as possible in his own mind.
In both cases he "could not do not-x" because God knows that x will be done and indeed x is done. So what the actual tangible difference, other than using different words for no reason?
> As someone else puts it, it depends on God in which world you are created, but it depends on you what you do in the world you were created in.
Of course. The fact that someone knows what action I'll make doesn't absolve me from the necessity to make my own choice about the situation. My choice and God's knowledge about my choice are perfectly correlated, but it doesn't make my choice meaningless any more than it makes God's knowledge of my choice meaningless. From one perspective we can say that God's nowledge determines my choice, while from the other that my choice determines God's knowledge. Both statements are talking about the same thing. This is true for both Molinism and Determinism.
> "Finally, I think once the theist accepts that God is free—which they should, to account for his choice to create whichever particular world he did, rather than a different one—accepting that we are free isn’t much of an extra cost."
Are we sure that God is free? Doesn't God do the best possible action at any given time? Even if we posit that God *could* do evil and just chooses not to (what would this mean?), this seems like a very different kind of freedom compared to human freedom.
And why do we think God created only one particular world, rather than the set of all good worlds? Don't your anthropic precommitments force you to believe that God created the set of all possible good worlds, since those have the most possible people compatible with God's goodness?
It may be different in various ways but it's still definitely a kind of freedom. I have the ability to stick my fingers in electrical sockets, but never choose to do so because I see it's a bad idea. Does this make me unfree? No, I don't think so.
I think the set of all good worlds is slightly the wrong way to think about things. Rather, God creates all possible agents and places them all in good worlds. This pareto dominates just creating all the good worlds and avoids various weird challenges like the fact that if God creates every possible good world, that probably collapses induction because there are lots of ways to destroy the world in ways that make it good overall (everyone has ten seconds of infinite bliss and then is turned into a cloud of smoke).
I think I consider you free because, even though you are constrained to a single path regarding electrical sockets, there are many other areas of life where you have lots of options and I can't predict your behavior. If your choice was to follow one specific path for your entire life with zero deviations - determined down to individual muscle micro-movements - or else receive an electrical shock, this to me at least challenges the concept of freedom.
What is the difference between God and gravity? Gravity always acts in accordance with the inverse square law; God always acts in accordance with the greater good; both are equally predictable. If someone says "gravity only pulls things down because it always, invariably, feels like it, but it COULD do whatever it wanted" is this a meaningful claim?
It seems like God probably doesn't even consider doing evil, since a being who had some slight tendency toward evil but overcame it would be less good than one who didn't. When I say "I could have hit my wife, but didn't", I mean there are parts of me that could raise the possibility, consider it as a live option, and then back down from it. I'm not sure God should be considered as having those parts.
I don't know, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Imagine some really dedicated effective altruist reads the writing of Peter Singer and dedicates their life to maximizing the good at all times. They still seem free in the relevant sense.
What's the difference between God and gravity? God acts in accordance with his will, not determined by anything outside it. Gravity doesn't have a will.
God, knowing everything, knows that he could do evil but doesn't seriously consider it in the same way that I don't seriously consider sticking my fingers in electrical sockets. That doesn't seem to rob me of my freedom.
>Gravity doesn't have a will.
Scott's point is that neither does God since his free will behavior is identical to gravity's will-less behavior.
>I don't seriously consider sticking my fingers in electrical sockets.
If it's impossible that you ever do so then you don't have freedom is what's in contention.
If there was a P-zombie that acted like me, it wouldn't have free will. This doesn't mean I don't, even though my free will behavior is identical to its will-less behavior.
> And why do we think God created only one particular world, rather than the set of all good worlds?
If by "world" you mean universe - rather than one particular part of the universe - God created only one world by definition. If anything exists it is part of the universe (which is the collection of all things that exists). If we believe in an triple-omni God, we should expect him to create the best possible universe (in this very sense).
I use "universe" to mean "places that are accessible from one another through normal space travel". I think it's meaningful to talk about multiple universes in the sense of "a parallel universe where I have blue hair" or "a parallel universe where the South won the Civil War". I think if God exists, He probably created many such universes, since doing so frees us from the "why did He create this universe rather than others" problem and lets Him do all possible good things.
>places that are accessible from one another through normal space travel
I don't think it's coherent to imagine a place that is spatially disconnected. The way I understand space is the background of the universe where everything happens. I don't know what it means for space to not exist in a certain place. I think this is also why David Lewis's modal realism is a bad theory - the mechanism by which possible worlds are supposed to be individuated relies on an unintelligible notion of "not spatially connected." I don't think that's meaningful, in the same way "the event that took place before time existed" isn't meaningful or "walk north of the north pole" isn't meaningful.
Good stuff, and especially good points against simple foreknowledge! But while I do lean towards molinism too, I don't think open theism is as dead in the water as you suggest. In fact, if there is genuine indeterminacy, I think it is very probably the best option.
While we can have very high certainty that you will eat breakfast tomorrow, I don't think it is true that you *will* eat breakfast tomorrow, if there is genuine indeterminacy. After all, it seems like for a statement "X will happen" to be true, it must be that X will happen in all possible continuations of the present. Suppose we are about to roll a dice, and I say "it will hit a 6", and suppose that it is a genuinely random, fair dice. In that case it just seems I uttered a false statement--it *will* not hit a 6, but it *can* hit a 6.
Likewise, suppose I have a genuinely random coin, it would here too be false to say "it will land heads". Even if we make it very unfair, such that it has a 99.9999% chance of heads, it still would be false to say that it *will* land heads, since it can also land tails.
Another way to see this is if I say "it will land heads", and you say "it will land tails (i.e., not-heads)". These are contradictory statements, so at most one can be true. The most reasonable candidate for being true is the former, since there is a 99.9999% chance it happens. But suppose that the coin actually happens to land tails. Well, it doesn't seem right to say that my statement was true and that it didn't land heads. But then it just turns out that my statement was always false, since it was always genuinely open whether the coin would land tails or not.
More generally this means that all future contingents are false, and so it is no arbitrary limit on God's knowledge that he doesn't know them. He can of course know probabilistic things about future contingents--e.g. that there's, say, a greater than 90% chance that you will eat breakfast tomorrow--but he cannot actually know whether you will eat breakfast tomorrow.
Why can't God make it 100% the case that a future event happens? This seems like an arbitrary limitation on his omnipotence, considering he created the universe and time with it.
I certainly think he could, even under an open theist picture. I guess the idea is that there are certain things, such as libertarian free will, that are important/valuable enough to warrant God giving up certain knowledge of the future.
> The fact that in 3,000 BCE it was true that I’d board my plane doesn’t mean I can’t do otherwise—it just means that if I were to do otherwise, the fact in 3,000 BCE would have been different.
Uh no. It very straightforwardly means you can’t do otherwise. If I tell you that in 3000 BC it was true that you would board your plane today, then it’s literally impossible that you would not board the plane.
“The fact in 3000 BC would have been different” changes nothing. Yes. It would have been different. Doesn’t change the fact that once it’s known, you have zero ability to choose otherwise.
On this view, the future facts only describe what actually happens. So if you tell me that in 3000 BC I will board the plane and I don’t, then you were simply mistaken.
Ok. But if I’m god, then me being mistaken is impossible, so you must board the plane.
If God tells you, you will end up boarding the plane of your own free will.
One idea might be that it’s metaphysically possible that you would do otherwise, but not what will happen in this particular world.
Suppose you blackout drinking one night and the next day your friend is recounting your antics to you. At one point in the story you exclaim, “that IS what I would do.” The idea that there’s a fact of the matter about what you would do in a particular state doesn’t conflict with the idea that your action was freely chosen.
> If God tells you, you will end up boarding the plane of your own free will.
Incorrect. It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise. No free will.
> One idea might be that it’s metaphysically possible that you would do otherwise
No. If this metaphysical possibility happened, it would generate a contradiction with God’s nature. So it’s metaphysically impossible.
> Suppose you blackout drinking one night
I don’t drink.
> At one point in the story you exclaim, “that IS what I would do.”
Completely distinct. You’re equating a casual figure of speech with metaphysical certainty. People tend to make these kinds of equivocations when they are losing arguments.
> The idea that there’s a fact of the matter about what you would do in a particular state doesn’t conflict with the idea that your action was freely chosen.
The notion that such a fact can be known with certainty in advance, very clearly does conflict with free will.
> Incorrect. It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise. No free will.
It’s impossible for you to have done otherwise AND the proposition about your future self to be true. The causal arrow moves in the other direction.
> No. If this metaphysical possibility happened, it would generate a contradiction with God’s nature. So it’s metaphysically impossible.
This reasoning proves too much. Take a non-controversial contingent fact, like “electrons exist.” If Omni-God exists, He believes “electrons exist.” But we couldn’t say that electrons not existing is metaphysically impossible because it would generate a contradiction with Omni-God’s infallible belief that electrons exist. Obviously if electrons didn’t exist Omni-God would just have different beliefs.
Open theism seems very plausible to me. God knows all of the facts that can be known, so he is omniscient. It just so happens that what free creatures will freely do are not among facts that can be known.
It’s important when God’s properties are debated to keep in mind that God is literally omnipresent and timeless.
There’s no need to characterize him except for the sake of making the examples clearer to understand (which I completely support). Making ‘him’ take action and even using cause-and-effect logic is a byproduct of this personification of an external being/force. I think this is the root of views that seemingly constrain God’s ability.
Based on the way you contrast it with theological determinism, it sounds like you're treating Molinism as involving libertarian free will. But if libertarianism is true, it seems obvious that counterfactuals of freedom don't exist. After, all if libertarianism is true, what could it possibly mean to say that, if non-actual scenario S were to occur, agent A would have made choice C? It can't be true in virtue of any feature of the scenario S - otherwise S would determine A's free choice, contra libertarianism. It can't be true in virtue of A's dispositions either, since A's dispositions do not determine A's choice under libertarianism. The only thing that can make it true that A chooses C under libertarianism is the fact that A chooses C - there's no prior cause that determines this. But in a non-actual scenario, there is no "A chooses C" to determine the counterfactual. It's simply true that in S, A could have chosen C, but they also could have chosen not-C. There is no fact of the matter as to which option A would have chosen because such a fact of the matter can only exist if it is determined by A's free choice, and A's free choice in scenario S can only occur if scenario S actually occurs.
The argument you give against this is, "It's true that something would happen." But that doesn't imply that any particular thing would happen. If I were to place a particle at the exact top of Mexican-hat potential well, it's true that it would fall to one of the lower-energy states, but it's false that it would fall to any particular state - in the scenario described, it could fall in any direction with equal probability.
Of course, you can still talk about probabilistic counterfactuals. You might say, "If A was in scenario S, they would have most likely chosen C." But these types of counterfactuals aren't enough for Molinism, and they don't solve any of the problems related to God's action. We could imagine that God looks at the probabilistic counterfactuals about what will happen if he creates Hitler. He finds that, if he creates Hitler, there's a 90% chance that he will become an artist, and his art will indirectly prevent a genocide. But there's a 10% chance that he gets rejected from art school and goes on to become a genocidal dictator himself. He creates Hitler based on this knowledge, but then the 10% chance comes up. Now he needs to zap Hitler out of existence before he becomes a dictator, except, if he does that, it leads to a contradiction, because he can only know that the 10% chance will come up if it actually will come up (i.e., if he doesn't zap Hitler out of existence).
Of course, I think the easiest solution for theists is to just accept compatibilism. Then theological determinism poses no problems, and counterfactuals of freedom can still exist without issue, so Molinism could be technically true as well. Compatibilism is also a more coherent view in general than libertarianism, and it coheres especially well with God's freedom (On libertarianism, how can God be free if he's guaranteed to only perform the best possible action?) and the freedom of people in Heaven if you also believe in that.
This whole discussion exceeds my intellectual capacity. But I'll recklessly jump in.
If we're talking about a Biblical view of God, the pastor I learned from (who had taught both theology and logic at the seminary level) used to say this. God is absolutely sovereign. Man is as free as he needs to be accountable.
As I tried to teach that concept to my children, I said it this way.
1. God is absolutely good.
2. God is absolutely sovereign.
3. If you have a problem with #2, refer to #1.
I realize my contribution doesn't have the complexity or nuance of all the preceding discussion. But sometimes simplicity helps the clarity. ( Or maybe reveals that I am speaking out of my league. )
Check out that Milton and Helene. That's some fine 'fine tuning' for human life.
Does God know he’s not a brain in a vat?
Rather terrified that you found that photo. You’ve gotta be pretty deep in the weeds to know about him
The core idea here seems to be that there ought to be a way to have meticulous providence and libertarian free will. But I haven't seen any good reason to think that's true, and lots of reasons (namely the best class of anti-molinist arguments, the ones that argue that Molinist commitments undermine libertarianism about free will) to think those two are probably not jointly satisfiable.
Does Molinism imply that there always is a fact of the matter as to what would have happened, given any counterfactual antecedent? Or just that, whenever there is such a fact, God knows it?
The latter seems the better way to go. Sometimes counterfactuals are indeterminate. Suppose I never flip a coin. If I *had* flipped a coin, would it have landed heads? Depends on very precise details about how I would have flipped it, and the antecedent doesn't specify those details. There may be no determinate fact of the matter about how I "would" have flipped the coin - perhaps several candidates are all equally likely (or happen in equally "nearby" possible worlds).
I think you’d have to fully specify the conditions up until the free choice.
There's no known way to do that that is (a) non-determining and (b) maximally informative, for basically the same reason that AGM has no way to define a unique contraction operator.
Couldn't you just e.g. specify the position of every particle in the universe?
If you know the outcome of an act before you commit the act, and you chose that act, you intended that outcome. If God knew before creation, all the possible worlds, all the counterfactuals, and chose to create the world we have, he intended for those outcomes to occur. God, in his omniscience, knew everything that would happen, before it happened, and created the universe so that it would happen. Therefore, he intended for it to happen. Also, it must happen just as God foresaw it happening, because he created the universe in which those things did happen. Therefore, we have no choice but to act in the ways God foresaw, and created the universe in which those things did happen. For God to be both omniscient and omnipotent, we lose free will, (at least that's how I see it - hard determinism).
>If God knew before creation, all the possible worlds, all the counterfactuals, and chose to create the world we have, he intended for those outcomes to occur.
That's why they call it Providence! No argument here.
>Therefore, we have no choice but to act in the ways God foresaw, and created the universe in which those things did happen.
Does not follow. Knowing what someone will do, and choosing to put them in a position where they will do it, doesn't mean that they don't have free will. It just means that God is ultimately responsible for what happened, since that's the universe He chose. But the question here is not on moral responsibility, but whether humans can choose anything at all, and if God is choosing which universe to make based on what we would choose, then clearly we have choice.
What would you call something along the lines of God knowing the natural law that governs choices (game theory, systematic attractors, archetypes...) without specific knowledge. God has a strong handle of how the system works, what types of things will form within the system and the eventual consequence. There is no actual determinism in the substrate, so no knowledge of which electrons have which spin or whether a free agent picks left or right. God knows a few Hitlers will come to pass and knows how they will mold culture. God knows Job, the just man.
God both has vague foreknowledge and general sense of alternative paths. Open theism with deep predictive wisdom?
I've landed here because deep specific knowledge of the substrate seems to devolve to pantheism: very little difference between knowing the state of every particle at all times and being that system.