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Ockhamists and Molinists in Search of a Way Out
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Abstract
If libertarianism is true, then there is a sense in which agents have it within their power to bring it about that some world is actual. Against recent arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, I offer an account of power over the past which takes this implication of libertarianism into consideration. I argue that the resulting account is available to Ockhamists and that it is immune to recent criticisms of the notion of counterfactual power over the past. But I contend that it is not an option for Molinists and that this fact leaves that position vulnerable to incompatibilist arguments.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995
References
1 Hasker, William, God, Time and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 96–143.Google Scholar
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4 Ibid.
5 Cf. ‘On Ockham's Way Out’, p. 257.
6 Thomas Flint, ‘In Defense of Theological Compatibilism’, Faith and Philosophy, VIII (1991), 237–43.
7 Ibid. p. 240.
8 David Basinger has offered a similar formulation of a similar principle in a similar context. I am using his formulation as a model. See Basinger, David, ‘Middle Knowledge and Human Freedom: Some Clarifications’, Faith and Philosophy, IV (1987), 334.Google Scholar
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17 ‘Sleigh's Fallacy’ or the confusion of the necessity of the consequence with the necessity of the consequent.
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24 Ibid.
25 Thanks to David Werther, Ed Martin, Charles Taliaferro, Ed Langerak and Keith Yandell for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper.