Molinist Conditionals
EDWIN D. MARES, Ken Perszyk · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011
This chapter distinguishes semantic and metaphysical problems facing Molinism. In the past thirty years, there has been a fair amount of uncertainty and confusion in the literature over the relationship between Molinist counterfactuals of freedom and the standard possible‐worlds semantics for counterfactuals. The authors show that Molinism is compatible with the standard semantics. They argue that two semantic arguments against Molinism‐the Might Argument and the Tie Argument—fail. Friends and foes of Molinism have typically failed to appreciate that the similarity relation that is appropriate to evaluate (both ‘would’ and ‘might’) counterfactuals is (unless they express strict conditionals) context-dependent. There is no one similarity relation that suits all contexts