Epistemic Privilege and the Grounding Objection to Molinism

It can be useful to consider the full force of objections and problems. I.e. suppose that

an objection you are considering is right and unanswerable, then what follows from that? So one of the most common technical objections to Molinism is the grounding problem. Loosely speaking the idea is that all truths require a “ground” or foundation that makes them true, counterfactuals have no such ground, therefore counterfactuals cannot be true and so Molinism is not true. Molinists have offered responses to this objection, but here I’ll argue that even if all the Molinist responses fail, that still doesn’t warrant a disbelief in counterfactuals and thus even if we grant it it’s full force the grounding problem is not a defeater for Molinism.

For anyone who is unaware part of the idea at work here is that all or at least most truths have something akin to a referent that makes them true. It’s true that 2+2=4 due to the nature of the numbers 2, 4, and what addition is. It’s true that gravity pulls matter together as that’s what gravity does. It’s true that I have been living in Missouri since 2007 because that’s when I permanently moved here. The objection to counterfactuals is that they refer to things that do not (but possibly do) exist so there is no referent to make them true. So it’s possible that I could have moved to another state in 2007. Say Colorado. From there we can infer counterfactual truths such as I would not have met my wife or most of my current friends, my children wouldn’t have existed (as I wouldn’t have met my wife), I wouldn’t have voted in Missouri’s elections, and so on. But, so the objection goes, how can we derive truths from this mere possibility that does not exist? These counterfactuals seem significantly different from the other truths that I pointed to about as there is no obvious foundation or referent for them. So, as the objection goes, Molinism depends upon a concept that has no foundation/ground.

But consider this analogy. You are walking through a forest near where you live and stumble upon a house you have never seen before. You have been to this forest many times and never seen the house or any construction or other indication that it was being built. The house is empty so there is no one there to question. This seems odd, so you ask other people who live in the area about it and none of them know anything either. You even consult the property and tax records of the local government and there is no record of anyone building or owning a house there. In effect it seems like the house has no explanation for being there, and just popped into existence at some point.  But it is there. Now this would be odd as well as a mystery that cries out for explanation. But supposing that neither you or anyone else are ever able to figure out who built that house, why they did so, and why no one can answer those questions . . . are you at that point justified in claiming that the house does not exist? No of course not. That would be silly and stupid. And likewise even if we can never explain how counterfactuals are grounded that alone doesn’t justify us in doubting their existence. The distinction here is that counterfactuals are abstract whereas a house is concrete thing. However most, or perhaps even all, human beings seem to have an immediate perception of counterfactuals.

 What I mean by this is that nearly all or perhaps all human beings have an awareness that things could have been or could be different, and that is a type of counterfactual. i.e. if I had left two minutes earlier or two minutes later, I would not have hit that deer. If I had chosen to live in a different state, my life would be different. You could have chosen to not read this article, or you can choose to stop now or you can continue. Virtually no one questions basic counterfactual claims like this. These claims seem so intuitively obvious that it is difficult to deny the truth of them. Now we certainly can have arguments and disagreements about more elaborate counterfactuals. If the Roman Empire had never fallen, would technology have advanced further? If Germany have won WWII would the Nazi party have died out anyway? If a fantastical creature like a Unicorn or a Cyclops actually existed, could you hunt and kill it? These are also a type of counterfactual, and it’s also perfectly reasonable to answer no to those questions or argue that such things are in a certain sense impossible. But from the fact that some counterfactuals can be reasonably denied and/or may be impossible, it doesn’t follow that they all are.

Hence it seems clear that all human beings have knowledge of at least some counterfactuals and not being able to explain why is not, in and of itself, a sufficient reason to doubt this. You are justified in believing your eyes even if you don’t know how they work, and likewise if the existence of even some basic counterfactuals seems immediately obvious to you (and this seems to be the case for virtually all human beings) then in absence of a good defeater for counterfactuals you are justified in believing they exist.

What I am appealing to here is a basic principle within Epistemology about the primacy of the phenomena of our own individual sensations/experiences. While different terms have been used for this idea, I think the best one is epistemic privilege. While explaining other aspects of epistemology Robert Audi gives a basic sense of this idea. “Simple perceiving is fundamental: it is required for objectual and propositional perceiving,” but it does not necessarily entail either.[1]

Broadly speaking the point here is that there are internal experiences like the sensations we experience. While we can easily be mistaken about aspects of these phenomena, we cannot reasonably doubt the fact that we experience these phenomena. I could experience the sensation that a spider is crawling on my arm, only to look at my arm and realize that there is no spider there. So I can misinterpret the data of the sensation on my arm, however there is no reasonable way of doubting that I did experience the phenomenon of the sensation. I have direct and internal access to the fact that I experienced the sensation and due to my privileged access to it no one can reasonably tell me, “No, you don’t feel that.” Other things that would qualify as internal in this sense are our own thoughts and emotions as we have direct, unfiltered, and privileged access to them, and other people do not.

Conversely there are other facts of the matter that I do not have direct access to, and these are external. These would be virtually everything that is not my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I can be mistaken in thinking that a spider is crawling on my arm as that knowledge is filtered through my perceptions, thoughts, experiences, and so on. Therefore, I do not have direct access to that knowledge like I do to the phenomenon of the sensation that I felt or as I do to my own thoughts and feelings. This distinction/point is remarkably uncontroversial within Epistemology as I know of no Epistemologist who questions this distinction.[2]

Now, contrary to some strains of global skepticism, it does not follow from this distinction that I should seriously doubt all external knowledge or facts of the matter. The mere possibility of error does not in and of itself demonstrate the presence of error. Possibility does not equal plausibility. Absent a good defeater for my perceptions, I am justified in believing them, and the mere possibility of error is not a good defeater.

It is akin to if someone were to attempt to convince me that I am not currently writing this article, but that I’m dreaming, a Boltzmann Brain, stuck in The Matrix, or something similar. I have strong premia facia reasons for believing that I am currently writing this article and as such it would take an exceptionally strong defeater to convince me that my basic perceptions are fundamentally wrong, that I am being grievously deceived, or something similar. In the absence of such a strong defeater, I am perfectly justified in believing that I am writing this article. Loosely speaking this is epistemic conservatism, and it applies to many other things such as our beliefs about a mind independent world, the testimony of other people, the principals of scientific inquiry, and so on.[3]

So if something presents itself to you as immediately true and not through a medium (i.e. the fact that you felt something, your own thoughts, etc) in the absence of a good defeater you should believe it. As you work your way out and into things that present themselves to you through a medium, (what your eyes see, what you touch, etc) you should allow for a bit more skepticism, but still in the absence of a good defeater for what your eyes see, believe your eyes. If you find out someone put LSD in your coffee, don’t believe your eyes. That’s a good defeater.

I don’t think we perceive counterfactuals as immediately as we do our own thoughts and feelings, but it is pretty obvious from how everyone talks and acts that everyone does perceive them . . . probably about at the same level as what we see or slightly further out. This is close enough that if someone wants you to doubt your intuition that “if x had happened instead of y I would have done a instead of b” they need to give you a good defeater. Your inability to explain the metaphysics of how this is true or how you know it to be true is not a good defeater for something you perceive so directly. Especially when so many other people also perceive the same thing (i.e. counterfactuals). Hence even if the grounding problem can never be solved and all of the Molinist responses are complete failures, you are still not justified in doubting the existence of counterfactuals, anymore then you would have been justified in doubting the existence of the house in the forest.[4]

[1] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, 3rd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2011), 24.

[2] Perhaps proponents of presuppositional apologetics will as many of their claims do challenge and/or deny this principal; however, I am unaware of any of them who explicitly make this claim and the vast majority of them are not epistemologists or even philosophers.

[3] Audi, Epistemology, 325-326

[4] Some of this article is taken from any essay I presented at the Society for Pentecostal Studies.