Page 10

My reply here is much the same as before. The similarity between the antirealist regarding

future-tense contingent statements and the antirealist regarding CFs is purely superficial. The
truth-value of a future-tense statement such as

(B) Jesus will return in 2010

is grounded here and now because, assuming that it is true, there will obtain, in 2010, the
categorical state of affairs Jesus returns in 2010. But no such state of affairs has obtained, does
obtain, or ever will obtain regarding any CF. Certainly, no such categorical states of affairs were
available to God before he created the actual world, which is something required by MK. I must,
then, concur with Hasker's assessment that since "comparative similarity among possible worlds
does not provide the grounding for the truth of the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, then we
have been given no answer whatever to the grounding objection."

Hasker, Review of Flint's Divine Providence, 251. Timothy O'CONNER, echoing the thought of

Alfred Freddoso, has offered another account for the grounding of CFs that deserves some mention (See
"The Impossibility of Middle Knowledge," 154-158) . The account amounts to this: Suppose there is a
free agent S in some possible world W which has a particular causal history up to some time t. At t, S is
faced with a situation calling for a free choice. What choice would S make? O'CONNER states,

While it is true that there are many possible worlds sharing this description which diverge at t,
there can only be one concrete world, with but one of any set of mutually exclusive states of
affairs obtaining at a given time. So if God had actualized this sort of universe, one---but only
one---of these courses of action would have been undertaken. Which one?---Who knows?. . .but it
surely cannot be denied that something would have occurred (p.157).

The point is that even though we might not know what an agent would freely do in a counterfactual
situation, there is no doubt that he would do something. So far so good. But O'CONNER goes on to say,

Consider now the universe God did in fact create. And consider the first free choice of some agent
A at t. There are possible worlds identical in their causal history up to time t which diverge at t,
due to the different choices available to A, but only one of these alternatives was actually taken.
(Ibid.).

The upshot of these remarks is to claim that a CF such as "If Jones were in C, then he would do x" is

true in virtue of the fact that (1) Jones must make some choice, and (2) there is a state of affairs at some
time t such that Jones does x. Of course, it is clear where the problem lies. It simply does not follow from
the fact that Jones does x at some future time and that he must make some choice with regard to x that the
subjunctive conditional "If Jones were in C, he would do x is true." All that follows is "If Jones were in C,
he will do x. That little word "would" in the subjunctive makes all the difference in the world. Even if the
future conditional about what Jones will do is true, this does

nothing to show that the subjunctive future

conditional about what Jones would (freely) do is true. Moreover, as O'CONNER himself admits, this
scenario involves the actual world and Jones' actual choice. The CF involved in this case is one in which
both the antecedent and the consequent actually obtain. O'CONNER himself is not persuaded that this
account

can be extended to cover CFs that are genuinely counterfactual and involve future events (as must

be the case if the MK solution is to work).