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The Brute Fact "Argument"

Having been unable perhaps to offer an account of the grounding of CFs, the Molinist has

one more strategy, namely, to assert that CFs are simply brute facts. Maybe the proponent of MK
hasn't shown how CFs are grounded, but this doesn't prove that CFs have no truth-value. It is
intuitively plausible, they say, to maintain that there are indeed true CFs and that God knows
them. The burden of proof is on the Anti-Molinist to show why MK is incoherent or otherwise
problematic despite their having no definitive explanation for the grounding of CFs. In other
words, the MK proponent may argue that CFs are, as far as we know, brute facts about the
universe. Why not? The Anti-Molinist hasn't show that they can't be brute facts. So, what
prevents the Molinist from simply believing in the reality of CFs in any case?

I suppose that nothing would prevent the Molinist from making this move. But, it would

seem to me that this move would be an attempt to get something for nothing. Or, to get
something out of nothing. It reminds me a lot of those critics of the cosmological argument who,
in attempting to avoid the conclusion of the argument, deny the causal principle and ask why the
(contingent) universe cannot simply be a brute fact. The defender of the cosmological argument
can give no logically necessary reason in refutation of this desperate move, but he reminds the
critic that the causal principle holds in other areas of inquiry, and clearly the causal principle is
more plausible than its denial.

Likewise, the Anti-Molinist may reply to the "Brute Fact Argument" by reminding the

Molinist that the correspondence theory of truth's requirement that propositions be grounded is
met by other types of propositions. And since there is apparently no ground for CFs, this means
that premise (4) of the GGOA is more plausible than its denial.

The Grounding Objection Triumphant

We have seen that attempt to ground the truth-value of CFs is problematic at best. No

plausible account for their grounding has (yet) been found. I have doubts that one will ever be
found. The reason I think this is because I believe that the GO does more than simply make CFs
mysterious. It gives us positive reason to think that they are in fact ungrounded, and that their
truth-value is undeterminate.

Let me explain it this way. Take the conditional proposition

(F) If the moon is made of green cheese, then Alvin Plantinga is an android.

Now both the antecedent and the consequent of this conditional are false (I'm sure that
Alvin Plantinga will be glad to here that!). But as you know, on truth-functional logic,
this proposition is supposed to be true! Clearly, however, something has gone amiss. If
such a proposition were to appear as a premise in an argument, we would all surely
dismiss it as obviously fallacious. Why? Because, in ordinary discourse, when we assert
a conditional proposition, we believe that there is some connection, (say) logical or