Middle Knowledge (Molinism) V

I am going to take a short excursion that I hope will lay a foundation. We are going to create our own system of possible worlds. This system will be very simple and hopefully will allow us to grasp the much more complicated system making up possible world semantics. The construction of our system will parallel the system of possible world semantics.

Our system begins with only two possible initial stages, which we will call IS(1) and ¬IS(1). What is interesting, this is a logically necessary situation. Think of it as: you either start with IS(1) or you don't. It is just an application of the law of non-contradiction. So, what is ¬IS(1)? Well, for our purposes, we will say that there is only one other possible initial state, which we will call IS(2). That is to say, in our little system ¬IS(1) is IS(2).

IS(1) and IS(2) each make up a complete set of events that we are calling the initial stage of a possible world. In real possible world semantics we have the same situation with one major exception. We have IS(1) and ¬IS(1), but ¬IS(1) is made up of a huge number of possible worlds, rather than just one. Think of all the possible starting points there could have been for creation. This would be our initial set. Of course, this is much too large for us to work with, and as such we just pretend that there are only two initial states: IS(1) and IS(2).

Now, there are a number of possible consequences to these initial stages. Think of them as the next stage as time moves forward. In other words, they are what happens next. For IS(1) the possible consequences are MS(1) and ¬MS(1). IS(2) has the possible consequences of MS(2) and ¬MS(2). ('MS' stands for middle stage, which is not to be confused with Middle Knowledge. In real possible world semantics the parallel is exact with the exception that there is a huge number of initial stages for which there are two possible consequences, namely MS(n) and ¬MS(n). In our system, we will define ¬MS(1) to be MS(2) and ¬MS(2) to be MS(1) for the sake of simplicity. Of course, this is not the same for real possible world semantics. ¬MS(n) stands for an even larger set of possible consequences than the huge set of possible initial stages. Two stages into real possible world semantics leaves us with a mind boggling number of possibilities.

We will end our possible world system with the final stage FS(1) and FS(2) with all of the corresponding possibilities. In the real possible world semantics, we would not stop here. In fact, there would be numerous stages making the number of possible combinations truly staggering. However, it is not too staggering for God to comprehend. In our little possible world system, the number of possible worlds is only eight. Here are our eight possible worlds in our little bitty system:

P(1) IS(1) → MS(1) → FS(1)
P(2) IS(1) → MS(1) → FS(2)
P(3) IS(1) → MS(2) → FS(2)
P(4) IS(1) → MS(2) → FS(1)
P(5) IS(2) → MS(2) → FS(2)
P(6) IS(2) → MS(2) → FS(1)
P(7) IS(2) → MS(1) → FS(1)
P(8) IS(2) → MS(1) → FS(2)

Each of these possible worlds has an event path that is unique. For instance our P(6) is made up of the following path: <2,2,1>. There is no other possible world that has this path. <1,2,1> is P(4), <2,2,2> is P(5), and <1,1,1> is P(1), etc… The parallel in possible world theory is exactly the same. Each possible world has its own unique event path. Different possible worlds may share many events in common, but each event path will all be unique - just like P(1) and P(2) share the first two stages the same, but end differently.

In Molinism, God considers the humongous set of event paths that make up the humongous set of possible worlds in possible world semantics, and He chooses to actuate one of these possible worlds. It is in this sense that God ordains everything that comes to pass. He actuates one possible world and this in turn actuates the event path of this possible world. All events can then be spoken of as being ordained by God on the basis of Him choosing this particular possible world. So, if God were to actuate P(4), then it would be said that God ordained all events that make up the event path <1,2,1>.

Middle Knowledge (Molinism) V

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