Middle knowledge, fatalism and comparative similarity of worlds
RICHARD GASKIN a1 a1 Graduate Research Centre in the Humanities, University
of Sussex,
Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN
Abstract
The doctrine of Middle Knowledge presupposes that conditionals
of
freedom (statements of the form ‘If A were circumstances C, he would
perform X’)
can be true. Such conditions are, where true, not true in virtue of the
truth of any
categorical proposition. Nor can their truth be modelled in terms of comparative
similarity of possible worlds, because the structure of possible worlds
is a necessary
one, whereas the connection between antecedent and consequent of a conditional
of
freedom is a contingent one. Lewis and Stalmaker are committed to ‘conditional
fatalism’, the view that things only would go a certain way if they
would have to
go that way. Although commitment to conditional fatalism does not itself
import a
commitment to fatalism, it is hard to find a separate motivation for it.
