Adams thinks that the strongest objection to his argument is an appeal to intuitive everyday examples where even regular humans appear to have middle knowledge about what free agents would do in different circumstances. Plantinga's example is that of Curley Smith, a corrupt mayor who accepts a bribe of $35,000. Plantinga asserts that, quite obviously, we can know that if Smith had instead been offered $36,000 he would have accepted the greater offer. According to Adams, this proposition is a “semi-factual” in which the antecedent is false (the offer was in fact $35,000), but the consequent is assumed to be true. The proposition's truth comes from the fact that the consequent, Smith's acceptance of the offer, would not have been “prevented or …show more content…
It is tempting to say that this knowledge is definite because of the butcher's “character, habits, desires, and intentions, and the absence of countervailing dispositions” (116). However, as Adams has previously established, no agent's actions are causally or logically determined by his character, and so we cannot be “absolutely certain” about the butcher's actions on the basis of his character. If humans indeed have free will, then it appears that the only leftover explanation, which Adams concedes is not especially satisfying, is that “he would only probably have sold it to me, though we normally ignore the minute but real chance there would have been that he would refuse” …show more content…
They are statements about what would have been true had circumstances been different and David had not fled Keilah. On the other hand, it might be questioned whether Adams is entitled to hold that the truth of the propositions must be grounded in some relation of necessitation. Of course the agents involved cannot turn out to be causally or logically necessitated to act if they have free will. But why think that the appeal to intentions and character must involve necessity? Well, it seems that, without necessity, there is no justification for God to have knowledge of what free agents would do in any possible circumstance. How does God know that if David stayed in Keilah then Saul would besiege the city? Supposedly he knows this on the basis of his knowledge of Saul's character and intentions. But why does this provide God with certain knowledge about Saul's actions? It is unclear how else God's knowledge of Saul's actions could be guaranteed by knowledge of Saul's character if his character does not make his actions