This essay attempts to provide a plausibly sound argument for theological incompatibilism, where (i) theological incompatibilism is the thesis that if theological determinism is true, then for any created agent S, any time t, and any true proposition p, it is not up to S at t whether p and (ii) theological determinism is the thesis that God’s willing what God wills necessitates and explains every other contingent fact. While the argument offered here is similar to other arguments for the same thesis, it is unique insofar as it invokes the technical notions of thorough ontological priority and metaphysically generative relations. In introducing and defining these technical notions, this essay draws on recent philosophical discussions of explanation, grounding, and ontological priority.

Chapter 6 will examine what exactly is presupposed about the metaphysical character of the relation between parts and compounds in the context of part-whole explanations. These kinds of explanations have often been taken to be evidence for Physical Foundationalism, a view that assumes that an ontological priority relation obtains between the micro-level and the macro-level. I will argue that part-whole explanations (just as other explanations) do indeed presuppose the existence of dependence relations between what the explanans refers to and what the explanandum refers to (this is sometimes called a ‘backing relation’). However, the stronger claim that an ontological priority relation obtains in nature does not do any work in understanding the dependence relations involved in our reductive explanatory practices. All we need is the assumption that parts and wholes mutually determine each other. A minimal metaphysics of science needs to postulate a dependence relation but not an ontological priority relation. Foundationalism is not implied by what classical mechanics and quantum mechanics have to say about the part-whole relation.