A future for the thin red line

Synthese 188 (1):117-142 (2012)
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Abstract

The thin red line ( TRL ) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of indeterminism. It is inspired by a famous solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge associated with William of Ockham, in which the freedom of agents is argued to be compatible with God’s omniscience. In the modern branching time setting, the theory of the TRL is widely regarded to suffer from several fundamental problems. In this paper we propose several new TRL semantics, each with differing degrees of success. This leads up to our final semantics, which is a cross between the TRL and supervaluationism. We discuss the notions of truth, validity and semantic consequence which result from our final semantics, and demonstrate some of its pleasing results. This account, we believe, answers the main objection in the literature, and thus places the TRL on the same level as any other competing semantics for future contingents

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Author Profiles

Jacek Wawer
Jagiellonian University
Alex Malpass
University of Bristol

References found in this work

Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Past, present and future.Arthur N. Prior - 1967 - Oxford,: Clarendon P..
Facing the future: agents and choices in our indeterminist world.Nuel D. Belnap - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Michael Perloff & Ming Xu.
Past, present, and future.Arthur Prior - 1967 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 157:476-476.

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