There is a familiar debate between Russell and Strawson concerning bivalence and ‘the present King of France’. According to the Strawsonian view, ‘The present King of France is bald’ is neither true nor false, whereas, on the Russellian view, that proposition is simply false. In this paper, I develop what I take to be a crucial connection between this debate and a different domain where bivalence has been at stake: future contingents. On the familiar ‘Aristotelian’ view, future (...) class='Hi'>contingent propositions are neither true nor false. However, I argue that, just as there is a Russellian alternative to the Strawsonian view concerning ‘the present King of France’, according to which the relevant class of propositions all turn out false, so there is a Russellian alternative to the Aristotelian view, according to which future contingents all turn out false, not neither true nor false. The result: contrary to millennia of philosophical tradition, we can be open futurists without denying bivalence. (shrink)

Avicenna’s discussion of future contingent propositions is sometimes considered to entail metaphysical indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that his logical analysis of future contingent statements is best understood in terms of the epistemic modality of those statements, which has no consequences for modal metaphysics. This interpretation is corroborated by hitherto neglected material concerning the question of God’s knowledge of particulars. In the Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna argues that God knows particulars by knowing their complete causes, and (...) when contrasted with the human knowledge of particulars, this epistemically superior access shows that the contingency of statements about future particulars is not due to the modal properties of real particulars but to the nature of human access to them. (shrink)

In Facing the Future, Belnap et al. reject bivalence and propose double time reference semantics to give a pragmatic response to the following assertion problem: how can we make sense of assertions about future events made at a time when the outcomes of those events are not yet determined? John MacFarlane employs the same semantics, now bolstered with a relative-truth predicate, to accommodate the following apparently conflicting intuitions regarding the truth-value of an uttered future contingent: at (...) the moment of utterance, if asked to evaluate the truth-value of the asserted future contingent one has the intuition that the assertion is neither true nor false, yet later, at the moment of the predicted event, one has the intuition that the assertion was, already, either true or false. Both MacFarlane and Belnap assume that assertions of future contingents have complete propositional content – the traditional propositional contents that, according to him ‘are the contents of assertions and beliefs’. This assumption is challenged. (shrink)

Various philosophers have long since been attracted to the doctrine that future contingent propositions systematically fail to be true—what is sometimes called the doctrine of the open future. However, open futurists have always struggled to articulate how their view interacts with standard principles of classical logic—most notably, with the Law of Excluded Middle. For consider the following two claims: Trump will be impeached tomorrow; Trump will not be impeached tomorrow. According to the kind of open futurist (...) at issue, both of these claims may well fail to be true. According to many, however, the disjunction of these claims can be represented as p ∨ ~p—that is, as an instance of LEM. In this essay, however, I wish to defend the view that the disjunction these claims cannot be represented as an instance of p ∨ ~p. And this is for the following reason: the latter claim is not, in fact, the strict negation of the former. More particularly, there is an important semantic distinction between the strict negation of the first claim [~] and the latter claim. However, the viability of this approach has been denied by Thomason, and more recently by MacFarlane and Cariani and Santorio, the latter of whom call the denial of the given semantic distinction “scopelessness”. According to these authors, that is, will is “scopeless” with respect to negation; whereas there is perhaps a syntactic distinction between ‘~Will p’ and ‘Will ~p’, there is no corresponding semantic distinction. And if this is so, the approach in question fails. In this paper, then, I criticize the claim that will is “scopeless” with respect to negation. I argue that will is a so-called “neg-raising” predicate—and that, in this light, we can see that the requisite scope distinctions aren’t missing, but are simply being masked. The result: a under-appreciated solution to the problem of future contingents that sees and as contraries, not contradictories. (shrink)

This article considers three medieval approaches to the problem of future contingent propositions in chapter 9 of Aristotle's _De interpretatione_. While Boethius assumed that God's atemporal knowledge infallibly pertains to historical events, he was inclined to believe that Aristotle correctly taught that future contingent propositions are not antecedently true or false, even though they may be characterized as true-or-false. Aquinas also tried to combine the allegedly Aristotelian view of the disjunctive truth-value of future (...) contingent propositions with the conception of all things being timelessly present to God's knowledge. The second approach was formulated by Peter Abelard who argued that in Aristotle's view future contingent propositions are true or false, not merely true-or-false, and that the antecedent truth of future propositions does not necessitate things in the world. After Duns Scotus, many late medieval thinkers thought like Abelard, particularly because of their new interpretation of contingency, but they did not believe, with the exception of John Buridan, that this was an Aristotelian view. (shrink)

In his Reportatio super Sententias (ca. 1321–1323), Walter Chatton proposes a solution to the problem of future contingents based on propositional analysis. Future-tense statements must be disambiguated with the help of a scope distinction between temporal and truth operators, such that a statement like “Socrates will sit” comes out either as (1) “it is true now that Socrates will sit,” or (2) “it will be true that Socrates sits.” On the first analysis, Socrates’s action is necessitated, whereas on (...) the second it remains contingent. In his later Quodlibet (ca. 1330), Chatton maintains his original analysis but augments it with an ingenious use of the traditional distinction between actus exercitus and actus significatus. His use of the distinction enables him both to give some speech-act-theoretical content to the scope analysis, which had been open to the charge of mere formalism, and to defend it cogently against an apparently strong counterargument. (shrink)

This work presents an overview of four different approaches to the problem of future contingency and determinism in temporal logics. All of them are bivalent, viz. they share the assumption that propositions concerning future contingent facts have a determinate truth-value. We introduce Ockhamism, Peirceanism, Actualism and T x W semantics, the four most relevant bivalent alternatives in this area, and compare them from the point of view of their expressiveness and their underlying metaphysics of time.

I argue that the semantics of sentences expressing future contingent propositions is best viewed as being based on a clear distinction between a time at which a proposition is true and a time at which a state of affairs that makes it true gets actualized. That a prediction is true here and now means that its truth-maker gets actualized later. This is not to say that if a contingent proposition p concerning the future is true (...) at t, it acquires the truth-value true at t only retrospectively, at a later moment. Nor must this be seen as suggesting that it is a settled, unpreventable fact at t that p is true at t. It just means that the reason for its present truth is something that happens later on: the future happens to evolve in such a way as to make a truth-maker of p obtain. In this case, then, it can be said that at t, p is truth-maker indeterminate, or that it has an indeterminate truth-maker. I develop a formal semantics based on this analysis in the follow-up article ‘A Formal Framework for Future Contingents’. Here, I lay down the conceptual framework and indicate Boethius and Abelard as precursors of the view I wish to defend. (shrink)

This paper discusses the main lines of medieval Latin approaches to future contingents with some remarks on Marcin Tkaczyk’s paper “The antinomy of future contingent events.” Tkaczyk’s theory shows some similarity with the general frame of the views of Ockham and Scotus, the difference being that while medieval authors argued for the temporal necessity of the past, Tkaczyk is sceptical of the general validity of this necessity. Ockham’s theological view was that God eternally has an intuitive and (...) immutable knowledge of all possibilities as well as whether they are ever actualized or not (PANACCIO & PICHÉ 2010). The content of God’s past knowledge attitude remains contingent before the free choice takes place because God’s knowledge could be different similarly as the truth-value of the proposition. While Ockham held that no past or present thing follows from future things as an effect follows from its cause, this causal link is defended by Tkaczyk. Later thinkers thought that the doctrine of the scientia media sheds light on this question; perhaps it is easier to understand than the retroactive model which is not contradictory but difficult to imagine, as Tkaczyk concludes his paper. (shrink)

In The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius addresses two main problems posed by the problem of future contingents that shed important light on his conception of necessity and possibility: (1) a logical problem that alleges that if propositions about the future are true now then they are necessarily true, and (2) a theological problem that centers on a supposed incompatibility between divine foreknowledge and a contingent future. In contrast to established readings of the Consolation, I argue (...) that a proper understanding of Book V requires understanding the modal concepts employed there in atemporal terms. This interpretation requires revising our traditional understanding of the two problems present in the Consolation text, particularly in seeing how timeless knowledge or truth could be conceived as a threat to human freedom. It also stresses the importance of a strategy used by Boethius to disambiguate the scope of modal operators used in his opponent’s arguments and how that strategy unifies his discussion in Book V. (shrink)

This work presents an overview of four different approaches to the problem of future contingency and determinism in temporal logics. All of them are bivalent, viz. they share the assumption that propositions concerning future contingent facts have a determinate truth-value. We introduce Ockhamism, Peirceanism, Actualism and T × W semantics, the four most relevant bivalent alternatives in this area, and compare them from the point of view of their expressiveness and their underlying metaphysics of time.

This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham “in flesh and bone” construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first examines the (...) thesis that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem of future (...) contingents. We argue that the theory fails to vindicate the intuition that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, leaving the theory open to a charge of Reductio. We show that these problems cannot be answered while preserving the core tenets of truth relativism. (shrink)

Peter de Rivo (b. ca. 1420), argues for the existence of human freedom despite its alleged incompatibility with the truth of future contingent propositions. Rivo’s solution doesn’t follow the common medieval attempt to dissolve the alleged incompatibility, but claims that future contingent propositions aren’t determinately true. This approach troubled Rivo’s contemporaries, who thought it was incompatible with biblical infallibility, particularly the veracity of prophetic statements. Rivo tries to reconcile his solution with orthodox Christianity by (...) grounding authentic prophetic statements in God’s cognition of future events. In the end, Rivo’s attempted reconciliation fails because grounding the truth of prophetic statements in God cognition is incompatible either with his theological assumptions or his conception of free action. (shrink)

In this article, I present a formal semantic framework that renders explicit how to reconcile the condition that a proposition about a contingent future event is true at a moment t0 with the idea that at t0, this proposition is ‘truth-maker indeterminate’: a state of affairs making it true will obtain later on, though no such state of affairs obtains at t0. The semantics I formulate employs ‘open temporal models’. They represent the passage of time by a specific (...) component termed time-resource, which acts on durations construed as model-external inputs. A model does not by itself specify which course of events gets actualized in a given duration depending on the latest moment that has already got actualized. A time-resource merely represents schematically the dependence between a moment t and a course of events that gets actualized in a time-span of a given length counted from t; until that much time has indeed passed, it is not fixed which course of events actually extends t. Further, I introduce evaluations as a fine-grained tool for studying truth-conditions of tensed formulas, and I use this tool to define the notion of truth-maker. I define what it means that a truth-maker will obtain but does not, and what it means for a truth-maker to be determinate. It is proven that my semantic analysis retains the desirable link between determinacy and historical necessity—namely, a truth-maker of a proposition being determinate entails that the proposition is historically necessary. (shrink)

One concern bothering ancient and medieval philosophers is the logical worry discussed in Aristotle's De Interpretatione 9, that if future contingent propositions are true, then they are settled in a way that is incompatible with freedom. Another is if we grant God foreknowledge of future contingent events then God's foreknowledge will determine those events in a way precluding freedom. ;I begin by discussing the standard compatibilist solution to these problems as represented in Boethius's Consolation of (...) Philosophy and then examine theories that allegedly deviate from the Boethian solution. Boethius's solution to these separate problems involves showing that both problems operate on an ambiguity in the scope of the modal operator 'necessarily' present in the articulation of the problem. Once the ambiguity is removed we see that both disambiguations fail to offer a sound argument against the compatibility of free action with either God's omniscience or future contingent proposition's being true. The only difference between the solutions is that before executing the scope distinction strategy in the theological problem, Boethius reminds us that God knows future contingents rather than foreknowing them, since God is timeless. ;The rest of my discussion examines positions that allegedly deviate from the Boethian solution: positions held by Peter de Rivo, William Ockham and Plotinus. I argue that Ockham doesn't in fact deviate from the Boethian solution to the theological problem as is commonly held. Instead of offering a compatibilist position where God's omniscience includes foreknowledge, Ockham denies that God foreknows the future advocating instead a more sophisticated Boethian position. The other two philosophers, Rivo and Plotinus, deviate from Boethius, but unfortunately neither position appears philosophically plausible. Rivo's incompatibilist solution to the logical problem is inconsistent with his retention of the Boethian solution to the theological problem and is probably implausible on its own. Plotinus's compatibilist account fails not because it claims that necessity and freedom are compatible, but because the account of moral responsibility Plotinus offers to justify the compatibility fails. (shrink)

Cet article examine les deux thèses attribuées à Aristote depuis l’Antiquité à propos de la bataille navale dans le De interpretatione 9 : soit Aristote a résolu le problème du déterminisme dans ce chapitre en restreignant l’application du principe de bivalence, soit il a rejeté le déterminisme, en qualifiant la vérité ou la fausseté des propositions concernant les futurs contingents comme vérité ou fausseté indéfinies. On dit que la première est la réponse aristotélicienne traditionnelle, tandis que la seconde est (...) parfois désignée comme l’autre solution. Cependant, quand on revisite nos principales sources sur cette question, la première réponse semble être la branche d’un dilemme dans lequel les Stoïciens ont poussé les Péripatéticiens, et ne peut pas en tant que telle figurer comme une solution au problème du déterminisme, tandis que la seconde est la solution que les Péripatéticiens ont trouvée comme solution au dilemme auquel ils étaient confrontés, et donc correspond premièrement au défi stoïcien et seulement secondairement au texte aristotélicien. (shrink)

In this brief reply I discuss Fr. Marcin Tkaczyk’s excellent article, “The Antinomy of Future Contingent Events.” I first raise some concerns about his understanding of representation. I then raise three concerns about his preferred solution to the antinomy: first, that a part of his theory of representation itself motivates a rejection of proposition 1 of the antinomy; second, that one needn’t employ retroactive causal connections to weaken 1 as he does; and third, that it is difficult to (...) make sense of the sort of backward efficient causation that Tkaczyk requires for his solution to work. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

Ockham appeared to maintain that God necessarily knows all true propositions, including future contingent propositions, despite the fact that such propositions have determinate truth values. While some commentators believe that Ockham’s attempt to reconcile divine omniscience with the contingency of true future propositions amounts to little more than a simple-minded assertion of Ockham’s Christian faith, I argue that Ockham’s position is more sophisticated than this and rests on attributing to God a dual knowledge (...) property: God not only knows every true proposition, but knows its modal properties as well. Future contingent propositions are determinately true when actualized, not timelessly, and God’s knowledge of their truth values is knowledge of when the truth value of a proposition is actually determined. (shrink)

In this article I offer an explanation of the need for contingent propositions in language. I argue that contingent propositions are required if and only if there is a need for propositions which can be both true and false in different circumstances. Indexical expressions enable the same proposition to be expressed in different contexts, thus allowing it to be both true and false. Examination of the different indexical expressions shows that temporal indexical expressions are the (...) ones that do this. Furthermore, describing the change in the temporal A-determinations of past, present, or future, requires using contingent propositions. The conclusion of this article is that change in the temporal A-determinations is the explanation for the need for contingent propositions in language. (shrink)

This work concerns the use of operators for past and future contingency in Priorean temporal logic. We will develop a system named C_t, whose language includes a propositional constant and prove that (I) C_t is complete with respect to a certain class of general frames and (II) the usual operators for past and future necessity are definable in such system. Furthermore, we will introduce the extension C_t(lin) that can be interpreted on linear and transitive general frames. The theoretical (...) result of the current work is that contingency can be treated as a primitive notion in reasoning about temporal modalities. (shrink)

Non-bivalent semantics of the future tense assert that propositions regarding future contingents are neither true nor false. One of the most relevant non-bivalent semantics is supervaluationism :264–281, 1970; Thomason, in: Gabbay, Guenthner Handbook of philosophical logic, Springer, Berlin, 1984), which preserves important logical principles. Recently, non-bivalent semantics are under attack from some pragmatics arguments: these semantics would be incompatible with our practices of asserting future contingents and with the probability we ascribe to such assertions :251–271, 2014; (...) Cariani and Santorio in Mind 127:129–165, 2018). The aim of this paper is to defend supervaluationism against this kind of criticism. We argue that, if probability is interpreted as the subjective belief in a proposition and if a semantic contextualism is adopted, supervaluationism makes correct predictions concerning the norms that govern our practices of asserting future contingents. Obviously, other arguments can be proposed against supervaluationism, but they must be of a different kind, such as metaphysical arguments. (shrink)

Alexander Pruss’s recent argument against the open future view (OF) is unsound. Contra Pruss, there is no conflict between OF, which holds that there are no true future contingent propositions (FCPs), and the high credence we place in some FCPs. When due attention is paid to the semantics of FCPs, to the relation of epistemic to objective probabilities, and to the distinction between truth simpliciter and truth at a time, it becomes clear that what we have (...) good reason for believing is not that some FCPs are true, but rather that some FCPs have a good chance of becoming true. (shrink)

Argument for fatalism attempts to prove that free choice is a logical or conceptual impossibility. The paper argues that the first two premises of the argument are sound: propositions are either true or false and they have their truth-value eternally. But the claim that from the fatalistic premises with the introduction of some innocent further premise dire consequences follow as regards to the possibility of free choice is false. The introduced premise, which establishes the connection between the first two (...) premises (which are about the nature of propositions) and the concept of free choice is not innocent. It creates the impression that the truth of certain propositions can somehow determine the occurrence of certain events. But no proposition can have such an effect since the counterfactuals If proposition P were true, event E would happen does not say anything about determination. The argument for fatalism is, however, not a boring sophism. It does reveal something about the nature of propositional representation. It shows that each proposition represents necessarily the fact what it represents, i.e. it shows that propositions have their truth conditions non-contingently. But from this nothing follows as regards to the contingent nature of the facts represented. On the bases of the first two premises of the argument for fatalism we cannot infer to the impossibility of free choice. The argument for fatalism should not be interpreted as an attempt to prove on purely logical or conceptual grounds that we do not have the ability to influence future events by our choices. But it could be used to show something about the nature of propositional representation. (shrink)

Unlike versions of open theism that appeal to the alethic openness of the future, defenders of limited foreknowledge open theism (hereafter LFOT) affirm that some propositions concerning future contingents are presently true. Thus, there exist truths that are unknown to God, so God is not omniscient simpliciter. LFOT requires modal definitions of divine omniscience such that God knows all truths that are logically knowable. Defenders of LFOT have yet to provide an adequate response to Richard Purtill’s argument (...) that fatalism logically follows from the omnitemporality of truth. Hasker believes a distinction between hard and soft facts prevents fatalism, but I argue that his defense fails in light of arguments involving divine necessity. Additionally, I point out that Hasker’s philosophy of language concerning divine names faces problems that cannot be overcome, given the versions of the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge that motivate LFOT. Thus, contra Hasker, Swinburne, and van Inwagen, open theism necessitates the alethic openness of the future. (shrink)

The Representational Theory of the Mind allows for psychological explanations couched in terms of the contents of propositional attitudes. Propositional attitudes themselves are taken to be relations to mental representations. These representations (partially) determine the contents of the attitudes in which they figure. Thus, Representationalism owes an explanation of the contents of mental representations. This essay constitutes an atomistic theory of the content of formally or syntactically simple mental representation, proposing that the content of such a representation is determined by (...) the intersection of the representation's correlational and control properties. The theory is distinguished from standard information-based accounts of mental content in allowing that the relevant correlations be contingent while insisting on an efferent aspect to mental content. The theory on offer allows for a natural explanation of misrepresentation, finds a niche for the notion of narrow content, welcomes radical first person fallibility with respect to questions of content, admits of mental ambiguity and recognizes that the future of a psychological agent is a factor in determining the content of the agent's present psychological states. (shrink)

This essay examines Marcin Tkaczyk’s “The antinomy of future contingent events,” with an eye towards clarifying the roles played by philosophical notions of propositions, events, the present, the relativity of time, and Tkaczyk’s notion of a “sphere of culture.” The essay concludes by examining what support might be offered for Tkaczyk’s claim that people can to some degree change the past.

This article aims to show that the so-called ‘Ockhamist’ solution to the determinist challenge was a commonplace among Parisian scholastics around 1200. On the ‘Ockhamist’ view, some propositions about the past do not fall under the necessity of the past, since their truth-value depends on the future. The paper focuses on two puzzles involving Abraham’s belief in the future Incarnation. The author discusses the ‘Ockhamist’ strategies adopted by theologians of the period, including Simon of Tournai, Peter of (...) Poitiers, Praepositinus of Cremona, Stephen Langton, Geoffrey of Poitiers, and William of Auxerre. Langton draws an analogy between Abraham’s faith and Christ’s statement “Thou shalt deny me thrice” and suggests that past movements of faith are counterfactually flexible with regard to content. In order to interpret Langton’s statements, the author sketches a model of empty slots in the supernatural layer of the past, retrospectively infused with grace. (shrink)

It is debated among open theists whether propositions about the contingent future should be regarded as straightforwardly true or false, as all false without exception, or as lacking truth-values. This article discusses some recent work on this topic and proposes a solution different than the one I have previously endorsed.

At least since Aristotle’s famous 'sea-battle' passages in On Interpretation 9, some substantial minority of philosophers has been attracted to the doctrine of the open future--the doctrine that future contingent statements are not true. But, prima facie, such views seem inconsistent with the following intuition: if something has happened, then (looking back) it was the case that it would happen. How can it be that, looking forwards, it isn’t true that there will be a sea battle, while (...) also being true that, looking backwards, it was the case that there would be a sea battle? This tension forms, in large part, what might be called the problem of future contingents. A dominant trend in temporal logic and semantic theorizing about future contingents seeks to validate both intuitions. Theorists in this tradition--including some interpretations of Aristotle, but paradigmatically, Thomason (1970), as well as more recent developments in Belnap, et. al (2001) and MacFarlane (2003, 2014)--have argued that the apparent tension between the intuitions is in fact merely apparent. In short, such theorists seek to maintain both of the following two theses: (i) the open future: Future contingents are not true, and (ii) retro-closure: From the fact that something is true, it follows that it was the case that it would be true. It is well-known that reflection on the problem of future contingents has in many ways been inspired by importantly parallel issues regarding divine foreknowledge and indeterminism. In this paper, we take up this perspective, and ask what accepting both the open future and retro-closure predicts about omniscience. When we theorize about a perfect knower, we are theorizing about what an ideal agent ought to believe. Our contention is that there isn’t an acceptable view of ideally rational belief given the assumptions of the open future and retro-closure, and thus this casts doubt on the conjunction of those assumptions. (shrink)

The author of the paper critically analyzes a quasi-theory of future contingents (PFC) given by Marcin Tkaczyk and proposes his own explication of its theses and terms. The author makes it by introducing operational definitions of temporal and modal concepts, distinguishing between the causal and functional determination, discussing the status of the principle of bivalence, and replacing Tkaczyk’s theses by their new formulations. As a result, the author states, among other things, that (contrary to Tkaczyk) there is no contradiction (...) between the thesis about the opened future and the thesis about divine omniscience, because it requires the causal (but not functional as it is a case) determination between a true proposition and its determined fact. The author also shows that Tkaczyk’s examples of the retroactive causes are not an accurate solution of the antinomy because they are, at most, the examples of the factors which change the picture of the past but not the past itself. (shrink)

Take strong open-future Humeanism (OFH) to comprise the following three tenets: (i) that truth supervenes on being (ii) that there is a dynamic present moment, and (iii) that there are no future facts; that is, contingent propositions about the future obtain truth values only when their referents are actualised (Tooley 1997). On the face of it this is a deeply problematic metaphysic - if there are no future facts then prima facie the Humean can (...) neither provide laws of nature, nor explain the evolution of physical systems, as the Humean takes truths (including nomological truths) to supervene on the omnitemporal mosaic of local particular matters of fact. Hypertemporal Humeanism (HH), the view I propose in this paper, admits of nomological facts whilst granting the ontological and conceptual commitments of OFH. HH provides a coherent account of laws of nature, and (unlike standard Humean conceptions) accommodates the natural intuition that future facts are yet to be determined. Furthermore, although the view arguably struggles to combat the problem of induction, the Hypertemporal Humean is in no worse a position in this respect than the traditional closed-future Humean metaphysics. (shrink)

If it is not now determined whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow, can an assertion that there will be one be true? The problem has persisted because there are compelling arguments on both sides. If there are objectively possible futures which would make the prediction true and others which would make it false, symmetry considerations seem to forbid counting it either true or false. Yet if we think about how we would assess the prediction tomorrow, when a sea (...) battle is raging (or not), it seems we must assign the utterance a definite truth-value. I argue that both arguments must be given their due, and that this requires relativizing utterance-truth to a context of assessment. I show how this relativization can be handled in a rigorous formal semantics, and I argue that we can make coherent sense of assertion without assuming that utterances have their truth-values absolutely. (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the (...) claim that future contingents are truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

While philosophers feel relatively comfortable about talking of the present and the past, some of them feel uncomfortable about talking in just the same way of future events. They feel that, in general, discourse about the future differs significantly from discourse about the past and present, and that these differences reflect a logical asymmetry between the past and future beyond the merely defining fact that the future succeeds, and the past precedes, the present time. The problem (...) is: how can we talk about events which have not yet happened, or at any rate are not yet bound to happen, or whose participants do not yet exist? The effect of these worries has led them to claim to recognise restrictions on our talk about the future which do not govern talk about the past and present. The most famous of these views is Aristotle's. According to one familiar interpretation, he holds that a statement about a future event which is not yet settled, a contingent event in the future, is neither true nor false, even though the statement that the event either will or will not happen is necessarily true. Proponents of this view felt that if a future-tensed statement were already true then the fact that it stated would already be settled. I do not propose to discuss this well-known and muchdiscussed doctrine of Aristotle's, but I do want to consider some allied views which have been aired recently, and to look at their philosophical significance. Before I look at these, however, it will be convenient to recall three of the main reasons why the Aristotelian doctrine is unpopular. In the first place it is paradoxical to accept that a statement of the form p v ∼ p is true while claiming that neither of its disjuncts is true. Then there are misgivings about the notion of truth involved: many feel that truth is essentially an attribute of timeless propositions and that it is nonsense to talk of a statement's becoming true as you would of Aristotle's views if the event described became inevitable. There is also the difficulty of accounting for the meaning of a future-tensed sentence which may express a statement that is neither true nor false simply because what it states is not yet settled. It could not be said of the sentence expressing such a statement that you know what it means if you know what it is for the sentence to express a true statement. I know the meaning of the present-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle is now being waged’ if I know that it can normally be used to make a true statement precisely in the event of there being a sea-battle being waged at present. But I do not know the meaning of the future-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle will be waged tomorrow’ simply by knowing that the sentence expresses a true statement if it is already settled that there is going to be a battle: the statement doesn't mean that the battle is already settled, otherwise it would not lack a truth-value when the matter was still open – it would be false. (shrink)

While philosophers feel relatively comfortable about talking of the present and the past, some of them feel uncomfortable about talking in just the same way of future events. They feel that, in general, discourse about the future differs significantly from discourse about the past and present, and that these differences reflect a logical asymmetry between the past and future beyond the merely defining fact that the future succeeds, and the past precedes, the present time. The problem (...) is: how can we talk about events which have not yet happened, or at any rate are not yet bound to happen, or whose participants do not yet exist? The effect of these worries has led them to claim to recognise restrictions on our talk about the future which do not govern talk about the past and present. The most famous of these views is Aristotle's. According to one familiar interpretation, he holds that a statement about a future event which is not yet settled, a contingent event in the future, is neither true nor false, even though the statement that the event either will or will not happen is necessarily true. Proponents of this view felt that if a future-tensed statement were already true then the fact that it stated would already be settled. I do not propose to discuss this well-known and muchdiscussed doctrine of Aristotle's, but I do want to consider some allied views which have been aired recently, and to look at their philosophical significance. Before I look at these, however, it will be convenient to recall three of the main reasons why the Aristotelian doctrine is unpopular. In the first place it is paradoxical to accept that a statement of the form p v ∼ p is true while claiming that neither of its disjuncts is true. Then there are misgivings about the notion of truth involved: many feel that truth is essentially an attribute of timeless propositions and that it is nonsense to talk of a statement's becoming true as you would of Aristotle's views if the event described became inevitable. There is also the difficulty of accounting for the meaning of a future-tensed sentence which may express a statement that is neither true nor false simply because what it states is not yet settled. It could not be said of the sentence expressing such a statement that you know what it means if you know what it is for the sentence to express a true statement. I know the meaning of the present-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle is now being waged’ if I know that it can normally be used to make a true statement precisely in the event of there being a sea-battle being waged at present. But I do not know the meaning of the future-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle will be waged tomorrow’ simply by knowing that the sentence expresses a true statement if it is already settled that there is going to be a battle: the statement doesn't mean that the battle is already settled, otherwise it would not lack a truth-value when the matter was still open – it would be false. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of future contingents, and focuses on two classical logical principles, excluded middle and bivalence. One may think that different attitudes are to be adopted towards these two principles in order to solve the problem. According to what seems to be a widely held hypothesis, excluded middle must be accepted while bivalence must be rejected. The paper goes against that line of thought. In the first place, it shows how the rejection of bivalence leads (...) to implausible consequences if excluded middle is accepted. In the second place, it addresses the question of why one should reject bivalence, and finds no satisfactory answer. /// Este artículo trata el problema de los futuros contingentes, y se enfoca en dos principios lógicos clásicos: el tercero excluido y la bivalencia. Se podría pensar que una solución del problema requiere actitudes diferentes hacia estos dos principios. Según una hipótesis que parece ampliamente compartida, el tercero excluido debe ser aceptado, mientras que la bivalencia debe ser rechazada. Este artículo argumenta en contra de esta línea de pensamiento. En primer lugar, se aborda cómo el rechazo de la bivalencia lleva a consecuencias poco plausibles si el tercero excluido es aceptado. En segundo lugar, se enfrenta la cuestión de por qué se debería rechazar la bivalencia, sin encontrar una respuesta satisfactoria. (shrink)

This paper argues that we know the future by applying a recent solution of the problem of future contingents to knowledge attributions about the future. MacFarlane has put forward a version of assessment-context relativism that enables us to assign a truth value 'true' (or 'false') to future contingents such as There Will Be A Sea Battle Tomorrow. Here I argue that the same solution can be applied to knowledge attributions about the future by dismissing three (...) disanalogies between the case of future contingents and the case of knowledge attributions about the future. Therefore none of the traditional conditions for knowledge can be utilized to deny that we know the future, as I argue in the last section. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, arguments for “fatalism” are arguments for the conclusion that no human actions are free. Such arguments typically come in two varieties: logical and theological. Arguments for logical fatalism proceed, roughly, from truths about future actions to the conclusion that those actions are unavoidable, and hence unfree. Arguments for theological fatalism, on the other hand, proceed, roughly, from divine beliefs about future actions to the conclusion that those actions are unavoidable, and hence unfree. What is characteristic (...) of any argument for fatalism is that, first, it purports to show by appeal to quite general logical or metaphysical assumptions that no human action is free, and, second, it does so without explicitly invoking the thesis that those actions are causally determined. There is, of course, a venerable argument for the conclusion that causal determinism is incompatible with free will (understood as the ability to do otherwise), but philosophers advancing such arguments are not now generally understood to be advancing the cause of “fatalism.” To endorse fatalism is thus not simply to endorse the view that no human action is free, but also to endorse the further claim that this can be shown by appeal to the general logical or metaphysical assumptions at issue. Fatalistic arguments of both sorts are and have been intimately bound up with philosophical questions about the logical status of future contingent propositions—propositions saying of causally undetermined events that they will happen. This entry will thus cover the main positions in the debates concerning logical fatalism, the logic of future contingents, and theological fatalism. (shrink)

Using Aristotle's well-known sea battle as our example, we offer a precise, intelligible analysis of future contingent assertions in the presence of indeterminism. After explaining our view of the problem, we present a picture of indeterminism in the context of a tree ofbranching histories. There follows a brief description ofthe semantic bases for our double-time-reference theory of future contingents. We then set out our account. Before concluding, we discuss some ramifications of, and alternatives to, a double-time-reference approach (...) to the problem of future contingents. There are some technical ideas at the foundation of our analysis, ideas of which most philosophers are largely ignorant; on our view, in the absence of mastery ofthese ideas it is quite impossible to speak responsibly about either indeterminism or free will. (shrink)

Patrick Todd argues for a modified Peircean view on which all future contingents are false. According to Todd, this is the only view that makes sense if we fully embrace an open future, rejecting the idea of actual future history. I argue that supervaluational accounts, on which future contingents are neither true nor false, are fully consistent with the metaphysics of an open future. I suggest that it is Todd's failure to distinguish semantic and postsemantic (...) levels that leads him to suppose otherwise. I also show how one can resist Todd's argument (with Brian Rabern) that the conceptual possibility of omniscience requires us to reject Retro‐closure (). (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether future contingents are knowable, that is, whether one can know that things will go a certain way even though it is possible that things will not go that way. First I will consider a long-established view that implies a negative answer, and draw attention to some endemic problems that affect its credibility. Then I will sketch an alternative line of thought that prompts a positive answer: future contingents are knowable, although our epistemic (...) access of them is limited in some important respects. (shrink)

In the current paper, I enter into debate with Marcin Tkaczyk and the chosen Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers of religion to discuss the theological version of the problem of future contingents. I take into consideration some varieties of Ockhamism (retroactivism)—the position denying the temporal necessity (non-determination) of all past events and allowing some form of retroactivity. Strong Ockhamism postulates real retroactive causation, moderate Ockhamism limits it to the meanings of physical and psychical events, and weak Ockhamism replaces the notion of (...) retroactive causation with that of retroactive dependence. I compare different forms of retroactivism with eternalism (of Boethius, St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas) to show that the latter has significant advantage. At the same time, I point out that eternalism in its presentist and relativist version (proposed by Brian Leftow) avoids the objections put forward against it, and that, within such eternalism, the problem of future contingents does not arise. (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the (...) claim that future contingents are truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

Invited discussion paper on Patrick Todd's book, _The Open Future: Why Future Contingents Are All False_ (Oxford, 2021).