Abstract
It is highly now intuitive that the future is open and the past is closed now—whereas it is unsettled whether there will be a fourth world war, it is settled that there was a first. Recently, it has become increasingly popular to claim that the intuitive openness of the future implies that contingent statements about the future, such as ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ are non-bivalent (neither true nor false). In this paper, we argue that the non-bivalence of future contingents is at odds with our pre-theoretic intuitions about the openness of the future. These intuitions are revealed by our pragmatic judgments concerning the correctness and incorrectness of assertions of future contingents. We argue that the pragmatic data together with a plausible account of assertion shows that in many cases we take future contingents to be true (or to be false), though we take the future to be open in relevant respects. It follows that appeals to intuition to support the non-bivalence of future contingents are untenable. Intuition favours bivalence.
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Notes
This is admittedly just to exchange metaphors with metaphors. Be that as it may, we will use ‘settled’ and ‘unsettled’ as synonymous with ‘closed’ and ‘open.’
OF-compatibilists, on our definition, include: Barnes and Cameron (2009), Lewis (1987), Prawitz (2009), and von Wright (1979). OF-incompatibilists include: Belnap (1992), Belnap and Green (1994), Brogaard (2008), Diekemper (2004), Kölbel (2008), MacFarlane (2003, 2008), Markosian (1995), Prior (1957), and Ryle (1953). The terms ‘OF-compatibilism’ and ‘OF-incompatibilism’ are borrowed from Torre (2011), though Torre defines OF-compatibilism as the view that the open future is compatible with the determinate truth/determinate falsity of future contingents. Thus, Barnes and Cameron (2009), who preserve bivalence, but claim that future contingents are neither determinately true nor determinately false come out as OF-compatibilists on our view, but OF-incompatibilists on Torre’s view.
This definition is adapted from Markosian (1995). Note, however, that Markosian’s purpose is not to defend non-bivalence on the basis of this stipulative definition, but to raise a difficulty for OF-incompatibilism.
Barnes and Cameron (2009) make this complaint as well.
See Wallace (2010) for discussion.
See Lewis (1987).
This standard method of interpretation falls apart when we consider backtracking counterfactuals such as ‘Had it not been sunny today, it would have been rainy yesterday’, which we do not know how to process unless given further information. Lewis argues that although we are willing to accept backtracking counterfactuals if we are given sufficient information to evaluate them, we are not willing to accept such counterfactuals when we employ our standard analysis. Thus, the asymmetry of openness is preserved on Lewis’ view within ordinary contexts.
MacFarlane (2003, p. 326).
MacFarlane (2003, p. 326).
Barnes and Cameron (2011).
With respect to all of the assertion norms referred to here, we assume that ‘ought’ takes wide scope over the conditional. The reason for this is that it is the orthodox formulation (see e.g. Williamson 2000). It is also often claimed that the knowledge norm entails the truth norm. However, note that the wide scope formulation of the norms does not uncontroversially permit entailment from the knowledge norm to the truth norm. If the assertion norms are wide scope, in order to derive the truth norm from the knowledge norm, it would be necessary to accept the principle that O(p → q) & q → r, then O(p → r), which is controversial in deontic logic. This minor difficulty can be overcome. The knowledge norm and the truth norm are related in the following way: necessarily, if one satisfies the knowledge norm, it follows that one satisfies the truth norm. Though we will continue to adopt the standard practice of talking as if the knowledge norm entails the truth norm, what we mean is that satisfaction of the knowledge norm entails satisfaction of the truth norm.
This kind of explanation originates with Grice (1989), though it is now widespread in both linguistics and philosophy of language.
The Of-incompatibilist might point out that we very often hedge our statements about the open future, and prefer not to make flat-out assertions. For instance, we more often say ‘I think that it will be sunny tomorrow’, or ‘it is likely to be sunny tomorrow’ than ‘it will be sunny tomorrow’. Perhaps we hedge because we judge future contingents to be non-bivalent.Though it is true that we often hedge, the fact that we sometimes make flat-out assertions about the open future, and that we sometimes judge these assertions to be correct is sufficient for our purposes. The prevalence of hedging would only support OF-incompatibilism if we were never willing to make flat-out assertions of future contingents, or if we were only willing to make flat-out assertions of future contingents in those cases where we regard the future to be settled (as in ‘I will die someday’). However, the cases in the main text are examples of flat-out assertions that we would judge to be correct and yet where we judge the future to be open in relevant respects.
We are assuming that this is not an expression of intention, but a straight assertion. If that is difficult to imagine, suppose instead that Jonathan says, of Addy, ‘she will go for a run in 10 minutes’.
We discuss alternative accounts of assertion in Sect. 4.
See Ripley (forthcoming).
This view seems to follow from Barnes and Cameron’s account 2009. We discuss their view briefly in footnote 27.
Notice that these objections from challenges just leveled against the truth norm would not work against the factual norm (you ought to (assert ‘p’) only if p). In principle, an OF-incompatibilist could endorse the factual norm (or a stronger norm that entails the factual norm but does not entail the truth norm) and accept excluded middle while rejecting both bivalence and standard disquotation schemas. On this view (1) would be neither true nor false but would still state a determinate fact, and an assertion of (1) would be governed by a factual norm and so would be assertible. This view would avoid the objections concerning the correctness of assertions raised above against OF-incompatibilism. However, if this were the correct view, one would expect it to be natural to challenge assertions of future contingents in the material mode—which it is not. So, for instance, one would expect it to be natural to challenge the assertion of (13) with ‘there will not be a fourth world war’ or ‘there neither will be nor won’t be a fourth world war.’ However, these challenges in the material mode sound just as odd as those in the semantic mode. Thanks to Oystein Linnebø for discussion.
Cf. Peréz Otero (2010).
More precisely, the conditions that constitute satisfaction of the knowledge norm constitute satisfaction of the truth norm. See footnote 16.
For a defence of the knowledge norm and a discussion of both the knowledge norm and the justified true belief norm, see Williamson (2000).
Future contingent Gettier cases also speak in favour of the knowledge norm over the justified true belief norm. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.
This is why merely preserving bivalence without declaring some propositions as true (and some as false) will not suffice to meet our objection. For instance, Barnes and Cameron (2009, 2011) claim that every proposition is either true or false, but with respect to some propositions, it is indeterminate which truth-value they have. According to them, for every point in time at the actual world, there is a set of possible worlds that represents the way the future of the world might be, consistent with its past up to that point in time. They call this set {Futures} and they treat the worlds in {Futures} as precisifications of the present state of the actual world. They claim that though it is determinate that one of the worlds in {Futures} will be actualized, it is indeterminate which of them will. So, on their view, if Alice asserts (1) today, and if it is sunny in London tomorrow at some worlds in {Futures} but not at others, then what Alice says is not determinately true and not determinately false. However, they maintain that all of the worlds in {Futures} are maximal and classical, so that at each world, every proposition is either true or false. Hence, today, it is determinately true that what Alice says is either true or false, because it is determinately true that one of the worlds in {Futures} will be actualized. This view cannot avoid the foregoing objections. Our pragmatic judgments reveal that we do not just take future contingents to be bivalent, but that in some cases at least, we take them to be true. If we did think that future contingent propositions were bivalent, but that it was indeterminate which truth value they had, then we would take assertions of future contingent propositions to be either correct or incorrect depending on which truth value they turned out to have. But we do not; we take them to be true, at least in some cases, even though we take the future to be open in relevant respects.
The belief norm is also unacceptable for a variety of independent reasons. For further discussion, see Williamson (2000).
A parallel point can be made with regard to a belief norm that says that you ought to (assert that p) only if you have a high credence in p. However, if we generally have a high credence that future contingents are neither true nor false, the only rational credence in a future contingent proposition would be 0.5. So, it wouldn’t be rational to have a credence greater than 0.5 in any future contingent, and we would regard assertions of future contingents as incorrect.
The point is put here in terms of outright belief, though Williams raises a similar objection against non-bivalent accounts of future contingents with respect to partial beliefs (see Williams, ms).
Brandom (1994).
MacFarlane (2003).
MacFarlane (2003, p. 334).
See Brandom (1994). Since Brandom works with sentences, he would express the disquotation principle in terms of sentences rather than propositions. Nothing hangs on this here.
MacFarlane accepts a similar disquotation principle, though it is stated in terms of propositions, as we have done elsewhere in this paper. See MacFarlane (2008).
Thanks to Ant Eagle for suggesting this.
Cappelen and LePore (1997).
These remarks hold even if we consider other expressions for chances than ‘likely’, which might be thought to be too weak, such as ‘very likely’. The reported speech data suggests that any such strengthening would be inadequate.
Thanks to Dorothy Edgington for suggesting this.
See Williams (ms) for a discussion of fictional belief in relation to non-bivalent accounts of future contingents.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at The Open Future workshop in Barcelona in 2011; the 2011 Mind, World and Action conference in Dubrovnik; the Philosophy of Language and Mind conference in Stockholm in 2011; and at the Philosophy departments of Birkbeck College, Bristol, Glasgow, Nottingham and Oxford. Thanks to the audiences on these occasions, especially Mahrad Almotahari, Alexander Bird, Dorothy Edgington, Oystein Linnebø, and Dag Prawitz for very helpful discussions. Special thanks to Krister Bykvist, Cian Dorr, Ant Eagle, Max Kölbel, Ofra Magidor, Ian Rumfitt, Stephan Torre and anonymous referees, for useful comments on drafts of the paper.
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Besson, C., Hattiangadi, A. The open future, bivalence and assertion. Philos Stud 167, 251–271 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0041-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0041-2