Future Contingents and Relative Truth

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4351561
AutoresJohn Macfarlane (0000-0003-2557-9090, University of California, Berkeley, autor de correspondencia)
Año2003
Volumen53
Número212
Páginas321-336
Fecha de publicación2003-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1467-9213.00315
OpenAlexW2114999042
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas106
Referencias citadas9

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

Assertion · Battle · Context (archaeology · Economics · Epistemology · Futures contract · Linguistics · Literal (mathematical logic · Truth value · Utterance · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · History · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science