Future contingents, openness and the possibility of omniscience
Defending an argument against relativism and supervaluationism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20142960 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patrick Todd (0009-0003-8001-4364, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 91 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.12583 |
| OpenAlex | W4406408610 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
In a recent paper, Patrick Todd and Brian Rabern argued that—contra both Thomason's supervaluationism and MacFarlane's relativism—an “open future” view is incompatible with the principle they call “Retro‐closure”, according to which today's rain implies that yesterday it was true that it would rain a day later. In a recent piece, MacFarlane replies. This paper has two aims. First, I argue that MacFarlane's response to Todd and Rabern is unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I attempt to clarify Todd and Rabern's overall argument, and explain how MacFarlane's replies should be construed within the overall dialectic. The intended result: if you want an “open future”, then one's best option is a modified Peirceanism (as in Todd, The Open Future); if one wants Retro‐closure, one's best option is one on which there is a determinate “Thin Red Line” (a view sometimes called “Ockhamism”). However, one cannot have what supervaluationism and relativism both promise, viz., a view that preserves both
Argument (complex analysis) · Epistemology · Omniscience · Openness to experience · Relativism · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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