The Open Future: Introduction to a Classical Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Classical Approach ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Patrick Todd

In this introductory chapter, Patrick Todd introduces the core idea defended in this book—the idea that future contingents are all false. He clarifies what the book simply presupposes but does not defend, and then provides brief chapter-by-chapter summaries of the book.

The Open Future

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Radical Interpretation ◽  
Norms Of Assertion ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Patrick Todd

In The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False, Patrick Todd launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future, one according to which all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false. Todd argues that this theory is metaphysically more parsimonious than its rivals, and that objections to its logical and practical coherence are much overblown. Todd shows how proponents of this view can maintain classical logic, and argues that the view has substantial advantages over Ockhamist, supervaluationist, and relativist alternatives. Todd draws inspiration from theories of “neg-raising” in linguistics, from debates about omniscience within the philosophy of religion, and defends a crucial comparison between his account of future contingents and certain more familiar theories of counterfactuals. Further, Todd defends his theory of the open future from the charges that it cannot make sense of our practices of betting, makes our credences regarding future contingents unintelligible, and is at odds with proper norms of assertion. In the end, in Todd’s classical open future, we have a compelling new solution to the longstanding “problem of future contingents”.

The Open Future, Classical Style

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-83
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Classical Style ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Semantic Distinction

In this chapter, the author defends his view against the core complaint that it invalidates what has been called “Will Excluded Middle” (either it will be that p or it will be that ~p), and an associated principle that has recently been called “Scopelessness”. According to scopelessness, will is “scopeless” with respect to negation; there is no semantic distinction between ~Willp and Will~p. In this chapter, it is argued that the data that seems to support scopelessness is adequately explained by the thesis that will is “neg-raising predicate”. In normal contexts, “No one should do that” certainly pragmatically implies “Everyone shouldn’t do that”—but the former sentence does not semantically entail the latter; this is, in part, to say that should is a neg-raiser. In general, the author defends the crucial scope distinction between ~Willp and Will~p, and responds to several objections to this view.

The Assertion Problem

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-202
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Open Future

In this chapter, the author responds to a family of related objections to the doctrine of the open future—roughly, problems stemming from the observation that what are plausibly future contingents are often nevertheless properly assertible (despite being, on the author’s view, false). He responds to this family of problems by developing several related themes: (i) even if the author’s view is true, it is properly ignored in ordinary life; (ii) an assertion may assert what is false but nevertheless communicate what is true, and this can explain the appropriateness of that assertion; (iii) there is plausibly replacement talk that we could use that would enable us, if we wished, to avoid saying what is false, but would nevertheless allow us to communicate in satisfactory ways. In the end, then, there is no compelling “assertion problem” for the view defended in this book.

Grounding the Open Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-20
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
General Thesis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Patrick Todd

In this chapter, Patrick Todd considers how presentists can argue that the future is open, holding fixed that they maintain that the past is not. He argues that any such presentist argument is doomed to failure, if it proceeds by appeal to a general thesis about truth (such as that “truth supervenes on being”). Thus, he contends, presentist open futurists should not argue for the open future from an intuition about truth in general, but from an intuition about the future in particular. The result, however, is that presentist open futurists cannot make their case by appeal to anything like a metaphysically neutral starting point. Nevertheless, due to certain asymmetries between facts about the past and facts about the future, a presentist open future view remains substantially theoretically motivated.

Bivalence, Future Contingents and the Open Future

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Fabrice Correia ◽  
Sven Rosenkranz
Keyword(s):  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The Open Future

scholarly journals Future Contingents and the Logic of Temporal Omniscience

2021 ◽  
pp. 148-180
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd ◽  
Brian Rabern
Keyword(s):  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Closure Principle ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Open Future

Perhaps one of the chief objections to open future views is that they must deny a principle we may call “Retro-closure”: roughly, if something is the case, then it was the case that it would be the case. Certain theorists, however—supervaluationists and relativists—have attempted to maintain both the open future view, and Retro-closure. In this chapter, the author argues (with Brian Rabern) that this combination of views is untenable: we must take our pick between the open future and Retro-closure. They argue that this combination of views results either in an unacceptable form of changing the past, or instead implausibly rules out the (former) existence of an omniscient being. In the appendix to this chapter, Todd argues that we can plausibly do without the Retro-closure principle, and that the principle, while intuitive, is not nearly so obvious as many have seemed to suppose.

scholarly journals The problem of future contingents: scoping out a solution

Synthese ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 197 (11) ◽  
pp. 5051-5072
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Relative Truth ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
The Given ◽  
Assessment Sensitivity ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Semantic Distinction

Abstract 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 (LEM). For consider the following two claims: (a) Trump will be impeached tomorrow; (b) 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 [~(Trump will be impeached tomorrow)] and the latter claim (Trump will not be impeached tomorrow). However, the viability of this approach has been denied by Thomason (Theoria 36:264–281, 1970), and more recently by MacFarlane (Assessment sensitivity: relative truth and its applications, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) and Cariani and Santorio (Mind 127:129–165. doi: 10.1093/mind/fzw004, 2017), 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 (a) and (b) as contraries, not contradictories.

Sustainable Development is a Dead-End: The Logic of Modernity and Ecological Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
The Core ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Core Idea

This paper examines the theory of sustainable development presented by Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of Sustainable Development. While Sustainable Development ostensibly seeks to harmonise the conflict between ecological sustainability and human development, the paper argues this is impossible because of the conceptual frame it employs. Rather than allowing for a re-conceptualisation of the human–nature relation, Sustainable Development is simply the latest and possibly last attempt to advance the core idea of western modernity — the notion of self-determination. Drawing upon Hegel’s account of historical development it is argued that Sustainable Development and the notion of planetary boundaries cannot break out of a dualism of nature and self-determining agents.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Tallberg ◽  
Karin Bäckstrand ◽  
Jan Aart Scholte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
Governance Institutions

Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume, which engages with the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. This introductory chapter explains the rationale of the book, introduces its conceptual framework, reviews existing literature, and presents the key themes of the volume. It emphasizes in particular the volume’s sociological approach to legitimacy in global governance, its comparative scope, and its comprehensive treatment of the topic. Moreover, a specific effort is made to explain how each chapter moves beyond existing research in exploring the book’s three themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

On the Sociology of Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliana Rivera-Sánchez ◽  
Xóchitl Bada
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
The Core ◽  
Research Fields

In this introductory chapter, we develop a brief history around the institutionalization process of sociology in Latin America. At the same time, we revisit some of the core debates and contributions of the sociology of Latin America, identifying some of the topics and fields in which sociology from this region has made key contributions to the discipline. The chapter is divided into three sections: development and institutionalization of the discipline, selected debates and contributions to sociology from Latin America, and, finally, the roadmap to this Handbook, which covers eight research fields.

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