Omniscience and the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-118
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Current View ◽  
Open Theism ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Simple View ◽  
Traditional Theism ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

In this chapter, the author discusses what A.N. Prior called “The Formalities of Omniscience”, and shows how the proponent of the view that future contingents are all false can maintain a simple, plausible conception of omniscience—one according to which p is logically equivalent to God believes p. The author introduces and motivates this intuitive equivalence, which he relies on at various points in the chapters to come. If we combine the current view with traditional theism, the result is a version of what has recently been called “open theism”. The author further argues that other open future views cannot maintain this simple view, and that this constitutes at least some reason to prefer his own view. In particular, other open future views must either (a) deny the intuitive equivalence in question, or (b) maintain that God’s mind is sometimes indeterminate.

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”.

scholarly journals Against the Russellian Open Future

Mind ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 126 (504) ◽  
pp. 1217-1237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders J Schoubye ◽  
Brian Rabern
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The Future ◽  
Law Of Excluded Middle ◽  
The Law ◽  
Excluded Middle

Abstract Todd (2016) proposes an analysis of future-directed sentences, in particular sentences of the form ‘will()’, that is based on the classic Russellian analysis of definite descriptions. Todd’s analysis is supposed to vindicate the claim that the future is metaphysically open while retaining a simple Ockhamist semantics of future contingents and the principles of classical logic, i.e. bivalence and the law of excluded middle. Consequently, an open futurist can straightforwardly retain classical logic without appeal to supervaluations, determinacy operators, or any further controversial semantical or metaphysical complication. In this paper, we will show that this quasi-Russellian analysis of ‘will’ both lacks linguistic motivation and faces a variety of significant problems. In particular, we show that the standard arguments for Russell's treatment of definite descriptions fail to apply to statements of the form ‘will()’.

Fluxus and the Absurd (1961–62)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Second Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Impact

After John Cage’s 1958 Darmstadt lectures, many European composers developed an interest in absurdity and artistic provocation. Although Ligeti’s fascination with Cage and his association with the Fluxus group was brief, the impact it had on his composition was palpable and lasting. A set of conceptual works, The Future of Music, Trois Bagatelles, and Poème symphonique for one hundred metronomes, fall clearly into the Fluxus model, even as the last has taken on a second life as a serious work. This spirit, however, can also be seen in the self-satire of Fragment and the drama and irony of Volumina, Aventures, and Nouvelles Aventures. The sketches for Aventures not only show the composer channeling this humor into a major work but also prove to be a fascinating repository of ideas that Ligeti would reuse in the years to come.

scholarly journals A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Rachel Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.

The Politics of Proximity: The Italian Response to the Albanian Crisis

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Humanitarian Mission ◽  
Neighboring Country ◽  
The Future ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time

This article focuses on the apparent disjunction between the Italian reluctance to allow Albanians to come as refugees and Italy's enthusiastic leadership of the United Nations military-humanitarian mission. It explains the Italian response both in terms of Italian popular opinion regarding Albanians and Italy's concern for the impression on Europe that its politics would make. Italy's leadership of the mission represents the first time a medium-sized power has assisted a neighboring country with whom it has had deep historical connections. The conclusion argues that such proximate interventions are likely to increase in the future, and spells out the implications of the Italian case.

Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Hilary M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
To Come

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.

Time and Truth: The Presentism-Eternalism Debate

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Stoneham
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Growing Block ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Block Universe ◽  
The Way

AbstractThere are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agrees with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreement. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect.

Feminism, Modern Philosophy and the Future of Legitimacy of International Constitutionalism

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
The Future ◽  
Migrants Rights ◽  
To Come ◽  
International Constitutionalism

AbstractInternational constitutionalism relates to processes of limiting traditionally unrestricted powers of states as ultimate subjects, law-makers and law-enforcers of international law. Human rights occupy a central, but very confusing and confused role in the theorisation of international constitutionalism. If feminist scholars have criticised the inadequacies, shortcomings and gaps of international law of human rights at least since 1991, the doctrine of international law theorising constitutionalisation of international law until now has remained blind to these critiques idealising human rights and often using them as the ultimate legitimating factor. Thus, legitimacy and legality become confused and the distinction between them blurred in the doctrine of international constitutionalism. This in turn creates a danger of failure of the constitutionalists project itself, as it will serve to reinforce existing inadequacies and gaps in human rights protection. To illustrate this argument, I discuss some examples related to the protection of women's and migrants' rights. In order to avoid this dangerous development, I argue that international lawyers theorising international constitutionalism shall adopt an adequate, inclusive notion of legitimacy. In order to develop this adequate understanding of legitimacy, they should first take seriously feminist and other critiques of international human rights law and international law more generally. In the final parts of this article I develop my own more detailed proposals on the future of legitimacy and international constitutionalism. In doing so, I draw on the 'self-correcting learning process' developed in the writings of Jürgen Habermas, 'democracy to come' and more general views on the nature of sovereignty and human rights expressed by Jacques Derrida, as well as Levinasian 'responsibility-to-and-for-the-Other'.

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