scholarly journals Semantical Interpretations of the Temporal Logic Systems CL and Kb with the Gaps of Traditional Truth-values

Problemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 132-149
Author(s):  
Živilė Pabijutaitė
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Temporal Logic ◽  
Retrospective Evaluation ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
The Past ◽  
Divine Omniscience ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
Logic Systems ◽  
Excluded Middle

Over the past several decades, in the field of temporal logic there have been created a great number of semantical theories that provide different truth conditions for tensed propositions. In this article we deal with five non-bivalent semantical interpretations of the temporal logic systems CL (Cocchiarella Linear) and Kb (Kripke Branching): 1) Ł3 by J. Łukasiewicz; 2) K3 by S. C. Kleene; 3) Ockhamism by A. Prior; 4) supervaluationism by R. Thomason; 5) relativism by J. MacFarlane. The aim of this article is to present a detailed typology of the five semantical theories based on these criteria: a) the ability to deal with the problem of retrospective evaluation of future contingent propositions; b) the ability to deal with the problem of divine omniscience and free will; c) their relation to the law of excluded middle; d) their relation to other formulas that are intuitively acceptable in an intederministic context. It is argued that the only theory that satisfies all four criteria is the relativism of J. MacFarlane; however, it faces some serious challenges when dealing with the problem of retrospective evaluation of future contingent propositions in the theological context.

Open theism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
No Value ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Open Theism ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future

Open theism is the name for a model of God which emphasizes divine love and responsiveness to creatures. It arises from a family of theologies known as free-will theism which accentuate the divine gift of freedom to humans and hold that God does not micromanage the affairs of the world. The name open theism was coined in the 1990s by a group of philosophers and theologians in order to distinguish it within the free-will theistic family. God is ‘open’ to creatures in that God is affected by what creatures do and God genuinely interacts and enters into dynamic give-and-take relationships with creatures. These reciprocal relationships mean that God has a history which includes changing mental and emotional states. As a consequence, open theists affirm that God is temporal and everlasting rather than atemporal and timeless. Open theists believe that God is omnipotent but chooses not to exercise tight control over creation. Instead, God grants to creatures great latitude to act within boundaries. Because God chooses to elicit our free collaboration in divine plans God takes risks that we will act in ways contrary to the divine intentions. According to open theists the future is ‘open’ as well because it contains multiple possible futures that may or may not come about rather than solely one unalterable future. The future is not a blueprint or script but rather a set of possibilities, and God solicits the cooperation of creatures in order to bring some of these possibilities into existence. Since the future is not determined and humans have genuine free will, God does not know with certainty future contingent actions. Rather, God possesses ‘dynamic omniscience’ in which God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and present and understands what we call ‘the future’ as the possibilities which could occur along with any events God has determined to occur. Divine omniscience is dynamic in that God constantly acquires knowledge of which possible future actions creatures select to actualize. Open theists reject standard accounts of divine foreknowledge because they believe that they are incompatible with human freedom, they are of no value to God in terms of planning and acting in world affairs and they fail to correspond with the biblical portrayal of God.

scholarly journals Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, free will and mathematical thought

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOLOMON FEFERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Computing Machine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unlimited Time ◽  
Incompleteness Theorems ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Mathematical Mind ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Gödel’S Incompleteness Theorems

The determinism-free will debate is perhaps as old as philosophy itself and has been engaged in from a great variety of points of view including those of scientific, theological, and logical character. This chapter focuses on two arguments from logic. First, there is an argument in support of determinism that dates back to Aristotle, if not farther. It rests on acceptance of the Law of Excluded Middle, according to which every proposition is either true or false, no matter whether the proposition is about the past, present or future. In particular, the argument goes, whatever one does or does not do in the future is determined in the present by the truth or falsity of the corresponding proposition. The second argument coming from logic is much more modern and appeals to Gödel's incompleteness theorems to make the case against determinism and in favour of free will, insofar as that applies to the mathematical potentialities of human beings. The claim more precisely is that as a consequence of the incompleteness theorems, those potentialities cannot be exactly circumscribed by the output of any computing machine even allowing unlimited time and space for its work. The chapter concludes with some new considerations that may be in favour of a partial mechanist account of the mathematical mind.

Logic and time

1979 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 566-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
The Church ◽  
Over Time

‘In Time rigorous abstraction, in Time the highest, in Time divine knowledge, is comprehended’Atharva VedaFollowing McTaggart [17], we may distinguish two aspects of time: The A-series, running through the past to the present and on into the future, and the B-series, running from earlier to later. In Indo-European languages at least, verbs are tensed, so we cannot help but place whatever we speak of in one of the three divisions of the A-series. But these divisions are not permanent: what is present was future and will be past. Hence a typical statement, e.g. ‘Socrates is sitting’, may well be true at one time and false at another. The instability of truth-value over time was a commonplace among pre-Renaissance logicians, but most modern writers have ‘abstracted from’, i.e. ignored, this feature of ordinary language.Early logicians were quite interested in time: Aristotle questioned the applicability of the excluded middle to predictions of future contingencies in the famous ‘sea-fight’ passage of On interpretation. Later Greek logicians debated whether that which neither is nor will be can legitimately be called possible, and whether, in order for the conditional ‘if p, then q’ to be true, it is required that ‘not both p and not ∼q’ be true (not just now but) always. Mediaeval logicians in Western Europe struggled with logical difficulties created by the Dogmas of the Church, Omniscience and Free Will. Their counterparts in the Islamic world puzzled over the semantics of the temporal adverbs, ‘always’, ‘usually’, ‘often’, ‘sometimes’, ‘seldom’, ‘never’.

scholarly journals Free Will in Human Behavior and Physics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasil Dinev Penchev
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Quantum Information ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Quantum Bit ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mean ◽  
The One

If the concept of “free will” is reduced to that of “choice” all physical world share the latter quality. Anyway the “free will” can be distinguished from the “choice”: The “free will” involves implicitly a certain goal, and the choice is only the mean, by which the aim can be achieved or not by the one who determines the target. Thus, for example, an electron has always a choice but not free will unlike a human possessing both. Consequently, and paradoxically, the determinism of classical physics is more subjective and more anthropomorphic than the indeterminism of quantum mechanics for the former presupposes certain deterministic goal implicitly following the model of human freewill behavior. Quantum mechanics introduces the choice in the fundament of physical world involving a generalized case of choice, which can be called “subjectless”: There is certain choice, which originates from the transition of the future into the past. Thus that kind of choice is shared of all existing and does not need any subject: It can be considered as a low of nature. There are a few theorems in quantum mechanics directly relevant to the topic: two of them are called “free will theorems” by their authors (Conway and Kochen 2006; 2009). Any quantum system either a human or an electron or whatever else has always a choice: Its behavior is not predetermined by its past. This is a physical law. It implies that a form of information, the quantum information underlies all existing for the unit of the quantity of information is an elementary choice: either a bit or a quantum bit (qubit).

scholarly journals Negation of Conditionals in Natural Language and Thought

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Gilberto Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Pragmatic Truth ◽  
Natural Language Pragmatics ◽  
Excluded Middle

External negation of conditionals occurs in sentences beginning with ‘It is not true that if’ or similar phrases, and it is not rare in natural language. A conditional may also be denied by another with the same antecedent and opposite consequent. Most often, when the denied conditional is implicative, the denying one is concessive, and vice versa. Here I argue that, in natural language pragmatics, ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ entails ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’, but ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’ does not entail ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’. ‘If $A, B$’ and ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ deny each other, but are contraries, not contradictories. Truth conditions that are relevant in human reasoning and discourse often depend not only on semantic but also on pragmatic factors. Examples are provided showing that sentences having the forms ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’ and ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ may have different pragmatic truth conditions. The principle of Conditional Excluded Middle, therefore, does not apply to natural language use of conditionals. Three squares of opposition provide a representation the aforementioned relations.

scholarly journals THE TIME CAPSULE IN THE POST-SOVIET SOVKHOZ

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (47) ◽  
pp. 84-110
Author(s):  
Elena Malaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Logic ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
State Farm ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Time Capsule ◽  
Post Soviet Period

The article is devoted to ideas about the Soviet era, widespread in а village in the north-east of Crimea. The paper offers an analysis of how the community, formed around a partially preserved state farm, builds its own picture of historical time, expands the imaginary boundaries of the Soviet period, and also thinks of it not so much as the past, but as the past future. Particular attention is paid to the object that organizes its temporality — а time capsule, which was laid twice in the studied village (in 1967 and in 2017), as well as its connection with the teleology of modernism. The article compares letters to descendants, sealed in two time capsules, as well as additional documents sent to the future. The text of the 1967 letter is based on a progressive narrative and contains a list of economic indicators of the success of the Soviet economy. By contrast, the 2017 text creates a picture of an unstable time of change, in which the focus is not on the predictable future, but on the vague past and present. The author of the article explains the nostalgia for the Soviet era in the studied community by the reaction to the changes and crises of the post-Soviet period, and suggests using temporal logic in the research of post-socialism.

scholarly journals Edwards on the Incompatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will

Sententiae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Oleh Bondar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Fatalism ◽  
Nelson Pike ◽  
Necessity Of The Past

In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.

Fate and Foreknowledge in Greek Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
Claire Hall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Autonomy

The majority of this chapter focuses on Greek philosophical approaches to fate and foreknowledge. To understand the background of Origen’s thought on these topics, we must distinguish between three distinct types of problem: a) logical problems that concern the possibility of making true statements about the contingent future, b) the problem of how human beings can be held morally responsible for their actions if their actions are fated, and c) the problem of how human beings can choose freely between courses of action if God (or the gods) can have foreknowledge of the future. This chapter shows where and why these conceptions of fate, prophecy, and human autonomy differ, and why these distinctions matter. First, it examines the puzzles set and answered by Aristotle concerning the logical problem of future contingent statements. Then it explores some of the terminological difficulty in talking about ‘free will’ in the Greek context. Next it examines Stoic and Platonist discussions about choice and autonomy, which focus primarily on ethical considerations. Finally, it argues that Origen’s framing of these issues was heavily influenced by his pagan near-contemporary Alexander of Aphrodisias. The chapter ends with a survey of some other early Christian texts on autonomy and moral responsibility that show the Christian context in which Origen was arguing and sets the stage for the argument that Origen deviates significantly from his Christian contemporaries.

Divine Omniscience and Human Free Will

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciro De Florio ◽  
Aldo Frigerio
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Divine Omniscience
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