http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
1 online resource (viii, 212 pages) : illustrations.
This book launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. Patrick Todd argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false.
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".
Cover -- The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False -- Copyright -- Preface -- Contents -- The Open Future: Introduction to a Classical Approach -- 1: Grounding the Open Future -- 1.1 Truth and Reality -- 1.2 The Problem of the Past -- 1.3 The Future in Particular -- 1.4 Conclusion -- 2: Three Models of the Undetermined Future -- 2.1 Three Models -- 2.2 Future Directed Facts -- 2.3 The Thin Red Line -- 2.4 Semantics for Will -- 2.5 A Comparison: Cows in Barns -- 2.6 Model (III) Once More -- 2.7 Peirceanism -- 2.8 All False -- 2.9 A Flow-Chart -- 2.10 Objection: Missing Ambiguities?
2.11 Costs and Benefits: A Preliminary Take -- 3: The Open Future, Classical Style -- 3.1 Scopelessness -- 3.2 Neg-Raising: A Primer -- 3.3 Interlude: Pure Semantic Competence -- 3.4 Against Scopelessness: Quantifiers -- 3.5 One or the Other/Neither -- 3.6 A Prediction of Salience -- 3.7 The Dialectic: Circular Arguments -- 3.8 Some Comparisons with Other Modals -- 3.9 Some Objections -- 3.10 Interim Conclusion -- 3.11 Supervaluationism: A Comparison -- 3.12 The Past and the Future: A Comparison -- 3.13 No Fact of the Matter? -- 4: The Will/Would Connection -- 4.1 Grounding
4.2 Williamson on Conditional Excluded Middle -- 4.3 A Brief Interlude on "Might" Arguments -- 4.4 Models and Semantics Once More -- 4.5 Flow-Charts -- 4.6 The Neg-Raising Inference -- 4.7 On an Argument for CEM from Quantifiers -- 4.8 Should -- 4.9 Conclusion -- 5: Omniscience and the Future -- 5.1 Two Versions of Open Theism: Open Future, and Limited Foreknowledge -- 5.2 The Logic of Omniscience -- 5.3 Perfect Anticipation: Variations on a Priorean Theme -- 5.4 God's Tickets -- 5.5 From Omni-Accuracy to Omni-Correctness -- 5.6 Shifting Gears -- 6: Betting on the Open Future
6.1 Prior on Bets, Guesses, and Predictions -- 6.2 Betting as a Normative Act -- 6.3 Promising -- 6.4 Open-Futurist Agreements -- 6.5 Ambiguities -- 6.6 Omniscience -- 6.7 Transition to the Credence Problem -- 6.8 The First Problem: Zero Credence -- 6.9 Moore-Paradoxes? -- 6.10 The Second Problem: The Linguistic Data -- 6.11 The Will/Would Connection Once More -- 6.12 Probability in Fiction -- 6.13 Unifying the Three Cases -- 6.14 Conclusion -- 7: Future Contingents and the Logic of Temporal Omniscience -- 7.1 Open-Closurism -- 7.2 The Logic of Temporal Omniscience
7.3 The Costs of Omni-Accuracy -- 7.4 The Costs of Omni-Correctness -- 7.5 Ruling Out Omniscience? -- 7.6 Revoking Omniscience -- 7.7 Conclusion -- Appendix: Denying Retro-Closure -- 8: The Assertion Problem -- 8.1 The First Problem: Must Open Futurists Change Their Ways? -- 8.2 Another Assertion Problem -- 8.3 Asserting What Is False, but Communicating What Is True -- 8.4 Weakened Readings -- 8.5 Tendencies and the Future -- 8.6 Interlude on Skepticism -- 8.7 Inshallah -- 8.8 Conclusion -- References -- Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.