Catching up with the Present in Presentist Time?

Presentists hold that only one time exists. Obviously, since there are no other times, this time is the only one that can be correctly referred to as "the present", absolutely speaking. Previous times, however - "the past" - do not exist or at least are not real times in the same sense as the present.

Now consider the scientific fact that it takes time to perceive things. It takes time for light to bounce off a surface and enter into my eye, or for the signals from any one or more of my senses to travel along my neural pathways and make their way to my brain. It likely takes time for my brain to process any kind of input prior to it even becoming conscious. Conscious experience is likely itself spread across a period of time. What this means, then, is (at the least) that what is perceived (or at least those particular conditions or slices of life of whatever objects are perceived) is always in the past relative to your perception of it.

So if the past is unreal as the presentist claims, the world you perceive is also not real and hence your perception is, in a sense, illusory since it is presented as real and existing - the conditions of it presented as actually obtaining. The world you perceive has no real existence - your perceptions are of the ghosts of another world allowed to slip into the actual world, the present, and not of the actual world itself.

Perhaps you can try to infer what the real world is like from what is presented in experience, but this also takes time. Our perceptions and our mental faculties in general have difficulty in "keeping up" with what is real as everything we try to grasp is swiftly swept away into oblivion.

In the presentist's world, then, we are disconnected from reality in a much stronger way than one would have otherwise thought, contrary to many presentists' claims that presentism is somehow the "common sense" view (a claim I would reject for many reasons - see my dissertation, for examples). A real past, however, one that exists and is fully actualized in the actual world we live in (and I think this actually fits common sense a bit better), renders our perceptions true, with us really perceiving and in touch with reality as it is and exists. Including what we see when we gaze out into the stars...

Fatalism, Indeterminacy, and No-Future Views

A paper I gave at the 2008 Eastern APA (at the Philosophy of Time Society group meeting):

FATALISM, INDETERMINACY, AND NO-FUTURE VIEWS

Presentists and growing block theorists reject the idea of a concrete, determinate future. Such ‘No-Futurism’ is often in part motivated by an incompatibilist or libertarian view of free will and the desire to avoid the fatalism which is thought to accompany the denial of No-Futurism. However, this avenue to No-Futurism can be successfully blocked – we can show that the very assumptions which are meant to entail the incompatibility of a determinate future with libertarian freedom actually also entail, in conjunction with the common assumption that bivalence fails for future contingents, the incompatibility of an indeterminate future with such freedom. And in fact, what we are in the end forced to say is that this freedom, when conjoined with a denial of bivalence, is straightforwardly incompatible with No-Futurism in general, whether or not all of the No-Futurists’ assumptions are accepted in the first place. Far from providing a successful route to the nonexistent future, considerations from human freedom and incompatibilism actually point, if anywhere, in the opposite direction or, at least, to some other No-Future views which have their own share of problems.

I. The Open Road
Many people reject the existence of a real, concrete and determinate future because they think it leads to fatalism and hence a lack of freedom on our part. These people tend to fall neatly into one of two camps: presentists, who believe that neither the future nor the past exist (or at least that they do not do so except as parts of the present), or growing block theorists, who believe that only the future fails to exist. More carefully, presentists take it that everything which exists is present and exists at the present, whereas growing block theorists take it that everything which exists is either present or past and exists at the present or in the past. Though these two groups disagree about the ontological status of the past, they agree for the most part about the future. From now on, I will call such views ‘No-Future’ views.

Many No-Futurists hold the beliefs they do at least in part because of a widespread belief in Libertarianism about free will and the looming threat of fatalism which a determinate future is thought to provide. According to Libertarians about free will, free will both exists and is incompatible with determinism (that is, Incompatibilism is true). Libertarians will also take it that free will automatically rules out fatalism about our actions – that is, it rules out the possibility that we might have no power (at every given time) to affect what we will do in the future. So if fatalism turned out to be true, that would automatically rule out the existence of free will as understood by Incompatibilists. According to many of those who hold such views, though, the only way to avoid the fatalism supposedly provided by a determinate, real future is to get rid of it. Indeed, one often sees reasoning such as the following: “If it really is determinately the case that I will eat a burger even before I do it, then I had to do it. So there can be no determinate future featuring my eating of a burger – otherwise my eating would not have been a free action. So there is no future.”

Diekemper (2007, 429) expresses this attitude of the No-Future theorist as follows:

…if the event of the Third World War exists eternally, then in what sense is that event—prior to its occurrence—not inexorable? The [No-Future theorist’s] intuition is that there is no sense in which it is not inexorable; and so, in order to preserve the potentiality of the future, many philosophers of time have rejected the B-Theoretic doctrine of an existent future.

Tooley (1997, 45-46) describes (but does not endorse) such an argument as denying the existence of future facts because such facts would thereby be unpreventable, even by an omnipotent person. Lucas (1973) seems to endorse this sort of reasoning as, in several places, does Prior and those many who would equate eternalism with a deterministic block universe. Indeed, many people seem to take a real, determinate and concrete future to be a very grave threat to our freedom.

These sorts of lines of thought generally proceed from a largely Incompatibilist or Libertarian view of free will, according to which the predetermination of what I shall do by facts beyond my control render my actions thereby unfree. Let us state a formal, stripped down version of the Incompatibilist view as follows:

Incompatibilism: If either □N F(p) or □N F(~p), then ~Free (F(p)).

Here, ‘p’ stands in for some claim ascribing an action to me and ‘F’ is an operator making the claim future-tensed. ‘Free(F(p))’ claims that I am free with respect to whether I will perform the action described in ‘p’. Assuming a standard logic for tense, we can take ~F(p) to either entail or be equivalent to F(~p). It is important to note that the modality expressed in the modal operators here is not one of absolute metaphysical modality or logical modality. Rather, such a modality is meant to be understood in terms of the temporally-relative modality of ‘accidental’ or ‘temporal’ necessity – the modality of inevitability at a given time and future contingency. The basic idea of this sort of modality is that something is possible with respect to a given time if and only if it is compatible with the facts about that very time (plus the laws of nature and perhaps facts about earlier times). The Incompatibilist might add here that something can only be something I really have a choice about or say in if it is possible in this sense. So we should take ‘□t ’to mean roughly the same as ‘It is inevitable at t that…’ and ‘t’ to mean roughly the same as ‘It is not inevitable that it is not the case at t that…’. All modal operators in this paper should be understood to express this sort of modality and, unless stated otherwise, all verbs should be taken as present-tensed. In our statement of Incompatibilism, then, the subscript ‘N’ should be taken as referring to the current time, so that the whole claim can be read, ‘If it is either now inevitable that p or now inevitable that not-p, then I am not free with respect to whether it will be the case that p.’

On this sort of incompatibilist view we are looking at, then, causal determinism of the ordinary sort is straightforwardly incompatible with free will since if my performing a certain action at a later time is now causally determined, it will not be possible now for me to do otherwise and hence I will not have the power to do so and hence will not be free with respect to that action.

So far, however, none of this gives us any lack of free action when conjoined merely to a determinate, real future. On its own, Incompatibilism may appear prima facie compatible with a determinate future unless we add some further assumption or set of assumptions. As one might expect, though, some No-Future folks will also accept the following controversial principle (though not always stated in this precise form) :

Fatalistic Principle (FP): If Det(F(p)) then □N F(p).

Here, ‘Det’ should be read as ‘It is determinate that…’. I suppose the basic intuition behind FP (which seems on many interpretations to play the key role in Aristotle’s “sea-battle” discussion in De Interpretatione) is that if it is already true that I will perform a certain action, then this settled and hence, in order for it to be possible for me to do otherwise, I would have to be able to causally effect what is already settled (that is, the truth that I will perform that action) – an activity which to many seems impossible or at least beyond the powers of mortal ken. In other words, given that it is already true that I will A in 2010, for it to be possible for me to do otherwise than A, I would need to continue to have the ability to causally influence whether I will do A in 2010. But that would require an ability to causally influence whether it is now or was in the past true that I will do A in 2010. But since those things are already settled, it is supposed, I can have no such ability since those sorts of things cannot be causally influenced. So, on this intuition, if it is indeed true that I will perform an action it must also be necessary now that I do it – it is inevitable and completely unavoidable. And it is precisely this principle, FP, which in conjunction with Incompatibilism, entails the controversial position held by many that freedom with respect to some future action requires that it be indeterminate whether I will take such an action. From Incompatibilism and FP, then, we get:

Openness Principle (OP): If either Det(F(p)) or Det(F(~p)), then ~Free(F(p)).

And so these No-Future theorists will take it that, since there are instances where I am free to do something, there are therefore instances where my doing it in the future is indeterminate. So the Incompatibilist who accepts the Fatalist Principle will thereby be committed to OP and hence, if they believe in free will, will be forced to reject the idea that there is a real and determinate future. No-Futurism follows.

II. The Fatalistic Principle Strikes Back
That OP follows from the assumptions of the previous section is, I think obvious. But that these same assumptions are compatible with the existence of free will is, I think, taken for granted. As I hope to show now, one need not make any further substantive assumptions beyond what many No-Futurists already accept to reach the conclusion that Incompatibilism and FP, together with a common No-Futurist assumption, jointly entail that we have no determinate freedom, so that rejecting a determinate future will not help us to save free will after all.

A key assumption that we need here is one that is widely adopted by many No-Futurists, and this is just the denial of bivalence for future contingents – that is, that for any statement which neither is inevitable nor whose negation is inevitable, such a statement is neither true nor false (not that it is indeterminate whether it is true or false, but rather genuinely neither). We could take this to mean either that future contingents possess a third truth-value separate from truth and falsity, or simply that they are truth-valueless. I do not believe which one we choose will make much of a difference in what follows, so long as we deny bivalence in either case. On this sort of view, for some truth to be determinate is simply for it to be true (and vice versa) and for it to be indeterminate is simply for it to fail to be true and also fail to be false. That is, indeterminacy is a third option – a claim may be true, false, or neither. This view, then, is committed to the following principle:

Alethic Determinacy (AD): If p then Det(p).

Now what should someone who rejects bivalence think about the law of the excluded middle for future contingent propositions? That is, should we take the following as true or not:

Future Excluded Middle (FEM): Either F(p) or ~F(p).

One option here is to adopt a supervaluationist branching future view, accept the truth of FEM, and save the law of the excluded middle. On this strategy, there are many possible futures branching out from the present (and hence many possible complete histories) and if a given claim is true on all branches (that is, on all histories) then it will count as true, if false on all branches then it will be false, and indeterminate otherwise. And since on every history the action described in p occurs or it does not, FEM is also true on every history and hence is true simpliciter. Supervaluation, however, will not be much help here. Consider that we can here distinguish between two notions or modes of truth – there is super-truth (truth at all possible histories) and there is local truth (truth at a given possible history). Super-truth, then, is merely local truth relative to every possible history. A statement like p, then, can be locally true relative to some possible history while failing to be super-true. Local truth, that is, does not entail super-truth. Since Det(p) is generally taken to be true just in case p is super-true, p can be locally true without being determinately true. That is, for a given possible history, it could be true that p while false that Det(p). But this means that, given the existence of some future contingent, AD fails to be locally true relative to every possible future. If we take AD to be super-true just in case it is true at every possible history, then it follows that AD is in fact not super-true.

Along similar lines, we could show that on this understanding of the branching time framework that for any statement F(p) which reports a future contingent, it ends up the case that Det(F(~Det(p))), from which it would follow via the No-Futurist’s principles that I am not free as to whether or not it will be determinately the case that p. This may be better than it not being the case that I am free as to whether or not it will be the case that p, but for someone who wants a robust Libertarian free will it does not seem all that much better. There are various moves that could be tried at this point to avoid all these apparently bad consequences, but in every case I think the rejection of AD will be more plausible than any view which happens to retain it. The truth that AD is trying to capture, it seems, is simply the triviality that if it is determinate that p then it is determinate that p. This is admittedly a rather short dismissal of other supervaluationist alternatives, but for now I will leave the discussion at that and simply assume from now on that such gambits will not ultimately deserve our acceptance.

Supposing, however, we simply stipulate that AD is true at every possible history really is necessarily true in the strongest sense and really does hold even in each of these possibilities. In that case, it is important to remember that FEM is supposed to be true at each history. But that is simply because, for each history, either one disjunct is true or the other is. Given a possible history where F(p), it is also true that either F(p) or ~F(p), and the same for any history where ~F(p). But then, by AD, in histories where F(p), it will also be true that Det(F(p)) and hence that either Det(F(p)) or Det(~F(p)). Similarly for histories where ~F(p). But then, by OP, it follows that in each of these possible histories there is no freedom. But since this holds for every possible history, it holds simpliciter and hence there is no freedom, period.

Since the supervaluationist option was a bust, the anti-bivalentist might instead suppose that FEM, like its atomic constituents, is neither true nor false. This would be a desperate move indeed but perhaps not hopeless. Let us introduce a new operator, ‘Ind’, which obeys the following rule: For any claim c, ‘Ind(c)’ is true just in case c is neither true nor false; it is false otherwise. ‘Ind’ should, then probably be interpreted as saying something like ‘It is indeterminate that…’. Since FEM, we are supposing, is neither true nor false, the following proposition will be true:

Indeterminate Excluded Middle (IEM): Ind(Either F(p) or ~F(p)).

But since ‘Either F(p) or ~F(p)’ entails that I am not free with respect to F(p), it follows that either I am not free with respect to F(p) or it is indeterminate whether I am not free with respect to F(p). That is, ‘~Free(F(p))’ will be the case or ‘Ind(~Free(F(p)))’ will be the case. The former is straightforwardly inconsistent with a Libertarian position, but what of the latter? Since ‘Ind(F(p))’ will only be true just in case ‘Ind(~F(p))’ is also, it follows that ‘Ind(Free(F(p)))’ is also true and hence it is not determinate that I am free with respect to F(p). That is, it is indeterminate whether I have free will. This might be slightly better than having no free will at all but, again, if it is better, it is not much so. After all, a genuine Libertarian is surely going to be committed to its actually being the case – to its being determinately true, in fact – that I am free, not just that it is neither true nor false that I am free. So even if this gambit does not exclude free will, we can surely describe it as excluding determinate free will and that is about as bad. From now on, I will drop the ‘determinate’ adjective and simply assume that the free will we are interested in here is supposed to be determinate. Whether FEM or IEM is accepted, then, freedom is excluded. Instead of securing freedom, it looks like our No-Futurist must reject it.

III. Why No-Futurists Must Accept the Fatalistic Principle
To get out of this mess, it seems we must reject one of the following: free will, Incompatibilism, FP, AD, or FEM. Since I cannot see how anyone would plausibly accept all the other assumptions and yet reject FEM as false, I will leave that option aside. The live options, then, are these: either give up free will, reject Incompatibilism, give up the Fatalist Principle, or accept bivalence and reject AD. Although I would opt for both of the latter two options, it is perfectly open to the Libertarian No-Futurist to take only one. That option, however, cannot be the rejection of the Fatalist Principle – the No-Futurist is committed to this principle by their very views about the future and, hence, the only way for a No-Futurist to adopt a Libertarian position is for them to accept bivalence and reject AD. What I claim, then, is that the following is true:

No-Future and Fatalism (NFF): If No-Future then FP.
NFF, of course should probably be restricted in such a way that it is true only of future truths – that is, as far as facts about the future are concerned, if No-Future, then if these future things are determinate they are necessary. Take this as understood. But how does FP follow from a No-Future view? Here is one way to go – we can say that it follows largely due to the principle that Truth Supervenes on Being (TSB) – a difference in truth value for a given proposition across two worlds requires a difference in the objects or instantiations of properties between those two worlds (that is, a difference in what there is and how things are between them). I take this to be an intuitively obvious principle (even though some may want to deny it) – after all, if the truth of a statement floats freely of the way the world is, we lose any grip on its really being about anything in the world in the first place.

But now, given TSB, if we believe No-Future we are going to be hard pressed not to accept FP as well. After all, if there is no future then all facts about the future must be grounded in the present (or the present together with the past) plus any relevant nomological laws. So if it is determinately true that p, then that fact is grounded in (let’s say) present facts. But for p to be temporally contingent, it must be temporally possible at this time both that p and that ~p. And that is only so if the intrinsic facts about the present (along with, perhaps, the past) do not determine that p. But if that were so, then given No-Future the present facts could not ground the truth that p. But, again, given No-Future and TSB, if that were so then it cannot be determinately true that p. So if it is determinate at this time, it is not possible at this time for it to be otherwise. Hence for the No-Futurist, NFF follows straightforwardly from TSB.

None of the various versions of the kinds of truthmakers No-Futurists give to ground truths about the future will work here. Take, for instance, the view that what grounds truths about the future are simply the current states of things plus the laws of nature. This is straightforwardly ruled out by Incompatibilism as a way of grounding truths about future free actions. Consider also the view that there are primitive, irreducible future-tensed properties such as being such that one will do A possessed by individuals or the world which ground truths about the future (see Bigelow 1996). The having of some such properties rather than some others clearly will be temporally necessary. Appeals to temporally distributional properties will seem to fare similarly, as will verificationists or dispositionalist accounts of the grounding of future truths. If any of those posited truthmakers now ground in the present what will happen in the future, such future occurrences are inevitable – that is, they are temporally necessary.

An ersatzist about times such as Bourne (2006) or Crisp (2007) – who treats times as abstract objects arranged in order via primitive ersatz earlier-than relations – will not do any better here. Such a view treats future truths as being grounded in what is represented as being the case by an ersatz time which is ersatz-later than the ersatz time which correctly represents the present. So if some such time represents p then it is true that p at the corresponding distance from the present time. But this is just as inevitable as any of the other options. These states of abstract objects are, after all, present states – as in all the other options, they render my future actions temporally necessary. Similar sorts of views which make future truths depend on God’s memories or will or some such divine mental state will obviously not do any better.

The argument for NFF I have been giving is similar to ones that have been given in the literature attempting to show that Libertarians and their ilk must reject bivalence or at least determinacy for at least some future-tensed statements. Rhoda, Boyd, and Belt (2007), for instance, argue that the guarantee by present conditions of the truth of future-tensed statements about my actions is straightforwardly inconsistent with Incompatibilism (though they do not use this exact terminology). And Michael Rea (2006) has skillfully argued that, if Presentism is true and all statements about the future are determinate then, since future truths about someone’s actions have not in the past been even partly grounded in the person such truths are about (since they were true before that person even existed), such a person never has and never will have a choice about such actions. And hence such a person will not be free with respect to such actions.

Rea considers ways someone might try to resist fatalism, but most of the ways out of principles like FP end up being available only to one who actually believes in a real, concrete and determinate future. At this point, though, one might think that if TSB is rejected for statements about my future contingents (as might be done by certain Molinists) then we would have a way out of NFF. But, as Rea (2006, 521-522) has in effect argued, even if TSB is false (as claimed by Merricks 2007), if No-Future is true and all statements of future contingents are now either true or false, then such ‘future contingents’ will indeed be temporally necessary. After all, these ungrounded truths are still present (or past) truths and, being ungrounded, they are not made true by anything outside of the present (or past). So the fact that F(p) is a wholly present fact, not dependent on anything future, and this fact guarantees or fixes what will occur in the future. Hence, any future contingents will be inevitable. So whether or not TSB is true, NFF follows once we accept a No-Future view.

IV. The No-Futurist’s Options
Given the truth of NFF, the No-Futurist is thereby stuck with FP. Hence, per the discussion of the previous sections, for the No-Futurist, the only options left are to abandon No-Futurism (so they can reject FP), abandon free will, accept compatibilism, or take bivalence on board. So for someone committed to both No-Futurism and Incompatibilist freedom, the only option is to accept bivalence and reject AD. Presumably, this would have to involve invoking some kind of perhaps entirely non-semantic metaphysical indeterminacy where F(p)’s indeterminacy is compatible both with its truth and its falsity – that is, where it really is either true or false, and hence bivalence holds for it, yet it is simply indeterminate which. On this view, indeterminacy would not be some third option over and above truth and falsity, but rather a kind of primitive state where the world is simply indeterminate between the two options. The problem here, of course, would be to make sense of this sort of metaphysical indeterminacy and the idea that something could be true but not determinately so.

Another bivalence-accepting strategy would be to take ‘~F(p)’ as true, and differentiate this from ‘F(~p)’. So far I have been taking these two claims to be either equivalent or for the former to entail the latter. However, were one to differentiate them, denying that one entails the other, and take all ‘will’ claims such as ‘F(~p)’, where they express future contingents, to be false, one could still affirm the truth of ‘~F(p)’. In this case, the inference from IEM to the denial of free will is rendered invalid. The basic idea of this view, then, is to accept bivalence and still get out of my argument by, in effect, denying that ‘will’ and ‘will not’ sentences are genuine contradictories. Contraries, yes, but not contradictories. This strategy, of course, has its own problems dealing with the way we ordinarily treat ‘will’ and ‘will not’ as contradictories and dealing with truth-value links between previous predictions about what were once future contingents and the truth of propositions about these same events occurring in the present..

So, from what we have seen, far from requiring a No-Future view of time, Libertarianism is straightforwardly incompatible with it (or at least with many common forms of it). To escape from this incompatibility, I have suggested two strategies the No-Futurists might make use of, both of which will involve a lot of work, if not substantial difficulties. Whatever the case may be, the denial of bivalence for propositions about future contingents in order to uphold our free will is a self-defeating gesture and No-Futurists who deny bivalence in the name of saving free will are instead attacking the very thing they set out to defend.

WORKS CITED

Aristotle, De Interpretatione
Asher, N., J. Dever, and C. Pappas (draft) “Supervaluations Debugged”
Bigelow, John (1996) “Presentism and Properties” in Tomberlin, James (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 10: Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell, 35–52.
Bourne, Craig (2006) A Future for Presentism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cameron, Ross (draft) “Truthmaking for Presentists”
Crisp, Thomas (2007) “Presentism and the Grounding Objection”, Noûs 41.1: 90-109.
Diekemper, Joseph (2007) “B-Theory, Fixity, and Fatalism”, Noûs 41.3: 429-452.
Ludlow, Peter (1999) Semantics, Tense, and Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McGee, V. and B. McLaughlin (1995) “Distinctions without a Difference”, Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 Supplement: 203–251.
Merricks, Trenton (2007) Truth and Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Naylor, Margery Bedford (1980) “Fatalism and Timeless Truth” in Inwagen, Peter (ed.), Time and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor, 49-65. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Parsons, Josh (2000) “Must a Four-Dimensionalist Believe in Temporal Parts?”, Monist 83.3: 399-418.
__________ (2004) “Distributional Properties” in Jackson, F. and G. Priest (eds.), Lewisian Themes, 173-180. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rea, Michael (2006) “Presentism and Fatalism”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84.4: 511-524.
Rhoda, A., G. Boyd, and T. Belt (2006) “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future”, Faith and Philosophy 23: 432–59.
Tooley, Michael (1997) Time, Tense, and Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Varzi, Achille (2007) “Supervaluationism and its Logics”, Mind 116: 633-676.
Williamson, Timothy (1994) Vagueness. London: Routledge.

Is Tense Common Sense? (Plattitudes, Attitudes, and Experiences)

Tensed theorists often claim that their theories are common sense. Growing block theorists claim their theory is the common sense view, moving spotlight folks claim theirs is the common sense view, presentist claim theirs is the common sense view, etc. And this is somehow supposed to provide evidence or at least a presumption in favor of their pet version of the tensed time. But what on earth makes them think this in the first place? I suppose it must involve things like fitting various common platitudes and asymmetric attitudes about time or our experience of time or agency. But I'm skeptical about their claims, to say the least. Note first that it's pretty implausible that each of these views is the common sense one or general common sense. And I think that it's a fair piece of evidence against the identification of, say, a view like presentism with common sense that many people find the debate between it and an opposing view like eternalism to be simply vacuous at best. If common sense is indeterminate enough to leave up in the air an issue such as that between eternalism and presentism, I think that's pretty good reason to say that presentism is not the common sense view. It seems to me in general that common sense is either indeterminate between or vacillates between tensed and tenseless views of time. My money would be that common sense doesn't on it's own go either way, though individuals may take it a step farther in one direction or another. Ordinary thought simply does not deal in such high powered metaphysics to a great enough extent in this area to go either way.

But what about all those platitudes, attitudes, and experiences? Well, tenseless theorists can accept and explain all of these too! It is not contrary to the tenseless theory to say, in ordinary speech, that, for instance, time flows or that "time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...into the future". Or even that "the future is not yet and the past is no more". What I think tensed theorists are latching onto isn't the plausibility of their own theories but the apparent implausibility of tenseless ones as accurate accounts of what's behind such platitudes, attitudes, and experiences. Sometimes when one looks at tenseless theories of time, it can seem that something is missing in accounting for such things. Tensed theorists, I take it, think they can give us what they think are the things are felt to be missed. But, I contend, they actually fail precisely in this regard in almost the same ways and in general at least as bad as (as sometimes worse than) tenseless theorists. (See Alan's post here and our discussion following for a possible example of the sort of stuff I'm talking about in this post)

This last fact - that the apparent gap between our attitudes, platitudes, and experiences, on one hand, and tenseless views, on the other, is just as bad if not worse between our attitudes, platitudes and experiences and tensed views - usually goes unnoticed (though not always - many people have pointed this out in particular cases of these gaps). This is at least partly because of tensed theorists' misleading terminology and (mis?)appropriation of 'common sense talk' as well as intricate ontologies and metaphysics hidden (or put aside to avoid committing to any particular view) behind the soothing, ordinary speech. It all lends an air of authority and authenticity and faithfulness not possessed by most tenseless theorists' talk, largely because tenseless theorists often eschew common talk and often seem to be denying its worth (sometimes this is precisely because, unfortunately, they are!). This is also due to the prevalence and entrechedness of the common misperceptions of what tenseless eternalists believe (see my earlier post on this).

No theory, however, can fill in the gaps I've mentioned - something will always seem missing from any account. Tensed theorists think that because tenseless theorists "fail" in this regard that they therefore succeed, but that is simply not so. In my dissertation, I am arguing that this is true, show that the most plausible account of our mind's access to, uses of, and representations of time explain where these gaps come from - and do so in a way that is in itself neutral between the two big camps. And that this is just one piece in a larger fabric of our conscious, perspectival access to the world and all the associated perspectival/nonperspectival gaps that arise because of it. Tensed theorists in time - as well as other folks in other areas - make a peculiar mistake relating to our representations' relation to the world, one that is widespread in areas from metaphysics to ethics. Or so I argue. So there is absolutely no support for tensed theories from common sense - not even from our plattitudes, attitudes, and experiences.

Can a Presentist Believe in Incompatibilist Freedom?

In my last post, I argued that the following was true:

Fatalist Contradiction (FC): ~((Incompatibilism & DF) & FP)

Since then, I noticed that this has certain other consequences for presentism (and growing block views too). Notice first that the following seems true (straightforwardly, via the principle that Truth Supervenes on Being):

Presentism and Indeterminacy (PI): If Presentism and Incompatibilism then FP.

A Molinist may deny this, but in doing so they run afoul of TSB or either DF or Incompatibilism (depending on how its spelled out). So it follows from FC and PI that

Incompatibility (I): If DF, then ~Presentism or ~Incompatibilism.

So if libertarianism is true, presentism is not. And if presentism is true, either we have no free will or we do but it is of a compatibilist nature.

EDIT (4/18/08): PI should probably be restricted in such a way that it is true only of future truths - that is, as far as facts about the future are concerned, if Presentism and Incompatibilism, then if these future things are determinate they are necessary.

Fatalism, Indeterminacy, and Power

Here's an interesting argument I came up with:

Many people (i.e., many (but not all) growing block theorists and presentists) don't believe in a real, concrete and determinate future because they think it leads to fatalism and hence a lack of freedom on our part. Here are some assumed (incompatibilist) assumptions:

Freedom Implies Power (FIP): If I am free to make it the case that p then I have the power to make it the case that p and I have the power not to make it the case that p.

and

Power Implies Possibility (PIP): If I have the power to make it the case that p then possibly (I make it the case that p).

These seem to be fairly straightforward incompatibilist beliefs - incompatibilists will accept them, even if others do not. Here's another principle:

Power Produces Determinacy (PPD): I have the power to make it the case that p iff I have the power to make it the case that determinately p.

This is pretty straightforward - it makes no sense to say that someone has the power to bring something about if they do not also have the power to make it determinately the case (and vice versa). So far none of this gives us fatalism when conjoined to a determinate, real future. But then, some no-future folks will also hold to the following controversial principle:

Fatalistic Principle (FP): If it is the case that determinately p then necessarily p.

FP in conjunction with FIP and PIP entails the relevant belief in no determinate future:

Openness Principle (OP): If I am free to make it the case that p then it is not the case that determinately p.

And so these folks will take it that there are instances where I am free to do something and hence where my doing it in the future is indeterminate. And, of course, I am not only free to do certain things, but I am determinately so (since really robust freedom requires us to be determinately free, not merely for it to be indeterminate whether we are so):

Determinate Freedom (DF): I am determinately free to make it the case that p.

From OP and DF, we can reasonably infer,

Determinate Indeterminacy (DI): It is determinate that it is not the case that determinately p.

Now here's where my real argument starts to get going: From DI and FP, we get:

Necessary Indeterminacy (NI): It is not possible that determinately p.

From NI and PIP, we get:

Power Failure for Determinacy (PFD): It is not the case that I have the power to make it the case that determinately p.

And now we finally get to use PPD which I mentioned earlier. From PFD and PPD we get:

General Power Failure (GPF): It is not the case that I have the power to make it the case that p.

So from GPF and FIP we get:

Unfree (U): I am not free to make it the case that p.

And so we have a contradiction, which means at least one major assumption must be false. The only real substantive premises that might be candidates for rejection, I would contend, are FIP, PIP, FP, or DF. Since FIP and PIP just follow from incompatibilism and DF is just a way of saying that we are free, we can put things this way: What this argument shows is that either incompatibilism is false, the Fatalistic Principle is false, or we have no free will. Contra the no-future folks who hold to all three of these, we must choose one of these options. In my opinion, a rejection of the Fatalistic Principle is the obvious choice.

Moral Responsibility and the Unreality of the Past

It is a necessary condition for freedom or moral responsibility concerning some action A that I am the ultimate explanation for A - A ultimately depends on me for its existence. So to be responsible for something, I must be the metaphysical ground for it. But not only that, it is also necessary that I have some sort of control over A, that the fact that A is my action rather than something else is also dependent on me and explained by me. It is my contention that views of time - such as Presentism - which do not acknowledge the reality of the past cannot allow that anyone is morally responsible for their past actions. And if they are not morally responsible for such, then they cannot justifiably be punished or praised (or whatever) for them either.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that if the past does not exist then neither do my past actions. But if I have no past actions, then there are no actions for me to be held responsible for. Anti-realists about the past must, then, make revisionary adjustments to our views about responsibility and insist that we can be "responsible for our past actions" only in the sense that we are responsible for the past-tensed fact that we committed such past actions. Already, this is in conflict with the natural idea that in order for me to be responsible for something there must be some action which is directly ascribable to me as mine - instead, we must have something else that I am responsible for or which is ascribable to me. But let's put that aside for now.

Different views will cash out these past-tensed which we are responsible for in different ways. One way is simply to assert that past-tensed facts are primitive facts, unanalyzable and irreducible to anything more basic (or that these facts involve primitive tensed properties like having performed action A). But why should I or anyone care about such primitive facts or think they have anything to do with whether I ought to punished or praised? After all, if facts about what I could have done are also primitive in the same way and such facts do not justify praise or blame, how could these other facts do the same? What's the difference? In neither case is the fact explained by me or is it something that I am responsible for in any sense. These facts are simply there, free-floating with no input from me as to what they are or how they are and with no relevant dependence on me that could make any difference as to my responsibility for anything. In neither case is there any control over what these things are like. If there was, then I would now have control over the past, which I simply do not - at least not in any significant enough way.

But let's say these past facts aren't primitive facts after all. This is hardly any better. Why should we be held responsible for physical states of the world or states of God or whatever? After all, that things are this way is not in any way up to us or explained by us or relevantly dependent on us. So either way the Anti-Realist goes, there's no getting around the fact that without a real past, there can be no moral responsibility for our past actions. Elsewhere, I've argued that freedom or moral responsibility also requires a real future. So, all in all, friends of moral responsibility ought to be eternalists about time and accept the reality of past, present, and future.

Notes on Boyd's Satan and the Problem of Evil Chapter 4B

At the end of chapter four (see here for some criticisms of the first part), Boyd, in Satan and the Problem of Evil, gives what he takes to be scientific and experiential support for his open theism - that is, evidence that is supposed to show that the future does not exist (and hence is not known in an exhaustive definite manner by God). Boyd suggests that science supports this view by appealing to the fact that most plausible interpretations of quantum theory in physics require indeterminism. But of course indeterminism - causal "openness" - is perfectly compatible with the future not being open in Boyd's sense. Indeterminism and eternalism (the view that all times past or present or future exist) are perfectly compatible. It is a common confusion not to notice this, but of course Boyd is pretty much entirely confused throughout this science section. He takes indeterminism to show that the irreversibility of time is real, however, I'm not really sure what he even means by "the irreversibility of time". I take it that he has in mind something like the arrow of time - that is, the directedness of time or the things within it. But of course, indeterminism has no direct bearing on this issue, contra Boyd. A system can be indeterministic in a past-to-future direction, a future-to-past direction, or even both. So indeterminism on its own, even quantum mechanical indeterminism, really says little if anything about Boyd's "irreversibility of time" (despite the people he cites in support of what he says - these are issues that scientists unfortunately often get as confused about as lay people). Thus, contra Boyd, quantum mechanics does not in the slightest support his views and is perfectly compatible with all manner of eternalist or anti-open theist views.

If Boyd's discussion of quantum mechanics was somewhat confused, his discussion of relativity theory is a complete mess. First of all, though, he suggests that Scripture treats God as temporal but I've dealt with these sorts of contentions in this previous post. Boyd then notes that relativity theory doesn't show that time is unreal as if that helped him. But of course those who object to theories like Boyd's based on relativity theory would mostly agree with this, so I'm not sure how this is supposed to be helpful. Boyd claims that the theory does not address the ontological status of the future but this is contentious and, I would suggest, false. For instance, say event E1 is in the absolute future of my current space-time coordinate (pretend for the moment that I'm a point-particle). Now, given relativity, any event E2 which is neither in my absolute past nor present nor "light-like" related to me will be simultaneous with me in some reference frames and not in others (these are called "space-like" related to me). So let us take an event E2 which is very close to the space-time cone carved out by my absolute future. There are parts of my absolute future which, in some reference frames are simultaneous with E2 since they are space-like related to it. Assume E1 is space-like related to E2. Now we have two events - E1 and E2 - which lie on a simultaneity line but one of them - E2 - lies on such a line with me and the other lies in my absolute future. So there's no room to say that E1 doesn't exist since it lies on a simultaneity line with E2, which also exists, and everything which lies on a single simultaneity line is equally real. So Boyd (or Capek, who he cites) really can't get out of eternalism without reinterpreting relativity theory or treating it merely instrumentally (which sometimes Boyd confusingly sounds like he's doing, other times not - I'm not sure even he knows exactly what he's trying to do here). The rest of Boyd's discussion is basically the same as the mass of confusions he's posted on his blog and which I've addressed previously in this post.

In response to the argument that time was created with creation and since God is above creation he is above time, Boyd confusingly tries to respond to this by saying that God's experience or measurement of time is different than ours. But that doesn't even address the argument at all since it wasn't about experience or measurement in the first place - this is a metaphysical or physical argument based on the nature of God and the apparent fact that our time dimension is essentially a component of our space-time universe and hence cannot have existed outside of it. I'm really not sure what Boyd was after when he started talking about measurements here.

Boyd's argument from experience is essentially this - our experience of ourselves as free and morally responsible presupposes or is the same as an experience of ourselves as being undetermined. But of course this, again, does not support his views in the slightest. As I've said previously, indeterminism is perfectly compatible with eternalism or anti-open theism. So again, nothing Boyd says here provides even the slightest shred of evidence for his views.

Next time, more on Boyd's book...

Notes on Boyd's Satan and the Problem of Evil Chapter 4A

Last time, I finished up with chapter three of Boyd's book, so now we go to chapter four. Here, at the beginning of this chapter, Boyd attempts to address passages that look like they ascribe to God some amount of EDF (exhaustive definite foreknowledge) - passages where God predicts details about future free actions or events which depend on such, passages that cannot plausibly be interpreted as expressing mere conditional intentions on God's part. Part of his answer involves the same sort of idea I've been discussing elsewhere - that real freedom involves deciding who one will be and once that is fixed, that will also fix the range of actions one may do. And if one has made oneself fixedly wicked, for instance, God will know how to arrange it so that you will certainly do, say, action A because he knows your fixed character - a character you cannot any longer act against. The rest of his answer in this section is rather vague and hand-wavy - the real argument comes later. What he's said so far isn't nearly sufficient, but since his main arguments come later, I'll deal with them then and show why he still can't have both open theism and God's certain knowledge of these prophesied events.

Boyd then goes on to criticize Molinism which, in the context of the sort of no-future view Boyd holds, I can agree won't work. His idea, though, of God making plans for every contingency so that lack of EDF does not limit his sovereignty or providence over the future could equally well be put into effect by a non-Molinist believer in EDF - prior (not temporally prior, though) to creating everything and giving out free will, God could have lots of different plans for how things might turn out with his free creations. Posterior to this set of plans, however, is the creation of the space-time universe and God's knowledge of all of history, including EDF. Boyd, however, makes the rather lame claim that God knows more on his view than on, say, the Molinist view since God on his view not only knows what will happen but also what may. This, of course, is rather unfair since the Molinist may claim that they are the ones that allow God to know more since God knows much more of what will happen on their view than on Boyd's. That point aside, I think both Molinists and other EDFers could perfectly well have both EDF and exhaustive knowledge of all those mays and mights that Boyd includes. So, contra Boyd, EDFers may include all the same knowledge Boyd does. So Boyd's just plain wrong when he claims that in his view "God does not know less than the classical view: he knows more." The facts are quite the opposite.

Boyd uses all he's said so far to address the passage of Jesus predicting Peter's denials - God could providentially ensure that things happen such that Peter denies Christ three times. But this requires Peter's character to be fixed in this regard. But it doesn't seem to me that anyone's character can be completely fixed in such a regard without being nearly totally fixed in its entirety. Our character is an organic whole, after all, not some construct made up of behavioral or habitual atoms. And since Peter is by no means a "saint", on Boyd's own view Peter would perhaps be irredeemably lost (having formed a fixed character leading to or involving a denial of Christ). In any case, Peter wasn't the only one involved in the story - there were other free agents as well. They would also have to be significantly fixed in their characters. But there were other free agents around them as well, who could have killed them or done other things to prevent them from talking to Peter. So they would have to fixed as well. But then those people were around free agents as well, and so on. So whatever happened to the people with unfixed character here? It doesn't seem that God, without interfering in ways Boyd wouldn't like or having EDF, could guarantee that Peter would deny Christ three times even if Peter had a fixed character that would otherwise make it certain.

Now to Boyd's philosophical arguments. Consider the argument enshrined in the following passage:

Let four things be granted: (1) God possesses EDF; (2) God's knowledge is infallible, hence unalterable; (3) the past by logical necessity cannot be changed; and (4) we are not free or morally responsible in relation to what we cannot change. These four premises seem to entail that agents are no more free and morally responsible with regard to future events (including their own future chosen actions) than they are with regard to past events. Among the totality of facts in any given moment in the past which we cannot change is the fact of what we shall do in the future - a facticity found in God's EDF and included in the totality of factual truths at any given moment in the past.

This is a completely awful argument. Note that Boyd's argument entails that I am not morally responsible for what I did in the past. But if I'm not morally responsible for, say, my past sins, God cannot justly hold me accountable for them or punish me for them. The only atonement necessary is that provided by the passage of time! But then even present actions are not things I can be responsible for either - in the same sense I cannot change the past since I cannot make something other than what it is, I cannot change the present either. After all, if I am sinning in the present I cannot very well also be not sinning. So on Boyd's lights, I cannot be responsible for past or present actions. What about future actions? Well, on Boyd's view, these do not literally exist, so I cannot be held responsible for actions that are not even there. And in any case, I can hardly at one time be held responsible for something I haven't done yet. So if Boyd's argument works, it shows that there is no free will or moral responsibility! And I think that in turn shows that Boyd's argument has gone seriously wrong.

Boyd's final sentence in the above paragraph represents a huge confusion. For one thing, it's not clear that there are distinct entities called "facts". And if there are, it's not clear that they exist in or at any times at all - they may very well be atemporal. But if some of them do exist at times, they exist wholly at the time they are about. So facts about the future therefore do not exist, exist outside time, or exist in the future, not in the present or in the past. So Boyd's argument doesn't work (see Nathan Oaklander's work on this stuff for more, similar details). Appealing to the pastness or presentness of God's beliefs won't work either since God's beliefs, if he is atemporal, cannot be past or present in the temporal sense anyway. And even if God is temporal, if the beliefs get the content or truth that they do from the actual future events then the fact that God believes such and such is not solely a fact about this current time in any case. So either way Boyd's argument doesn't work. For more criticisms of the sorts of arguments Boyd employs throughout this chapter and book (including criticism of his thought that EDF makes the future unalterable and hence we are not free with regards to it), see my earlier post here and also this one.

Boyd mentions "soft facts" - current or past facts which are dependent on future facts - as a way out of his argument. On this move, God's current belief (supposing he is in time) that E will occur is dependent on E's occurrence in the future. That seems about right to me. But Boyd doesn't like this. He thinks that because God is omniscient we can't affect the content of his past beliefs. But why not? Boyd doesn't really give any kind of argument other than to say that if God in the past wrote down his beliefs about the future then the fact the written document had the content it did or said what it did would be a hard fact. But it wouldn't - Boyd is simply wrong. If God's beliefs are dependent on future fact then so is the document. I think Boyd here is assuming an illegitimate notion of soft facts according to which the only way something can be dependent on the future is if we already have a growing block or presentist view of time and certain facts about the past do not even exist in reality at all since there is no future to determine them. But if we are eternalists and believe that all times and their contents exist and are on a par, we can have dependency relations crisscrossing over time with no problem. So Boyd is simply assuming from the get-go without any kind of real argument that the most plausible opposing views are false. But of course, if you do that, it's not to difficult to argue for your own view.

Next time...science and experience as "evidence" for open theism...

A Couple of Comments on Gregory Boyd on Relativity Theory

In a recent post on his blog, Gregory Boyd says the following (in comments about the recent Quincy Science and Theology Conference):

We all know thawt Relativity Theory stipulates that the NOW of every finite perspective cannot be absolutely correlated with the NOW of any other finite perspective, since WHEN an event happens depends on WHERE you are, and HOW FAST you're traveling, relative to the event in question. Yet, each finite perspective has ITSELF as a NOW, and this NOW has a real "before" and a real "after." So the universe is comprised of all finite perspectives with their own NOW and their own "BEFORE" and "AFTER." (In relativity language, each perspective has its own "time cone").Now, if we believe in an omnipresent God, God would be internally present to, and thus contemporaneous with, each finite perspective, and thus each NOW. God could therefore have -- indeed, MUST have -- a "NOW" that synchronizes and integrates ALL finite perspectives. Thus, for God, there is an absolute NOW that encompasses all NOWS. So even with Relativity Theory, I argued, God and the universe are moving forward from a real past to a real future...

But none of this actually works given Relativity as it stands (you could, of course, decide to reject Relativity as being literally true but that would be a different move, though more common). When Boyd talks about "perspectives" the only thing I can think of that he might mean is a space-time point or a space-time point considered in a particular frame of reference (given what he says about perspectives having an absolute earlier and later there really isn't much else he could mean in the context of Relativity Theory). But then, if God's NOW is just the

combination of all NOWs and each perspective is its own NOW then God's NOW would just be the whole space-time universe. How do you get a real past and future just from that or any movement from one to the other? This isn't to say that there is no past or future or anything that might be called "flow" (I think there is, though I think the tensed version of this is incorrect). It's just that Boyd's idea doesn't seem to get him anything like what he might want.

He also reports on this:

But the main topic for the day was what science has to say about the nature of time. Among the many things Robert said was that there are 7 indicators in science (as we presently understand it) that suggest that the flow of time from the past to the future is real. (This is very important since the flow of time has for the most part been considered superfluous for the physical sciences, since most equations work forward or backward. Prediction and retrodiction are essentially the same).I don't have time to explain these, but for those who are curious, these 7 arguments are:

1) Cosmological: Evidence of the big bang suggests the universe is moving from a start in the past to a finish in the future.

2) Radioactive: Light and sound diverge outward but don't converge inward.

3) Thermodynamics: Disorder increases over time. (This is the famous "Second Law of Thermodynamics").

4) Gravitational: Black holes absorb all matter in a one way motion. There are no "white holes" that reverse the process.

5) Subatomic: Anti-kaons (the anti-matter of kaons) disintegrate faster than kaons.

6) Measurement: The collapse of the quantum wave is irreversible.
And....

7) Psychological: People uniformly remember the past and anticipate the future. (This one, of course, is not a strictly scientific piece of evidence, but perhaps Mann included it simply because its a phenomenon that needs explaining.)

...At one point Mann seemed to suggest that Special and General Relativity Theory entailed a "block view" of the universe (this is the view that the past, present, and future are timelessly present as a sort of settled block. The flow of time, in other words, is not real ).

Of course, all of those things do indicate that there is flow to time - they simply do not, however, indicate that there is flow in the sense that tensed theorists like Boyd want there to be. What these things indicate is that time has an arrow, but that doesn't have much to do with whether there is a block universe or not (if by "block universe" all we mean is the view that all times are equally real, existent, and determinate - this may not be exactly what Boyd has in mind, though I'm not sure what else he might mean since a block universe in this sense does not have all times being "timelessly present"). Again, nothing here to write home about from the perspective of a tensed theorist or open theist.

Open Theism, the Future, and Free Will - Comments on Some Recent Articles Pt. 2

Sorry for not blogging too much lately...I've had papers to grade...:(

Anyway, here's part 2 as promised. This entry is on Dale Tuggy (of Trinities fame) and his paper "Three Roads to Open Theism", which is for the most part a fairly good paper though I disagree (obviously) with some of the things he says about those who believe in a real future. According to Tuggy, there is no future since libertarian free will is incompatible with there being such a thing - it requires a genuinely open future because we need to have power over the future/more than one thing to choose to do/be able to do otherwise. But none of that stuff entails that the future is open at all - this is the mistake of all fatalistic arguments (see my earlier post for one version of such arguments and where it goes wrong). In actuality, the unreality of the future not only isn't a requirement for free will but it actually excludes it. Why? Precisely because it removes choice - one cannot choose when there is no later moment (there being no future after all) to choose at! If there is no future then there is no free choice over future states. Free will requires power to influence things but one cannot influence non-existent things. If there is no future then there's nothing to influence and therefore nothing to deliberate about in the first place. So free will actually requires there to be a fully determinate (but not determined) future.

**WARNING: Really Technical Part**

Tuggy thinks we need a branching model but not a linear model of time. But branching and linear models can actually be made compatible. The linear model can be taken to describe the actual world as it is - it models the concrete way things are. Temporal accessibility here is simply a matter of having actual temporal relations with something. The branching model describes possibilities for times - both actualized and non-actualized. Accessibility here is simply capturing possible temporal relations. Failure to see the compatibility of these two models and thinking the linear model rules out all possibilities is a key reason for the mistake Tuggy and many other open theists make in their reasoning.

Tuggy says that the branching structure beyond the present represents facts about the present - outcomes which are possible given the course of history up until now, represented futures not ruled out by past and present happenings. But that's consistent with an actual future. Which path is taken is up to us but that doesn't mean the path doesn't exist.

**End Really Technical Part**

Tuggy says that opponents of open theism haven't argued for or defended the assumption that time is linear (that is, that there is a single, determinate future). That, however, seems plainly wrong. They might not work, but Tuggy actually considers some objections against non-linear conceptions! So it's a bit disingenous to say that there's been no arguments when Tuggy has actually considered some in the very same paper in which he claims this. Additionally, lots of people have defended an actual future. There's a rather large literature here, actually. On this score, it could even be argued that non-linearists have actually been much more dialectically irresponsible than linearists!

Tuggy also claims that if those objections (from bivalence and the Law of the Excluded Middle) he considered are shown wrong, the anti-open theists will then rest their case against open theism on the weight of the claim that the Bible plainly teaches things incompatible with open theism. I, however, do not think that is true, so I'm clearly a counterexample to Tuggy's claim here. I think the main case against open theism of the variety Tuggy and many others like is that it requires an unreal future. And there are lots and lots of reasons against believing such a thing - ones that don't rest on the purely logical considerations that Tuggy addresses in his paper.

Open Theism, the Future, and Free Will - Comments on Some Recent Articles Pt. 1

In the Fall 2006 issue and Winter 2007 issues of Faith and Philosophy (which I've just recently received), there are a number of interesting articles, two of them from an open theist perspective. While some of their arguments I could agree with, their arguments in favor of one or another open theist position left something to be desired. I'll tackle these in chronological order in two different posts.

First we have a paper, "Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future", by Alan Rhoda, Greg Boyd (the Evangelical Godfather of open theism), and Thomas Belt. One of things they do is to argue that the future's causal openness (that is, the state of affairs where the future is not causally determined to be a certain way) is incompatible with the denial of semantic openness for associated future-tensed sentences (a sentence is semantically open if it is neither determinately true nor determinately false). They argue for this incompatibilism by arguing that 'will' in normal cases has 'causative force' - when we utter such future-tensed sentences we are indicating that there is some (high, perhaps) causal probability that what we are saying is going to occur. And supposedly that shows that if the future is causally open then such sentences cannot be semantically closed. But if 'will' does have causative force, that to me still doesn't seem to decide the issue in favor of their incompatibilism unless they simply already assume that if 'It will be the case that p' has causative force that must be because it means something like what their semantics says it does and includes that causitive factor already in the way the semantics works. But why think that unless one were already antecedently convinced of something like open theism? Why think the causative force must show up in the semantics? After all, there's a very important distinction between saying and indicating - when I say that p, I am also indicating that I believe that p, but 'p' in my mouth doesn't have anything about me in its semantics. So 'It will be the case that p' may very well indicate something causal without that showing up in the semantics at all. In fact, their whole argument seems to trade on a confusion between evidence or conditions of rational assertibility on the one hand and truth conditions or semantics on the other. Just because the causal probability of p is a condition for its rational assertion doesn't mean its a condition for its truth. All sorts of things show up in the conditions for all sorts of propositions' rational assertibility without them being conditions on truth. Only a verificationist would want to deny this - but this seems to be what the authors need to affirm to get to their conclusion of incompatibilism. So the argument is just awful.

But let's say 'will' does function in the way the authors suggest. This tells us nothing about tenseless sentences that don't use 'will'. So you can still have sentences about the future with determinate truth values so long as you don't use 'will'. Or if that's not kosher, we could decide to use 'will' stripped of its causal significance and so still have sentences about the future with determinate truth values even in the face of causal openness. So who cares, ultimately, about whether 'will' has causative force or not? Maybe it does, but so normally does 'if' and we can perfectly well use that stripped of causal significance as well. So in sum, their argument for incompatibilism doesn't really even begin to get off the ground (unless of course they are already assuming that the future doesn't exist, but that would be a very different argument which they give later - one that I'm quite happy with since I deny the assumption).

An Argument Against Tooley's Dynamic View of Time

**WARNING: Technical Post**

1. Either States of Affairs (SAFs) are in time or SAFs are not in time.
2. Something cannot be located in a time other than that of its material constituents when they are arranged in such a way to give rise to that thing.
3. So by 2, if SAFs are in time, then SAFs cannot be located in a time other than that of its material constituents when they are arranged in such a way to give rise to that SAF.
4. For some SAFs, the time when their material constituents are arranged in such a way to give rise to them is wholly located in the past.
5. So by 3 and 4, if SAFs are in time, then some SAFs are wholly located in the past.
6. An SAF is actual-in-the-present if and only if it exists in the present.
7. Something exists in the present if and only if it is located in the present.
8. Something is wholly located in the past only if it is not located in the present.
9. So by 5-8, if SAFs are in time then some SAFs are wholly located in the past but not actual-in-the-present.
10. If some SAFs are wholly located in the past but not actual-in-the-present then Tooley's Dynamic View of Time (TDVT) is false.
11. So by 9 and 10, if SAFs are in time then TDVT is false.
12. By 6, and 7, if SAFs are not in time, no SAF is actual-in-the-present.
13. If no SAF is actual-in-the-present, then TDVT is false.
14. So by 1, 11 and 13, TDVT is false.

Fate

Fatalism is the view that everything that happens is somehow fated or perhaps determined or decided with certainty beforehand - there is no way of avoiding what is fated to happen and one has no control over whether such fated occurrences come to pass. One is powerless in the face of fate. Often, people try to argue that various views about God or the future lead to an objectionable sort of fatalism and, since fatalism is false, we ought to reject such views. One such view that has been attacked is the view that for every proposition p about the future, it is determinately true or determinately false that p. So for the proposition that I will go to school tomorrow or perform a certain action eleven years from this date, it is either determinately true that I will do this or determinately false. But some people want to object that this means that fatalism is true and that we have no control over the future since it's already determined for us.

Here's the sort of argument that seems to be in many peoples' minds:

1. If all propositions about the future are determinately true or determinately false, then no one has any control over their future.
2. But we do have control over our futures.
3. So, by 1 and 2, not all propositions about the future are determinately true or determinately false.

To make this argument go against the further view that such propositions are true or false because future times and events actually exist, we can add the following:

4. If not all propositions about the future are determinately true or determinately false, then not all of the future does exists.
5. So, by 3 and 4, not all of the future exists (the open future view).

To make this relevant to issues over open theism (the view that God doesn't know everything about the future), we could further add:

6. God knows about something if and only if that thing exists.
7. So, by 5 and 6, God does not know all of the future.

Why think any of these statements are true? 7 follows from 6 and 5. 6 seems reasonable - one can't know something if there isn't anything there to be known. 5 follows from 3 and 4. 4 seems reasonable - how could every bit of the future exist if parts of it are still indeterminate? 3 follows from 1 and 2. 2 seems fairly common-sensical and accords well with our general experience of the world. 1, however, seems to be the most interesting premise - the one that I think we need to push on if we are to avoid open theism or "open future" views on the one hand and fatalism on the other. 1 is the crux in arguments for fatalism or an open future.

I think something like the following reasoning seems to be lurking in the background for premise 1:

0. If the future is not as real as the present then 1 is true.
0.1. The future is not as real as the present.
Therefore, 1 is true.

Notice, though, that if we reject 0.1, this argument for 1 won't work - we can insist that the existence and full reality of the future on par with the present grounds the determinate truth of claims about the future without entailing fatalism. The reasoning many open-future people seem to be using is that we seem, metaphorically, to be "moving" from the real present into a not-so real future so that, if the future is determinate it can't be because of our free actions since those free actions do not yet exist and so are not fully real - it is as if there is a cosmic play written out that we must inevitably follow, one that is independent of us and constraining us. Indeed, if God knows our futures and the future is not real then that must be because something is constraining us, perhaps God himself. Otherwise, there is no way he could know what we will do.

But now consider the badly-named static view of time, according to which all times are equally real and on a par with each other. I exist and act just as much in future moments as I do in past or present ones. On this view, there isn't necessarily any cosmic blueprint that my future is forced to follow since it is my future - my future free decisions and actions - that make it determinately true or determinately false that I will perform some specific action in the future. So my future is under my control and exists as a result of decisions under my control. It is only when we deny that it is me who makes it true that I will do something - when we deny that I act and exist as much in the future as in the present or past - that we will be tempted to say that determinate truth or falsity about my future actions means such things are outside my own control. So it seems we need to deny the reality of the future in the first place to get the argument for the unreality of the future (1-5) off the ground. And that's clearly a question-begging move - which puts open-theism, with its reliance such arguments, on very shaky ground.