Philosophy Society: 'Assertions and Beliefs about the Future'
Dr Craig Bourne
About the event
Event type: Seminar
When is it permissible to assert or believe anything? One minimal requirement is (roughly) that we shouldn’t assert or believe what isn’t true (at least under ordinary circumstances). Recently, some philosophers have argued that this creates problems for those who think that anything that is said about the future is neither true nor false.
If the future is in some sense yet to be decided, no claim about the future can be true. Consequently, according to this view, nothing should be asserted or believed about the future. Yet it seems that perfectly good assertions can be made about the future and perfectly good beliefs can be had about the future.
So those who think that claims about the future are neither true nor false will have to show how their view is compatible with these apparently good assertions and beliefs about the future. I’ll show how this can be done.