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Futuri contingenti
Gallina, Francesco; Spolaore, Giuseppe
2016
Abstract
Future contingents are statements that predict events (or a states of affairs, or facts) that are neither inevitable nor impossible. The standard example of a future contingent is the claim 'Tomorrow there will be a sea battle'. Some traditional and prima facie strong arguments lead, from the premise that future contingents have a determinate truth-value at their moment of use, to the conclusion that the future is inevitable. Philosophers are thus faced with a difficult choice between rejecting these arguments, subscribing to the principle of bivalence, and adopting fatalism. Each of these options has deep philosophical consequences concerning, for instance, the nature of time and free will. Moreover, the debate about future contingents has fostered important insights in the semantics of temporal and modal languages.
Journal
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Francesco Gallina, Giuseppe Spolaore, "Futuri contingenti", in "APhEx 13", 2016, pp. 33
Languages
it
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