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948The open future: bivalence, determinism and ontologyPhilosophical Studies 146 (2): 291-309. 2008.In this paper we aim to disentangle the thesis that the future is open from theses that often get associated or even conflated with it. In particular, we argue that the open future thesis is compatible with both the unrestricted principle of bivalence and determinism with respect to the laws of nature. We also argue that whether or not the future (and indeed the past) is open has no consequences as to the existence of (past and) future ontology.
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63In this book, Yagisawa defends a type of realism about merely possible worlds and individuals.1 The view defended is much closer to David Lewis’s genuine modal realism than it is to any kind of actualist or ersatzist modal realism, and I think the best way of understanding Yagisawa’s view will be to see where it differs from Lewis’s. To that end, let’s briefly remind ourselves of Lewis’s theory
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191Quine said that the ontological question can be asked in three words, ‘What is there?’, and answered in one, ‘everything’. He was wrong. We need an extra word to ask the ontological question: it is ‘What is there, really?’; and it cannot be answered truthfully with ‘everything’ because there are some things that exist but which don’t really exist (and maybe even some things that really exist but which don’t exist).
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169There are various theses that go by the name ‘mereological essentialism’, but common to all is the thought that things have their parts essentially. The most obvious way of stating this is: for all objects x, for all parts y of x, x has y as a part in every world in which x exists. But there are various ways to read this claim.
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I attempt to accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness with classical logic and bivalence. I hold that for any vague predicate there is a sharp cut-off between the things that satisfy it and the things that don’t; I claim that this is due to the greater naturalness of one of the candidate meanings of that predicate. I extend the view to give an account of arbitrary reference and a solution to Benacerraf problems. I end by exploring the idea that it is ontically indeterminate what the most natural …Read more
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46forthcoming in a collection of papers (from OUP, edited by Bob Hale) given at the Arché modality conference, St Andrews University, 7th-9th June 2006.
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics and Epistemology |
| Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
| Metaphysics and Epistemology |
| Science, Logic, and Mathematics |