Three Perspectives on the Open Future: Ockham, Peirce and Belnap

Abstract

This essay presents and critically discusses three different views on the open future and its consequences for the truth-values of future contingents, i.e. those statements that say that something is going to be the case which is not already predetermined to be going to be the case by facts about the present and past. The first of these views, associated with the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, holds that future contingents are uniformly false. According to the second view, defended, among many others, by the contemporary philosopher Nuel Belnap, future contingents turn out to be neither true nor false. Accordingly, neither of these first two views allows for the truth of future contingents; and as will be shown, both these views have important – and arguably unpalatable – consequences for logic and semantics. By contrast, the third of the views to be reviewed, which is associated with the medieval philosopher William of Ockham, allows for the truth of future contingents and avoids these consequences.

Key words: open future, truth, determinism, future contingents, tense logic.