Relativism, the Open Future, and Propositional Truth
نویسندگان
چکیده
F. Correia and A. Iacona (eds.), Around the Tree: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues Concerning Branching and the Open Future, Synthese Library 361, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5167-5_1, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract In his paper “Future Contingents and Relative Truth,” John MacFarlane argues for truth relativism on the basis of the possibility of the open future. He defends the relativization of a truth predicate of linguistic items: utterances of sentences produced in concrete contexts. In more recent work, however, he contends that this was wrong, because when propositions are taken as truth bearers, the truth absolutists he was objecting to have an escape, and offers a new argument for relativism based on the semantics of “actually.” Here, I will critically examine these points. In the first place, I will suggest that the new argument concerning “actually” is not convincing. More importantly, I argue that truth absolutists should not accept MacFarlane’s “gift,” that is, his proposal for them to resist his previous arguments once they take truth to be a predicate of propositions: if there was a good argument in “Future Contingents and Relative Truth” for truth relativism taking truth as a property of linguistic items, there is still one when taking it as a property of propositions; these issues do not depend on the nature of truth bearers. I conclude by outlining what I take to be the best line for truth absolutists to take regarding the open future. Relativism, the Open Future, and Propositional Truth
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