Abstract

The thin red line (TRL) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of indeterminism. It is inspired by a famous solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge associated with William of Ockham, in which the freedom of agents is argued to be compatible with God’s omniscience. In the modern branching time setting, the theory of the TRL is widely regarded to suffer from several fundamental problems. In this paper we propose several new TRL semantics, each with differing degrees of success. This leads up to our final semantics, which is a cross between the TRL and supervaluationism. We discuss the notions of truth, validity and semantic consequence which result from our final semantics, and demonstrate some of its pleasing results. This account, we believe, answers the main objection in the literature, and thus places the TRL on the same level as any other competing semantics for future contingents.

Highlights

  • The thin red line is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents

  • We present several pleasing results for the STRL semantics, showing that it generates all the plausible Ockhamist validities and avoids a well-known problem for supervaluationism presented by Willimson and Tweedle

  • In this article we have focused on one in particular: how to account for predictions made off the thin red line (TRL)

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Summary

Introduction

The thin red line (or TRL) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of (perhaps radical) indeterminism It is inspired by a well known solution to the. We present several pleasing results for the STRL semantics, showing that it generates all the plausible Ockhamist validities and avoids a well-known problem for supervaluationism presented by Willimson and Tweedle. With this begins our project of placing the TRL on the same level as other competing semantics for future contingents

Ockhamism
The problem
The solution
Conclusion of Ockham
Prior meets Ockham
Problems with the history parameter
The thin red line
Elementary history-independent semantics
Problems for the TRL
Solutions to the first problem
Introducing “would”
To shift or not to shift
Modal ‘would’
Modal ‘will’
Supervaluational thin red line
Validity
Semantic consequence
Conclusion
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