Abstract
It is debated among open theists whether propositions about the contingent future should be regarded as straightforwardly true or false, as all false without exception, or as lacking truth-values. This article discusses some recent work on this topic and proposes a solution different than the one I have previously endorsed.
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Notes
More recently, Arbour has also argued against OFOT; see his (2019). His rather elaborate arguments against OFOT will not be considered here.
One reason I gave for this preference I now recognize not to be compelling. I preferred LFOT because I saw that the argument against standard truth-values for CFPs would be difficult to make convincing, whereas the argument for the incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will, though contested, is relatively clear and straightforward. But there is a simple way to avoid that difficulty, by taking the truth-values as a provisional assumption, to be rejected after the combination of foreknowledge and libertarian free will proves contradictory.
Interestingly Alfred J. Freddoso, formerly an exponent of Ockhamism, came to agree with this: he reports a “conversion from Ockhamism to Molinism” (Freddoso, 1988, 61).
See the selections by Fischer in John Martin Fischer, ed., 1989.
Actually this is not quite my view. I say that references to ‘God’ imply the attributes God is commonly understood to possess by users of this expression. I do not, on the other hand, suppose that ‘God,’ used without further explanation, entails such controversial attributes as timelessness, simplicity, and the like, whether or not these are genuinely attributes of God.
I substitute this for Arbour’s original proposition, in order to stick with the single example.
I would point at that, at the time when my book was being written, it was widely taken for granted that CFPs have truth values. The extensive discussion about “hard and soft facts” makes sense only on the assumption that they do.
The Law of Large Numbers asserts that, in the long run, frequency settles down on probability. Thus, in Pruss’s example, as the fair coin is tossed over and over the frequency of heads will tend to come closer and closer to .5 – not to zero, which would be the result if the series of heads were to come to an end.
For another discussion of this argument, see Hess and Rhoda 2020.
Note that this need not imply the rejection of actual infinities in other contexts. All that is needed is that the different tosses do not exist until the time comes when they are made. And this is an assumption the Open Futurist will be happy to accept.
Pronounced”q-point”.
To be sure, Pruss’s question might still have point if taken as a question about what is causally possible for human beings to believe. No doubt it is in fact very difficult, indeed impossible, for us to consistently distinguish between considering some propositions as very nearly certain, and believing them as true without reservation. In epistemic practice, the attitude of an Open Futurist towards the proposition q! probably would not differ appreciably from that taken towards a proposition she takes herself to know to be true. Nevertheless, this inevitable epistemic infirmity of us humans scarcely establishes the point Pruss needs to make.
Adherents include Greg Boyd, Alan Rhoda, Elijah Hess, Greg Boyd, and Patrick Todd.
This is however debatable. It is a nice question whether ordinary usage regards predictions of contingent events as straightforwardly true (or false) at the time when they are made. What is clear, I think, is that it is wrong to think all such predictions are false regardless of the actual outcome.
My thanks to an unnamed referee, for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
References
Arbour, B. H. (2013). Future freedom and the fixity of truth: Closing the road to limited foreknowledge open theism. International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 73, 189–207.
Arbour, B. H. (2019). A few worries about the systematic metaphysics of open theism. In B. Arbour (Ed.), Philosophical essays against open theism (pp. 45–67). Routledge.
Fischer, J. M. (Ed.). (1989). God, foreknowledge, and freedom. Stanford University Press.
Freddoso, A. J. (1988). Introduction to Luis De Molina, On Divine Foreknowlege: Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso. Cornell University Press.
Hasker, W. (1989). God, time, and knowledge. Cornell University Press.
Hess, E., & Rhoda, A. (2020). Is an open infinite future impossible? Reply to Pruss. Faith and Philosophy, 37(3), 363–369.
Pruss, A. (2010). Probability and the open future view. Faith and Philosophy, 27, 190–196.
Pruss, A. (2016). An open infinite future is impossible. Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, 33(4), 461–464.
Purtill, R. L. (1988). Fatalism and the omnitemporality of truth. Faith and Philosophy, 5, 185–192.
Rhoda, A. (2010). Probability, truth, and the openness of the future: A replytoPruss. Faith and Philosophy, 27, 197–204.
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Hasker, W. Future truth and freedom. Int J Philos Relig 90, 109–119 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09792-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09792-0