Category Archives: semantics

The Metaphysical Muddles of Molinism ā€“ Some Thoughts on MacGregor (Part 3)

This is my third and final post on Kirk MacGregorā€™s book,Ā Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures (2022). My first post dealt with chapters 1ā€“3. My second post dealt with chapter 4. This post covers chapters 5ā€“6 and part of the concluding chapter. In Chapter 5 MacGregor defends Molinism’s Biblical credentials against various open theism friendly prooftexts.ā€¦ Read More »

Todd (ch.8) ā€“ The Assertion Problem

This is the 9th and final installment of my series on Patrick Toddā€™s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). (Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.) In this chapter Todd tackles the “assertion problem” for open futurism. He’s quick to clarify that it’s notā€¦ Read More »

Todd (ch.7) ā€“ Against Open-Closurism

This is part 8 of my ongoing series on Patrick Toddā€™s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). (Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.) In Chapter 7 Todd and his coauthor, Brian Rabern, tackle a view that they dub “open-closurism”. It’s the view espoused byā€¦ Read More »

Todd (ch.4) ā€“ Against Conditional Excluded Middle

This is part 4 of my ongoing series on Patrick Toddā€™s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. Ch. 3 dealt with will excluded middle (WEM), the thesis that Fp āˆØ F~p (i.e., that forā€¦ Read More »

Todd (ch.2) ā€“ Models of the Undetermined Future

This is part 2 of my ongoing series on Patrick Toddā€™s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). You can find part 1 here. In chapter 2, Todd compares and contrasts “three models of the undetermined future” and proposes a unified semantics for the future tense. I argueā€¦ Read More »

Correspondence vs. Disquotation

In my previous two posts I have discussed the correspondence theory of truth and disquotation principles. In this post I’m going to use the former to argue against the latter.Ā More specifically, I’m going to argue that the “if and only if” of the disquotation principles should be merely an “only if”. In other words, insteadā€¦ Read More »

Truth and Disquotation Principles

In my previous post I talked about the correspondence theory of truth and its relation to truthmaker theory. I’m going to follow itĀ up with a series of posts on various issues concerning truth and ontology that I’ve been mulling over off-and-on over the past several years.Ā The current post concerns disquotation principles. I distinguish between sententialā€¦ Read More »

Responding to Craig and Hunt (Part 4 ā€“ the semantic argument)

This is the fourthĀ installment in a series of posts in which I respond to a recent 2013Ā paperĀ entitled ā€œPerils of the Open Roadā€ authored by William Lane Craig and David Hunt (hereafter, C&H).Ā In their paper C&H critique two papers defending open theism: a 2006Ā paperĀ (hereafter, RBB) that I co-wrote with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt entitled ā€œOpenā€¦ Read More »