Category Archives: fatalism

Against Personal Numerical Identity over Time

The topic of identity over time has long been a topic in philosophy. Frequently, these discussions take it for granted that, for understanding the persistence of persons at least, we need to have numerical identity over time. One motivating idea is that we commonly say, in reference to photos or memories of our younger selves,… Read More »

The Metaphysical Muddles of Molinism – Some Thoughts on MacGregor (Part 3)

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

Todd (ch.5) – Omniscience and the Open Future

This is part 5 of my ongoing series on Patrick Todd’s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). (Previous installments: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.) Chapter 5 is a relatively short chapter that initially focuses on how to understand divine omniscience in relation to… Read More »

Fatalism and the “Modal Fallacy” Fallacy

A common trope in discussions of fatalism is that arguments for fatalism are invariably guilty of a “modal fallacy”, specifically the fallacy of conflating “necessarily, if p then q” with “if p, then necessarily q“. In fancy academic jargon this is known as conflating the necessity of the consequence (i.e., of the whole conditional, if p then q)… Read More »

Todd (ch.4) – Against Conditional Excluded Middle

This is part 4 of my ongoing series on Patrick Todd’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 ∨ F~p (i.e., that for… Read More »

Todd (ch.3) – Against “Will Excluded Middle”

This is part 3 of my ongoing series on Patrick Todd’s recently published book The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (Oxford, 2021). You can find part 1 here and part 2 here. Todd’s main focus in chapter 3  is a thesis that he calls “will excluded middle” (WEM). Simply put, WEM says… Read More »

Open Futurism, Supervaluationism, and Indeterminacy – A Critique of Barnes and Cameron

In my previous post on Ch. 2 of Patrick Todd’s book The Open Future (Oxford 2021), I criticized Todd for confusing supervaluationism with the view defended by Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron in two influential papers. In this post I want to look more closely at the view of Barnes and Cameron (hereafter B&C). For ease of… Read More »

Todd (ch.2) – Models of the Undetermined Future

This is part 2 of my ongoing series on Patrick Todd’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 argue… Read More »