Category Archives: semantics

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.7) – Against Open-Closurism

This is part 8 of my ongoing series on Patrick Todd’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 by… 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.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 »

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. 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, instead… Read More »

Responding to Craig and Hunt (Part 4 – the semantic argument)

This is the fourth installment in a series of posts in which I respond to a recent 2013 paper entitled “Perils of the Open Road” authored by William Lane Craig and David Hunt (hereafter, C&H). In their paper C&H critique two papers defending open theism: a 2006 paper (hereafter, RBB) that I co-wrote with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt entitled “Open… Read More »