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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

168395

No-futurism and metaphysical contingentism

Baptiste Le Bihan

pp. 483-497

Abstract

According to no-futurism, past and present entities are real, but future ones are not. This view faces a skeptical challenge (Bourne in Australas J Philos 80(3):359–371 2002; A future for presentism, Clarendon Press, Oxford 2006; Braddon-Mitchell in Analysis 64(283):199–203 2004): if no-futurism is true, how do you know you are present? I shall propose a new skeptical argument based on the physical possibility of Gödelian worlds (Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist, Open Court, La Salle, pp. 555–562, 1949). This argument shows that a no-futurist has to endorse a metaphysical contingentist reading of no-futurism, the view that no-futurism is contingently true. But then, the no-futurist has to face a new skeptical challenge: how do you know that you are in a no-futurist world?

Publication details

Published in:

(2014) Axiomathes 24 (4).

Pages: 483-497

Full citation:

Le Bihan Baptiste (2014) „No-futurism and metaphysical contingentism“. Axiomathes 24 (4), 483–497.