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Full Idea
If the future is unreal, future individuals are ontologically problematic. Any apparent obligations towards them cannot, it seems, have an object.
Gist of Idea
If the future is not real, we don't seem to have any obligation to future individuals
Source
Robin Le Poidevin (Intro to 'Questions of Time and Tense' [1998], 5)
Book Ref
'Questions of Time and Tense', ed/tr. Le Poidevin,R [OUP 2002], p.8
A Reaction
I certainly 'feel' obligations to the future, but I am not sure whether I 'have' them. How far into the future do the extend? Should I care if homo sapiens is replaced by a different dominant species?
| 15186 | In the tenseless view, all times are equally real, so statements of the future have truth-values [Le Poidevin] |
| 15187 | It is claimed that the tense view entails the unreality of both future and past [Le Poidevin] |
| 15188 | If things don't persist through time, then change makes no sense [Le Poidevin] |
| 15189 | Things which have ceased change their A-series position; things that persist change their B-series position [Le Poidevin] |
| 15191 | At the very least, minds themselves seem to be tensed [Le Poidevin] |
| 15190 | Evil can't be an illusion, because then the illusion that there is evil would be evil [Le Poidevin] |
| 15192 | We share a common now, but not a common here [Le Poidevin] |
| 15193 | The new tenseless theory offers indexical truth-conditions, instead of a reductive analysis [Le Poidevin] |
| 15195 | If the future is not real, we don't seem to have any obligation to future individuals [Le Poidevin] |
| 15196 | God being inside or outside of time both raise a group of difficult problems [Le Poidevin] |
| 15197 | Fiction seems to lack a tensed perspective, and offers an example of tenseless language [Le Poidevin] |