more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Maybe both the past and the future are real, determined by our current temporal perspective. Past is then events capable of having a causal influence upon events near us, and future is events we can affect, but from which we receive no information.
Gist of Idea
Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real
Source
Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5)
Book Ref
Dummett,Michael: 'Truth and the Past (Dewey Lectures)' [Columbia 2004], p.86
A Reaction
This is the Four-Dimensional view, which is opposed to Presentism. Might immediate unease is that it gives encouragement to fortune-tellers, whom I have always dismissed with 'You can't see the future, because it doesn't exist'.
| 8189 | Truth-condition theorists must argue use can only be described by appeal to conditions of truth [Dummett] |
| 8191 | The truth-conditions theory must get agreement on a conception of truth [Dummett] |
| 8190 | Intuitionists rely on the proof of mathematical statements, not their truth [Dummett] |
| 8192 | I no longer think what a statement about the past says is just what can justify it [Dummett] |
| 8193 | Verification is not an individual but a collective activity [Dummett] |
| 8195 | Undecidable statements result from quantifying over infinites, subjunctive conditionals, and the past tense [Dummett] |
| 8194 | Surely there is no exact single grain that brings a heap into existence [Dummett] |
| 8198 | A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett] |
| 8197 | Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real [Dummett] |
| 8196 | The present cannot exist alone as a mere boundary; past and future truths are rendered meaningless [Dummett] |
| 8199 | The existence of a universe without sentience or intelligence is an unintelligible fantasy [Dummett] |