• Janus
    16.5k
    From our temporal view how can statements about future events be true or false? Are you proposing that bi-conditional logic presupposes determinism and other logics indeterminism?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    No. But determinism might use biconditional logic, while indeterminism might include an "undecided" evaluation.
  • frank
    16k
    I understand the idea that there is no universal now. No obsevers see time in reverse though do they?Janus

    No. If you don't want to watch the video, you can read the transcript by clicking on the title and scrolling down to where it says "transcript."
  • Janus
    16.5k
    What leads you to believe I didn't watch the video?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    What is it that you think the video shows? It doesn't appear to provide an answer to the titular question...
  • frank
    16k
    What is it that you think the video shows? It doesn't appear to provide an answer to the titular question...Banno

    The question about whether there are unknown true propositions about the future. The answer is: probably.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    That's not an answer. But where and how does it say that? It looks to me to just hand wave at "quantum". Physics doing philosophy, badly.
  • frank
    16k
    But where and how does it say that?Banno

    Watch the video. He's an American, but he sounds Australian, so it should be easy in your ears. He's a physics professor in NY.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    I'll not watch the video. I did look at the transcript. I do not think the author provides an answer to his own question. You seem to think he does. Where does he commit?
  • frank
    16k
    What leads you to believe I didn't watch the video?Janus

    Sorry, the point was that there are a number of options for answering the question about propositions regarding the future.
  • frank
    16k
    I'll not watch the video.Banno

    That's fine. He's one of the best sources for questions about physics. You're missing out.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    He's one of the best sources for questions about physics.frank

    Seeing as he doesn't provide an answer, that's pretty sad. But also probably accurate.

    Missing out on what? He doesn't say much at all, ending up waffling on about Venusian factories.
  • frank
    16k
    Seeing as he doesn't provide an answer, that's pretty sad. But also probably accurate.Banno

    He's not an evangelizer, he walks you through what physicists know about the topic, sort of like a flow chart. Toward the end of the video he addresses what path you have to go down in order to avoid solipsism and maintain a materialist stance. Yes, there's some philosophy in there, but that's just the nature of the topic.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Ok. You previously implied that he answered the question of the facticity of future events, by offering the video as a reply to Janus' "Does it have a truth value before the coin toss is completed?" He doesn't answer that question, but only provides a bit of physics as background.
  • frank
    16k

    Yep. Take it as a warning not to try to answer that question via your homegrown intuitions.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Who, me? I didn't offer an answer, either.

    Folk thinks such questions are profound metaphysics, when they are just differences in ways of talking about the issue. We can choose to talk about the future as fixed or as indeterminate; we can choose to use classical or non classical logics. The choice depends on what we are doing and what we want to say.

    Once again what looks like metaphysics is a choice of language.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    5k
    Truth is a property of sentences.Michael

    Is it? Shouldn't it at the very least be a property of a pair <sentence, interpretation>? (Or a triple that includes as well a world.)

    Here's an analogy.

    Suppose you have a little wagon, and the wheels are held on by cotter pins but one's broken. You bend a paperclip so that it stays in place as the cotter pin did, and then test it, concluding "It's holding, for now anyway."

    Is "holding" a property of the paperclip? If you remove it, would it still be "holding"? Was it "holding" before you bent it into a cotter-pin shape?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Shouldn't it at the very least be a property of a pair <sentence, interpretation>Srap Tasmaner
    The wouldn't you need an interpretation of the interpretation?

    isn't saying things that are true is just something we (sometimes) do? Like using a paperclip to replace a cotter pin?
  • frank
    16k
    Once again what looks like metaphysics is a choice of language.Banno
    Right. I mentioned earlier that worldview (or hinge propositions) are in play regarding dinosaur truths. It's not something that gets worked out logically.

    But also the language we use about time can use some influence from physics.

    The wouldn't you need an interpretation of the interpretation?Banno

    Usually we can pick out the meaning of an utterance from context. If we can't, we can ask. For instance if Bill is looking at a global weather Doppler and says, "It's raining.". We can ask him: where?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Well what am I supposed to do with a post like that? There's nothing here to disagree with, nothing to take umbrage at, not even a pernickety point to pick apart. No fun at all.
  • frank
    16k

    I'll do worse next time.
  • Michael
    15.8k
    Is it?Srap Tasmaner

    I think so, much like accuracy is a property of paintings (that resemble their subject).

    I certainly don’t think that accuracy is a property of the landscape being painted, and I don’t think we need some intermediate thing that sits between the painting and the landscape.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    5k
    Like using a paperclip to replace a cotter pin?Banno

    That was the sense in which I was using "interpretation". Using a paperclip as a cotter pin. More or less.

    much like accuracy is a property of paintingsMichael

    Hmmmm.

    So if you set up your easel in front of my house and make a lovely painting of it, will it seem, even to you, to be accurate if you look at my house from the back? (Or after dark? Or in the rain?)
  • Leontiskos
    3.2k
    (Or a triple that includes as well a world.)Srap Tasmaner

    I think world is the key missing element here. To say that a painting is accurate in itself makes no sense without reference to something outside the painting.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    5k
    To say that a painting is accurate in itself makes no sense without reference to something outside the painting.Leontiskos

    Yes, that was my reservation about saying truth is a property of a sentence.

    The case of paintings is curious. If you paint a nice picture of a farm, with a house in the foreground and a barn in the background, your painting may show the barn as being much smaller, even if the actual barn is much larger than the actual house.

    Is that accurate? Yes, it is, but accurate as a representation of the world? Or as a representation of a perspective on the world?

    (So even the pair <painting, world> looks inadequate.)
  • Leontiskos
    3.2k


    Okay, then I can see why you want to include interpretation. I would err on the side of saying that interpretation/perspective can simply be taken for granted. It could be added as a relata but it isn't strictly necessary to add it. If we feel it necessary to add it then I fear we will need to add other things as well (although we could perhaps fold all interpretive elements into one representative element).

    (And this relates somewhat to Wayfarer's approach, for I think he underestimates how widely accepted a perspectival element is in theories of perception or knowledge.)
  • Janus
    16.5k
    Yes, it is, but accurate as a representation of the world? Or as a representation of a perspective on the world?Srap Tasmaner

    Careful...you'll have @Wayfarer coming to tell you that there is no size difference absent a perspective.

    :ok:
  • Michael
    15.8k
    So if you set up your easel in front of my house and make a lovely painting of it, will it seem, even to you, to be accurate if you look at my house from the back? (Or after dark? Or in the rain?)Srap Tasmaner

    It's an accurate painting of the front of your house on a rainless day.
  • Michael
    15.8k
    To say that a painting is accurate in itself makes no sense without reference to something outside the painting.Leontiskos

    Sure, and being an integer greater than the number 3 makes no sense without reference to the number 3, but being an integer greater than the number 3 isn't a property of the number 3; it's a property of the numbers 4 and 5 and 6 and so on.
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