VI 127f
Future/QuineVsAristotle: E.g. "tomorrow’s sea battle": tomorrow’s sea battle does not exist. Therefore there are no statements about it. Not even the statement that "it is not true now"... -assumes 1) omniscient God - 2) determinism - is incompatible with our freedom of action.
Freedom/Quine: we do what we decide to do - whether decisions are determined is not the issue - Sentence of the Excluded Middle: is definitely valid but is at most, incomplete - ambiguous propositions are not true, but the corresponding propositions - Completion: does not lie in the future, though - ((s) ...but lies in information - truth value: can be left open, but not the meaning of the sentence.)
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Excluded Middle/Quine.
VI 129
Pro three-valued logic: truth value, and not whether the sentence makes sense, would depend on the existence of the unicorn - as it should be - Vs: Problem: there are too many truth-function combinations.
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Truth Values/Quine.
XIII 73
Future/Quine:
XIII 74
Question: are sentences about the future neither true nor false (without truth value) until the matter is decided?
Aristotle: pro. This is still supported today by some theologians.
Future/Theology: if a sentence about the future is already true today, God must know it, but then determinism also follows from it. But that is a different kind of determinism than the one discussed under "freedom of will".
Problem: then people can no longer act freely and free action is a prerequisite for praise and blame, sin and grace.
Quine: I hope the reader is not convinced by my presentation of the argument.
Prediction/future/statement/solution/Quine: Thesis: statements about the future are true or false when made, however capricious or unfounded they may be.
Advantage: only if we accept this, we can treat time and space on one level. Namely, time as the 4th dimension.
Ethics/Morality/Time/Future/Quine: also for the moral discussion we get advantages from it: Example
Dilemma: a) Environmental protection benefits people as well as the unborn,
b) Birth control benefits the environment. But with this we deny the rights of the unborn.
Four-Dimensionalism/future/past/resolution/Quine: Thesis: future and past objects and people are just as real as present ones.
XIII 75
Timeless: timelessly spoken, unborn babies are just as real and their interests are to be respected in the same way.
Birth control: people who are never born because of it are a fiction. Such people do not exist, not even timelessly! Ethics/Morality/Future/Non-Existence/Quine: in this way nobody's right is violated by birth control.
Four-Dimensionalism/Possibilia/Quine: four-dimensionalism creates a place in the sun for all future actualities, however unpredictable, but it is no consolation or help for mere possibilities.
Actual/Possibilia/Quine: the rights of the non-updated are contingent on their actualization.
