Dartmouth Events

Sapientia Lecture Series

Ned Markosian, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "The Open Future." Free and open to all. Reception follows.

Friday, October 19, 2018
3:30pm – 5:00pm
103 Thornton Hall
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Lectures & Seminars

Abstract: “We would all like to have an open future. And I think this is an appropriate attitude. Which raises an important question: What is the best way to understand the notion of an open future when we say things like “We would all like to have an open future”? In this talk I will consider several different ways of answering this question. I will argue that, contrary to what many philosophers believe, the relevant sense of an open future does not require truth-value gaps. Instead, I will argue, the relevant sense of an open future involves an ability to access different possible worlds. And I will suggest that an ability to access different possible worlds is best understood in terms of the notion of agent causation, together with a conditional analysis of ability.”

Ned Markosian is on the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He works mainly in metaphysics, but also has research interests in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of art, and various other areas of philosophy. He is co-author of the textbook, An Introduction to Metaphysics (Cambridge University Pr., 2010). Read more about him - and read most of his many papers - here.

The Sapientia Lecture Series is funded by the Mark J. Byrne 1985 Fund in Philosophy.

 

For more information, contact:
Marcia Welsh
(603) 646-3738

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.