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2013 | 25 | 243-254

Article title

Are There Future Facts?

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

PL

Abstracts

EN
Facts are often defined as actual events or states of affairs in the present or in the past. The future is also often conceived as that which is yet to be an event or a state of affair. With these conceptions of facts and future it is taken for granted that there cannot be future facts. The future is bedeviled with contingency and probability. But a critical look at facts shows that facts, be it of the past or the present, are also bedeviled with the problem of contingency,probability, and change in status. So, a critical reformulation of facts coupled with a conception of future that distinguishes between the that of nature in general, and our own future, gives room for the idea of future facts. Though this idea of future facts deals with events or states of affairs yet to be present, it is valid until the future becomes present and the event in question does not occur just as present or past facts remain facts subject to new facts that may render them false.

Keywords

Year

Volume

25

Pages

243-254

Physical description

Contributors

  • Sylvester Idemudia Odia, Lecturer, Dept. of Philosophy & Religions, Faculty of Arts, University of Benin

References

  • Aristotle, (2001), On Interpretation, trans. by E. M. Edghill, in Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: The Modern Library).
  • Ayer, A. J. (1959), Verification and Experience, in A. J. Ayer (ed.). Logical Positivism (New York: The Free Press), pp. 228–243.
  • DeWitt, Richard (2004), Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd).
  • Hahn, Hans (1959), Logic, Mathematics and Knowledge of Nature, trans. by Arthur Pap. in A. J. Ayer, (ed.). Logical Positivism (New York: The Free Press), pp. 147–161.
  • Loux, Michael J. (2006), Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. 3rd ed. (New York & London: Routledge).
  • Mautner, Thomas (ed.) (2000), The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Penguin Books Ltd).
  • Oliver, A. (2005), Facts, in E. Craig (ed.). The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (London: Routledge).
  • Parkinson, G. H. R. (Gen. ed.) (1988), An Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge). Randall, J. H. Jr. (1939), On Understanding the History of Philosophy, “The Journal of Philosophy”, 36, no. 17, August, pp. 460–474.
  • Rosen, S. (ed.). (2000), The Philosopher’s Handbook: Essential Readings from Plato to Kant. (New York: Random House Reference).
  • Whitmore, E. Charles (1935), Self-Warrant; The Criterion of Fact, “The Philosophical Review”, 44, no. 4, July, pp. 368–374.

Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.desklight-c7d52192-a896-45bd-b064-49c0024b19ac
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