I suggest a way of extending Stalnaker's account of assertion to allow for centered content. In formulating his account, Stalnaker takes the content of assertion to be uncentered propositions: entities that are evaluated for truth at a possible world. I argue that the content of assertion is sometimes centered: the content is evaluated for truth at something within a possible world. I consider Andy Egan's proposal for extending Stalnaker's account to allow for assertions with centered content. I argue that Egan's account does not succeed. Instead, I propose an account on which the contents of assertion are identified with sets of multi-centered worlds. I argue that such a view not only provides a plausible account of how assertions can have centered content, but also preserves Stalnaker's original insight that successful assertion involves the reduction of shared possibilities.
A commonly held idea regarding the nature of time is that the future is open and the past is fixed or closed. This article investigates the notion that there is an asymmetry in openness between the past and the future. The following questions are considered: How exactly is this asymmetry in openness to be understood? What is the relation between an open future and various ontological views about the future? Is an open future a branching future? What is the relation between an open future and the question of whether contingent statements about the future are true or false? Is an open future compatible with a single determinate future?
I consider whether the self‐ascription theory can succeed in providing a tenseless (B‐theoretic) account of tensed belief and timely action. I evaluate an argument given by William Lane Craig for the conclusion that the self‐ascription account of tensed belief entails a tensed theory (A‐theory) of time. I claim that how one formulates the self‐ascription account of tensed belief depends upon whether one takes the subject of self‐ascription to be a momentary person‐stage or an enduring person. I provide two different formulations of the self‐ascription account of tensed belief, one that is compatible with a perdurantist account of persons and the other that is compatible with an endurantist account of persons. I argue that a self‐ascription account of tensed beliefs for enduring subjects most plausibly involves the self‐ascription of relations rather than properties. I argue that whether one takes the subject of self‐ascription to be a momentary person‐stage or an enduring person, the self‐ascription theory provides a plausible B‐theoretic account of how tensed belief and timely action are possible.
In this paper I consider two strategies for providing tenseless truthconditions for tensed sentences: the token-reflexive theory and the date theory. Both theories have faced a number of objections by prominent A-theorists such as Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig. Traditionally, these two theories have been viewed as rival methods for providing truth-conditions for tensed sentences. I argue that the debate over whether the token-reflexive theory or the date theory is true has arisen from a failure to distinguish between conditions for the truth of tensed tokens and conditions for the truth of propositions expressed by tensed tokens. I demonstrate that there is a true formulation of the token-reflexive theory that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of tensed tokens, and there is a true formulation of the date theory that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of propositions expressed by tensed tokens. I argue that once the views are properly formulated, the A-theorist's objections fail to make their mark. However, I conclude by claiming that even though there is a true formulation of the tokenreflexive theory and a true formulation of the date theory, the New B-theory nonetheless fails to provide a complete account of the truth and falsity of tensed sentences.
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