Fara’s Formula and the Supervaluational Thin Red Line

Supervaluationism is one of the most discussed approaches to the semantics of future tense sentences in a branching time. In this paper, we consider the criticism advanced by Malpass against Supervaluationism. This criticism relies on the fact that supervaluationists must accept as supertrue disjunctions whose disjuncts are not only supertrue-which supervaluationists are ready to acknowledge-but also not satisfiable. In order to show this, Malpass proposes a formula, FF 1 , which shows the existence of a satisfiable disjunction with unsatisfiable disjuncts in supervaluationist models. In reply, we show that formula FF 1 cannot be expressed within a model (whether Ockhamist or supervaluationist) because it quantifies on models. It can be correctly characterised only within a meta-model that has the resources to quantify on various models. However, once that is done, FF 1 is, for the advocates of Supervaluationism, no more demanding than other disjunctions because it just generalises at the meta-theoretical level what supervaluationists already acknowledge at the theoretical level.As is well known, the semantics of future tense sentences in a branching time (BT) model is controversial. One of the most discussed approaches is Supervaluationism (Thomason, 1970). Supervaluationism is a kind of para-complete semantics; however, compared to other semantic frameworks that allow truth value gaps, Supervaluationism has the advantage of preserving the validity of formulas such as Fφ _ F¬φ and the invalidity of formulas such as Fnφ ^Fn¬φ, 1 which seem very intuitive. 1The meaning of Fn is "in n time units it will be the case that …".

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“…The procedure is intuitive enough however, and poses no outright logical difficulties of which I am aware. (Malpass, 2013, p. 273)…”

Section: Problems With Malpass's Criticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Supervaluationism has received much criticism. Here we will consider the challenge advanced by Malpass (2013). Malpass refers to an argument put forward by Graff Fara (2010) against “canonical Supervaluationism” (for instance, that of Fine, 1975) and readapts it to Thomason's Supervaluationism (TS).…”

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confidence: 99%

A critique of Malpass's argument against Supervaluationism

Florio

Frigerio

2022

Theoria

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“…Iacona distinguishes between "plain truth" and "truth in a history," while I use "truth at context" and "truth at index," respectively. However, I believe that the difference is mostly terminological and our actual views are very much in line.6 For more on these problems in the context of branching time, see,Malpass (2013). By means of a simple example, observe that in supervaluationism φ is true at every context at which φ is true.…”

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confidence: 94%

Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time

2022

Synthese Library

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Ockhamism Without Molinism

Wawer

2021

Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time

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Fara’s Formula and the Supervaluational Thin Red Line

Cited by 4 publications

References 9 publications

A critique of Malpass's argument against Supervaluationism

A critique of Malpass's argument against Supervaluationism

Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time

Ockhamism Without Molinism

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