Linearism, Universalism and Scope Ambiguities

Abstract

In this paper, I distinguish two possible families of semantics of the open future: Linearism, according to which future tense sentences are evaluated with respect to a unique possible future history, and Universalism, according to which future tense sentences are evaluated universally quantifying on the histories passing through the moment of evaluation. An argument in favour of Linearism is based on the fact future tense does not exhibit scope interactions with negation. Todd (2020, 2021) defends Universalism against this argument proposing an error theory, according to which the speakers engaged in non‐philosophical conversations implicitly assume a linearist semantics of the future. In this paper, I show that an error theory is not needed for defending Universalism and that the scopelessness of negation can have another explanation. The absence of a wide‐scope reading of negation characterises many other linguistic constructions: counterfactuals, vague predicates, generics and plural definite descriptions. My main thesis is that, their considerable differences aside, these constructions have something in common: they are true when the predicate applies to the members of a set, false when the predicate does not apply to the members of the set and indeterminate in the intermediate cases. When negation interacts with such constructions tends to take the narrow scope reading only. I review two types of explanations for this behaviour, one semantic and the other pragmatic. Since this explanation for the scopelessness of negation is at least as good as that of Linearism, I conclude that the argument against Universalism is ineffective.