Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Non-Persistent Truths [Target Article]

Issue: Issue 17 • Author/s: Andrea Bonomi
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

I start from Evans’ criticism of temporalism, based on the claim that it does not “provide for the stable evaluation of utterances”. I try to show that, with suitable qualifications, assuming the possibility of evaluations yielding different truth-values at different times is not an “eccentric” move (as suggested by Evans). I briefly consider Prior’s metaphysical arguments in favour of the asymmetry between past and future and I suggest that, independently of these arguments, there are linguistic reasons in support of such an assumption. In particular, there are some future-oriented statements…