Dummett on McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time
Issue: Issue 06 • Author/s: Brian Garrett
Topics: History of Analytic Philosophy, Theoretical philosophy
Michael Dummett’s paper “A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time” put forward an ingenious interpretation of McTaggart’s famous proof. My aim in this discussion is not to assess the cogency of McTaggart’s reasoning, but to criticise Dummett’s interpretation of McTaggart.
Floating, Anchored and Future-Tensed Propositions [Critical Note]
Issue: Issue 18 • Author/s: Francesco Orilia
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy
There are two prominent theses in Bonomi’s 2023 paper “Non-Persistent Truths”, here labelled the two-levels and the changing background theses. According to the former, both semantic eternalism and temporalism are right, in that our ordinary natural language utterances may be taken to express both anchored propositions with a fixed truth value and floating propositions with a changing truth value. According to the changing background thesis, there are future-tensed propositions that change truth value, for reasons that have to do with change in background information available to ordinary speakers, rather than…