7月11日Barry Lee 教授讲座：Eternalism, Counting Across Times, and the Argument from Semantics
来源：会议讲座
作者：
时间：2014-07-07
英国约克大学教授Barry Lee （University of York, UK）
7月11日（星期五）15：00-17：00
老化学楼外国哲学研究所227教室
Eternalism, Counting Across Times, and the Argument from Semantics
Abstract:
In his 2004 paper ‘Tensed Quantifiers’, David Lewis presented an apparently powerful case for eternalism by arguing that we cannot account for the truth-conditions of sentences like ‘There have been forty-four presidents of the United states’ and ‘There will be five more presidents of the United states’ and maintain a non-revisionary attitude towards their truth-values, without committing to the existence of ‘past’ and ‘future’ things. Related arguments can be found in Ted Sider’s ‘Presentism and Ontological Commitment’ (1999) and Zoltan Gendler Szabó’s ‘Counting Across Times’ (2006). We can call the fully developed form of this argument the Argument from Semantics (AfS). In this paper, I counter the AfS by showing that these truth-conditions can be captured without commitment to the existence (in a present tense sense or a tenseless sense) of things—such as Socrates and Abraham Lincoln—which we take to have existed but not to exist, or things—like the particular children of those born today—which we take it do not exist, though they will.
7月11日（星期五）15：00-17：00
老化学楼外国哲学研究所227教室
Eternalism, Counting Across Times, and the Argument from Semantics
Abstract:
In his 2004 paper ‘Tensed Quantifiers’, David Lewis presented an apparently powerful case for eternalism by arguing that we cannot account for the truth-conditions of sentences like ‘There have been forty-four presidents of the United states’ and ‘There will be five more presidents of the United states’ and maintain a non-revisionary attitude towards their truth-values, without committing to the existence of ‘past’ and ‘future’ things. Related arguments can be found in Ted Sider’s ‘Presentism and Ontological Commitment’ (1999) and Zoltan Gendler Szabó’s ‘Counting Across Times’ (2006). We can call the fully developed form of this argument the Argument from Semantics (AfS). In this paper, I counter the AfS by showing that these truth-conditions can be captured without commitment to the existence (in a present tense sense or a tenseless sense) of things—such as Socrates and Abraham Lincoln—which we take to have existed but not to exist, or things—like the particular children of those born today—which we take it do not exist, though they will.