Analysis, Vol 66 No 1 Jan 2006
This article gives an argument for the truth-value of future-tense sentences like 'I'm meeting with Johnson tomorrow.' Author's intention is to show that future events can make current ones about it true or false when uttered, though we have to wait until the future happens to determine which. He considers this the 'common sense view' that 'preserves bivalence' and also claims this conforms to Ockham's conception of time as given by Adams & Kretzman. This is contrary to the Aristotelean view that future-tense sentences have no truth value.
The problem with using the future to underwrite the truth-value of future-tense sentences is that you could get into trouble with a valid but unsound argument:
Let 'A' be a proposition about a future event E
1) if an event E is in the future, it isn't occurring now
2) E is in the future
3) E isn't not occurring
4) If A is true, E is now occurring
5) A is not true
6) A is false
Author believes that 4 is the false premise and wishes to re-write it to be:
4*) if A is true, E has occurred, or is occurring, or will occur.
Dummett offers a variety of views (that author expands upon) about the reality of the past, present, and future-- author likes this model, though it is 'still much too far away'. To bring out the value of eternalism for making future-tense sentences true, author discusses how a future-tensed sentence could be true when we have to wait for it (that is, wait until the future becomes the present) for it to be true. So 'I will meet Johnson' might be made true when I meet Johnson, except not really: the sentence 'I will meet Johnson' isn't made true when 'I meet Johnson', since the latter is a different sentence. The easy solution to the 'toy' problem is to claim that both sentences express the same proposition, namely '[I] [meeting] [Johnson] [date]'. This requires what Dummett calls 'truth-value links', which insist 'perforce' that if this proposition is true, it is true at all times, whether it has yet to occur, or has already occurred, or is now occurring.
The use of truth-value links bolsters only a conditional claim: if future-tense sentences can express true propositions, then present-tense sentences expressing the same proposition must be true once the future in question comes.
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