The logical way of being true: Truth values and the ontological foundation of logic

In this paper I reject the normative interpretation of logic and give reasons for a realistic account based on the ontological treatment of logical values

False Speech: Quagmire?

Recently decided cases in several Federal Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court show that First Amendment false speech case law is contradictory and unpredictable. This Article gives examples and concludes that legal liability for false speech will continue to be arbitrary and even susceptible to intentionally unjust decisionmaking if judges and juries individually and collectively disregard or downplay the necessity of an honest search for truth under the guise of tolerance and evenhandedness. If Americans wish to avoid an anything-goes “quagmire” about truth, they must—despite inevitable resistance in a civilization increasingly rife with skeptics—undergo transformations of their thinking habits to genuinely seek and successfully identify truth with charitable application in law. In addition, a certain kind of optimism is necessary to render consistent, predictable, and correct conclusions in false speech cases. This Article’s implications may also extend beyond false speech to other areas of constitutional and common law

The true future of the open future

This thesis defends the 'true-futurist' view, according to which statements about the future are either true or false, even if the future is open and unsettled in some robust, objective and mind-independent sense. A general argument for the validity of the principle of bivalence in the open future is advanced. The key feature of such argument is the 'principle of retrospective determinacy', stating that, for any proposition p, if it is now the case that p, then it was true that p would be the case. Different possible objections are discussed and dismissed. Second, two true-futurist theories are presented and shown to meet all the relevant desiderata of a true-futurist theory. In particular, much attention is devoted to the 'problem of counterfactual evaluation', concerning the truth-value of future-contingent statements in merely counterfactual scenarios. In addition, it is argued that that the choice between the two true-futurist theories depends upon which metaphysical picture of time is assumed as true. Some notable theoretical commitments of True-Futurism are examined. In particular, it is argued that True-Futurism is incompatible with two different ideas. The first one being that future-contingent statements (although bivalent) have an indefinite truth-value. The second one being that there are true 'counterfactuals of openness', stating that a certain future-contingent statement would have had a specific truth-value, had different circumstances obtained

The true future of the open future

This thesis defends the 'true-futurist' view, according to which statements about the future are either true or false, even if the future is open and unsettled in some robust, objective and mind-independent sense. A general argument for the validity of the principle of bivalence in the open future is advanced. The key feature of such argument is the 'principle of retrospective determinacy', stating that, for any proposition p, if it is now the case that p, then it was true that p would be the case. Different possible objections are discussed and dismissed. Second, two true-futurist theories are presented and shown to meet all the relevant desiderata of a true-futurist theory. In particular, much attention is devoted to the 'problem of counterfactual evaluation', concerning the truth-value of future-contingent statements in merely counterfactual scenarios. In addition, it is argued that that the choice between the two true-futurist theories depends upon which metaphysical picture of time is assumed as true. Some notable theoretical commitments of True-Futurism are examined. In particular, it is argued that True-Futurism is incompatible with two different ideas. The first one being that future-contingent statements (although bivalent) have an indefinite truth-value. The second one being that there are true 'counterfactuals of openness', stating that a certain future-contingent statement would have had a specific truth-value, had different circumstances obtained