In Chapter 9 of On Interpretation, Aristotle argues that at least some statements about the future need to be exempted from the principle of Excluded Middle:
In the case of that which is or which has taken place, propositions, whether positive or negative, must be true or false. Again, in the case of a pair of contradictories, either when the subject is universal and the propositions are of a universal character, or when it is individual, as has been said,’ one of the two must be true and the other false; whereas when the subject is universal, but the propositions are not of a universal character, there is no such necessity. We have discussed this type also in a previous chapter.
When the subject, however, is individual, and that which is predicated of it relates to the future, the case is altered. For if all propositions whether positive or negative are either true or false, then any given predicate must either belong to the subject or not, so that if one man affirms that an event of a given character will take place and another denies it, it is plain that the statement of the one will correspond with reality and that of the other will not. For the predicate cannot both belong and not belong to the subject at one and the same time with regard to the future.
Thus, if it is true to say that a thing is white, it must necessarily be white; if the reverse proposition is true, it will of necessity not be white. Again, if it is white, the proposition stating that it is white was true; if it is not white, the proposition to the opposite effect was true. And if it is not white, the man who states that it is making a false statement; and if the man who states that it is white is making a false statement, it follows that it is not white. It may therefore be argued that it is necessary that affirmations or denials must be either true or false.
Now if this be so, nothing is or takes place fortuitously, either in the present or in the future, and there are no real alternatives; everything takes place of necessity and is fixed. For either he that affirms that it will take place or he that denies this is in correspondence with fact, whereas if things did not take place of necessity, an event might just as easily not happen as happen; for the meaning of the word ‘fortuitous’ with regard to present or future events is that reality is so constituted that it may issue in either of two opposite directions. Again, if a thing is white now, it was true before to say that it would be white, so that of anything that has taken place it was always true to say ‘it is’ or ‘it will be’. But if it was always true to say that a thing is or will be, it is not possible that it should not be or not be about to be, and when a thing cannot not come to be, it is impossible that it should not come to be, and when it is impossible that it should not come to be, it must come to be. All, then, that is about to be must of necessity take place. It results from this that nothing is uncertain or fortuitous, for if it were fortuitous it would not be necessary.
The argument here is that if it is already true, for example, that I will eat breakfast tomorrow, then I will necessarily eat breakfast tomorrow, and there is no option about this and no ability of anything to prevent it. Aristotle is here taking it for granted that some things about the future are uncertain, and is using this as a reductio against the position that such claims can be already true. He goes on to give additional reasons for the same thing:
Again, to say that neither the affirmation nor the denial is true, maintaining, let us say, that an event neither will take place nor will not take place, is to take up a position impossible to defend. In the first place, though facts should prove the one proposition false, the opposite would still be untrue. Secondly, if it was true to say that a thing was both white and large, both these qualities must necessarily belong to it; and if they will belong to it the next day, they must necessarily belong to it the next day. But if an event is neither to take place nor not to take place the next day, the element of chance will be eliminated. For example, it would be necessary that a sea-fight should neither take place nor fail to take place on the next day.
These awkward results and others of the same kind follow, if it is an irrefragable law that of every pair of contradictory propositions, whether they have regard to universals and are stated as universally applicable, or whether they have regard to individuals, one must be true and the other false, and that there are no real alternatives, but that all that is or takes place is the outcome of necessity. There would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble, on the supposition that if we should adopt a certain course, a certain result would follow, while, if we did not, the result would not follow. For a man may predict an event ten thousand years beforehand, and another may predict the reverse; that which was truly predicted at the moment in the past will of necessity take place in the fullness of time.
Further, it makes no difference whether people have or have not actually made the contradictory statements. For it is manifest that the circumstances are not influenced by the fact of an affirmation or denial on the part of anyone. For events will not take place or fail to take place because it was stated that they would or would not take place, nor is this any more the case if the prediction dates back ten thousand years or any other space of time. Wherefore, if through all time the nature of things was so constituted that a prediction about an event was true, then through all time it was necessary that that should find fulfillment; and with regard to all events, circumstances have always been such that their occurrence is a matter of necessity. For that of which someone has said truly that it will be, cannot fail to take place; and of that which takes place, it was always true to say that it would be.
Yet this view leads to an impossible conclusion; for we see that both deliberation and action are causative with regard to the future, and that, to speak more generally, in those things which are not continuously actual there is potentiality in either direction. Such things may either be or not be; events also therefore may either take place or not take place. There are many obvious instances of this. It is possible that this coat may be cut in half, and yet it may not be cut in half, but wear out first. In the same way, it is possible that it should not be cut in half; unless this were so, it would not be possible that it should wear out first. So it is therefore with all other events which possess this kind of potentiality. It is therefore plain that it is not of necessity that everything is or takes place; but in some instances there are real alternatives, in which case the affirmation is no more true and no more false than the denial; while some exhibit a predisposition and general tendency in one direction or the other, and yet can issue in the opposite direction by exception.
Now that which is must needs be when it is, and that which is not must needs not be when it is not. Yet it cannot be said without qualification that all existence and non-existence is the outcome of necessity. For there is a difference between saying that that which is, when it is, must needs be, and simply saying that all that is must needs be, and similarly in the case of that which is not. In the case, also, of two contradictory propositions this holds good. Everything must either be or not be, whether in the present or in the future, but it is not always possible to distinguish and state determinately which of these alternatives must necessarily come about.
Let me illustrate. A sea-fight must either take place to-morrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place to-morrow, neither is it necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place to-morrow. Since propositions correspond with facts, it is evident that when in future events there is a real alternative, and a potentiality in contrary directions, the corresponding affirmation and denial have the same character.
This is the case with regard to that which is not always existent or not always nonexistent. One of the two propositions in such instances must be true and the other false, but we cannot say determinately that this or that is false, but must leave the alternative undecided. One may indeed be more likely to be true than the other, but it cannot be either actually true or actually false. It is therefore plain that it is not necessary that of an affirmation and a denial one should be true and the other false. For in the case of that which exists potentially, but not actually, the rule which applies to that which exists actually does not hold good. The case is rather as we have indicated.
Basically, then, there are two arguments. First there is the argument that if statements about the future are already true, the future is necessary. If a sea battle will take place tomorrow, it will necessarily take place. Second, there is the argument that this excludes deliberation. If a sea battle will take place tomorrow, then it will necessarily take place, and no place remains for deliberation and decision about whether to fight the sea battle. Whether you decide to fight or not, it will necessarily take place.
Unfortunately for Aristotle, both arguments fail. Consider the first argument about necessity. Aristotle’s example is that “if it is true to say that a thing is white, it must necessarily be white.” But this is hypothetical necessity, not absolute necessity. A thing must be white if it is true that is white, but that does not mean that “it must be white, period.” Thus for example I have a handkerchief, and it happens to be white. If it is true that it is white, then it must be white. But it would be false to simply say, “My handkerchief is necessarily white.” Since I can dye it other colors, obviously it is not simply necessary for it to be white.
In a similar way, of course it is true that if a sea battle will take place, it will take place. It does not follow at all that “it will necessarily take place, period.”
Again, consider the second argument, that deliberation would be unnecessary. Aristotle makes the point that deliberation is causative with respect to the future. But gravity is also causative with respect to the future, as for example when gravity causes a cup to fall from a desk. It does not follow either that the cup must be able not to fall, nor that gravity is unnecessary. In a similar way, a sea battle takes place because certain people deliberated and decided to fight. If it was already true that it was going to take place, then it also already true that they were going to decide to fight. It does not follow that their decision was unnecessary.
Consider the application to gravity. It is already true that if the cup is knocked from the desk, it will fall. It does not follow that gravity will not cause the fall: in fact, it is true precisely because gravity will cause the fall. In a similar way, if it true that the battle will take place, it is true because the decision will be made.
This earlier discussion about determinism is relevant to this point. Asserting that there is a definite outcome that our deliberations will arrive at, in each case, goes against our experience in no way. The feeling of “free will,” in any case, has a different explanation, whether or not determinism is true.
On the other hand, there is also no proof that there is such a determinate outcome, even if in some cases there are things that would suggest it. What happens if in fact there is nothing ensuring one outcome rather than another?
Here we could make a third argument on Aristotle’s behalf, although he did not make it himself. If the present is truly open to alternative outcomes, then it seems that nothing exists that could make it be true that “a sea battle will take place,” and false that “a sea battle will not take place.” Presumably if a statement is true, there must be something in reality which is the cause of the statement’s truth. Now there does not seem to be anything in reality, in this scenario, which could be a cause of truth. Therefore it does not seem that either alternative could be true, and Aristotle would seem to be right.
I will not attempt to refute this argument at this point, but I will raise two difficulties. First of all, it is not clear that his claim is even coherent. Aristotle says that “either there will be a sea battle or there will not be,” is true, but that “there will be a sea battle” is not true, and “there will not be a sea battle” is not true. This does not seem to be logically consistent, and it is not clear that we can even understand what is being said. I will not push this objection too hard, however, lest I be accused of throwing stones from a glass house.
Second, the argument that there is nothing in reality that could cause the truth of a statement might apply to the past as well as to the future. There is a tree outside my window right now. What was in that place exactly 100 million years ago to this moment? It is not obvious that there is anything in the present world which could be the cause of the truth of any statement about this. One might object that the past is far more determinate than the future. There are plenty of things in the present world that might be the cause of the truth of the statement, “World War II actually happened.” It is hard to see how you could possibly have arrived at the present world without it, and this “necessity” of World War II in order to arrive at the present world could be the cause of truth. The problem is that there is still no proof that this is universal. Once things are far enough in past, like 100 million years, perhaps minor details become indeterminate. Will Aristotle really want to conclude that some statements about the past are neither true nor false?
I will more or less leave things here without resolving them in this post, although I will give a hint (without proof at this time) regarding the truth of the matter. It turns out that quantum mechanics can be interpreted in two ways. In one way, it is a deterministic theory, and in this way it is basically time reversible. The present fully determines the past, but it equally fully determines the future. Interpreted in another way, it is an indeterministic theory which leaves the future uncertain. But understood in this way, it also leaves the past uncertain.
Entirely Useless 
Let me guess : a Kantian dichotomy again with these two interpretations?
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Close, anyway.
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A new post soon?
I was going to ask you how can you derive a First Cause if, as you note in your post, some interpretations makes no “absolute causality”, or, as you said, “The present fully determines the past, but it equally fully determines the future.”. In that sense, not even the past causes the future. Right?
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“Causality” includes the element of being explanatory to us, as I’ve said elsewhere. So as long as you discuss reality without involving us, you don’t use the specific notion of a cause. That doesn’t mean “there is a first cause” is false; it just means it would not come up if we do not consider ourselves.
Second, if you are looking for a sequence of causes, you wouldn’t involve a temporal sequence (whether past or future), because that results in a non-explanatory sequence, and therefore non-causal — e.g. if you say today was “caused” by yesterday which was “caused” by the day before etc., that may not come to an end. Which means it does not explain anything, and causality is not involved (since causality includes explanation.)
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Your view is interesting… though it makes me feel strange, for something doesn’t seem quite right.
All which bothers me is you tieing “causality” to “explanation”. That’s a strange move, for it would mean that, had there never were any humans, causality wouldn’t exist. Quite… weird. Are you saying that causality “is only in the mind”? I’m sure you’re not saying this, for if I get your posts on causality, you say that we have a view matching empiricism, meaning causality “is coming from reality”. This strikes me as confusing, for it forces us to admit some kind of PSR (in whatever form we assume it), and a form of theism (and I’m a firm nontheist myself).
Second, as you said, is the element of “explanatory” power which makes my nose cringe. How would you quantify “explanatory power”? I can already think of how it could fail. Let’s take two simple examples.
a) “TV works by magic fairies.” vs “TV works by using electromagnetic fields.” vs “TV works using people”. I’m guessing that you’d say the first one doesn’t really explains anything, while the other two are just different “levels” of explanation (taking your “true vs really true” comments).
b) “A explains B” vs “A doesn’t explains B”. How do you differentiate the two? It seems you’re making explanation here a purely subjective thing. This is an interesting argument. I often meet theists saying “well, this needs an explanation, and this is God” or “God explains Z and Y”. But I’m lost on what it could mean.
And these two points makes me say this : your view does condemn you in a form of relativism, correct? It kills metaphysics as a “God’s view of reality”… while pushing it back at some place that is… weird.
Hope you can clarify these points out for me.
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“That’s a strange move”
It is based on Aristotle’s idea that “cause” means the answer to “why.” Asking why is asking for an explanation.
“for it would mean that, had there never were any humans, causality wouldn’t exist.”
That doesn’t follow. It’s like saying, “If humans didn’t exist, statements wouldn’t exist, so the statement that rocks are heavy would not be true.” Of course, if humans wouldn’t exist, no one would make that statement. It would still be true that rocks are heavy. But WE — actually existing humans — are the only ones that can make the statement. At the same time nothing stops us from talking about situations where humans don’t exist. In the same way, even if humans didn’t exist, gravity would be the cause of rocks falling. But it only makes sense to call it a “cause” because gravity explains to US — actually existing humans — why rocks would fall, even if humans didn’t exist. We can explain things involving situations where humans don’t exist, so there is nothing impossibility about causality without humans.
“it forces us to admit some kind of PSR” Sure, and it is hard to see how you can avoid acting on such a principle in some form or other, whether or not you admit it. Exactly HOW sufficient a reason needs to be is unclear, and determined by experience.
“and a form of theism” I agree that my position *could* be described that way, although many theists would say it is atheistic.
“and I’m a firm nontheist myself.” I think it’s a bad idea to identify in such a way, for reasons somewhat along the lines I stated in the post on culture. That is, you’ll be tempted to say things not because they are true or likely to be true, but because they entrench your position as a “nontheist.”
“It seems you’re making explanation here a purely subjective thing.” It isn’t purely subjective, although it certainly can differ by degree. Basically it is subjective/objective in much the way “good” is subjective or objective. Calling something good is not purely subjective, even if there is a lot of subjectivity involved; e.g. you are not going to start inflicting as much pain on yourself as you possibly can, no matter what. So you cannot possibly believe that “suffering as much pain as possible is good.” And in the same way that we get the idea of “good” from good experiences, we get the idea of explanation from having things explained to us. But sometimes something seems good and we later find out that it was bad, and in a similar way, a false “explanation” is not an explanation at all. So truth is certainly one necessary element for explanation, although not the only element.
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“your view does condemn you in a form of relativism, correct?”
I’m not sure what you are asking, or what exactly you mean by “kills metaphysics.” I think there is such a thing as the way things objectively are, but not such a thing as “the way things are objectively described.” Obviously, description is a human project, and we can do it in different ways. And that means that “the way things objectively are” is not just one thing when we describe it, but many things, since we can use many descriptions. I do think that this causes problems for *the particular way* that many people attempt to do metaphysics, because they are really looking for an objective *description*, and that cannot be done.
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” I agree that my position *could* be described that way, although many theists would say it is atheistic.” => Sure, but the idea of “theism” was present in Aristotle’s terms, and Aquinas. Unless you’re using a strange way of seeing “theism”, your thought is clearly a form of classical theism. I checked your About page, and you seem to be defending a view which is both atheistic and theistic. But you’re right, this is not the point.
I think one question that I’d love to be clarified is your usage of “explanation”. What makes, for you, if you have A and B, “A explains B”? Because, as I mentionned earlier in my comment, and if I’m right (as Russell indicates) your usage of explanation highly involves “cause”. Though, if you define “cause” as “explanatory origin”, and “explanatory power” being what a “cause” is, we’re running in circles.
Could you give me an example of what you call an explanation? Mind you, I don’t see what you mean by “why”, actually. For me, science isn’t really into finding explanations – as Russel mentions, it’s more, and I’m sure you’ll agree, into defining a model which helps us predict the world. I’m fine with that. If you want to move to “explanations” and “whys”, I’ll need a bit more things to process. Especially in how you can say that something “explains” something else while maintaining that both the future and the past cause the present. Are, for you, explanations a kind of description? And in what sense? Let’s say I described the position of all the constitutive elements in a body, and gave the equation for their respective motions. What remains to be explained?
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I mean by “why” the same thing you mean by it in everyday life when you use it to ask questions, and when you understand enough to respond when other people use it. You say that you don’t know what I mean by it, perhaps thinking I meant something technical. I don’t. I mean the same thing you mean by it, and if you still don’t know, then you don’t know what you mean yourself.
The same thing is true of explanation. That is an ordinary English word, and I mean it in its ordinary sense. You *do* understand that word, and the proof is that you used it yourself, saying, “For me, science isn’t really into finding explanations.” You could not say that without knowing what it is that science isn’t looking for. So you know what an explanation is.
Your skeptical view of science may or may not be common in your social circles, but it is not typical for scientists. They *do* think they are trying to explain things. E.g. Dawkins says, “But the very least that any honest quest for truth must have in setting out to explain such monstrosities of improbability as a rainforest, a coral reef, or a universe is a crane and not a skyhook.” So Dawkins thinks that someone looking for truth (including scientists) is “setting out to explain” things. That is normal for scientists: most of them got into that business because there were interested in explanations. So you have it backwards: scientists do produce predictive models, but they do that because these are included in the best explanations they can find.
I did not say that both the future and the past cause the present. I did suggest that there the present has some similar relations to both, but there was no discussion of causality there.
You can say that explanations are a “kind of description,” but only because *anything* you say about the world is a kind of description. Your particular description would explain some things, but not everything, because it would answer some questions, but not all questions. “What remains to be explained” would be “whatever other questions you can think of asking.”
Regarding the supposed circularity, it is common for one concept to influence a second concept, and then the second concept influence the first concept in turn. In this sense, I don’t doubt that the concept of cause and the concept of explanation mutually influence each other. That is normal for everyday concepts. That does not mean there is any circular definition, because the concepts are derived from experiences that are there *independently* from the concepts. In particular, we should define cause as an explanatory origin, but we don’t define explanation in terms of cause. We might say in particular cases things like “this explains because it gives the cause,” but that is not a definition.
To overly simplify this, an explanation is an answer to a question, although not just any question, but a particular kind of question. In particular it is the sort of question that gives rise to the experience of understanding something, where you might say, “oh, that explains it.” If we say that something is a “good explanation” that means it is *the right kind of thing* to give rise to that sort of experience.
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“you don’t know what you mean yourself” : close. In real life, asking “why” is often mixed with different questions. For example, if you ask “why did the flower pot fell off the table?”, you’re actually asking “what are the events beforehand that lead to the flower pot falling off the table”. And answering “because there was a draft” makes it true. Now, in other contexts, it concern optimization : “why is this move in chess the best move in that situation?” is a question you can answer with a “well, because movement X leads to Y which is a checkmate situation”. Most of these questions resolve in answering things who are linked through time (what’s going to happen, what happened before, etc.). The reason I mentionned the quote that “science isn’t really into finding explanations” is exactly because I don’t really know what “an explanation is”. As I just said here, you can reply and tell me that I’m pretending that I don’t know, or something similar, but it’s really what I think.
For your second point, I didn’t say that “science isn’t finding explanations” full stop, I said that it’s not the REAL point of science. I don’t know what you mean by “explanation”*. And no, I don’t need to know what an explanation is to say what science is, in the same way you don’t need to know what “digbo” is to say that “science isn’t really into finding digbo”.
*What I mean here is that, as I mentionned in my first point, what you could call the “common sense view” of “explanation” is confused, for it refers to different questions depending on the context.
I don’t think I have a skeptical view of science. As I mentionned, science is the process of modelling, building a scenario and a story, and checking against the real world if the result is similar or not. These are not from “skeptical scientist” (whatever these are), but it’s a shared view. For example, take Gershenfeld view, who says that “the most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don’t — they make and test models…. Making sense of anything means making models that can predict outcomes and accommodate observations. Truth is a model.” That Dawkins use the world explanation, I don’t mind. I see it as a shorthand for “finding a predictive model”, because as a scientist, he’s in the business to make predictive models. Shall his theories be discredited, fine, we’ll find a “better model”. This is similar to when Aristotle’s physics are seen as an approximation of Newton’s who are an approximation of Einstein’s. If we use “explanation”, here, how do we use it? I don’t think I have it “backwards”, as you say, for we can test prediction, but we can’t test explanability. If you take any scientific theory, we see the p-values and the results grading the study to check. We don’t, for example, say “well, Newton’s theory explain less than Einstein’s theory as proved by X or Y”. We say “according to Einstein’s theory, we can see that the movement (or speed or whatever) of X is coherent with our observations in XXX% of the time, which is more than Newton’s at YYY% of the time”.
My main point, in my replies, is that the word “explanation” is a confused (some would say “handy”) anthropomorphised concept build from a word (“why”) which ends up having different meanings in different situations. Now, that’s exactly what I’m trying to “unconfuse” here. I’m trying to see if the “explanation” thing has something else to do *outside* describing the position, speed and whatever we can point of particles or constituants. I agree that any possible thing we say about the world is a description; but I want to know *what, for you, specifically amount as an explanation* (considering the caveat I pointed about the language confusion).
Regarding the three last paragraphs, it seems you’re saying that “other questions you can think of asking” are *possible* outside these I mentionned (namely, relative to time or position/space). I’m curious about it, because, for example, you can reduce a human reason to a few moving particles inside one’s head – everything else being, in that case, a commodity of naming, and nothing “real”. Once you know the laws of the particle, you’ve answered every possible question, and there is nothing else to “ask about” in my view. Hence, I asked these questions.
Last but not least, you seem to argue that the experience of having an explanation is subjective (though you take caution in your wording). I were to agree here, for, if you say that “well, the draft explains the fall of the flower pot”, I’m not moved at all, for the “explanatory power” of the situation is moved to the “draft”… and you haven’t told me what it is (and I’m tempted to believe that the “draft” has no more “explanatory power” than the “flower pot”…). But if you say that “well, I don’t know what you mean, but I saw a draft before which knocked the vase down”, I’d be more satisfied. And as Hume mentionned, you can call in question whether the “draft” caused the “vase” to “fall”, or if it’s the “fall” of the “vase” which caused the “draft”. And in these moments, I don’t understand how can one be satisfied by it. How would we know that? We can’t replay the scene back and remove the draft to see if the vase doesn’t fall. Perhaps you can clarify?
To be short, my last criticism to this “well, it’s what causes you to have this happy experience” also falls like “believing in God makes you happy” arguments. I don’t think they’re “good”, for truth doesn’t necessarily arises from good feelings.
Sorry if my english sounds strange, I’m not a native. I hope this clarifies my point of view, and that you can reply to it so that I can understand this Aristotelian concept (and then I’ll ask you how you can defend determinism ^^’).
Regards.
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I think you are being confused by the vagueness of the things we are discussing, and you mistakenly conclude that this is a problem with my discussion. It isn’t; the problem is the things, not the discussion.
For example, whether or not someone is bald is vague. It is not “subjective,” because the difference between one man who is bald and another man who is not, is an objective difference between the two men. Nonetheless, there is no special line between “bald” and “non-bald.” The thing you are discussing there is vague.
You also don’t seem to notice that the same vagueness that affects this discussion, affects all of your own ideas. For example, you say, “we can test prediction, but we can’t test explanability.”
But we can in fact test an explanation. For example, if someone says, “The reason there is a cup on this table is because my mother put it there,” we can ask your mother if she put it there. So there is a way to test whether an explanation is good or bad.
And there is equally an inevitable vagueness in the idea of prediction. If you say, “I predict that a car will pass by in the next ten minutes,” how can we test that? Suppose you see a car pass by. Well, how do you know you did not just imagine it? What *counts* as “the prediction happened”? Does it count if a tractor passed by? And what if the car started to pass and then stopped after a few feet? Can you tell how many feet it has to go to count as passing by? Nothing in human life can be fully defined. You seem to want to “unconfuse” the things that are confused, without noticing that your own thoughts are equally confused, and that the confusion can never be removed.
“you can reduce a human reason to a few moving particles inside one’s head – everything else being, in that case, a commodity of naming, and nothing “real”.
This is just false, and if you are actually interested in it I would suggest that you keep reading. I’ve discussed this extensively and I won’t repeat it here.
“you seem to argue that the experience of having an explanation is subjective”
No, I don’t. The “feeling that something was explained” is a thing that happens to people, factually. It is an objective fact that people feel that way. So “the right kind of thing to produce this feeling” is an objective thing, but vaguely defined, like baldness.
The basic fact is that *everything* you know is based on your subjective experiences, including your ideas of prediction, models, “particles,” and so on. So are your ideas of those things subjective? And how do you plan to “unconfuse” them?
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