An Open Future Sample Clauses

An Open Future. ‌ To see the value of the presentist perspective in providing dynamic flow I will turn to the idea of the open future. For many (Broad 1923; ▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2013 and many others) the actualisation of a non-existent open future is the key to understanding the flow of time. The difference between the past and future is that the future is uncertain and there are many possible ways the world could turn out to be. Why the open future is so important and what the details of this are is a larger question that I will explore in more depth in the following chapter alongside considering why, if the future is open, the past is not. Here I will focus on the question of existence and simply show that an open future is compatible with the ontology of localised temporal becoming. This claim is initially at odds with there being a tenseless block of all events so it requires careful articulation. The following chapter can then build on this basis to show how an open future connects becoming to the directionality found in physics and the way that physics treats the openness of the future. Various models of the open future have been developed with a range of different on- tologies. Some of these limit the open future to being purely epistemic (▇▇▇▇▇ 1986; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2003 for criticism). Others (▇▇▇▇▇▇ 1994) take a strongly ontological approach where multiple futures exist in a branching future and branches ‘fall off’ as time passes. I will focus here on the more moderate view articulated by ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (2013), which follows from ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (1992; 2003; 2012), ▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (2012).18 The resulting ontological picture, I will show, has no meaningful differences to how localised temporal becoming represents time in terms of the perspectival switch between tensed and tenseless existence. Moreover the account of flow in the open futures model can be achieved by localised temporal becoming. The commitment to open futures is not agreed upon by all the authors who have advocated for localised temporal becoming. ▇▇▇▇▇▇ (2006) denies that there is any sense of an open future; he takes the tenseless block to fix all relevant events. Others do take it to be a key consideration although they do not spell out in much detail how this follows from the ontological picture they present (for example ▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2016a). Most, however, do not mention it at all.