The Modal Future

Fabrizio Cariani is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has published extensively on the philosophy of language, epistemology and logic, and is editor of the journal Philosopher's Imprint.

• Introduction; Part I. Background: 1. The symmetric paradigm; 2. Symmetric semantics in an asymmetric world; Part II. The Road to Selection Semantics: 3. The modal challenge; 4. Modality without quantification; 5. Basic selection semantics; Part III. Developing Selection Semantics: 6. Between will and might; 7. Future orientation; 8. Neo-Stalnakerian conditionals; Part IV. Assertion, Prediction, and the Future: 9. On predicting; 10. Assertion troubles; 11. Thin red lines without tears; Part V. Future Cognition and Epistemology: Some Themes: 12. Imagining and simulating the future; 13. On the direct evidence inference.

The Modal Future succeeds in both being rigorous and highly readable. Cariani employs a careful methodology, drawing distinctions between various issues and theses that are oftentimes conflated or overlooked in the literature. The rich argumentation adeptly integrates insights from linguistics, metaphysics, and epistemology, making substantial contributions to recent debates concerning the open future, assertion, prediction, foreknowledge, and also providing a novel and attractive account of the semantics of future discourse. Stephan Torre, University of Aberdeen