Can truth relativism account for the indeterminacy of future contingents?

John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem of future contingents. We argue that the theory fails to vindicate the intuition that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, leaving the theory open to a charge of Reductio. We show that these problems cannot be answered while preserving the core tenets of truth relativism.

Automated summary

In this paper, it is argued that John MacFarlane's truth relativism is not capable of solving the problem of future contingents, despite the assumptions made in terms of metaphysics, semantics, and pragmatics. The theory fails to vindicate the intuition that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, leaving it open to criticism.