Does the Future Exist?
Don’t ask the broke for a spot!
There is a legal principle sometimes called “the nemo dat rule” which holds that no one can give what he doesn’t have. Nemo dat quod non habet. It’s evident that you can’t provide what you don’t possess.
It seems equally evident that you can’t lose what you don’t have, and you can’t have what doesn’t exist. However, it seems reasonable to say that killing a person is prima facie morally wrong because doing so unjustly deprives that person of his valuable future. It also seems coherent to say that, for example, an intelligent young person has a bright future. Thus we have conflicting intuitions. Here they are:
A person has a future.
To have a future, that future must exist.
The future does not exist.
We’ve said that (2) is evident and (1) is reasonable. What about (3)? According to presentism, a position in the philosophy of time, only what is present exists in time; i.e., the only things that exist temporally are those that are now. (Abstract objects might exist, but they don’t exist temporally.) Hence, neither the past nor the future exist. And according to the growing block theory (GBT) of time, the past and the present exist, but the future does not. The growing block of time includes the always increasing bevy of past objects and the ever-present vanguard of the block, which is the current moment. However, the future does not exist. When we think about the “future,” we are not thinking of an existing thing but rather are anticipating new present instants at the vanguard that will rapidly become past moments on the block.
Presentism and GBT are defensible positions, though I don’t intend to defend them here. Rather, I want to note that some find these positions plausible and have defended them, and hence that (1) – (3) are each defensible.
However, (1) – (3) cannot all be true. If any two propositions of the triad are true, the third is false. We face a triadic tension. How would you resolve it? Which proposition would you deny?
(2) seems beyond reasonable doubt. If one has something, then that thing has the property of being possessed, and thus exists.
Regarding (1), in moral philosophy, it is widely held that at least part of what makes the wrongful killing of a person wrong is precisely the fact that it deprives that person of his valuable future. This account seems plausible to me. But to be deprived of something is to lose it. And to lose something is to first possess it. How can you lose what you don’t have? ‘Loss’ is defined in terms of having.
Given the plausibility of (1), I’m inclined to doubt (3). Perhaps the future exists, since there is good reason to believe that a person can, in some sense, possess a future. And if the future exists, then there is reason to deny presentism and GBT, and instead to affirm eternalism: the view that the past, present, and future exist.
On the other hand, I want to question (1). Perhaps we don’t possess a future. We speak as if we do, but in fact, we are merely anticipating events that will likely occur. When we do so, we are mentally representing those events to ourselves.
I have not yet resolved the triadic tension.