No Crystal Balls
Name
no_crystal_balls_draft_of_june_01_2017.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
297.55 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8fd75b46cdf463e7c120e9c0771172b8
Author(s)
Spencer, Jack
Date Issued
May 18, 2018
Journal
Noûs
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell (Firm)
Citation
Spencer, Jack. "No Crystal Balls." Noûs (2018): 1-21 © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
A crystal ball, in Hall’s (1994) sense, need be neither round nor crystalline. The world is said to contain crystal balls whenever the present carries news of the as-yet-undetermined parts of the future. Images appearing in spheres made of magical quartz might be crystal balls, in the relevant sense, but so too might arrangements of magical tea leaves or neural states in the brains of time-travelers or clairvoyants. Many philosophers believe that crystal balls are metaphysically possible. In this essay, I argue that they are not.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12252
