Logical Determinism And Future Contingents

In metaphysics of morals,the greatest challenges facing free will and moral responsibility are various forms of determinism.Among these variations,Logical Determinism(or,Logical Fatalism)is the most difficult challenge.The argument of Logical Determinism does not refer to any material premise.Its conclusion can be derived solely from logic principles,especially Principle of Bivalence.By Principle of Bivalence,we mean that a proposition is either true or false,and if is true(or,false),it is necessarily true(or,necessarily false).If Principle of Bivalence is true for any proposition,then it is true for future contingents,which means that the states of affairs these future contingents represent will be necessarily(not)obtained.After Aristotle raised and then attempted to avoid the puzzle in his De Interpretatione,philosophers have proposed many solutions to overcome this challenge.These discussions always involve two interrelated issues: first,whether the inference in the argument of Logical Determinism is valid;second,whether sentences expressing future contingents have truth values in the classical sense.Most of these discussions are willing to accept the validity of the inference but to abandon classical truth values – to take this kind of propositions to be something without truth values or something with truth values of different kinds.Attempts to solve the puzzle of Logical Determinism can be roughly classified into two categories: the semantics solutions and the logic solutions.Among those who take the semantics solutions,Aristotle avoids the conclusion of Logical Determinism by limiting the range of application of the Principle of Bivalence to the extent that it is not applicable to future contingents.Aristotle's followers propose two influential solutions: one is to differentiate the truth of a predicate and the truth of a sentence,and another is to differentiate two notions of necessity.While,Gilbert Ryle's so-called “Category Fallacy” solution states that as the contents of predictions,there is no truth or falsity,but only correctness or incorrectness,in future contingents.Therefore,the Principle of Bivalence is not applicable.Among those who incline to take the logic solution,Jan Lukasiewicz develops the system of Three-Value Logic which attempts to solve the problem by assigning future contingents the third truth value.While people who adopt tense logic solve the problem by applying the notion of branching time to the truth which is sensitive to time.In this article,after analyzing the reasonable aspects of past attempts as well as the difficulties they face,I will follow the semantics solution to give a universal description for logical necessity.I will argue that under this universal description,times are discrete,and then,the universal truths of propositions at different times do not entail the tendencies of physical necessities.Most importantly,in this article,I will transform John L.Mackie's argument from Queerness of moral property into a semantics thesis,and will point out that any sentence which is either false,or meaningless.Therefore,Logical Determinism is either false,or meaningless.In conclusion,free will and moral responsibility are not impossible.