Fatalism and the Future

Abstract

I discuss how we should respond to the view that says that the truth of future-tensed statements entails that the future could not have been otherwise. Much fatalist reasoning of this type is rather uninteresting since it can swiftly be dismissed as trivial or obviously fallacious. But the real interest lies in getting straight on those issues that arise from the discussion, such as: the relationship beween time and modality; three-valued logic; truth, truth-bearers and truth-makers; causation, and temporal asymmetry.