Question How does our approach to knowledge about the past differ from our approach to knowledge about the future, keeping in mind that there is an element of uncertainty in both?

Accepted:
January 11, 2009

Comments

Our knowledge of the past derives from perception, memory and inference, in the sense that these are answers to the question, 'How or by what means do you know?' (There are other ways, for example report or testimony). But our knowledge of the future has in it no elements of memory or perception. So as one might therefore expect it is harder to come by knowledge of the future, and we have less of it per hour, if you want. We typically can know more about a past hour than about a future hour, though by no means all of the past hours, for example those in past centuries. If I know p, and p is a proposition about the future, I cannot know it by memory, special cases apart. (A special case would be that I come to know that I am going to Africa next summer - a piece of knowledge about the future - by remembering that I am going to Africa next summer. 'How do you know?' 'I just remembered it . . .' makes sense as a conversation.)

It seems to me, in spite of the assumption you make, however, that in some cases there may not be an element of uncertainty in either knowledge of the past or the future. There is no uncertainty that the cat will be roughly where it is on the sofa in one attosecond - cats don't move that fast - and there is no uncertainty that the cat has been sitting there for the last five minutes, as I have been watching it for the whole time. There is an interesting mistake (I myself think it's a mistake, anyway) to be avoided in this area. Why are there asymmetries in time with respect to knowledge? I am not sure the question put just like that makes sense. Why can we remember the past but not the future, for example? The simple answer is that if I remember something, then it must already have happened, so memory of the future is a contradiction. My own view is that even the alleged logical asymmetries between past and future are much more slippery than they seem at first glance, and we must be careful to get our tenses right. It is certainly true, for example, that the past exists, in the sense that past events have occurred - and what other sense are we considering? But then so does the future exist, in just the same sense: future events will occur.

Question How does our approach to knowledge about the past differ from our approach to knowledge about the future, keeping in mind that there is an element of uncertainty in both? Accepted:January 11, 2009

Question How does our approach to knowledge about the past differ from our approach to knowledge about the future, keeping in mind that there is an element of uncertainty in both?

Accepted:
January 11, 2009