Cariani’s The Modal Future is a book about future language. At its heart is a challenge to the received symmetric picture of temporal language. Many think past tense and future auxiliaries are mirror images of each other: one simply has “later” where the other has “earlier.” The Modal Future aims to supplant this symmetric picture with an asymmetric one, where future thought and talk is modal, and explores issues in the pragmatics, epistemology, and cognition of future claims in the light of this asymmetric picture.Cariani motivates the asymmetric picture with a dilemma. “Will” appears to have properties characteristic of modal expressions. But existing modal accounts face a variety of extremely serious problems. Take the Peircean view, where “will φ” is true at w and t if and only if φ is true in all futures that are possible at w and t. Cariani shows this view makes a mess of our future credences. If I am about to toss a fair coin, what should my credence be that the following is true?(1) The coin will land heads.It is 0.5, of course. But the Peircean predicts it should be 0: I should be certain this universal claim has a counterexample. Cariani argues, convincingly in my view, none of the standard modal views ultimately do better.Cariani’s alternative, building on Cariani and Santorio 2018, is the selection semantics for “will.” This theory draws on the selection functions from Stalnaker’s theory of conditionals, which, given a world and a proposition, select the closest world where that proposition is true. On Cariani’s semantics, “will φ” is true at w just in case φ is true at the selected world with the same history as the actual world. Of course, this selected world just is the actual world, so, in simple unembedded contexts, “will φ” is simply equivalent to φ. (This equivalence is broken in various embedded contexts, such as conditionals, which add further information to input proposition for the selection function.) We get a nice account of the dilemma: “will” is indeed a modal, but its true modal nature is hidden in simple, unembedded claims.After sketching the basic idea, Cariani addresses important technical questions for the semantics. A particularly pressing question is how to secure the future orientation of “will” without disrupting the scope relations between “will” and negation. Cariani solves this issue by adapting Condoravdi 2001 account of future orientation in modals. This involves an event semantics, where verbs quantify over events and tenseless clauses are interpreted relative to worlds and intervals. In this framework, “will” effectively shifts the interval of evaluation: the embedded tenseless clause is evaluated relative to the interval starting at the time of utterance and continuing into the future indefinitely. This accounts for the future orientation of “will” without unwanted scope relations.From here, the book addresses a range of related questions, and the selection semantics becomes an important background assumption. One cluster of issues centers on assertion and the open future. Cariani, who is ultimately agnostic about openness, argues for a conditional claim: if the future is open, we should adopt a particular bivalent approach to openness.Cariani first argues against venerable, Aristotelian approach, where future claims have a third indeterminate truth value, when the future is open. This view faces a puzzle about assertion and the open future. The Aristotelian seems to predict no future contingents are assertable. Truth is a very plausible necessary condition on assertability. But many future contingents are assertable: I can for instance tell my friend that I will be arriving on the 1:30 train.Cariani endorses a bivalent indeterminist Thin Red Line view. On the Thin Red Line view, even when multiple futures are consistent with the present, one particular history has the privilege of being ours. On bivalent indeterminism about the future, future claims have classical truth values, even when they are not settled; it is simply indeterminate which particular classical value they have. So on Cariani’s Thin Red Line view, one history has the privilege of being the one we live in, but it is indeterminate which future is that thin red line is. Unlike other modal views, Cariani’s selection semantics is a good fit for this kind of view.This view has two interesting consequences. First, it is often indeterminate whether one has violated a norm of assertion. When I make my assertion about the train, it is indeterminate whether I have spoken truly, so it is also indeterminate whether I have violated the truth norm. Second, this status will eventually be resolved one way or the other: if the train did arrive on time, my assertion came true and so it is now determinate that the norm was not violated; if it did not arrive on time, it is now determinate the norm was violated. (I did wonder whether the Aristotelian will be satisfied: are future contingents not often determinately assertable at their time of utterance?)The book also deals with the topic of future epistemology and cognition, concluding with a discussion of a puzzle from Ninan 2022. Future claims seem to require weaker evidence to be assertable than past claims. For instance, a meteorologist may be able, on the basis of a century of past weather data, to assert:(2) It will snow in Boston in winter 2023.But once winter 2023 has come and gone, the meteorologist cannot use the same meteorological data to assert:(3) It snowed in Boston in winter 2023To assert (3), they require further direct evidence. This is puzzling—are they not saying the same thing on both occasions?Cariani says they are not. Cariani proposes a lexical account, where predicate meanings place restrictions on the speaker’s evidence. For instance, the semantic value of “died” in a context is treated as a partial function from a world w and individual x to truth values, one which only returns a truth value if the speaker in the context has evidence that settles whether x died in w. Cariani proposes these evidential requirements are removed in certain embeddings, particularly by modals. For instance, “must” clearly removes the evidential requirement: the meteorologist can say(4) It must have snowed in Boston in winter 2023.Given Cariani’s earlier claim that “will” is a modal, the lexical account predicts that (2) does not require the same direct evidence as (3).Every section of this book is deserving of extensive discussion, and, because of the book’s modular structure, one can engage with many of the main claims both individually and as a package. That being said, the claim that “will” is a modal undergirds very much of the discussion. I am convinced that, if “will” is a modal, Cariani’s semantics is the best currently on the market. The guiding idea of the selection semantics idea is ingenious, and the problems for its competitors are extremely serious. But I am not yet completely convinced of the antecedent: is “will” really a modal? I close with some remarks about the argument Cariani regards as the strongest, the argument from modal subordination.Roberts 1989 directed our attention to discourses like:(5) A wolf might come in. It would eat you first.While the second sentence lacks any overt conditional, the modal “would” is understood conditionally: I am saying that if a wolf came in, it would eat you first. This kind of reading prima facie appears to require a modal. Consider:(7)a. If John bought a book at all, it’ll be a mystery novel.b. He’s at home reading it right now.But Klecha 2014 notes that “will” also gives rise to modal subordination:(8) A wolf might come in. It will eat you first.So, the argument concludes, “will” is a modal.But on closer examination the data are messy. First, to my ear, the contrast is strongest in discourses with a mixture of tenses and/or auxiliaries. But a natural hypothesis here is that this mixture of tense and auxiliaries, rather than the absence of “will,” somehow blocks the subordination in (7b).Second, and relatedly, when we consider more uniform discourses, apparent subordination is easier. Cariani acknowledges apparent subordination is possible with the past. Consider:(9) If he went to the park yesterday, he had a sandwich. He enjoyed it.I note that future directed uses of the present also permit apparent subordination:(10) If it doesn’t rain on Monday, we go camping in Yellowstone that evening. We leave Yellowstone early on Tuesday morning.In (9), Cariani suggests that the second sentence is understood as being conjoined to the conditional consequent. But of course this kind of move would explain the original subordination data too.To Cariani’s mind, the most powerful data point is that “will” appears to go in for modal subordination across clause type. Consider:(11) Please do not throw paper towels in the toilet. It will clog.(12) Does Cinderella stay at the ball? The carriage will turn into a pumpkin!The conditional interpretations here cannot be due to conjunction. Furthermore, Cariani argues there are no parallel data when it comes to the past. Imperatives are necessarily future oriented, but past-oriented questions do seem to bear out a contrast, at least initially. Compare (12) to:(13) Did Cinderella stay at the ball? The carriage turned into a pumpkin!I think Cariani is right that subordination is not possible here. But a possible confounder here is that it is not always entirely straightforward to subordinate material from a past tense question, even when “will” is present. Consider:(14) Did you throw paper towels in the toilet? It will clog.I find the subordinated reading harder to access here than in (11), maybe not as crashingly bad as (13), but not as effortless as (11). A final data point is that it does seem possible to get modal subordination across clauses with the future directed present:(15) If Cinderella doesn’t leave before midnight, her carriage turns into a pumpkin. Do the footmen turn back into mice?So I am not sure modal subordination is a straightforward diagnostic of modality. It still could well be that the best account requires “will” to be a modal. To decide the issue, I suspect we will need some sustained attempt to develop a nonmodal alternative. (An alternative starting point: perhaps rather than reinterpreting the apparently subordinated claims, we simply add them to a derived context containing extra suppositions.)However this turns out, The Modal Future does extremely important work in articulating a significant and novel picture of our thought and talk about the future. Cariani covers an impressive amount of ground, proposing a range of interesting and novel views in a range of debates, and the discussion is consistently of very high quality. It is a must read for anyone working in these areas.

中文翻译：

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模态未来

Cariani 的 The Modal Future 是一本关于未来语言的书。其核心是对公认的时间语言对称图景的挑战。许多人认为过去式和将来时的助动词是彼此的镜像：一个简单地表示“稍后”，而另一个表示“较早”。模态未来旨在用不对称图取代这种对称图，其中未来的思想和谈话是模态的，并根据这种不对称图探索语用学、认识论和对未来主张的认知中的问题。Cariani 激发了不对称图进退两难。“Will”似乎具有情态表达的特征。但现有模态账户面临着各种极其严重的问题。采取 Peircean 的观点，当且仅当 φ 在 w 和 t 的所有可能的未来中都为真时，“will φ”在 w 和 t 为真。Cariani 表明这种观点使我们未来的信任变得一团糟。如果我要掷一枚公平的硬币，我应该如何相信以下内容是正确的？（1）硬币会正面朝上。当然是 0.5。但是 Peircean 预测它应该是 0：我应该确定这个普遍的主张有一个反例。Cariani 认为，在我看来，没有一个标准模态视图最终做得更好。Cariani 的替代方案建立在 Cariani 和 Santorio 2018 的基础上，是“will”的选择语义。该理论借鉴了 Stalnaker 的条件理论中的选择函数，在给定一个世界和一个命题的情况下，选择该命题为真的最接近的世界。在 Cariani 的语义学上，“will φ”在 w 为真，以防 φ 在所选世界与实际世界具有相同历史的情况下为真。当然，这个选定的世界就是现实世界，因此，在简单的非嵌入上下文中，“will φ”等同于 φ。（这种等价性在各种嵌入式上下文中被打破，例如条件语句，它为选择函数的输入命题添加了更多信息。）我们很好地解释了这个困境：“will”确实是一个模态，但它真正的模态性质是隐藏在简单的、未嵌入的声明中。在勾勒出基本思想之后，Cariani 解决了语义的重要技术问题。一个特别紧迫的问题是如何在不破坏“意志”与否定之间的范围关系的情况下确保“意志”的未来指向。Cariani 通过采用 Condoravdi 2001 年对模态未来方向的描述来解决这个问题。这涉及到一个事件语义，其中动词对事件进行量化，而无时态从句相对于世界和间隔进行解释。在这个框架中，“will”有效地改变了评估的间隔：嵌入的无时态子句是相对于从说话时开始并无限期地持续到未来的间隔进行评估的。这说明了“意志”的未来方向没有不需要的范围关系。从这里开始，本书解决了一系列相关问题，选择语义成为一个重要的背景假设。一组问题集中在断言和开放的未来。Cariani 最终对开放性持不可知论，他主张有条件的主张：如果未来是开放的，我们应该采用一种特殊的二元方法来实现开放性。Cariani 首先反对令人尊敬的亚里士多德方法，当未来是开放的时，未来的主张具有第三个不确定的真值。这种观点面临着一个关于断言和开放未来的难题。亚里士多德似乎预测没有未来的偶然事件是可以断言的。真实性是可断言性的一个非常合理的必要条件。但许多未来的偶然事件是可以断言的：例如，我可以告诉我的朋友我将乘坐 1:30 的火车到达。卡里亚尼赞同二价非决定论的细红线观点。根据细红线的观点，即使多个未来与现在一致，一个特定的历史也有幸成为我们的历史。根据关于未来的二价不确定性，未来的主张具有经典的真值，即使它们尚未确定；它们具有哪种特定的古典价值是完全不确定的。所以在 Cariani 的细红线视图中，一段历史有幸成为我们生活的历史，但不确定那条细红线是哪个未来。与其他模态视图不同，Cariani 的选择语义非常适合这种视图。这种视图有两个有趣的结果。首先，一个人是否违反了断言规范通常是不确定的。当我对火车作出断言时，不确定我是否如实说了，所以也不确定我是否违反了真理规范。其次，这种状态最终会以一种或另一种方式解决：如果火车确实准时到达，我的断言就成真了，所以现在可以确定没有违反规范；如果它没有按时到达，现在可以确定违反了规范。（我确实想知道亚里士多德主义者是否会满意：未来的偶然性在他们说话时通常不是可以确定地断言吗？）这本书还涉及未来认识论和认知的主题，最后讨论了尼南 2022 年的一个难题。未来的主张似乎需要比过去更弱的证据才能断言索赔。例如，气象学家可以根据过去一个世纪的天气数据断言：(2) 2023 年冬天波士顿会下雪。但是一旦 2023 年冬天来了又走了，气象学家就不能使用相同的要断言的气象数据：（3）2023年冬天波士顿下雪要断言（3），他们需要进一步的直接证据。这很令人费解——他们不是在两个场合说同样的话吗？卡里亚尼说他们不是。Cariani 提出了一种词汇解释，其中谓词意义对说话者的证据施加了限制。例如，上下文中“死亡”的语义值被视为从世界 w 和个体 x 到真值的偏函数，如果上下文中的说话者有证据确定 x 是否在 w 中死亡，则该函数仅返回真值。Cariani 建议在某些嵌入中删除这些证据要求，特别是通过模态。例如，“must”清楚地删除了证据要求：气象学家可以说 (4) 2023 年冬天波士顿一定下雪了。鉴于 Cariani 之前声称“will”是一个模态，词汇解释预测 (2) 确实不需要与 (3) 相同的直接证据。本书的每一节都值得广泛讨论，并且由于本书的模块化结构，人们可以单独或作为一个整体来处理许多主要主张。话虽如此，“will”是一种情态的说法支持了很多讨论。我相信，如果“will”是一个模态，Cariani 的语义是目前市场上最好的。选择语义思想的指导思想是巧妙的，它的竞争对手的问题是极其严重的。但我还没有完全相信先行词：“will”真的是情态吗？最后，我对 Cariani 认为最强的论证，即模态从属的论证进行了一些评论。Roberts 1989 将我们的注意力引向了以下话语：(5) 一只狼可能会进来。它会先吃掉你。虽然第二句话没有任何明显的条件句，情态的“would”被有条件地理解：我是说如果有狼进来，它会先吃掉你。这种阅读表面看来需要模态。考虑：（7）a。如果约翰买了一本书，那将是一本悬疑小说。b。他现在正在家里阅读。但是 Klecha 2014 指出“will”也会引起模态从属：(8) 一只狼可能会进来。它会先吃掉你。所以，论证得出结论，“will”是一个模态.但仔细检查数据是混乱的。首先，在我看来，在混合了时态和/或助动词的话语中，对比最为强烈。但这里的一个自然假设是，这种时态和助动词的混合，而不是“意志”的缺失，以某种方式阻碍了 (7b) 中的从属关系。其次，相关地，当我们考虑更统一的话语时，明显的从属关系更容易。Cariani 承认过去可能会出现明显的从属关系。考虑：(9) 如果他昨天去了公园，他吃了一个三明治。他很享受。我注意到现在时的未来定向使用也允许明显的从属关系：(10) 如果星期一不下雨，我们那天晚上去黄石公园露营。我们在星期二早上很早就离开了黄石公园。在 (9) 中，Cariani 建议将第二句理解为与条件后件相结合。但当然，这种移动也可以解释原始从属数据。在 Cariani 看来，最强大的数据点是“will”似乎进入了跨子句类型的模态从属。考虑：(11) 请不要将纸巾扔进马桶。它会堵塞。(12) 灰姑娘会留在舞会上吗？马车会变成南瓜！这里的条件解释不能是合取。此外，卡里亚尼认为，就过去而言，不存在平行数据。祈使句必然是面向未来的，但面向过去的问题似乎确实证明了一种对比，至少在最初是这样。将 (12) 与 (13) 进行比较：灰姑娘是否留在舞会上？马车变成了南瓜！我认为 Cariani 是对的，这里不可能从属。但这里可能存在的混淆是，即使出现“will”，从过去时的问题中获取从属材料并不总是完全直接的。考虑：(14) 你把纸巾扔进马桶了吗？它会堵塞。我发现这里的从属阅读比 (11) 更难访问，也许不像 (13) 那样糟糕，但也不像 (11) 那样轻松。最后一个数据点是，它似乎确实有可能在带有未来指向现在的子句中获得模态从属关系：(15) 如果灰姑娘在午夜之前不离开，她的马车就会变成南瓜。男仆会变回老鼠吗？所以我不确定模态从属是对模态的直接诊断。最好的帐户仍然很可能需要“意志”成为模态。为了解决这个问题，我怀疑我们需要持续尝试开发一种非模态替代方案。（另一个起点：也许不是重新解释明显从属的主张，我们只是将它们添加到包含额外假设的派生上下文中。）然而，事实证明，模态未来在阐明我们思想的重要和新颖图景方面做了极其重要的工作并谈论未来。Cariani 涵盖了令人印象深刻的领域，在一系列辩论中提出了一系列有趣和新颖的观点，并且讨论始终具有非常高的质量。对于在这些领域工作的任何人来说，这是一本必读的书。