Openness and Assertability

There is a dilemma facing theories of future-directed discourse. On the one hand, we pretheoretically conceive of the future as open. Not everything is settled in advance. On the other hand, we make assertions about the future, which seemingly commits us to it being settled. This essay argues that the dilemma arises out of a misdiagnosis of where the pretheoretical openness of the future resides. The future is open, but not because there is no fact of the matter regarding what will happen, but because what will happen can change. Future contingents have truth values, making them assertible, but the future can change, thus preserving openness. This diagnosis accounts for the assertability of future contingents. The theory furthermore accounts for why future contingents are sometimes assertible even though their present-tense counterparts are not.