David Storrs-Fox
I am a Philosophy Futures Postdoctoral Lecturer at NYU. I received my PhD in Philosophy from NYU in September 2020. I came to NYU from Oxford, where I received a BPhil in Philosophy and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).
My work defends novel conclusions about the metaphysics of action, and brings them to bear on issues in ethics and decision theory. I am also interested in early modern philosophy. My CV is here, and my email address is david.storrsfox@nyu.edu . My teaching page is here.
Publications
Propositional temporalism is the view that there are temporary propositions: propositions that are true, but not always true. Factual futurism is the view that there are futurist facts: facts that obtain, but that will at some point not obtain. Most A-theoretic views in the philosophy of time are committed both to propositional temporalism and to factual futurism. Mark Richard, Jeffrey King and others have argued that temporary propositions are not fit to be the contents of propositional attitudes, or to be the semantic values of natural language utterances. But these discussions have overlooked another role that the A-theorist’s posits struggle to play: the role of facts in explaining other facts. Focusing on the case of action explanation by reasons, this paper presents the challenge that explanation poses for factual futurism. It then brings that challenge to bear against propositional temporalism and the A-theory more generally. My argument saddles the factual futurist with surprising commitments concerning reasons, facts and explanation. The futurist might accept those commitments and pay the price. The alternative – which I prefer – is to reject factual futurism, and with it the A-theory.
Other papers