I’m trying to define the terms of an argument I’m mulling over.
Fill in the definition/blank for me:
A future that CAN BE = potentially an eventual actuality
A future that MUST BE = inevitably an eventual actuality
A future that WILL BE = ???
I guess you could say, ‘a future that must be’, could simply be ‘an eventual actuality’. Where does ‘a future that will be’ fit in? Does ‘will be’ insinuate inevitability, potential or simply the transformation of potential to actual? Help!
Also, if someone says, ‘know THE future’ does that insinuate it’s an inevitable future? This can be considered in light of, ‘a future’ or simply, ‘future’.
“A future that MUST BE = inevitably an eventual actuality”
is wrong because if I say I MUST go to the shops and buy some milk I’m not saying its envitable. Its just that I MUST buy some milk or else I won’t have any to put on my ceral. If I say I WILL go to the shop and buy some milk I’m making the statement that it is inevitable that I will go to the shops and ge the milk.
Otherwise theres no difference between MUST an WILL. I think in some contexts MUST and WILL can mean the same thing. Maybe you should give us a better context than “A future WILL BE”
Sorry for the late reply. The forums have been down.
So if someone asks, “Do you know what the future will be,” what are they asking? I know ‘future’ simply signifies our relation to it and the future can never be the present, but things that are supposedly ‘in the future’ can eventually become present things or actualities. When I say, "A future that MUST BE’, I think I’m saying it’s a future event that has 100% chance of becoming an actual event. A future that CAN BE is in reference to something imagined in the future that has something short of a 100% chance of becoming a real, present, actuality.
It seems to me that ‘a future’ or ‘the future’ can means portions of future or all of future. Also, ‘A future’ seems to imply potential and ‘the future’ seems to imply inevitability. From this, it seems portions of future can be comprised of inevitability and potentiality and that future is not neccessarily exclusively inevitable events or potential events but a mix of the two. But, are these two compatible? If everything has a cause, can inevitable things eventually become actualities without the assistance of every other eventual actuality? Wouldn’t inevitability need the ‘cooperation’ of potentiality as it may or may not exist in other future events? Is it either all inevitable or all potential? Can they co-exist?