The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at

King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at www. History of Philosophy.

Net. Today's episode, Back to the Future, for knowledge and predestination.

Suppose you and I are arguing about the outcome of an upcoming election. I think that candidate A will prevail over candidate B and I have good reasons for my view.

All the polls suggest that candidate A has an insurmountable lead and candidate B is manifestly unfit for office.

You however insist that candidate B may just bring a surprise victory.

When the vote is held, candidate B does not. may just bring a surprise victory.

When the vote is held, candidate B does indeed win the election.

In addition to my dismay at the outcome, I must shoulder the additional burden of admitting

that you were right and I was wrong.

Or perhaps not, I might say to you, look, when you predicted the outcome of the election,

the result was still open.

The voters still had the capacity to choose between both candidates, so it cannot already have

been true then that candidate B would win.

That only became true once the election was actually held. So in fact, when you and I were having our argument,

neither of us was right because there was as yet no truth of the matter. Now please excuse me

while I look into the rules for acquiring Canadian citizenship.

Since you are a faithful listener of this podcast, my argument will probably remind you of a passage in Aristotle.

I covered it a mere 241 episodes ago, so you probably remember it quite well.

But just in case here's a recap.

In the ninth chapter of his logical work on interpretation, Aristotle presents an argument for determinism using the example of a sea battle.

The argument goes that if it is now true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow,

...