Normal Future Assertions

Some scholars have considered the fact that we make assertions about the future as an argument in favor of certain semantics of future tense sentences. In particular, the debate has focused on the assertion of future contingents. Besson and Hattiangadi (Philos Stud 167:251–271, 2014) and Besson and Hattiangadi (in: Goldberg, The Oxford handbook of assertion, Oxford University Press, New York, 2020) argue that the fact that we assert future contingents is a point in favor of all semantics of the future tense sentences according to which future contingents are true or false, while it is a reason to reject all semantics of the future for which future contingents either lack truth values or are all false. In this paper, we propose a theory about the correctness of assertions about the future flexibly enough to be compatible with any semantics of future tense sentences. If this theory is on the right track, our judgments about the correctness of assertions of future tense sentences do not favor or disfavor one semantic theory over another, and therefore, pace Besson and Hattiangadi, do not constitute a point in favor of theories that consider at least some future contingents to be true.