Analytical Research on the Ontological Status of the Future

我以澄清未来的本体论地位为目标，解决了因果关系的性质、自然的统一性、自然规律的地位等问题。首先，通过对缺位因果关系的考察，探究因果关系的本质。事件个体之间的因果关系预设了事件类型之间的关系。结果不仅取决于原因，还取决于背景条件。要知道一个事件是什么，就必须知道它与其他事件类型的关系。综上所述，因果关系是世界和人类共同构成的秩序（即事件类型之间的关系）。其次，我努力解决自然的统一性问题，人们一直期望它能证明归纳的合理性。关于未来的一致性对于知识的可能性是必不可少的。但是，从过去的期货推断未来期货的一致性是一种循环推理，在任何时候，未来都有可能不均匀。简而言之，未来在某种意义上是已知的，但在另一种意义上是完全未知的。第三，在我的研究过程中，出现了新的课题：心灵的存在和分析形而上学的出现。心灵是一个主体，它把从过去的经验中获得的知识投射到未来，并打算自己未来的行为。我检验了笛卡儿试图使心灵独立于肉体的论点，我证明了它是无效的。分析形而上学是许多哲学家研究的领域。但在二十世纪早期，形而上学受到了逻辑实证主义者和普通语言哲学家的严厉批评。我调查了导致这种变化的原因。最后，我研究了范畴理论，其中包括对自然规律和性格的分析

：Aiming at the clarification of the ontological status of the future, I tackled the problems, such as the nature of causation, the uniformity of nature, the status of natural laws, and others. First，through examining theabsence causation, I inquired into the nature of causation. The causation between event-individuals tacitly presupposes the relations between event-types. Effects depend on not only causes but also background conditions. To know what an event is already includes to know its relations to other event-types. To sum up, causation is the order (i.e. the relations between event-types) which the world and the humans jointly make up. Secondly, I grappled with the uniformity of nature, which has been expected to justify the induction. The uniformity concerning the future is essential to the possibility of knowledge. But inferring the uniformity of the future futures from that of the past futures is a circular reasoning and at any time there is a chance that the future will not be uniform. In short, the future is known in one sense but completely unknown in another sense. Thirdly, in the course of the progress of my research, new topics have appeared: the existence of the mind and the emergence of analytic metaphysics. The mind is the subject which projects into the future the knowledge gained through the past experiences and which intends its own future acts. I examined Descartes' argument that tries to make the mind independent of the body, and I showed it is invalid. Analytic metaphysics is a field where many philosophers are working. But in the early twentieth century metaphysics was severely criticized by logical positivists and ordinary language philosophers. I investigated what had caused this change. And lastly, I researched the category theory, which includes the analysis of natural laws and disposition