Are there future facts?

Abstract

Facts are often defined as actual events or states of affairs in the present or in the past. The future is also often conceived as that which is yet to be an event or a state of affair. With these conceptions of facts and future it is taken for granted that there cannot be future facts. The future is bedeviled with contingency and probability. But a critical look at facts shows that facts, be it of the past or the present, are also bedeviled with the problem of contingency, probability, and change in status. So, a critical reformulation of facts coupled with a conception of future that distinguishes between the that of nature in general, and our own future, gives room for the idea of future facts. Though this idea of future facts deals with events or states of affairs yet to be present, it is valid until the future becomes present and the event in question does not occur just as present or past facts remain facts subject to new facts that may render them false.