Schmid, Joseph C. "The End is Near: Grim Reapers and Endless Futures", Mind (forthcoming).
Abstract: José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favor of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes.
Readers of this blog will of course know of Schmid's other excellent work in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of time, with special focus on issues related to persistence, infinity and infinitary paradoxes, modality, models of God, and arguments for and against God’s existence. I highly recommend all of his work.
