McTaggart’s Paradox and Crisp’s Presentism

In his review of The Ontology of Time, Thomas Crisp (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2005a) argues that Oaklander's version of McTaggart's paradox does not make any trouble for his version of presentism. The aim of this paper is to refute that claim by demonstrating that Crisp's version of presentism does indeed succumb to a version of McTaggart's argument. I shall proceed as follows. In Part I I shall explain Crisp's view and then argue in Part II that his analysis of temporal becoming, temporal properties and temporal relations is inadequate. Finally, in Part III, I shall demonstrate that his presentist ontology of time is susceptible to the paradox he so assiduously sought to avoid.     

Eternalist Theories of Persistence Through Time: Where the Differences Really Lie

The eternalist endurantist and perdurantist theories of persistence through time come in various versions, namely the two versions of perdurantism: the worm view and the stage view, and the two versions of endurantism: indexicalism and adverbialism. Using as a starting point the instructive case of what is depicted by photographs, I will examine these four views, and compare them, with some interesting results. Notably, we will see that two traditional enemies—the perdurantist worm view and the endurantist theories—are more like allies: they are much less different than what is usually thought, and some alleged points of central disagreement fall prey to closer scrutiny. The aim of this paper is to examine carefully all those points, and to call attention to the places where the real differences between these views lie. I will then turn to the perdurantist stage view, and claim that with respect to some central issues it is the view that is the most different from the other three, but that in some places the reason why it different is also the reason why it is less satisfactory.

Quantitative Parsimony and the Metaphysics of Time: Motivating Presentism

In this paper I argue that presentism—the view that only present objects exist—can be motivated, at least to some degree, by virtue of the fact that it is more quantitatively parsimonious than rival views.     

Lewis,Change and Temporary Intrinsics

This is an attempt to sort out what is it that makes many of us uncomfortable with the perdurantist solution to the problem of change. Lewis argues that only perdurantism can reconcile change with persistence over time, while neither presentism nor endurantism can. So, first, I defend the endurantist solution to the problem of change, by arguing that what is relative to time are not properties, but their possession. Second, I explore the anti-perdurantist strategy of arguing that Lewis cannot solve the problem of change, for he cannot account for how some properties are possessed by objects in time. However, I argue that this strategy fails, for if by saying that objects in time can have properties ‘timelessly’ we mean “at no particular time” and “tenselessly”, only objects outside time can have properties in that way; but if we mean “for all the time they exist”, or “essentially”, perdurantists can account for this. Finally, I argue that actually perdurantism cannot solve the problem, but for different reasons: for either it sweeps the problem under the carpet, denying change, and in general subverting our conceptual scheme in a dangerous way, or it becomes equivalent to the endurantist picture that properties are had at times. Nor perdurantism is justified by the Relativity Theory or the B-theory of time, because while endurantism is certainly comfortable with presentism, it need not be committed to it; and even if it were, presentism need not be refuted by the Relativity Theory.     

Actualism without Presentism? Not by way of the Relativity Objection

Actualism is the view that only actually existing things exist. Presentism is the view that only presently existing things exist. In this paper, I argue that being an actualist without also being a presentist is not as easy as many philosophers seem to think. A common objection to presentism is that there is an unavoidable conflict between presentism and relativity theory. But actualists who do not wish to be presentists cannot point to this relativity objection alone to support their position. Unless they have some antecedent reason for thinking that actualism is more plausible than presentism, anyone who is moved by the relativity objection to give up presentism should be moved by a related objection to give up actualism as well. If there is a reason to be an actualist without also being a presentist, it must go beyond the relativity objection to presentism.     

Thisnesses,Propositions, and Truth

Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, should accept a thisness ontology, since it can do considerable work in defence of presentism. In this article, I propose a version of presentism that involves thisnesses of past and present entities and I argue that this view solves important problems facing standard versions of presentism.     

No time for powers

In this paper, I will investigate the compatibility of different metaphysics of time with the powers view. At first sight, it seems natural to combine some sort of powers ontology with a dynamical view of time, since the dynamic character of powers appears to account for the progression of time. Accordingly, it has been argued that a powers ontology, which is supposed to be inherently dynamic and productive, is incompatible with eternalism, which does not allow for any sort of real productivity. After having reviewed these arguments, I will argue that the powers view is not only incompatible with eternalism but also with the moving spotlight view and growing block theory. I will go on to argue that the specific notion of activity that the powers ontology provides is not straightforwardly compatible with presentism either.     

Presentism and Actualism

Presentism, some say, is either the analytic triviality that the only things that exist now are ones that exist now or the obviously false claim that the only things that have ever existed or will are ones that exist now. I argue that the correct understanding of presentism is the latter and so understood the claim is not obviously false. To appreciate this one has to see presentism as strictly analogous to anti-Lewisean actualism. What this modal analogue makes evident is that singular tensed statements can have scope ambiguities and so can be thought of as true with the temporal operator represented by the tense read as having wide scope. Secondly, I argue that the analogy with the modal case also makes it clear that presentism must be understood as a thesis of the form: ‘the only things that have ever existed or ever will exist stand in relation R to this (present) utterance’, and is not a substantive topic for debate until relation R is characterized in non-temporal terms. However, despite the strict analogy, I argue that presentism may be a harder position to defend than actualism, since the truth-maker objection, properly interpreted, with Lewis, as based on a supervenience thesis, has more force as an objection to presentism since supervenience is itself a modal notion.

     

Homogeneous Simples

I give reasons to suggest that the various 'homogeneous substance' objections to perdurance theory should not be regarded as raising serious difficulties. The main strategy is to show that there are equally exotic possibilities involving extended mereological simples that may turn the tables on the endurance theorist, insofar as she will have difficulties with these cases analogous to those she raises for the perdurantist. I conclude that such exotic cases are less useful that we might suppose in adjudicating between these competing doctrines of persistence.     

Semantic Externalism and Presentism

Abstract

In this paper I discuss an unconventional form of presentism which, I claim, captures better than all other versions of the doctrine the fundamental notion underpinning it, namely, the notion that ‘only what is present is real’. My proposal is to take this maxim as stating, not the rather uncontroversial view that past things are not real now, but the more radical idea that they never were. This rendition of presentism is, I argue, the only one that is neither trivial nor absurd. I examine this proposal by considering it against a sceptical hypothesis that bears similarities to it, viz., the hypothesis that the world was created five minutes ago. On this hypothesis, the past, all but five minutes of it, is unreal, in precisely the sense in which the presentism I discuss claims it is. I show that, assuming semantic externalism, this sceptical hypothesis cannot be sustained, but that a somewhat weaker hypothesis, the Creationist hypothesis that the world is 5,768 years old, cannot be refuted. Together, these conclusions enable a demarcation of those presentist intuitions that language and thought tolerate and those they do not.     

Why Four-Dimensionalism Explains Coincidence

In ‘Does Four-Dimensionalism Explain Coincidence?’ Mark Moyer argues that there is no reason to prefer the four-dimensionalist (or perdurantist) explanation of coincidence to the three-dimensionalist (or endurantist) explanation. I argue that Moyer's formulations of perdurantism and endurantism lead him to overlook the perdurantist's advantage. A more satisfactory formulation of these views reveals a puzzle of coincidence that Moyer does not consider, and the perdurantist's treatment of this puzzle is clearly preferable.     

The Priority of the Now

This article motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, is an attractive position that can do much of the same work in satisfying our intuitions about time as presentism, but without the ontological cost.     

Presentism and the Notion of Existence

The aim of this paper is to make presentism a dynamic view of reality by basing it on a notion of dynamic existence, that is, on a notion of existence which has a dynamic character. The paper shows that both of the notions of existence which are used in metaphysical theories of time (in presentism and eternalism) have a static character and, while such a notion is useful for eternalists, it is useless for presentists if they want to make their view able to remain in agreement with our everyday experience and self-consistent. It is demonstrated that both empirical and theoretical arguments indicate that the presentist should replace the notion of this static existence with the notion of a dynamic existence and that this maneuver allows the presentist to treat his/her existential thesis as equivalent to the thesis that time flows. Not only does this strategy allow us to express presentism in a simple, homogenous way which remains in agreement with our experience, but also permits us to solve some of the difficult problems which presentism faces, such as, for example, the objection of triviality and the question about the rate of time passage. Moreover, such an approach to presentism allows us to solve fundamental metaphysical problems concerning time such as the problem of the openness of the future and the fixity of the past, direction of causation, and relations between presentism and persistence through time by endurance.     

Presentism and the Triviality Objection

Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is obviously false if read as saying that everything that has existed, exits or will exist is present. If eternalism is taken as the negation of presentism, it is also either trivially false or obviously true. In this paper, I try to respond to the triviality objection on behalf of presentism. In second section, I will examine how the argument proceeds. In third section, I will reflect on three possible ways to respond but will argue that none of them succeeds in giving a satisfactory solution. I will then try to clarify the core idea of presentism and to suggest that if we characterise presentism accurately, the problem will disappear. In fourth section, I will offer a plausible definition of presentism and will show how it can avoid the triviality objection and demonstrate why it is advantageous to accept the version of presentism I offer.     

Presentism And Absence Causation: An Exercise In Mimicry

If presentism is true, then no wholly non-present events exist. If absence orthodoxy is true, then no absences exist. I discuss a well-known causal argument against presentism, and develop a very similar argument against absence orthodoxy. I argue that solutions to the argument against absence orthodoxy can be adopted by the presentist as solutions to the argument against presentism. The upshot is that if the argument against absence orthodoxy fails, then so does the argument against presentism.     

Wolf and Christman on autonomy: Two objective views

In this paper I examine the attempts of Susan Wolf and John Christman to rescue efforts to characterise the concept of autonomy from the difficulties faced by so-called subjective theories of autonomy – theories which treat agent’s own appraisals of their desires as final arbiters with regard to the assessment of whether or not they are autonomous. I conclude that Wolf’s view either ends up falling foul of her own objections to subjective theories or ends up describing virtuous, as opposed to autonomous, agents. But I also conclude that Christman’s combines the virtues of the subjective and objective views of autonomy. His view represents an advance on subjective views in that it explains why certain obviously sick selves which subjective views must regard as autonomous are excluded from the status of autonomy.     

Was Wittgenstein Frege's Heir

Dummett has claimed that Wittgenstein's views, as expressed in The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations , build on the attack on psychologism initiated by Frege. Frege's rejection of psychologism led him to the view that the meanings of sentences are thoughts which objectively exist in a third realm. It was Wittgenstein, according to Dummett, who, inheriting Frege's insights, provided a genuinely anti-psychologistic account of understanding by insisting that we explain understanding a sentence in terms of the use that is made of it. I challenge this interpretation of the relationship between Wittgenstein and Frege. I argue that the analysis does not sufficiently distinguish anti-psychologism and anti-mentalism. In the light of this distinction we can see that Wittgenstein misrepresents Frege's views, and confuses concepts with ideas. By being more faithful to Frege's actual views concerning the objectivity of concepts we can give a robustly realist account of mathematical truth which does not involve any objectionable psychologism or mentalism.
email : Karen.Green@arts.monash.edu.au     

Presentism and the Problem of Cross-Time Relations

Presentism is the view that only present entities exist. Recently, several authors have asked the question whether presentism is able to account for cross-time relations, i.e., roughly, relations between entities existing at different times. In this paper 1 claim that this question is to be answered in the affirmative. To make this claim plausible, I consider four types of cross-time relation and show how each can be accommodated without difficulty within the metaphysical framework of presentism.     

How to endure presentism

Presentism and endurantism are natural bedfellows: arguments have been mounted from endurantism to presentism and vice versa. I generalise an argument against the compatibility between presentism and endurantism offered recently by Tallant (forthcoming. “Presentism, Persistence and Trans-temporal Dependence.” Philosophical Studies). I then show how to reformulate endurantism so that it is compatible with presentism. I demonstrate that this reformulated version of endurantism can do the same work with respect to the problem of temporary intrinsics as can standard definitions.     

Hard presentism

Presentists believe that only present things exist. Their theories, at first glance, seem to offer many admirable features: a simple ontology, and a meaningful, objective status for key temporal phenomena, such as the present moment and the passage of time. So intuitive is this theory that, as John Bigelow puts it, presentism was “believed by everyone...until at least the nineteenth century” (1996, p. 35). Yet, in the last 200 years presentism has been beset by criticisms from both physicists and metaphysicians. One of the most significant criticisms is that presentists cannot provide an acceptable system of truthmaking. If there is no past, how can there still be truths about the past? In this paper, I introduce a new theory of presentism, which addresses this problem in a novel way: by simply denying that there are any truths about the past. While prima facie an unintuitive position, I will argue that a sensible presentist philosophy of this kind can be described, so long as it is accompanied by an appropriate system of physics. I will also indicate at certain points that adopting presentism could allow us to understand fundamental physics in new, more intuitive ways. By the end of the paper, I hope to not only show that hard presentism is a defensible theory of time, but also that it could offer a number of advantages to the physicist and the philosopher alike.