Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing

Londoner in Lockdown writes,

I am still puzzling about the connection between your

(1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past.

and

(2) X ceases to exist.

I think I understand (2). It means that there was once such a thing as X, but there is no longer such a thing as X.

But what does (1) mean? Does it mean what (2) means? In that case, (2) indeed follows from (1).

But you can't have intended that. So what do you mean by (1)?

Perhaps a spatial analog of (1) will help convey what I mean:

1*) X ceases to be spatially present by becoming wholly elsewhere.

Now (1*) is not idiomatic English, but the thought is clear.  And the thought is trivially true. Suppose the boundaries of the spatially present are given by the dimensions of my lot.  So when I say 'here' I refer to the area of my lot together with all its sub-areas. Suppose a  cat that is wholly within the boundaries of my lot trespasses onto your adjacent lot thereby becoming wholly elsewhere. Max was wholly here in my yard, but now he is wholly there in yours.  Spatial translations such as this one typically occur without prejudice to the existence of the moving item. Thus the cat does not cease to exist by moving from my property onto your property.  (Nor does the cat suffer any diminution of its degree of existence, if there are degrees of existence, or any change in its mode of existence, if there are modes of existence.)

In short, Max the cat exists just as robustly  in your yard as in mine.  Spatial translation is existence-neutral.  No one is a spatial presentist. No one holds that all and only what exists here, exists. 

Surely it is conceivable — whether or not it is true — that becoming wholly past is existence-neutral. It is conceivable that something that becomes wholly past not be affected in its existence by its becoming wholly past.  On this understanding of (1), (1) does not straightaway — i.e., immediately, without auxiliary premises — entail (2).  (1) and the negation of (2) are logically consistent.

Now if you insist that (1) entails (2), then I will point out that this is so only if you assume that all and only the temporally present exists.

Do my sparring partners now see that there is a genuine question here?  The question is whether it makes sense to maintain that, among the items that exist in time, some are non-present.  I say that it does make sense, whether or not in the end it is true; consequently, tenseless theories of time cannot be simply dismissed out of hand.  A corollary of this is that presentism is not obviously true, or even more outrageously,  a matter of common sense as some have the chutzpah to say. 

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Bill Vallicella

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3 responses to “Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing”

  1. Lockdown Londonista Avatar
    Lockdown Londonista

    That makes more sense. Shall we call this the ‘Dr Who’ theory of tense? I assume US readers are familiar with Dr Who, although he is English. He owns a travel machine (The TARDIS, standing for ‘Time And Relative Dimensions On Space) by which he can travel long distances both in space and time.
    Let’s suppose the Doctor is currently visiting Earth in 2020. So he exists in the (our) present. He enters the Tardis, twiddles the dials and the Tardis disapppears, to reappear in the distant future (say the year 3020) and a distant place (a planet surrounding a star in the Cartwheel Galaxy, 500m light years away).
    After he disappears, the Doctor is wholly non-present, is that correct? Then you want to say that he still exists, that there is still such a person as the Doctor, but he is not present either in time or space. He is not in our ‘lot’ either spatially, or temporally.
    I have further questions, this first question is simply to check I have understood what you say.

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Some quick points; more later. It’s getting hot here, so I have get out for my morning exercise.
    1. I am not committed to the possibility of time travel.
    2. I haven’t said anything about the future; I am presently concerned only with the question of the reality/existence of the past.
    3. >>After he disappears, the Doctor is wholly non-present, is that correct? << Yes. 4. >>Then you want to say that he still exists, that there is still such a person as the Doctor, but he is not present either in time or space. He is not in our ‘lot’ either spatially, or temporally.<< No. Something wholly past does not still exist. What still exists existed and exists now. You allude to an interesting question. If something is wholly past, the Berlin Wall say, and is therefore not temporally present, is it spatially non-present? I'll think about that on my bike ride.

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  3. Lockdown Londonista Avatar
    Lockdown Londonista

    >> Something wholly past does not still exist. What still exists existed and exists now.
    Then I am still wholly puzzled by what you are saying. You start with the following consequence, which you deny.
    (*) If (1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past, then (2) X ceases to exist.
    I.e. you claim that the truth of the antecedent (1) is consistent with the falsity of the consequent (2), i.e. consistent with X not having ceased to exist. But that claim implies that both “X still exists” and “X has ceased to exist” could be false.
    I don’t follow.
    Let’s go though it again. Assume that the antecedent (1) is true, i.e. X has “ceased to be temporally present by becoming wholly past”. Then you hold that (2) could be false, namely X has not ceased to exist.
    But you also hold, judging by what you say now, that X does not still exist, for what still exists, exists now. Thus X has not ceased to exist, but neither does it still exist.
    Can you explain?

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