Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Once More on Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing

I maintain that in the following conditional, the consequent (2) does not follow from the antecedent (1).

(*) If (1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past, then (2) X ceases to exist.

The Londoner replies

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.

Consider a spatial analog. I am in a meeting with some people. I then leave the room.  In so doing I cease to be spatially present to those people and the space they occupy.  But no one will conclude that I have ceased to exist by leaving the room.

Why not?  Well, where a thing is has no bearing on whether it is.  If you can grasp that, then it ought to be at least conceivable that when a thing is has no bearing on whether it is.  And if that is conceivable, then you ought to be able to grasp that (2) does not follow from (1).  An item can become wholly past without prejudice to its existence.

Now obviously 'existence' here refers to tense-free existence. That the Londoner is not grasping this is shown by his use of 'still exists.'  The claim is not the logically contradictory one that an item that has become wholly past still exists. For if a thing still exists, then it exists (present tense).  The claim is that it is conceivable that what has become wholly past has not been annihilated: it has not become nothing.  For (2) to follow from (1), presentism would have to be brought in as an auxiliary premise. But on presentism, that which has become wholly past has become nothing at all.

Does when a thing is determine whether it is?  This is not obvious.  For it could be — it is epistemically possible — that when a thing is has no bearing on whether it is. Two views. On one view, temporal location determines whether or not a thing is or exists.  Presentism is one type of this view.  On presentism, all and only that which is located in or at the temporal present exists.  This implies that items not so located — those that are wholly past or wholly future — do not exist.

On the second view, temporal location does not determine whether or not a thing is or exists.  'Eternalism' as it is known in the trade — the term is a bit of misnomer but let that pass — is a type of this view.  On eternalism, past, present, and future times and the items at those times (e.g. events) all exist equally, i.e., in the same sense of 'exists.' 

Now it should be perfectly obvious that this sense must be tense-neutral, or tense-free, or tenseless.  And I have no desire to paper over the considerable problems that arise when we try to specify exactly what this tense-neutral use of 'exists' comes to. But that is not our present topic.

Presentism growing block static block

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Bill Vallicella

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13 responses to “Once More on Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing”

  1. oz Avatar
    oz

    To be clear, I am only trying to follow the logic. You claim
    (A) X has ceased to be temporally present
    is consistent with
    (B) X has not ceased to exist
    But you also claim that (A) implies
    (C) It is false that X still exists
    Does (C) then imply
    (D) X no longer exists
    ? If so, you hold that “X has not ceased to exist” is consistent with “X no longer exists”.
    And does (B) imply
    (E) X continues to exist
    ? Then you hold that “X continues to exist” is consistent with “X no longer exists”.

    Reply
  2. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Hello Bill, you say,

    If you can grasp that, then it ought to be at least conceivable that when a thing is has no bearing on whether it is.

    My suspicion is that ‘when a thing is’ is wrongly tensed. ‘When a thing is’ means just the present, now. So your claim is that what’s conceivable is that the present has no bearing on whether a thing is. But this is false. Instead, allow a little time to elapse and talk about the present situation in the past tense:

    It ought to be at least conceivable that when a thing was has no bearing on whether it was.

    Not just conceivable but true. Likewise, a translation into the future renders

    An item can become wholly past without prejudice to its existence.

    as

    An item can have become wholly past without prejudice to its having existed,

    and the rationale for ‘tense-free existence’ evaporates.

    Reply
  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Oz,
    You’re trying to follow the logic, but you are not following it. You can’t seem to think outside your presentist box.
    David,
    You are not following it either.
    Stay safe, gentlemen.

    Reply
  4. David Gudeman Avatar
    David Gudeman

    For myself, Bill, I’m not a presentist (though you seemed to assume I was the last time we corresponded on this). I have no commitment at all on this debate (although my intuition says the Growing Past is the least problematic solution) so please don’t assume that I am unable to “think outside my presentist box”.
    I suspect that there is something of a communications failure here with your use of language. If I am right, you think there is an important difference between “still exists”/”exists now” on the one hand, and “exists” on the other hand, and your correspondents do not understand how you are using these terms.
    To most people, “X exists” means the same as “X still exists”, and not because of presentist sympathies but because of how they interpret the use of “still”. You seem to think that “still” modifies “exists” in some way, somehow pulling an airy tenseless existence down into the sludge of tensed existence. I don’t read it that way, and I think others do not either. To me, “X still exists” means something like “the predicate ‘X exists’ is true at the present time”. “Still” does not modify “exists”, it modifies the entire sentence, emphasizing the time at which it is true. Similar comments apply to similar phrases like “right now” or “at the present time”.
    You gave me a spatial analogy for why you use the language the way you do, but it came late in the thread so your other correspondents may not have read it. To them, you are violating the normal meaning of language without using your turn signals. Practically everyone who believes in God would say that “God still exists” is true. Most people would just be confused if you ask whether numbers exist, but once you get them to understand and agree to the proposition “numbers exist”, I believe practically everyone would affirm that “numbers exist right now”.

    Reply
  5. OZ Avatar
    OZ

    >>You’re trying to follow the logic, but you are not following it
    I am trying, yes. I am trying to understand what you through a series of questions.
    (1) Does “it is false that X still exists” imply “X no longer exists” ?
    (2) Does “X has not ceased to exist” imply “X continues to exist” ?
    (3) Does “X has not become nothing” imply “X continues to be something” ?
    What are the answers?
    You are clearly trying to make an argument. But to make an argument you need to construct a series of claims that lead (validly) to a conclusion. You haven’t done that yet.

    Reply
  6. OZ Avatar
    OZ

    Gudeman “To me, “X still exists” means something like “the predicate ‘X exists’ is true at the present time””.
    I think it (“X still exists”) means more than that. I think it means “X exists and X did exist”, perhaps “X has not stopped existing”. As opposed to “X exists, but never existed before now”.

    Reply
  7. OZ Avatar
    OZ

    Gudeman: “I have no commitment at all on this debate”
    I am not clear it is even a debate. For there to be a debate, there needs to be a definite proposition before us, whose truth or falsity we can give arguments for.
    But I have no idea what that proposition is.
    Bill claims in the post above that I suffer from “loss of problems”. I don’t think so. I think there is a problem, but it is a problem of trying to express what cannot be coherently expressed.

    Reply
  8. Cyrus Avatar
    Cyrus

    I suspect that there is something of a communications failure here with your use of language.
    There is also a very early twentieth century English use of “don’t understand” that is floating around the conversation, I suspect. Something to watch out for. . .

    Reply
  9. BV Avatar
    BV

    >>To most people, “X exists” means the same as “X still exists”<< Then they don't understand the English language. Here are explications, in tensed language, of two common English locutions: X no longer exists =df x existed but x does not exist. X still exists =df x existed and x exists. It should now be obvious that 'X exists' does not mean the same as 'X still exists.' The second entails the first, but the first does not entail the second. To see this, imagine you have just finished building a book shelf. You say, 'It exists!' That is not to say that it still exists for it just now began to exist. Agree? If not, there is no point in discussing this further.

    Reply
  10. David Gudeman Avatar
    David Gudeman

    I will agree for the sake of argument that X still exists =df x existed and x exists (despite reservations about the difference between an implication and a connotation), but with the caveat that the tense of “existed” does not restrict it from applying to timeless objects.
    In standard English, believers in a timeless God will readily agree that God existed, God exists, and God will exist:

    “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
    Revelations 1:8, NIV

    Believers in timeless abstract objects who have not been exposed to the philosophy of time will ready agree that 3 existed, 3 exists, and 3 will exist.
    I am making a grammatical point here, not a metaphysical point, and only for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding. If you want to use terms in a different way, I’m happy to adapt to your usage; I was only warning you and your readers of a potential misunderstanding.

    Reply
  11. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Morning Bill. I can indeed conceive of a material thing becoming wholly past without it ceasing to exist. I just don’t think this happens. I understand ceasing to exist as a process extended in time in which the matter of an object returns to the undifferentiated bulk from which the object first stood out. If a thing becomes wholly past without this process occurring then one moment the thing is present and the next it is not. Some mass just vanishes. And this violates the principle of the conservation of mass. We are in a position analogous with triangularity/trilaterality. There are geometrical reasons that these distinct concepts are always co-instantiated. Likewise physical reasons in the present case.
    However, you appear to move from conceivability to possibility: ‘An item can become wholly past without prejudice to its existence’. In the next sentence: ‘Now obviously “existence” here refers to tense-free existence’. So perhaps you are urging that by leaving the present in this way a thing embarks on a new mode of existence in the past. But I don’t think that can be right either because elsewhere you claim that Scollay Square is in that mode yet it surely underwent a cessation of existence process involving wrecking balls and bulldozers. So, yes, you are quite correct: I am not following your line of thought.

    Reply
  12. BV Avatar
    BV

    Hi David Brightly,
    Your comment is very good.
    Suppose I have a brass statue S. Think of it as a hylomorphic compound of substantial form + proximate matter (materia signata). I melt it down. The statue ceases to exist as we would normally say in tensed English. S has become wholly past. As an upholder of the reality of the past — that’s the going phrase, by the way, used by Anscombe, Dummett, et al. — I want to deny that S has become nothing. So it is tenselessly something. (I appreciate that ‘tenselessly’ is none too clear.
    On the other hand, we must all agree that S does not still exist as a hylomorphic compound after it has been destroyed by being melted down. Here the spatial analogy fails. I can remove S from our spatial presence without destroying it. But S cannot undergo existential (as opposed to alterational) change without being destroyed.
    I want to reconcile these two:
    1. Wholly past S is not nothing.
    2. Wholly past S is not a full-fledged hylomorphic compound.
    I want to say that S retains some sort of “shadowy existence” to borrow a phrase from Michael Dummett. But what the hell does that mean?
    So, David, can you feel my pain? Do you accept both (1) and (2)? Or do you reject (1). I would guess that you reject (1).

    Reply
  13. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    I can’t exactly feel your pain, Bill, but I’ll admit to a certain ‘falling through the floor’ sensation when the implications of my train of thought dawned on me more fully.
    Yes, I would have to give up your (1). I take it that ‘is’ here is present-tensed? Then perhaps you could say that S is a formless lump of brass and as such is not a fully-fledged hylomorphic compound. But then S has lost its S-ness.
    I think I too want to uphold the reality of the past. But does this require that it exist tenselessly—surely that would put it outside time altogether—or that it survive into the present in some attenuated form? If today’s ‘today’ and tomorrow’s ‘yesterday’ are co-referential, and the things of today are real, then the things of tomorrow’s yesterday will have been real too, even if some of them will have ceased to exist by tomorrow.
    I have been reading Dummett’s ‘The Reality of the Past’. Hard pounding.

    Reply

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