Month: May 2020

The Temporal, the Atemporal, and the Tenseless

1) Divide all entities into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes, the temporal and the atemporal. Temporal entities are 'in time,' while atemporal entities are not 'in time.' Caesar's crossing the Rubicon is in time; 7's being prime is not in time. 

2) Here are some temporal words: past, present, future, before, after, later, earlier, simultaneous.  We can define 'in time' as follows.  An item is in time iff a temporal word can be meaningfully predicated of it. Otherwise it is not in time. My definition is circular, but innocuously so. It is like the following which is also circular: X is possible =df X exists in at least one possible world.

"But doesn't 6 come after 5?" Yes in the normal order of counting. Counting, however, is a temporal process. The numbers themselves are not in time. 

"If a thing changes, then it is in time. The number 9 changed from being Tom's favorite number to being Tom's second favorite number. So numbers are in time."  But that's a mere Cambridge change; it doesn't count. 

3) Atemporal entities tenselessly exist and tenselessly have properties.  Everything timeless is tenseless. 

4) But can a temporal item tenselessly exist? This is the question we need to discuss. Mr Brightly in an earlier thread says No. Caesar is a wholly past individual, and obviously to be classified as temporal rather an atemporal. On Brightly's presentism, JC existed, but is now nothing. We of course agree that JC is no longer temporally present. He is a wholly past individual.  But I maintain that there is a sense in which he exists nonetheless.  I gave an argument earlier in response to Brightly.  Here is a new one.

ARGUMENT FROM THE UNIVOCITY OF 'EXIST(S)'

a) Both temporal and atemporal items exist.

b) Whatever exists exists in the same sense and in the same way: there are no different modes of existence such that timeless items exist in one way and time-bound items in another. 'Exist(s)' is univocal across all applications.

c) Atemporal items exist tenselessly.  Therefore:

d) Temporal items exist tenselessly. Therefore:

e) Julius Caesar and all wholly past items exist tenselessly despite being wholly past.

COMMENT

The main idea is that existence, by its very nature, is tenseless.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  If so, then pastness, presentness, and futurity are purely temporal properties which, by themselves, imply nothing about existence. It follows that existence cannot be identified with temporal presentness.  Accordingly:

Dinosaurs existed but do not still exist just in case dinosaurs exist (tenselessly) AND they are wholly past.

Horses exist (present-tense) just in case horses exist (tenselessly) AND some of them are present.

Martian colonies will exist just in case Martian colonies exist (tenselessly) AND they are wholly future.

The idea is that existence is time-independent. When a thing exists has no bearing on whether it exists. 

Think of a spotlight that successively illuminates events in McTaggart's B-series (events ordered by the B-relations, i.e., earlier than, later than, simultaneous with.)  The events and the times at which they occur are all equally real, equally existent, and their existence is tenseless.  An illuminated event is a temporally present event.  So the spotlight once shone on the event of my birth rendering it present. But the spotlight moved on such that my birth became wholly past, but not nonexistent.

UPSHOT

I am not endorsing the above argument, nor am I endorsing the Spotlight Theory of Time.  My point against Brightly is that there is no contradiction in thinking of a temporal item as tenselessly existing.  The trick is to realize that existence needn't be thought of as time-dependent — even in the case of items in time.

Ostrich on a Ridge

I bring an ostrich to a high and narrow and slippery ridge.  I bid him consider the abyss to his left and the abyss to his right.

"You came from nothing to perch here a moment, but soon you will slide to your left and become nothing again. I speak in a parable to convey to you the truth of presentism: the present alone is real.  What is not yet is not; what is no longer is not.  Now is the time, transient as it is. No nunc stans for you; the nunc movens is all you've got."

Sweet Sixteen

BV in PragueToday is my 16th 'blogiversary.' 

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these sixteen years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, some in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on last year's anniversary if you care to look.

An Exchange on the Reality of the Past

I wrote:

Our penal [and other] practices presuppose the reality of the past. But how can presentism uphold the reality of the past?  The past is factual, not fictional; actual, not merely possible; something, not nothing. 

The past is an object of historical investigation: we learn more and more about it.  Historical research is discovery, not invention.  We adjust our thinking about the past by what we discover. It is presupposed that what happened in the past is absolutely independent of our present thinking about it.

In sum, historical research presupposes the reality of the past. If there is a tenable presentism, then it must be able to accommodate the reality of the past.  I'd like to know how.  If only the present exists, then the past does not exist, in which case it is nothing, whence it follows that it is no object of investigation. But it is an object of investigation, ergo, etc.

David Brightly responds:

History, archaeology, palaeontology investigate not so much the past but vestiges (from vestigium, footprint or track) of the past. Things from the past that are not wholly past, such as documents, artifacts, and fossils that have come down to us. These things are sometimes hidden away in archives and attics, or under the soil, or in rock strata, and have to be discovered. But then comes a process of invention whereby a story about the past is put together that must be consistent with the found vestiges. Sometimes the account is revised in the light of new discoveries. Such an account may well contain truths but we cannot be sure. We can't acquaint ourselves with the wholly past.

We of course agree that the practitioners of the above disciplines study the causal traces of the past in the present. Since we cannot travel back to the past, the only accessible evidence, whether archaeological or documentary, is all in the present. The researchers then infer from present evidence various facts about the past.  "But then comes a process of invention whereby a story about the past is put together that must be consistent with the found vestiges."  That seems right.  We can also agree that any account/story of the past is subject to revision in light of new discoveries. 

Here are some points of possible disagreement.  If the reader disagrees, he should tell me about what and why.

1) Although we write history, the subject-matter written about is independent of us and what we write. Similarly, although we in the present remember some past events, the past events we veridically remember (as opposed to merely seem to remember) are typically if not always independent of us and our veridical memorial acts.  So, while without us there would be no history of the past, the past itself does not need us to exist.   (Compare: without us there would be no physics; but nature does not need us to exist.) To put it another way, the past is not immanent in our historiography; it is not 'constituted' (Husserl) by our historiography or by our collective memory.  Affirming this, I affirm the reality of the past, and deny anti-realism about the past.

2) While the (partially invented) story must be consistent with the evidence discovered, and consistent with itself, it cannot be both true of historical facts and complete.    Either Big Al drank a glass of vino rosso  on January 1st, 1940, or he did not.  But there is nothing in the present that could either confirm or disconfirm the proposition or its negation.  Whatever effects Big Al's drinking or non-drinking had surely had petered out by the end of 1940.  The past is complete (completely determinate). It is as complete as the present. But no true account we give could be complete. 

3) While our account of the past is subject to addition and revision, the past itself is not.  It is not only determinate in every detail, but also fixed and unalterable.  Although the past's events are logically contingent, they have a kind of accidental necessity (necessitas per accidens) inasmuch as neither man nor God can do anything to alter or expunge them. Not even God can restore a virgin, as Aquinas says somewhere.  What is done is done, and cannot be undone.  J. Caesar might not have crossed the Rubicon, but, having crossed it, he couldn't uncross it.

Now how can presentism accommodate these points? How can presentism uphold the reality of the past?

a) On presentism, whatever remains of the past must be locatable in the present. For on presentism, the present and its contents alone exist.  It follows that past events for which there are no causal traces in the present are nothing at all.  On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.  It does no good to say, with the Ostrich, that what no longer exists existed, for on presentism, what existed is nothing if it cannot be found in some form in the present. 

b) Most past events leave no causal traces in the present.  Therefore:

c) The  totality of causal traces  of the reality of the past in the present is incomplete.

d) The past is complete. Therefore:

e)  The past cannot be identified with  the totality of its causal traces in the present. Therefore:

f) Presentism cannot accommodate the fully determinate (complete) reality of the past. Therefore:

g) Presentism is false.

 

Style and Thought

I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his:

The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44)

This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman should be allowed to get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:

Style is the physiognomy of the mind.

Latin and Greek for Philosophers

Here, by James Lesher. Sample:

Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that any bachelors we encounter on our trip will be unmarried.’

Uncle Bill advises,

When it comes to Latin, and not just Latin, don't throw it if you don't know it.

Reading Now: Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing

KolakowskiI'm on a Kolakowski binge.  I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975).  I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988.  Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress of Philosophy in Brighton.  Both of the aforementioned books are outstanding even if the translations are inadequate. But knowing the ideas, I can figure out how the translation should have gone.

Kolakowsi is erudition on stilts. The man's range is stunning. While some of his essays are sketchy, he can be scholarly when he wants to be, as witness his magisterial three-volumed Main Currents of Marxism.

Kolakowski began as a communist but soon saw through the destructive ideology. For the great sin of speaking the truth, he was stripped of his academic post and prohibited from teaching in Poland.  He found refuge in Canada, The U. S. A. and the U.K. When the Left takes over the West, where will dissident truth-tellers go? Here is what Kirkus has to say about the exciting book I am now reading:

GOD OWES US NOTHING: A BRIEF REMARK ON PASCAL'S RELIGION AND ON THE SPIRIT OF JANSENISM

by Leszek Kolakowski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1995

A provocative critique of the Jansenist movement and of its celebrated proponent Blaise Pascal, from internationally renowned scholar Kolakowski (The Alienation of Reason, 1968, etc.; Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago). Jansenism, the powerful 17th-century heresy condemned by Rome, has often been called the Catholic form of Calvinism. Inspired by the writings of Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Utrecht, the Jansenists claimed to be orthodox disciples of St. Augustine and taught that salvation was gratuitous in a way that ruled out any human cooperation. Since those whom God had freely predestined would inevitably be saved, Jesus Christ died only for the elect; all others would be justly condemned to eternal torments, irrespective of whether they were good or bad, including unbaptized babies. Human nature was totally corrupted by sin, especially original sin. Kolakowski gives us a detailed account, with copious quotations, both of St. Augustine and of the positions of Jansen and his followers, and he guides us through the central questions of the debate. He devotes the second half of his study to the writings of Pascal, whose profound pessimism he sees as embodying the Jansenists' world-denying ideals. The arts, free intellectual inquiry, and even hugging one's children had no place in what Kolakowski calls Pascal's religion of unhappiness. The author rarely refers to other studies of this great controversy. He is surely being malicious when he holds that Rome's rejection of Jansenism was a compromise with the world and a de facto abandonment of the Church's tradition, since he presents the latter in an overly Augustinian form, choosing to ignore, for example, the Eastern Fathers, Aquinas, and the basic doctrine that the human person, endowed with free will, is made in the image of God. Brilliantly cynical presentation of an unpopular but still influential religious outlook.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-226-45051-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995

Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION