I agree with the following remark in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Zettel.
456. Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called “loss of problems.” (Problemverlust) Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world become broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial. Russell and H. G. Wells suffer from this.
I prefer to say that some philosophers are problem-blind. It is not as if they have lost the problems; they never found them. They are like unto the ostrich with his head in the sand.
Here is a problem, or rather a question, that seems to me genuine and ‘deep.’ It has to do with the relation of time and existence. Do only temporally present items exist, or do wholly past and wholly future items also exist? For this to be a substantive question of metaphysics, ‘exist’ in both of its occurrences in the preceding sentence cannot be in the present tense. If they were, ‘Only present items exist’ would be logically true and ‘Past and present and future items all exist’ would be logically false. For it is logically true that only present items exist at present, and logically false that past, present, and future items all exist at present, given that ‘past’ and ‘future’ mean wholly non-present.
So there have to be two senses of ‘exist(s)’ in play for our question to make sense. The question, again, is this: Do only temporally present items exist, or do wholly past and wholly future items also exist? Well, maybe the question just doesn’t make sense. This seems to be the Ostrich’s view. He seems to think that logical as opposed to metaphysical presentism is the only game in town: ‘Only the present exists’ is susceptible of only one reading, the logical reading, whereas I think it is susceptible of two readings, the logical one and a metaphysical one. In one of his earlier comments, the Ostrich (Edward Buckner) writes:
He [the logical presentist] is putting forward not a substantive metaphysical thesis, but rather a substantive thesis about language, a thesis about the meaning of ‘exists’ and ‘at present’.
The thesis, I take it, is that ‘exists’ can only be used correctly in the present-tensed way. But if so, ‘Boethius exists’ when used to convey that Boethius is neither fictional nor merely possible, but an actual albeit no longer present person, is nonsense. In other words, ‘exists’ has no correct tenseless use. It seems to me, however, that ‘exist(s)’ does have correct tenseless uses. It has correct tenseless uses when we are talking about timeless entities (if such there be) but also when we are talking about items in time.
Many philosophers have maintained that there are timeless entities. If so, then ‘exists’ can be used both tenselessly and correctly. Suppose I tell you that a prime number greater than 3 and less than 7 exists. It would be a bad joke were you to reply, Yogi Berra style, “You mean now?” But I expect the Ostrich will have no truck with the timeless. For the Ostrich is as much a nominalist as he is a logical presentist. But even if he were to countenance so-called abstract objects, he could restrict his logical presentism to temporalia. His claim would then presumably be that ‘exists’ has no correct tenseless or time-independent use in respect of any temporal item such as Boethius.
He might tell us that Boethius exists in that he either existed or exists or will exist, where each disjunct is tensed. The disjunction is true because the first disjunct is true, and because it suffices for a disjunction to be true that one of its disjuncts be true. The Ostrich could say, reasonably, that the disjunctively omnitemporal use of ‘exist(s)’ is not genuinely tenseless since it is parasitic upon tensed expressions.
The Ostrich bids us consider
. . . the question of whether a thing could exist without existing in the present. The logical presentist might then question what is meant by ‘no longer exists’. The natural interpretation is ‘existed, but does not exist’. But then the thing doesn’t exist, period. Using tensed language we can say, truly, that Boethius existed, but does not exist. Why not be satisfied with this?
Well, if Boethius does not exist, period, what is the difference in reality between his never having existed and his having existed? Those are plainly different. What is the difference between a purely fictional individual and a past non-fictional individual? And what is the difference between a merely possible individual and and a past actual individual? Boethius is factual, not fictional; actual, not merely possible. He is a wholly past factual and actual individual. Historians are students of the past. They study facts, not fictions; actualities not mere possibilities. One could accommodate these obvious differences by holding that ‘exist(s)’ can be used correctly in two ways, the present-tensed way and in a way that expresses existence simpliciter. To ask whether cats that swim exist, is not to ask whether they exist now. It is to ask whether they exist somewhere in the world at some time. It is to ask whether they simply exist, i.e., belong to the “furniture of the world.” To ask whether God exists is not to presuppose that if he exists, then he exists now. For the question whether God exists leaves open whether he exists at every time, at no time, at some but not all times, or entirely outside of time.
My claim is that there is a clear difference between ‘exist(s)’ used in the present-tensed way and ‘exist(s)’ used to express existence period, i.e., existence simpliciter.
If the Ostrich is right, and what no longer exists does not exist period, then the passage of time has annihilated the item in question. Of course, we both agree that Scollay Square no longer exists, and that it is now nothing. We also agree that it would be false to say that Scollay Square still exists. But of course that is not what I mean when I say that it exists simpliciter. What I mean is that it is (tenselessly) part of the furniture of the world. What I deny, and what the Ostrich seems to affirm, is that the passage of time has annihilated the locale in question.
The past-tensed ‘Boethius existed’ is true. It is true now. What makes it true? Surely not Boethius! The Ostrich will presumably say that nothing makes it true, and there is no need for anything to make it true; it is just true! I expect the Ostrich to adopt A. N. Prior’s redundancy theory of the present according to which everything that is presently true is simply true. (Cf. Craig Bourne, A Future for Presentism, Oxford UP, 2006, 42 f.) Just as ‘It is true that ____’ is redundant. ‘It is now the case that ___’ is redundant.
For Prior, all tensed sentences are present-tensed. Thus the past-tensed ‘Boethius existed’ MEANS that it is now the case that Boethius existed. Given the redundancy of ‘It is now the case that ____,’ we are left with ‘Boethius existed.’ And that is all! There is no need or room for a metaphysics of time. There is nothing more to say about the nature of time than what is said in a perspicuous tense logic.
Thus the Ostrich. I am not satisfied. Past-tensed contingent truths need truth-makers. ‘BV exists’ is true. It can’t just be true. It needs a truth-maker. A plausible candidate is the 175 lb. animal who wears my clothes. ‘BV exists’ is true because BV exists. Now it will be the case that BV no longer exists. When that time comes, ‘BV existed’ will be true. I conclude that if ‘BV exists’ needs a truth-maker, then so will ‘BV existed.’
As with BV, so with Boethius.
If ‘Boethius existed’ needs a truth-maker, and nothing at present can serve as truth-maker, then the pressure is on to resist the Ostrich thesis that ‘exists’ can only be correctly used in the present-tensed way.
The Ostrich, however, does not see the problem. Because he does not see the problem, I pronounce him ‘problem-blind.’ (Re-read the Wittgenstein quotation above.)