Author: Bill Vallicella

Spinoza’s Epistemic Theory of Miracles

Chapter Six of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is entitled, "Of Miracles." We do well to see what we can learn from it. Spinoza makes four main points in this chapter, but I will examine only two of them in this entry.

We learned from our discussion of Augustine that there is a tension and possibly a contradiction between the will of God and the existence of miracles ontically construed. Miracles so construed violate, contravene, suspend, transgress, or otherwise upset the laws of nature. But for theists the laws of nature are ordained by God, regardless of how  laws are understood, whether as regularities or as relations of universals that entail regularities (as on David M. Armstrong's theory of laws) or whatever. So it seems as if the theist is under a certain amount of conceptual pressure to adopt an epistemic theory of miracles. We heard Augustine say, Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura: A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. We find a similar view in Spinoza, despite the very considerable differences between the two thinkers:

Some ‘Tweets’ on Free Speech

Thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter has been liberated from the speech police.  Free at last! I may sign up. In these hyperkinetic times, pithy sayings are needed to punch through the noise. And sometimes one needs to SHOUT.

Dissent is not hate. If I dissent from your VIEWS, it does not follow that I hate YOU.
 
Can a contemporary 'liberal' distinguish between a person and the proposition he asserts? If he can, but he doesn't, then he ought to be morally reprimanded. We have a moral responsibility to try to think straight. We may not succeed, but we must try.
 
Don't confuse being judgmental with making moral judgments.
 
Don't make Dennis Prager's mistake of saying that the the First Amendment protects 'hate speech.' That formulation is a foolish concession to the Left's notion that conservative speech is hate speech. The First Amendment protects DISSENT. Hate, like love, is in the eye of the beholder, and leftists are not known for their 'visual' acuity.
 
The trouble with 'liberals' is that they are ruled by their emotions. That is why they hear dissent as hate.
 
The growing feminarchy within the Democrat Party will only exacerbate the party's governance by emotion. Is that a 'sexist' thing to say? Not if it is true; it is true; ergo, it is not 'sexist.'
 
Dissent is not hate. But even if dissent is couched in (what some inappropriately sensitive person  takes to be) harsh and hurtful or even hateful language, it still must be protected.
 
I apologize for repeating all of these obvious points. But in these benighted times, they need to be stated time and time again.  

THE DEMS NO LONGER SUPPORT FREE SPEECH. And you are STILL a Democrat? What is wrong with you? Jonathan Turley:

Yet recently, the Democratic Party seems to have abandoned its historic fealty to free speech. Democratic writers and leaders are publicly calling for everything from censorship to the criminalization of free speech. The latest such clarion call appeared in The Washington Post by a column from MSNBC analyst and former Obama official Richard Stengel.

Augustine and the Epistemic Theory of Miracles

This is a revised version of an entry from November 2009. Long-time reader Thomas Beale has got me thinking about miracles again. I cannot tell you what to believe about this vexing topic, but I can help you think clearly about it by making some distinctions.  Below I distinguish between ontic and epistemic approaches to miracles.

………………………….

In The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 8, St. Augustine quotes Marcus Varro, Of the Race of the Roman People:

There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its colour, size, form, course, which never appeared before nor since.  Andrastus of Cyzicus, and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Ogyges.

The Bishop of Hippo comments:

So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. (Modern Library, p. 776, tr. Dods, emphasis added.)

The Gist of Brightly’s Presentism

An excerpt from a comment by David Brightly  to this entry:

My mind is populated with ideas of things. I acquire these ideas (a) directly through acquaintance with external objects and (b) indirectly by description in language and image. These ideas of things guide my interaction with the outside world. Having seen a bear go into the cave or having been told 'There's a bear in the cave', I approach the cave with caution. Through my contact with the external world I come to accept that all external things come into existence, exist for a while, and then pass out of existence. The ceasing to exist of things that I am familiar with and am attached to is an everyday experience. When I have such an experience, or have a thing's passing described to me, my idea of that thing becomes modified. None of the idea itself passes away, at least not initially. Instead the idea (not the thing it's an idea of) acquires a new attribute, analogous to the label 'Account Closed' on the front of a business ledger, signifying that, to a first approximation, the content of the idea can be safely ignored for purposes of guiding my life. I might express this label by saying 'The thing is past' or 'The thing is in the past' or 'The thing has ceased to exist'. The important point here is that, despite appearances, these assertions are not predicating something of the thing itself but rather of my idea of it, namely that the idea is redundant.

Suppose that a monument M, of which I had direct sensory acquaintance, has been demolished.  M no longer exists, but my memorial ideas, my memories, of M still exist. Consider the most vivid of these, idea R.  R is obviously distinct from M because R is a mental representation of M. R exists now 'in' my mind; M does not exist now, and, being a physical chunk of the external world, never existed 'in' any (finite) mind either spatially or merely intentionally. When I learn that M no longer exists, R undergoes a modification; it "acquires a new attribute" as David puts it.  This new attribute is not an attribute of M, which no longer exists, but solely an attribute of R.  We could describe this attribute as the property of not being of or about anything real or existent. It comes to the same if we call this attribute the property of being non-veridical. This simply means that R is not true of anything.  R has thus undergone a modification: it was veridical when M existed, but is now non-veridical when R no longer exists.  (In my example, R is a memory, but it might be a past-directed description, say, 'the only statue at the corner of Third and Howard.' 

You can see where David is going with this. He is proposing that we analyze 'M is (wholly) past, ' M is in the past,'  and 'M has ceased to exist'  in terms of 'R has ceased to be veridical.'  

One virtue of this analysis is that R is available, and available at present, which satisfies the demands of presentism according to which only what exists (present tense) exists.   But I don't think the analysis is workable even as a specification of truth conditions. The cup out of which Socrates drank the hemlock existed but no one now has any ideas about it, that very cup. And there are innumerable things that existed but no longer exist about which no one now or ever had any ideas whether singular or general.  What existed cannot depend for its having existed on the present contents of any finite mind.  But there is worse to come when we ask about truthmakers. 

If you are wondering what the difference is between a truth condition and a truthmaker, our old friend Alan Rhoda in an old blog post does a good job of explaining the distinction:

. . .truthmakers are parcels of reality . . . .

Not so with truth conditions. Truth conditions are semantic explications of the meaning of statements. They tell us in very precise terms what has to be true for a particular statement to be true. For example, a B-theorist like Nathan Oaklander will say that the truth conditions of the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics are over" is given by the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics end earlier than the date of this utterance". Thus truth conditions are meaning entities like statements that are used to spell out or analyze the meaning of other statements.

'M existed' is true, true now, and contingently true now (it might not have been true now and would not have been true now if the Antifa thugs hadn't dynamited the monument).  We have here a truthbearer that clearly needs a truthmaker.  So I ask a simple question of the presentist: What makes it true that M has ceased to exist? (In general: what makes any presently true, past-tensed, contingent truth true?)  The truthmaker cannot be or involve M because M, on presentism, does not exist.

Note that the truthmaker of 'M has ceased to exist' cannot be the fact that the memorial representation or idea R has ceased to be  veridical. This answer avails nothing since it merely postpones the question, which becomes: what makes it true that R has ceased to be veridical?  'R is no longer veridical' is true, presently true, and contingently true. It needs a truthmaker.    

If the presentist says instead that 'M has ceased to exist' had a truthmaker in the past, what makes true this tensed claim, namely, the claim that the truthbearer in question had a truthmaker in the past? 

Could past-tensed contingent truths be brute truths?  (A brute truth, by definition, has no need of a truthmaker.)   I may come back to this topic in a separate entry.  But if you grant me that the true, present-tensed, contingent 'BV is  seated' (assertively uttered at t) needs a truthmaker, then how could the mere passage of time do away with the need for a truthmaker of the presently true, contingent, past-tensed 'BV was seated' (assertively uttered at t* > t)?

Finally, the presentist might reject the need for any truthmakers at all.  I would respond by hitting him over the head with Aristotle's Categories, figuratively speaking of course.

Institutions and Credibility

Key institutions appear to be working very hard to destroy their own credibility. The Roman Catholic Church, the Center for Disease Control, the fourth estate, the military, the business 'community,' academe, the entertainment industry, and the government in all three branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial have very little credibility left.  Each of these institutions has 'earned' our disrespect as could easily be shown. To name some names: Bergoglio, Fauci, Milley, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell.  My esteemed readers will have no trouble adding to the list.

For now I refer you to Steven Hayward:

• A few days ago I remarked that the Biden Administration would have to appeal the district court ruling striking down the mask mandate despite the political unpopularity of masks because preserving the power of the administrative state is a core principle of the left today. I just didn’t expect The New Republic to come right out and admit this point:

Biden had no choice but to appeal. That’s because Mizelle—a former Clarence Thomas clerk whom the American Bar Association rated “not qualified” based on insufficient experience when she was nominated in 2020—wasn’t repealing only a mask mandate. She was also advancing a slow-motion conservative assault on the post–New Deal regulatory state. . .

As I’ve written before, the right’s big brass ring is to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which seemed at the time, believe it or not, to be a conservative ruling, but now stands as the only bulwark against virtually closing down regulatory agencies entirely.

Word of the Day: Assuasive

Merriam-Webster: soothing, calming. Example: "Like all good listeners, he has a way of attending that is at once intense and assuasive: the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered, somehow, from all possible judgment." (David Foster Wallace)

I am a good listener, but far more intense than assuasive.

You have the verb 'assuage' in your vocabulary; now add the adjective 'assuasive.'

Which Side Are You On?

I have criticized Rod Dreher and others for "floating above the fray," for trying to be objective and impartial in those practical situations in which immediate action is required and in which the requisite action is impeded by the otherwise laudable attempt to arrive at the objective truth of the situation. 

"Can't you see that failing to support Donald J. Trump, the only one on our side willing and able to achieve results, aids and abets the political enemy?" "Can't you grasp that politics is a practical enterprise?" "Are you incapable of distinguishing between political theory and political practice?" "The very survival of the Republic is at stake and you want to wait around for the perfect  conservative candidate?" "You are letting the unattainable best become the enemy of the achievable good!" "What is wrong with you, man, which side are you on?"

But now I need to examine whether I myself am being consistent on the Ukraine question. I have criticized those who attack and indeed smear Tucker Carlson and others as 'Putin supporters.'  Am I not "floating above the fray" when I try to understand the current Ukraine horror and how it came about and how it could have been avoided?  Am I not aiding and  abetting a vicious aggressor  when I credit Carlson et al. with insights worth pondering? Which side am I on here? Does not my attempt at being fair and balanced have the effect of aiding Vlad the Aggressor? Should I take the Dick Morris line against Tucker Carlson? 

When we examine our consciences — a salutary practice to be enacted on a daily basis — we sometimes in all justice must acquit ourselves of the charges we bring against ourselves. And so it seems to me in this case.  There is an important difference.  

As an American citizen I have a strong interest in the preservation of the Republic and the defense of all that makes it what it is, including its borders.  Threats to it are threats to me and my way of life, the life of the philosopher who is committed to free speech, open inquiry, and the pursuit of truth   I do not have the same interest in the defense of  Ukraine and its borders.  This is not to say that the USA should not help Ukraine defend itself. It is to insist on the principle, Country First.  A special case thereof is America First. Let us review what this means.

It does not mean that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them.  It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.'  The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.  If I revert to America First, that is to be understood as an instance of Country First.

So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during  a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.

An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.

An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.

So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.

America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families.  If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare.  If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.

The details are disputable, but not the general principle.  The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first. 

The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries.  That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned.  I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory.

One implication of Country First is  that an immigration policy must be to the benefit of the host country.  The interests of the members of the host country supersede the interests of the immigrants.  Obviously, there is no blanket right to immigrate. Obviously, potential immigrants must be vetted and must meet certain standards. Obviously, no country is under any obligation to accept subversive elements or elements who would work to undermine the nation's culture.  Obviously, obviously, obviously — but not to the destructive leftists who have hijacked the Democrat Party and have installed a puppet to do their bidding.

Suppose you disagree with the enlightened nationalism I am sketching. What will you put in its place? If you are not a nationalist, what are you? Some sort of internationalist or cosmopolitan.  But the notion of being a citizen of the world is empty since there is no world government and never will be. What could hold it together except the hegemony of one of the nations or a coalition of nations ganging up on the others?

The neocons tried to press America and it values and ways upon the world or upon the Middle Eastern portion thereof. The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed on benighted and backward peoples riven by tribal hatreds and depressed by an inferior religion. The folly of that should now be evident. One cannot bomb the benighted into Enlightenment. 

Leftist internationalists want to bring the world to America thereby diluting and ultimately destroying our values. The mistake of the multi-culti cultural Marxists is to imagine that comity is possible without commonality, that wildly diverse sorts of people can live together in peace and harmony. Or at least that is one mistake of the politically correct multi-cultis.

So the way forward is enlightened nationalism. Trump understands this in his intuitive and inarticulate way. The Never-Trumpers do not. Their brand of  yap-and-scribble, inside-the-Beltway, bow-tied, pseudo-conservatism puts a premium on courtly behavior and gentlemanly debate that is an end in itself and rarely  issues in ameliorative action.  The people, however, demand action. 

Which side are you on?

Superstition Wilderness: Garden Valley Loop out of First Water Trailhead

The boys were a little anxious but acquitted themselves well on this five and a half mile loop through characteristically rugged Superstition terrain except for the easy walk through Garden Valley itself. The guide books say it takes four and a half hours. It took the old men a bit longer. We left at 6:36 and were back at the Jeep at 11:22 ante meridian. We made the full trip to Hackberry Spring which involves an arduous return via some scrambling  and a lot of streambed rock hopping.

In these times that try men's souls it is excellent therapy to be on trails that try men's soles.  Isn't that cute?

Dennis proudly standing and your humble correspondent sitting near Hackberry Spring. Photo credit: Jeff K. 

Bill V and Dennis M Hackberry Spring 22 April 2022

Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015.  We are headed back to the trailhead from Hackberry Spring  via the First Water Creek bed.

BV 3 April 15 First Water Creek

And here is the man himself in the vicinity of Hackberry Spring:

Dale Tuggy 3 April 15

Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday

Kant Sapere AudeImmanuel Kant was born on this date in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 44 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 44 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise higher and higher with age and experience one becomes more and more reluctant to submit anything to evaluation let alone publication. One may scribble as before, and even more than before, but with less conviction that one's outpourings deserve being embalmed in printer's ink. (Herein lies a reason to blog.)

So I say to my young friends: finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Finish it before your standards become too exacting. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30. 

Now raise your glass with me in a toast to Manny on this, his 298th birthday. Sapere aude!

 Related: Right and Wrong Order

Earth Day 2022

Maverick Philosopher doesn't celebrate anything as politically correct as Earth Day.  Maverick Philosopher celebrates critical thinking.  So I refer you to William Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.  A rich and subtle essay.  Excerpt:

Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists nonetheless express feelings tantamount to religious awe when in the presence of wilderness—a fact that testifies to the success of the romantic project. Those who have no difficulty seeing God as the expression of our human dreams and desires nonetheless have trouble recognizing that in a secular age Nature can offer precisely the same sort of mirror.

To put (roughly the same)  point with Maverickian aphoristic pithiness: Nature for the idolaters of the earth is just as much an unconscious anthropomorphic projection as the God of the Feuerbachians.

Thus it is that wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest. The critique of modernity that is one of environmentalism’s most important contributions to the moral and political discourse of our time more often than not appeals, explicitly or implicitly, to wilderness as the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world. Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are—or ought to be.

Related: Timothy Treadwell and Nature Idolatry.  (Treadwell was the romantic fool who camped without protection among grizzlies in Alaska, thought it acceptable to end up bear scat, and did, along with his girl friend.)

Christianity and Individualism

Mark Tooley:

Easter is a timely reminder of Christianity’s development of individualism, which is now widely derided by many on both sides of the political spectrum. 

Yes.

Many on the post-liberal left replace individualism, which they equate with greed and capitalism, with raucous identity politics stressing communal identities based on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or some other category of victim group. Many on the post-liberal right disdain individualism as self-centered autonomous materialist hedonism disconnected from family, religion and community, degenerating into endless categories of personal expressivism. They propose hierarchy, tradition and subordination to institutions as alternatives.

That's right.

Easter is the supreme example of extraordinary, supernatural inspired individualism. Jesus the individual, as God Incarnate, redeemed the whole world through His suffering, death and resurrection. He was shunned by all, His people, His followers, His family, yet He sacrificially prevailed against all sin, death and hell. Humanity was not saved by the collective but by one individual.

Jesus is the exemplar of the anti-tribal whether you accept his divinity or not. But isn't the God of the Old Testament a tribal god, the god of the Jews who sticks up for them and smites their enemies?  Maybe so, but God himself is not a member of the tribe of gods. In himself, God is anti-tribal. His identity is not a tribal identity. If we are made in his image and likeness, then we are meant to be individuals too.  Normative individuality is pre-delineated in our divine origin. In simpler terms, God made us to be individuals, and it is our vocation and task to achieve individuation by lifting ourselves out of the social and the tribal from which we must start, but in which we must not remain.  Perhaps  we could read Christ as the highest manifestation and achievement of radical self-individuation.

This fearsome call to the individual has animated all of Christendom and bequeathed to us concepts of individual dignity, purpose, duties and rights, which ultimately resulted in societies that aspired to equality and opportunity for all. What is sometimes called classical “liberalism” is the respect for individuals and their consciences that unfolded across several millennia thanks to the Biblical God’s summons to each person.

This is my view as well. It is presently under assault both from the post-liberal Left and the post-liberal Right, e.g. Patrick Deneen and Ryszard Legutko, et al. 

Addressing one prominent contemporary critic of individualism and “liberalism,” Hanssen warns: “[Patrick] Deneen needs to be more careful, in taking aim at radical autonomy, that he doesn’t cast aspersions on the entire tradition in which Christianity has played a crucial role in elevating the dignity of the individual. It is the individual substance of a rational nature that is immortal: not the family, not the community, not the state.”  

Exactly right!  Speaking for myself: 

1) The individual is the primary locus of value, not the family, the clan, the tribe, any group, association, race, sex . . . .

2) Self-individuation is a task, a project, and for the believer, one presumably extending beyond this life and into the next.  We are to become who we are, and to be who we are becoming.  

3) Tribalism is tearing us apart. We are on a path toward increasing social malaise as a result.

4)  The cure for tribal self-identification is not an opposite tribal self-identification. White tribalism, for example, is not  a truly ameliorative and long-term answer to black tribalism.  I do concede, however, that tribalism pro tempore may be tactically necesary, here and there, for purposes of self-defense.

Existence Simpliciter: Continuing the Discussion with David Brightly

 One of the points I made earlier was that presentism as a non-tautological, substantive thesis in the philosophy of time cannot be formulated without the notion of existence simpliciter. I then asked David Brightly whether he accepted the notion. Here is his reply:

Do I accept the notion of existence simpliciter? Yes and No. In so far as 'X exists simpliciter' appears to be a shorthand (a computer scientist's macro) for the disjunction of tensed claims 'X existed or X exists or X will exist' then I can guardedly accept it. This does seem to capture what is meant by 'listed in the final ontological inventory', does it not? But I worry that if we aren't very careful it can lead to logical mistakes. 'Simpliciter' here is a strange beast. It isn't an adverb qualifying 'to exist' for that would make 'to exist simpliciter' into a tenseless verb, and there are no such things. Nor, I think, does 'exists simpliciter' attribute a property to an item, so I cannot see 'existence simpliciter' as a concept. There is a whiff of 'grue' about it.

The presentist faces a problem of formulation. He tells us that only what exists at present exists. The problem is to say what the second occurrence of 'exists' in the italicized sentence expresses or denotes. What are the combinatorially possible views?

A. The second occurrence is present-tensed. This reading yields tautological presentism which is of no philosophical interest.  Note that if presentism is a tautological thesis, then 'eternalism,' according to which past, present, and future items are all equally real/existent, is self-contradictory.  If the only viable presentism is tautological presentism, then the dispute between presentists about what exists and eternalists about what exists is of no philosophical interest and is a pseudo-dispute.  This 'possibility' cannot be dismissed out of hand. I suspect that David may be luring us in this direction.  We should also be clear that presentism about what exists is not the same as presentism about existence. This is a distinction the explanation of which must wait.

B. The second occurrence expresses what I will call disjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it either existed, or exists, or will exist, where each disjunct is tensed.  On this approach, the presentist thesis amounts to this:

Everything in time that either existed, or exists, or will exist, exists (present tense).

But this is manifestly false. Kepler existed but does not exist (present tense).  I would also add, alluding to David's 'grue' remark, that while there are disjunctive predicates, it does not follow that there are disjunctive properties.  Existence simpliciter cannot be a disjunctive property any more than being either anorexic or underinflated is a property. 'Either anorexic or underinflated' is true of some basketballs, but surely, or at least arguably, the predicate picks out no property.  Likewise, 'existed or exists or will exist' picks out no property even on the assumption that existence is a first-level property. 

C. There is also conjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it existed, and exists, and will exist, where each conjunct is tensed.  The everlasting (as opposed to eternal) God is both disjunctively and conjunctively omnitemporal.  To save bytes, I will leave it to the reader to work out why this suggestion won't help us with our problem.

D. The second occurrence of 'exists' expresses timeless existence.  This obviously won't work because Only what exists at present exists cannot mean that only what exists at present exists timelessly.  For anything that exists at present exists in time and is therefore precisely not timeless.  So the existence simpliciter of temporal beings cannot be timeless existence. Yet it must somehow be tenseless.   Indeed, it it would seem to have to be irreducibly tenseless, where a definition of tenselessness is irreducibly tenseless just in case the definiens contains no tensed expressions. But then the problem becomes nasty indeed: how can temporal items, items in time, items subject to intrinsic change, both substantial and accidental, exist tenselessly?

At this point we need to note, contrary to David's claim that there are no tenseless verbs, that there are tenseless uses of 'exists' and tenseless uses of the copulative and identitarian 'is.' That the number 7 exists, if true, is tenselessly true. That the number 7 is prime is also tenselessly true. If I tell you that 7 is a prime number, it would be a lame joke were you to reply, "You mean now?" The same goes for the proposition that 7 is 5 + 2. If you object that these truths are not tenselessly, but omnitemporally, true I will say that they are true in all worlds including those possible worlds in which there is no time, and are therefore atemporally true, and thus tenselessly true.

And similarly for the eternal as opposed to everlasting God. If God is outside of time, then all truths about him are timelessly tenseless.

The above examples assume that there are atemporal items, items outside of time.  I expect David to balk.  If he denies that there are atemporal items, I will have him consider the case in which I say to my class, "Hume is an empiricist." A smartass might object, "Hume cannot be an empiricist because he no longer exists." I would then explain that to say that Hume is an empiricist is to use 'is' tenselessly.  Similarly if  I report that for Hume all significant ideas derive from sensory impressions.  'Derive' here functions tenselessly. Same with 'are' in 'Cats are animals.'  The same goes for extinct species of critter. In 'Dinosaurs are animals,' 'are' functions tenselessly. Ditto for 'Unicorns are animals.'

So now I ask David: have I convinced you that there are tenseless uses of verbs in ordinary English?

E. Could we say that the second occurrence of 'exists' in Only what exists at present exists expresses the quantifier sense of 'exists'? In the quantifier sense, x exists =df for some y, x = y. We would then be saying that 

Only an item that exists at present is such that something is that item

which is equivalent to

Only an item that exists at present is identical to something

which is equivalent to

Whatever is identical to something exists at present.

Socrates, however, is identical to something, namely himself, but he does not exist at present.  The trouble with the existence expressed by the existential quantifier is that it is general, not singular, existence. It is the existence that we attribute to a property or to a concept when we say that it it instantiated.  'Cats exist' says that the concept CAT has instances.  It is not about any particular cats, and because it is not, it does not attribute to any particular cat existence. 'Honesty exists' in ordinary English says that some people are honest, that the virtue honesty has instances. But of course those instances, honest men and women, must themselves exist. Their existence is singular existence. The latter, however, is presupposed by the so-called 'existential' quantifier and cannot be expressed by it.

Interim Conclusion   

Here is the predicament we are in. Presentism about what exists seems to make sense and seems to be a a substantive (non-tautological) thesis about a metaphysically weighty topic, that of the relation of time and existence: Only what exists at present exists. But the thesis collapses into a miserable tautology if the second occurrence of 'exists' is present-tensed.  So I went on a hunt for a sense of 'exists' that is not present-tensed.  But nothing I came up with fits the bill or The Bill.

David, I fear, will simply acquiesce in tautological  presentism, option (A) above. But 'surely' we are in the presence of a genuine metaphysical question!  Or so I will argue.

Your move, David.