Category: Time and Change

All is Impermanent? Impermanence and Self-Reference

I have long been fascinated by forms of philosophical refutation that exploit the overt or covert self-reference of a thesis. To warm up, consider

   1. All generalizations are false.

Since (1) is a generalization, (1) refers to itself. So if (1) is true, then (1) is false. On the other hand, if (1) is false, as it surely is, then (1) is false. Therefore, necessarily (1) is false. It follows that the negation of (1), namely, Some generalizations are true, is not just true, but necessarily true. (1) is self-refuting and its negation is self-verifying.  Some generalizations are true is an instance of itself which shows that it itself is true: one instance suffices to verify a particular generalization.

There are those who dismiss arguments like this as quick and facile. Some even call them 'sophomoric,' presumably because any intelligent and properly caffeinated sophomore can grasp them — as if that could constitute a valid objection. I see it differently. The very simplicity of such arguments is what makes them so powerful. A simple argument with few premises and few inferential moves offers few opportunities to go wrong. Here, then, is a case where simplex sigillum veri, where simplicity is the seal of truth.  Now consider a more philosophically interesting example, one beloved by Buddhists:

   2. All is impermanent.

(2) applies to itself: if all is impermanent, then (2), or rather the propositional content thereof, is impermanent. That could mean one of two things. Either the truth-value of the proposition expressed by (2) is subject to change, or the proposition itself is subject to change, perhaps by becoming a different proposition with a different sense, or by passing out of existence altogether.  (There is also a stronger reading of 'impermanent' according to which the impermanent is not merely subject to change, but changing.)

Note also that if (2) is true, then every part of (2)'s propositional content is impermanent. Thus the property (concept) of impermanence is impermanent, and so is the copulative tie and the universal
quantifier. If the property of impermanence is impermanent, then so is the property of permanence along with the distinction between permanence and impermanence.

In short, (2), if true, undermines the very contrast that gives it a determinate sense. If true, (2) undermines the permanence/impermanence  contrast. For if all is impermanent, then so is this contrast and this distinction. This leaves us wondering what sense (2) might have and whether in the end it is not nonsense.

What I am arguing is not just that (2) refutes itself in the sense that it proves itself false, but refutes itself in the much stronger  sense of proving itself meaningless or else proving itself on the brink of collapsing into meaninglessness.

No doubt (2) is meaningful  'at first blush.' But all it takes is a few preliminary pokes and its starts collapsing in upon itself.

Michael Krausz ("Relativism and Beyond: A Tribute to Bimal Matilal" in Bilimoria and Mohanty, pp. 93-104) arrives at a similar result by a different route. He writes:

     Paradoxically, because all things are contexted, the idea of
     permanence cannot be permanent. But it does not follow that in the
     end all things are impermanent either, for impermanence too is
     contexted and it too finally drops out of any fixed constellation
     of concepts. (101)

Krausz invokes the premise,

   3. All things are contexted.

Krausz writes as if (3) is unproblematic. But surely it too 'deconstructs' itself. Just apply the same reasoning to (3) that we applied to (2). Clearly, (3) is self-referential. So (3) cannot express an invariant structure of being. It cannot be taken to mean, context-independently, that every being qua being is contexted.

Note also that if (3) is true, then every part of (3)'s propositional content is contexted: the universal quantifier, the concept thing, the  copulative tie, and the concept of being contexted are all contexted. What's more, the very contrast of the context-free and the context-bound is contexted.

In short, (3), if true, undermines the very contrast that confers upon it a determinate sense, namely, the contrast between the context-free and the context-bound. For if all is contexted, then so is this contrast and this distinction.

(3) collapses in upon itself and perishes for want of a determinate sense. And the same goes for all its parts. Copulative Being collapses into indeterminacy along with every other sense of Being: the   existential, the identitative, the veritative, the locative, the class-theoretic. Being ends up with no structure at all. If Being and Thinking are one, as Father Parmendides had it, then the collapse of
Being brings Thinking down with it.

Clearly, we are sinking into some seriously deep shit here, and it is of the worst kind: the formless kind, crap that won't own up to its own crapiness, the kind that deconstructionists, whether Continental or Asian, like to serve up. It is stuff so unstable that one cannot even say that it stinks. Do we really want to wallow in this mess?

Wouldn't it be better to admit that there is an Absolute?

Presentism

Franklin Mason tells me he is a presentist.  I would like to see if he and I understand the same thing by the term.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present — the present time and its contents — alone exists. The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist. Past and future items do not exist. But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists. (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and the future does not now exist else it would not be future.) If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking. So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis. For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense). It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified use of 'exist(s).' So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.' Accordingly:

P. The only items that exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis. The presentist will affirm it, the antipresentist will deny it. Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed. But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter. The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does. Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now. But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in relations to things that presently exist, one of these relations being the reference relation. The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead. But I am her son. So I stand in the son of relation to my mother. If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object. But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there? This is a problem for the presentist, is it not? But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter. For then the relation connects two existents.

A second problem for presentism is that it seems not able to accommodate the obvious distinction between actual past items and merely possible past items.  Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen are past individuals.  Their child Angie, like Schopenhauer's son Will, however, are past merely possible individuals.  But what becomes of this distinction if everything past is nonexistent?  For the presentist, what was is not.  But then what was is indistinguishable from what never was (because merely possible).

No doubt the presentists will have answers to these objections.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene: the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult in all of philosophy.

Future Individuals and Haecceities

According to a wisecrack of Schopenhauer, the medievals employed only three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass.  In keeping with this hoary if not 'asinine' tradition, I too in my capacity as humble footnoter to Plato shall employ Socrates as my example.  To point out the obvious: he stands in for any concrete individual whatsoever, animate or inanimate.

I have been arguing (drawing on the work of the late Barry Miller with whom I was privileged to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence) that before Socrates came to be there was no such property as identity-with-Socrates.  The astute Franklin Mason objects:

If there is no such thing as Socrates' identity before he came to be, it would seem that there's no such thing as his identity after he ceases to be. If we need the man Socrates if we are to speak about him, then we can't do so either before or after he exists. But clearly we can now speak of Socrates though he is long since dead. Thus we don't need the man to speak of the man, and so whatever reason we had to deny the existence of haecceities that predate the things to which they attach collapses.

Socrates came to exist in 470 B.C.  So we can say:

1. It is now the case that Socrates did exist.

From this it follows that

2. It was the case (e.g. in 470 B.C.) that Socrates does exist.

Mason seems to think that from (2) one can also validly infer

3. It was the case (e.g.. in 472 B.C.) that Socrates will exist.

But if I am right, the second inference fails.  For if I am right, before Socrates came to exist, not only was there no Socrates, there was no singular or  de re possibility of Socrates' existing.  At most there was the general possibility that someone come to have the properties that Socrates subsequently had. 

To appreciate that the inference from (2) is invalid, consider a parallel argument.  Suppose I promise Tom that I will buy him a book for his birthday.  On the morning of his birthday I spy a first-edition copy of On the Road in a book store and I buy it.  Once the purchase has been made we can say:

1*. It is now the case that a copy of OTR was selected for Tom.

From this it follows that

2*. It was the case that a copy of OTR is selected for Tom.

But until I bought the book on the morning of Tom's birthday I had no idea what I would buy.  So before I bought the book no one was entitled to say

3*. It was the case that a copy of OTR will be selected for Tom.

The most one would be entitled to say is

4. It was the case that a book will be selected for Tom.

Just as (3*) does not follow from (2*), (3) does not follow from (2).

Only present and past actual individuals are genuine individuals.  Future 'individuals,' not having yet come into existence, are not genuine individuals.

REFERENCE: Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45 (September 1991), 3-28, esp. 10-11.

Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change

Our old friend Vlastimil Vohanka from the Czech Republic asked me if moral objectivism is a respectable metaethical position.  It depends on what exactly moral objectivism is.  Let's first of all see if we can locate it on the metaethical map.  Then I take a quick look at Mackie's 'argument from queerness.'

Let's think about sentences like

   1. Slavery is a great moral evil.

Presumably anyone reading this blog will assent to (1) and also hold that everyone ought to assent to it.  So our question does not concern the ground-level acceptability of (1) which is here simply taken for granted.  Our concern is metaethical.

(1) is a grammatically indicative sentence that appears to predicate the property of being evil of an action-type or an institution-type.  If it puzzles you how an action-type can be evil, I say: an action-type is evil just in case actual or possible tokens (instances) of the type are evil.

But is (1) a fact-stating piece of discourse? If yes, then it has a truth-value. But note that if sentences like (1) are truth-valued, it  does not follow that some are true and others false. It might be that   they are all false, as on J. L. Mackie's Error Theory, which I won't discuss in this entry.  Now let's  introduce some terminology. 

Continue reading “Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change”

A Common Misunderstanding of So-Called Cambridge Changes

There are philosophers who think that 'Cambridge' changes and real changes are mutually exclusive. Thus they think that if a change is Cambridge, then it is not real. This is a mistake. Real changes are a  proper subset of Cambridge changes.

Consider an example. Hillary gets wind of some tomcat behavior on the part of Bill and goes from a state of equanimity to that lamp-throwing fury the Bard spoke about. ("Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!"). Bill, on the other hand, as the object of Hillary's fury, also changes: at one time he has the property of being well thought of by Hillary, and the contradictory property at a later time. Common to both the real change (in Hillary) and the relational change (in Bill) is the following: x changes if and only if there are distinct times, t1 and t2, and a property P such that x  exemplifies P at t1 and ~P at t2, or vice versa. Change thus defined is Cambridge change. The terminology is from Peter Geach:

     The great Cambridge philosophical works published in the early
     years of this [the 20th] century, like Russell's  Principles of
     Mathematics and McTaggart's Nature of Existence, explained change
     as simply a matter of contradictory attributes' holding good of
     individuals at different times. Clearly any change logically
     implies a 'Cambridge' change, but the converse is surely not true.
     . . . (Logic Matters, University of California Press, 1980, p.
     321.)

In sum, every (alterational) change is a Cambridge change, but only some of the latter are real changes. The rest are mere Cambridge  changes. It is therefore a mistake to think that Cambridge and real   changes form mutually exclusive classes. What one could correctly say, however, is that mere Cambridge changes and real changes form mutually  exclusive classes.

But what about existential (as opposed to alterational) change, as when a thing comes into existence, or passes out of existence? Are such changes real changes in the things that pass in and out of   existence? Are they merely Cambridge changes? Or neither?

Boethius Contra Nietzsche on Time and Transition

Like Nietzsche, "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things."  (Letter to Franz Overbeck, 24 March 1887, quoted in R. Hayman,  Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Penguin, 1982, p. 304) Unlike Nietzsche, I
appreciate that the Eternal Recurrence of the Same is no solution.

Boethius The problem with time is not that it will end, but that its very mode of being is deficient. The problem is not that our time is short, but   that we are in time in the first place. For this reason, more time is no solution. Not even endlessly recurring time is any solution. Even if time were unending and I were omnitemporal, existing at every time, my life would still be strung out in moments outside of each other, with the diachronic identifications of memory and expectation no substitute for a true unity. To the moment I say, Verweile doch, du bist so schön (Goethe, Faust) but the beautiful moment will not abide, and abidance-in-memory is a sorry substitute, and a self diachronically constituted by such makeshifts is arguably no true self. Existing as we do temporally, we are never at one with ourselves: the past is no longer, the future not yet, and the present fleeting. We exist outside ourselves in temporal ec-stasis. We are strung out in temporal diaspora. The only Now we know is the nunc movens.

But we sense and can conceive a nunc stans, a standing now. This conception of a standing now, empty except for the rare and partial mystic fulfillment, is the standard relative to which the moving now is judged ontologically deficient. Time is but a moving and inadequate image of eternity.  So we of the tribe of Plato conceive of the divine life as the eternal life, not as the omnitemporal or everlasting life. Our spokesman is Boethius, inspired by Philosophia herself:

     Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite
     life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with temporal
     things. All that lives under the conditions of time moves through
     the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set in
     time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime.
     It cannot yet comprehend tomorrow; yesterday it has already lost.
     And in this life of today your life is no more than a changing,
     passing moment. And as Aristotle said of the universe, so it is of
     all that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will
     ever cease, and its life is coextensive with the infinity of time,
     yet it is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it
     apprehends and grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not
     embrace the whole simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the
     future. What we should rightly call eternal is that which grasps
     and possesses wholly and simultaneously the fullness of unending
     life, which lacks naught of the future, and has lost naught of the
     fleeting past; and such an existence must be ever present in itself
     to control and aid itself, and also must keep present with itself
     the infinity of changing time. (The Consolation of Philosophy, Book
     V; the Latin below the fold)

Continue reading “Boethius Contra Nietzsche on Time and Transition”

A Routley/Sylvan Argument for the Utter Nonexistence of Past Individuals

Many of us are inclined to say that purely past individuals (James Dean, Scollay Square, my cat Zeno, anything that existed but does not exist now), though past, yet exist.  Of course, they don't presently exist.  But why should only what presently exists, exist? Why should that which loses the temporal property of presentness fall into an abyss of nonbeing?  Surely that is not obvious. Presentism may be true, but it is not obviously true.  Nor is it a position favored by common sense as some contemporary writers seem to think.  Let me sketch a couple of anti-presentist considerations.  I will not present them rigorously and I do not claim that they are absolutely compelling.

Purely past individuals are part of the actual world inasmuch as they are not merely possible.  And what is actual exists.  So purely past individuals exist (tenselessly).  Or will you say that when Dean ceased to presently exist he underwent a transformation from an actual being to a merely possible one?  How then would you distinguish between past merely possible beings and past actual beings?  As far as I know Dean did not have any children.  Suppose that is true.  Still, he might have had a child.  In the past, that was a possibility, though it is not a possibility now.  Surely there is a difference between a past possible individual such as Dean's child and an actual past individual such as Dean.  Dean was; his child never was.

Moreover, we refer to past individuals and we say true things about them. 'James Dean died in a car crash in 1955.' 'Dean's fame is mainly posthumous.' 'Scollay Square was located in Boston.' The subject terms of these sentences not only did refer to something, they do refer to something, something that exists, though not at present.  Furthermore, whatever has properties exists. Dean has properties, ergo Dean exists. That is not to say that he presently exists, but if he didn't exist in any sense, how could he have properties?  So a case can be made for the reality or existence of past individuals.

Routley But this morning I stumbled upon an interesting argument from Richard Routley, who later in life came to call himself Sylvan. (Presumably because of an attraction to forests and jungles and an aversion to desert landscapes.) In any case, after beginning p. 361 of  Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview 1980) with some question-begging sophistry that I won't bother to expose, he uncorks an interesting argument on the other side of the question, one that that stokes my aporetic fire:

Purely past and purely future items are, like merely possible items, not (now) determinate in all extensional respects: hence (applying the results of 1.19) they do not exist.  Compare the items Aristotle and Polonious, and remember Peirce's question as to how long before Polonious died had he had a hair cut and Russell's as to the baldness of the present king of France.  Well, is Aristotle bald now?If he is, how long has he been bald? If not, how long since he had a hair cut and how long is his hair? Since Aristotle has ceased to exist, it is false that Aristotle is now bald and false that he is not now bald . . . . Thus Aristotle is indeterminate in respect of the extensional property of (present) baldness. Hence he does not exist now; hence he does not exist.

The argument is short and snappy:

1. For any x, if x exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.
2. It is not the case that purely past individuals are  now determinate in all extensional respects.
Therefore
3. It is not the case that purely past individuals exist.

The argument is valid but why should we accept (1)?  I have no problem with the following two cognate principles which I warmly embrace:

1*. For any x, if x now exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.

1**. For any x, if x exists, then x is determinate in all extensional respects.

But I see no reason to accept the question-begging (1).  After all, Aristotle, unlike Polonious, exists, but Aristotle — if (2) is to be believed — is not now determinate in respect of baldness or the opposite.

Suppose, however, that we accept (1).  Why should we also accept (2)?  Presumably because it is not now the case that Aristotle is either bald or not bald. But this far from clear.  During his life, Aristotle either counted as bald or as not bald.  Suppose he counted as bald.  Then I say that Aristotle exists (tenselessly) and is (tenselessly) bald.  So he is now determinate in respect of baldness or its opposite.  He is tenselessly bald and so is now tenselessly bald.

What Routley has done in the above passage and surrounding text is merely beg the question in favor of presentism.  He has given us no non-question-begging reason to accept it.

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

What better topic of meditation for New Year's Eve than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year!

…………..

If presentism is to be a defensible thesis, a 'presentable' one if you will, then it must avoid both the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity.  Having survived these hazards, it must not perish of unclarity or inexpressibility.

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

If 'exists' is used in the same way in both occurrences, then (1) is a miserable tautology and not possibly a bone of contention as between presentists and anti-presentists.  Note that (1) is a tautology whether 'exists' is present-tensed in both occurrences or temporally unqualified (untensed) in both.  To have a substantive thesis, the presentist must distinguish the present-tensed use of 'exist' from some other use and say something along the lines of

P. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter.

This implies that what no longer exists does not exist simpliciter, and that what will exist does not exist simpliciter.  It is trivial to say that what no longer exists does not presently exist, but this is not what the presentist is saying: he is is saying that what no longer exists does not exist  period (full stop, simpliciter, at all, sans phrase, absolutely, pure and simple, etc.)

But the presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.'  (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) 

SPM.  Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.

The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive but cannot be ruled out by logic alone.  To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955.  Presentist and anti-presentist agree that Dean existed and no longer exists.  (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.)  That is, both presentist and anti-presentist maintain that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being.  The presentist, however, thinks that Dean does not exist at all (does not exist simpliciter) while the anti-presentist maintains that Dean does exist simpliciter, but in the past.  In contrast to both,the present-moment solipsist holds that Dean never existed and for this reason does not exist at all.  Thus there are three positions on past individuals.  The presentist says that they do not exist at all or simpliciter.  The anti-presentist says that they do exist simpliciter.  The PM-solispist says that they never existed.

Clearly, the presentist must navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of present-moment solipsism.   So what is the presentist saying?  He seems to be operating with a metaphysical picture according to which there is a Dynamic Now which is the source and locus of a ceaseless annihilation and creation: some things are ever passing out of being and other things are ever coming into being.  He is not saying that all that is in being is all there ever was in being or all there ever will be in being.  That is the lunatic thesis of the present-moment solipsist. 

The presentist can be characterized as an annihilationist-creationist in the following sense.  He is annihilationist about the past, creationist about the future.  He maintains that an item that becomes past does not lose merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but loses both presentness and existence.  And an item that becomes present does not gain merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but gains both presentness and existence.  Becoming past is a passing away, an annihilation, and becoming present is  a coming into  being, a creation out of nothing.

To many, the presentist picture seem intuitively correct, though I would not go so far as Alan Rhoda who, quoting John Bigelow, maintains that presentism is "arguably the commonsense position."  I would suggest that common sense, assuming we can agree on some non-tendentious characterization of same, takes no position on arcane metaphysical disputes such as this one.  (This is a fascinating metaphilosophical topic that cannot be addressed now.  How does the man on the street think about time?  Answer: he doesn't think about it, although he is quite adept at telling time, getting to work on time and using correctly the tenses of his mother tongue.)

So far, so good.  But there is still, to me at least, something deeply puzzling about the presentist thesis.  Consider the following two tensed sentences about the actor James Dean.  'Dean does not exist.'  'Dean did exist.'  Both tensed sentences are unproblematically true, assuming that death is annihilation.  (We can avoid this assumption by changing the example to Dean's silver Porsche.)  Because both sentences are plainly true, recording as they do Moorean facts, they are plainly logically consistent.

The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but  no longer exists, does not exist at all.  That is the annihilationist half of his characteristic thesis.  It is not obviously true in the way the data sentences are obviously true.  Indeed, it is not clear, to me at least, what exactly the presentist thesis MEANS.  (Evaluation of a proposition as either true or false presupposes a grasp of its sense or meaning.) When the presentist says, in the present using a present-tensed sentence,  that

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

he does not intend this to hold only at the present moment, else (1) would collapse into the trivially true present-tensed 'Dean does not exist.'  He intends something more, namely:

2. Dean does not presently exist at any time, past, present, or future.

Now what bothers me is the apparent present reference in (2) to past and future times.  How can a present-tensed sentence be used to refer to the past?  That's one problem.  A second is that (2) implies

3.  It is presently the case that there are past times at which Dean does not exist.

But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which only the present time and items at the present time exist.

My underlying question is whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis. Does it make it between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of PM-solipsism only to founder on the reef of inexpressibility?

Happy New Year!

 

What Is Presentism?

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (Augustine).  The same goes, in my case at least, for presentism, as Peter Lupu made clear to me Christmas night.  Don't ask me what it is, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present  — the present time and its contents — alone exists.  The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist.  Past and future items do not exist.  But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists.  (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and similarly with the future.)  If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking.  So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis.  For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense).  It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified  use of 'exist(s).'  So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.'  Accordingly:

P. The only items that  exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis.  The presentist will affirm it,  the antipresentist will deny it.  Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed.  But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter.  The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does.  Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now.  But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can  go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in  relations to things that presently exist.  The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead.  But I am her son.  So I stand in the son of relation to my mother.  If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object.  But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there?  This is a problem for the presentist, is it not?  But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter.  For then the relation connects two existents.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene:  the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult  in all of philosophy.

 

Can a Bundle Theory Accommodate Change?

0.  Peter L. has been peppering me with objections to bundle theories.  This post considers the objection from change.

1. Distinguish existential change (coming into being and passing out of being) from alterational change, or alteration.  Let us think about ordinary meso-particulars such as avocados and coffee cups.  If an avocado is unripe on Monday but ripe on Friday, it has undergone alterational change: it has changed in respect of the property of being ripe.  One and the same thing has become different in respect of one or more properties. (An avocado cannot ripen without becoming softer, tastier, etc.)  Can a bundle theory make sense of an obvious instance of change such as this?  It depends on what the bundle theory (BT) amounts to.

2. At a first approximation, a bundle theorist maintains that a thing is nothing more than a complex of properties contingently related by  a bundling relation, Russellian compresence say.    'Nothing more' signals that on BT there is nothing in the thing that exemplifies the properties: there is no substratum (bare particular, thin particular) that supports and unifies them. This is not to say that on BT a thing is just its properties: it is obviously more, namely, these properties contingently bundled.  A bundle is not a mathematical set, a mereological sum, or a conjunction of its properties.  These entities exist 'automatically' given the existence of the properties.  A bundle does not. 

3.  Properties are either universals or property-instance (tropes).  For present purposes, BT is a bundle-of-universals theory.  Accordingly, my avocado is a bundle of universals.  Although a bundle is not a whole in the strict sense of classical mereology, it is a whole in an analogous sense, a sense sufficiently robust to be governed by a principle of extensionality: two bundles are the same iff they have all the same property-constituents.  It follows that the unripe avocado on Monday cannot be numerically the same as the ripe avocado on Friday.  And therein lies the rub.  For they must be the same if it is the case that an alteration in the avocado has occurred. 

So far, then, it appears that the bundle theory cannot accommodate alterational change.  Such change, however, is a plain fact of experience.  Ergo, the bundle theory in its first approximation is untenable.

4.  This, objection, however, can be easily met by sophisticating the bundle theory and adopting a bundle-bundle theory.  Call this BBT.  Accordingly, a thing that persists over time such as an avocado is a diachronic bundle of synchronic or momentary bundles.  The theory then has two stages.  First, there is the construction of momentary bundles from universals.  Then there is the construction of a diachronic bundle from these bundles. The momentary bundles have properties as constituents while the diachronic bundles do not have properties as constituents, but individuals.  At both stages the bundling is contingent: the properties are contingently bundled to form momentary bundles and these resulting bundles are contingently bundled to form the persisting thing.

Accordingly, the unripe avocado is numerically the same as the ripe avocado in virtue of the fact that the earlier momentary bundles which have unripeness as a constituent  are ontological parts of the same diachronic whole as the later momentary bundles which have ripeness as a constituent.

5. A sophisticated bundle theory does not, therefore, claim that a persisting thing is a bundle of properties; the claim is that a persisting thing is a bundle of individuals which are themselves bundles of properties.  This disposes of the objection from change at least as formulated in #3 above.

6. BBT also allows us to accommodate the intuition  that things have accidental properties.  On the proto-theory BT according to which a persisting thing is a bundle of properties, it would seem that all properties must be essential, where an essential property is one a thing has in every possible world in which it exists.    For if wholes have their parts essentially, and if bundles are wholes in this sense, and things are bundles of properties, then things have their properties essentially.  But surely our avocado is not essentially ripe or unripe but accidentally one or the other.  On BBT, however, it is a contingent fact that a momentary bundle MB1 having ripeness as a constituent is bundled with other momentary bundles.  This implies that the diachronic bundle of bundles could have existed without MB1 and without other momentary bundles having ripeness as a constituent.  It therefore seems to follow that BBT can accommodate accidental properties.

7. That is, BBT can accommodate the modal intuition that our avocado might never have been ripe.  But what about the modal intuition that, given that the avocado is ripe at t, it might not have been ripe at t?  This is a thornier question and the basis of a different objection that is is not defused by what I have said above.  And so we reserve this objection for a separate post.

Time and Tense: A Note on the B-Theory

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (Augustine)  This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time.

On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). If the B-theory is correct, then our ordinary sense that events approach us from the future, arrive at the present, and then recede into the past is at best a mind-dependent phenomenon. For on the B-theory, there are no such irreducible  monadic A-properties as futurity, presentness and pastness. There is just a manifold of tenselessly existing events ordered by the B-relations. Time does not pass or flow, let alone fly. There is no temporal becoming.  My birth is not sinking into the past, becoming ever more past, nor is my death  approaching from the future, getting closer and closer.  Tempus fugit does not express a truth about reality.  At best, it picks out a truth about our experience of reality.

Employing a political metaphor, one could say that a B-theorist is an egalitarian about times and the events at times: they are all equal in point of reality.  Accordingly, my blogging now is no more real (but also no less real) than Socrates' drinking the hemlock millenia ago.  Nor is it more real than my death which, needless to say,  lies in the future.  Each time is present at itself, but no time is present, period.  And each time (and the events at it) exists relative to itself, but no time exists absolutely.

This is not to say that the B-theorist does not have uses for 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.'  He can speak with the vulgar while thinking with the learned.  Thus a B-theorist can hold that an utterance at time t of 'E is past' expresses the fact that E is earlier than t.  An old objection is that this does not capture the meaning of 'E is past.' For the fact that E is earlier than t, if true, is always true; while 'E is past' is true only after E. This difference in truth conditions shows a difference in meaning. The B-theorist can respond by saying that his concern is not with semantics but with ontology. His concern is with the reality, or rather the lack of reality, of tense, and not with the meanings of tensed sentences or sentences featuring A-expressions. The B-theorist can say that, regardless of meaning, what makes it true that E is past at t is that E is earlier than t, and that, in mind-independent reality, nothing else is needed to make 'E is past' uttered at t true.

Compare 'BV is hungry' and 'I am hungry' said by BV. The one is true if and only if the other is.  But the two sentences differ in meaning. The first, if true, is true no matter who says it; but the second is true only if asserted by someone who is hungry. Despite the difference in meaning, what makes it true that I am hungry (assertively uttered by BV) is that BV is hungry. In sum, the B-theorist need not be committed to the insupportable contention that A-statements are translatable salva significatione into B-statements.

The B-theorist, then, denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege.  Every time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter.  This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness.  There just is no irreducible property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The opposite view is that of the presentist: there is a genuine property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property.  Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent.  If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist.

Why be a B-theorist?  McTaggart has a famous argument according to which the monadic A-properties lead to contradiction.  We should examine that argument in a separate post.

 

Wittgenstein on Time and Flux

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhees, trs. Hargreaves and White, Chicago 1975, p. 83:

52. It's strange that in ordinary life we are not troubled by the feeling that the phenomenon is slipping away from us, the constant flux of appearance, but only when we philosophize. This indicates that what is in question here is an idea suggested by a misapplication of our language. 

This indicates to me that Wittgenstein lacked a metaphysical sensibility. It is precisely in ordinary life, and prior to his occupation with technical metaphysics, that the metaphysician feels and is saddened by the transitoriness of things, the flux of phenomena, the passage of time. That feeling is part of what sets him on the path of technical metaphysics in the first place. It is the fundamental sense of the transience and unreality of this world that disposes him to take seriously metaphysical writings when he first encounters them. And it is the lack of this sense in G. E. Moore and in Wittgenstein which disposes them to be puzzled by the writings of metaphysicians like Bradley and McTaggart and to set out to debunk them either by defending common sense (as if the metaphysician were simply denying it) or by bringing us back to ordinary language used in ordinary ways.

Wittgenstein says that "only when we philosophize" are we troubled by the flux of phenomena. Not only is this plainly false, it suggests that there is something aberrant rather than natural about philosophizing, as if philosophy were a disease of cognition needing treatment rather than refutation. I simply deny this.  If there is a cognitive defect, it is in those who fail to perceive the relative unreality of the transient.

Philosophy arises quite naturally in people of a reflective disposition who have a sense of the relative unreality, the ontological non-ultimacy, of the world of time and change. Philosophy is not a disease, but a response to the inherent questionableness of the world and our lives in it.   In the Theaetetus, Plato speaks of wonder as the "feeling of the philosopher." This wonder is not mere puzzlement induced by linguistic confusion but a questioning elicited by the nature of things, a questioning that is a transcending of this world, a transcending that issues in attempts to put into language the essence of the world.

It is the possibility of this transcending that Wittgenstein questions. He questions it by questioning the meaningfulness of the sorts of extended uses of ordinary words that the metaphysician employs. The metaphysician takes a word like 'present' from ordinary usage and then says something extraordinary like, 'The present alone is real,' or 'Only the present experience has reality.' Wittgenstein objects to this with a sort of Contrast Argument:

We are tempted to say: only the experience of the present moment has reality. And then the first reply must be: As opposed to what? Does it imply that I didn't get up this morning? (For if so, it would be dubious.) But this is not what we mean. Does it mean that an event that I'm not remembering at this instant didn't occur? Not that either. (85)

Wittgenstein's point is that when one says that the present alone is real, one is using 'present' in an extended sense, one in which it no longer contrasts with 'past' and 'future.' He seems to think that the presentist metaphysician is saying something that conflicts with such obvious facts as that one got up in the morning. But here is where Wittgenstein's Contrast Argument becomes hard to credit. Wittgenstein's mistake is to think that when the presentist, saying that the present alone is real, implies that the past is unreal, he is implying that the past is nothing at all in a way that would render it false that we got up this morning. But of course the presentist does not deny the gross facts; what he does is reinterpret them. His point is something like this: the reality of the past is relative to, or derivative from, the (absolute) reality of the present.