Time and Change – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Presentism and Eternalism: A Substantive Difference?

A reader is convinced by my arguments against presentism and eternalism but is not convinced that there is a genuine issue in dispute. He further suspects that the parties to the dispute are using 'exist(s)' in different ways. The reader issues a serious challenge. Can I meet it?

Presentists and eternalists give competing answers to Quine's question, "What is there?" Roughly, presentists maintain that only present items exist, whereas eternalists maintain that past, present, and future items exist. The dispute concerns the ontological inventory. It is essential to observe that the disagreement presupposes a prior agreement as to how 'exist(s)' is to be used. It obviously cannot be used in the present tense. If it is, then both presentism and eternalism turn out to be trivial theses, presentism trivially true, and eternalism trivially false. (We have gone over this many times.)

So let me introduce the sign 'exist(s)*' to denote existence simpliciter. The dispute is then whether what exists* is restricted to what is present or is not so restricted. This strikes me as a substantive difference. The views are in genuine conflict. It is as genuine a conflict as that between those who say that only particulars exist* and those who say that both particulars and universals exist*. The dispute is about what exists simpliciter, i.e., what exists*.

Another example. Suppose on Monday morning you take delivery of 300 paving stones. By Friday evening, you have made a walkway out of them. Do you now have 300 + 1 new things on your property or only 300? Does the walkway count as something in addition to the paving stones? Some say yes. Other say no: you have 300 stones arranged walkway-wise. This is an ontological inventory dispute, a dispute about what exists. It is arguably genuine — but only if there is agreement as to the sense of 'exist(s).'

Quine famously told us that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses." ("Existence and Quantification" in Ontol. Rel., 97) To put that with all due scrupulosity, we must rewrite it as "Existence* is what existential quantification expresses." Equivalently, existence simpliciter is what existential quantification expresses. Uncle Willard takes his quantifiers 'wide open,' or unrestricted. They range over whatever there is, whether abstract or concrete , universal or particular, past, present, or future. On he same page, Quine offers his definition of singular existence: a exists =df (∃x)(x = a).

Suppose my reader agrees with the above. He might still feel that there is no real difference between presentism and eternalism, that the metaphysical difference is not a difference that makes a (practical) difference. The reader may be reasoning as follows: since the presentist and the eternalist accept all the same Moorean facts, there is no substantive difference between the positions.

Consider first the past. Among the gross facts not in dispute is the truth of

1) Scollay Square no longer exists.

What this says using tensed language is that

1T) Scollay Square existed but Scollay Square does not exist.

In tenseless language it goes like this:

1U) Every time at which Scollay Square exists* is a time earlier than the present time.

The reader may claim victory at this point. "You see? Two different ways of saying the same thing, a presentist way and an eternalist way. Hence there is no substantive difference between the two views."

But now consider the future. Here a substantive difference emerges. Suppose Dave is a father whose kids are slackers who may or may not procreate, but haven't done so yet. If they do, then Dave will have one or more grandchildren. If they do not, then Dave will have no grandchildren. On presentism, future temporal items do not exist* which implies that neither of the following is now true:

2) Dave will have a grandchild

and

~2) Dave will not have a grandchild.

On eternalism, however, future temporal items exist* so that one of the above propositions is now true. On eternalism, the future is as fixed as the past, whereas on presentism, the past alone is fixed. This is a substantive difference and not a difference in two ways of saying the same thing.

Reductive Presentism and the Truth-Value Links

What renders a statement about the past true? On one version of presentism, nothing does: statements about the past are brute truths. A rather more plausible version holds that "whatever renders a statement about the past true must lie in the present." (Michael Dummett, Truth and the Past, Columbia UP 2004, 75) Craig Bourne labels this view "reductive presentism." (A Future for Presentism, Oxford UP 2006, 47 ff.) But it too is untenable for various reasons, one of which is that it "conflicts with the truth-value links which assuredly govern our use of tensed statements." (ibid.) Dummett continues:

Such a truth-value link requires that if a statement in the present tense, uttered now, of the form "An event of type K is occurring," is true, then the corresponding statement in the past tense, "An event of type K occurred a year ago," uttered a year hence, must perforce also be true. (ibid.)

Suppose I now scratch my right ear and intone 'I am now scratching my right ear.' If precisely a year later I were to say, 'I scratched my right ear exactly a year ago,' I would say something true. "But it might well be that in a year's time you would have forgotten that trivial action, and that every trace of its occurrence would have dissipated." (ibid.) But then on reductive presentism, my statement, 'I scratched my right ear exactly a year ago' would not be true.

It would not be true because there would be nothing presently in existence to render it true. No memory, no video-taped recording, no causal trace whatsoever.

Presentism: Safe Passage between Tautology and Absurdity?

Can presentism navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity? Let's see. We begin with a datum, a given, a Moorean deliverance that I think most would be loath to deny:

DATUM: if it is true that a was F, or that a F'ed, then it was true that a is F, or that a Fs.

For example, if it is true that John F. Kennedy was in Dallas on 22 November 1963, then it was true on that date that he is in Dallas on that date. For a second example, if it is true that Socrates drank hemlock, then it was true that Socrates drinks hemlock.

It follows that the present present cannot be the only present: there had to have been past presents, past times that were once present. For example there was the present when JFK was assassinated. That is a past present. Only what was once present could now be past. Suppose you deny this. Then are you saying that there are past items that were never present. But that cannot be right. For the past is the present that has passed away. It cannot be the case that the event of Kennedy's assassination was always past and never present. There was a time when it was present and a time before that when it was future. When Kennedy was inaugurated, his assassination was future; when Johnson was sworn in, his asassination was past.

Bear in mind that presentism is an A-theory. This implies that among times there is a privileged time that is absolutely or non-relationally present. So while every time is present at itself, only one time is present absolutely. This time instantiates the monadic (non-relational) property of absolute temporal presentness. This absolute property is temporary, not permanent.

So what is the presentist maintaining? He cannot be maintaining that

P-Taut: Only present items presently exist

for this is not a substantive metaphysical claim contradicted by the eternalist's substantive denial, but a mere tautology. Nor can he be telling us that

P-Solip: Only presently present items exist simpliciter.

For this is solipsism of the present moment, a bizarre if not lunatic thesis. It amounts to the claim that all that ever existed, all that exists, and all that will ever exist exists now, where 'now' is a rigid designator of the present moment, the moment at which I am writing and you are reading. If our presentist pals are not solipsists of the present moment, then they cannot be saying that only what exists at the present present exists simpliciter, and so they they must be telling us that only what exists at a given present (whether past, present, or future) exists. Thus

P-Always: At every time t, only what is present at t, exists simpliciter.

This seems to do the trick. What is says is that, at every time t, only what is temporally present at t belongs in the ontological inventory, the catalog of what there is.

Thinking a little deeper, however, (P-Always) seems contradictory: it implies that at each time there are no non-present times and that at each time there are non-present times. For if one quantifies over all times, then one quantifies over present and non-present times in which case there are all these times including non-present times. But the bit following the quantifier in (P-Always) takes this back by stating that only what is present at a given time exists simpliciter.

It is obvious that (P-Taut) and (P-Solip) are nonstarters. So we are driven to (P-Always). But it is contradictory. The presentist wants to limit the ontological inventory, the catalog of what exists, to temporally present items. To avoid both tautology and the solipsism of the present moment, however, he is forced to admit that what exists cannot be limited to the present. For he is forced to quantify over times that are not present in order to achieve a formulation that avoids both (P-Taut) and (P-Solip).

The presentist needs the 'always' to avoid Scylla and Charybdis, but it doesn't keep him from drowning. He is forced to jump out of his privileged temporal perspective from within time and view matters sub specie aeternitatis. He is forced into an illict combination of a privileged perspective within time with a view from No When, a view from outside of time. The perspectives cannot be integrated, and therein lies the root of the problem.

My interim conclusion is that presentism makes no clear sense. This does not support eternalism, however, for it has its own problems.

“History is written by the victors.”

The cynicism of the saying presupposes the reality of the past.

Being and Time: Another Presentist Puzzle

One type of presentism makes a double-barreled claim about the Being of all beings: All beings are (i) in time (ii) at the present time. There is nothing 'outside' of time, and the there is nothing 'outside' of the present time. To be just is to be temporally present. Being = Presentness. Since identity is symmetrical, the property identity proposition expressed by the immediately preceding sentence does not fully convey what I want to convey. What I want to convey is that Being reduces to Temporal Presentness on the type of presentism now being considered. (If A reduces to B, it does not follow that B reduces to A.)

The presentism under discussion is involved in a double restriction: Items in general are restricted to temporal items, and then temporal items are restricted to present items. And all of this as a matter of metaphysical necessity.

What then do we say about the Berlin Wall? It is wholly past. Being past, it is in time. For, by definition, an item is in time just in case it is the subject of a temporal predicate, whether a monadic A-determination, or a relational B-property. The Wall is the subject of the predicate 'past', which is true of it; ergo, the Wall is in time. To put the point B-theoretically, the Wall is such that, every time at which it existed is a time earlier than the present time. Ergo, the Wall is in time.

On the other hand, being past, the Wall is nothing. Presentism implies that the passage of time has consigned the Wall to the abyss of nonbeing. For if Being reduces to Presentness, and an item is wholly past, then said item is nothing. But if the Wall is nothing, then it has no properties, including the monadic property of being past, and the relational property of being earlier that the present, whence it follows that the Wall is not in time.

So the Wall is both in time and not in time. It is in time, because 'wholly past' is true of it. It is not in time for the reason given in the immediately preceding paragraph.

Presentism, as a thesis about the very Being of all beings, restricts everything to the present time, including the temporal modes, past and future. In so doing, presentism negates itself by eliminating time. For there is no time if there are no distinctions among past, present, and future.

Statements about the Past: Troubling for Presentism

1) There are statements about the past, and some of them are true. 'Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald' is a true statement about the past. In particular, it is a true statement about the wholly past individuals, Ruby and Oswald.

2) It is true now that Ruby killed Oswald and it was true at every time later than the time at which Ruby killed Oswald. That Ruby killed Oswald is a past-tensed truth true at present.

3) On presentism, the (temporally) present alone exists and "the past, as the past, retains no existence whatever . . . ." (Michael Dummett, Truth and the Past, Columbia UP, 2004, p. 52)

4) That Ruby killed Oswald is not about anything that exists at present. This is because Ruby and Oswald are wholly past individuals.

5) That Ruby killed Oswald is not about anything at all. This follows from (3) and (4). So much the worse for presentism unless it can find a way to uphold and do justice to the reality of the past.

6) At this point, one might insist that past-tensed truths are brute truths, where a brute truth is a contingent truth that requires nothing external to it for its being true. A brute truth is just true, and that's all she wrote. The truth expressed by the present-tensed 'Tom is smoking' presumably cannot be brute since it requires, for its being true, Tom himself at a bare minimum. For if Tom does not exist, then 'Tom is smoking' cannot be true. But it is true, and it is true of Tom, so Tom exists. Here is a clear case in which truth supervenes on being, or veritas sequitur esse. Aristotle makes this point in the Categories at 14b15-22.

The notion that Socrates is seated cannot be a brute truth, but that Socrates was seated can be a brute truth, cannot be credited. But I won't argue this out for it is not my present topic.

7) The present topic is a different way out of the difficulty, call it the Way of Surrogacy. What the presentist tries to do is to find something in the present that can deputize for the wholly past item, a temporally present surrogate item that can ground the being-true of the past-tensed truth.

8) There is more than one way to proceed. One way is to appeal to causal traces in the present of the past events or individuals. For example, we have video footage of Ruby shooting Oswald, and this evidence is corroborated by eye witness accounts recorded in documents presently available. So the causal traces in the present include video footage, still photographs, copies of same, as above, memories, documents, the gun, etc. That the shooting issued in a killing, is shown by other evidence available at present.

So one could say, with some plausibility, that the reality of the past is preserved in the present by the effects (causal traces) in the present of the past events/individuals. But of course there is much more to the past than is recorded in the present. But I won't pursue this line of critique at the moment.

9) I will mention a different problem with this view. When I assert that Ruby killed Oswald, I am making an assertion about those individuals themselves. I am not talking about anyone's memories of them, or photographs of them, or video footage of them, or anything else. I am not referring to things present, but to things past. The very sense of 'Ruby killed Oswald' rules out anything present being what the sentence is about. It is about wholly past individuals.

Suppose I show you a photograph. I say, "This is my long-dead father." You reply, "So you were sired by a photograph? What you want to say is that this is a photograph of your father." You learn something about the appearance of a wholly past man by studying a present photograph.

Of course, the photograph shows what the man looked like, not what he looks like. But repeating this platitude does not to blunt the point that the dead man must in some sense exist if he is to be an object of ongoing study via photographs and other documentary evidence, not to mention exhuming the poor guy and studying his teeth and bones.

Scollay Square is wholly past. But there are plenty of pictures of it. By studying these pictures one can learn a lot about Scollay Square itself. The ultimate object of study is SS itself, not the evidence by means of which we infer truths about SS. Now if an historian learns more and more about Scollay Square by studying evidence in the present, how can it be maintained that such wholly past items as Scollay Square are now nothing at all?

Existence is Tenseless

The Ostrich inquires,

You hold that [instances of] both (1) and (2) below are true.

(1) X is no longer temporally present and (2) X exists tenselessly.

Fair enough. But what does ‘exist tenselessly’ mean?

To exist tenselessly is just to exist. To exist is to be something. More precisely, it is to be identical to something or other:

Q. Necessarily, for any x, x exists iff for some y, y = x.

For example,

a. Quine exists iff Quine = Quine.

Now is (a) true at all times, or only at some times? At all times. For at no time is Quine self-diverse. This commits me to the affirmation of permanentism and the denial of transientism:

P. It is always the case that everything in time exists at every time.

T. Sometimes something begins to exist, and sometimes something ceases to exist.

Now if nothing begins to exist and nothing ceases to exist, then the A-determinations (pastness, presentness, and futurity) are purely temporal and not at all existential. This is why, from

b. The Berlin Wall is no longer present

one cannot validly infer

c. The Berlin Wall does not exist.

Although nothing begins to exist and nothing ceases to exist, some items begin to be temporally present and some items cease to be temporally present.

Now presentism includes transientism. Having rejected transientism, I must also reject presentism, the view that it is always the case that whatever exists exists at present.

Is it a substantive metaphysical question whether permanentism or presentism is true? I should think that it is. It is a question about the nature of existence: Is existence time-independent or not?

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."

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.

Presentism, Punishment, and the Past

One man steals from another. The thief is caught, the thievery is proven, and the penalty required by law is demanded. It turns out that the thief's attorney is a philosophy Ph.D., a presentist in the philosophy of time, who could not find a job in academe. So he went to law school, and here he is in court. He argues on behalf of his client that, since the present alone exists, the past and its contents do not exist. So the act of thievery does not exist.

Now a person cannot be justifiably punished for what he does not do. Since the act of thievery, being wholly past, does not exist, the criminal case against the man in the dock should be dismissed. A man cannot be justifiably punished in the present for nonexistent past deeds any more than he can be punished in the present for nonexistent future deeds. Or so argues the defense.

The prosecutor, who is also a presentist, objects that, while the particular act of theft in question does not exist, it did exist, and that this past-tensed truth suffices to render the punishment just. Both defense and prosecution agree that the past-tensed truth that Smith stole Jones' car is a brute truth, that is, a contingent truth that has no truthmaker, no ontological ground of its being true.

The defense attorney replies that the past-tensed truth, being brute and groundless, is just words, an empty representation that does not represent anything, and this for the simple reason that the event does not exist. He adds that a man cannot be justifiably punished because of a string of words, even if the words form a sentence, and even if the sentence is true. For if there is nothing in reality that makes it true, the brute truth's being true is irrelevant. The defense further argues that a contingent sentence that lacks a truthmaker cannot even be true.

Our penal 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.

Continuing the Discussion of Time, Tense, and Existence

This just in from London. I've intercalated my responses.

Here is another take. We agree on our disagreement about the following consequence

(A) X is no longer temporally present, therefore X has ceased to exist.

You think it is not valid, i.e. you think the antecedent could be true with the consequent false. I think it is valid.

BV: Yes. So far, so good.

However regarding

(B) X is no longer temporally present, therefore X does not still exist

we seem to agree. We both think the antecedent cannot be true with the consequent false.

BV: Right. For example, we agree BOTH that the Berlin Wall is no longer temporally present (and is therefore temporally past) AND that the Berlin Wall does not still exist. I should think that we also, as competent speakers of English, agree that locutions of the form 'X still exists' are intersubstitutable both salva veritate and salva significatione with locutions of the form 'X existed and X exists' where all of the verbs are tensed and none are tense-neutral or tenseless. Agree? My second comment has no philosophical implications. It is merely a comment on the meaning/use of a stock English locution.

My puzzle is that my reading, and I think a natural reading, is that (A) and (B) mean the same, because “X has ceased to exist” and “X does not still exist” mean the same. You clearly disagree.

BV: If we stick to tensed language, then 'X has ceased to exist' and 'X does not still exist' mean the same. So I don't disagree if we adhere to tensed language. But note that 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as between

a) X has ceased to presently-exist (or present-tensedly exist)

and

b) X has ceased to be anything at all (and thus has become nothing at all).

For example, the Berlin Wall has ceased to presently-exist. But it doesn't follow that said wall has become nothing, that it is no longer a member of the totality of entities, that it has been annihilated by the mere passage of time. If you think that it is no longer a member of said totality, then you are assuming presentism and begging the question against me. You have restricted the totality of what exists to what presently exists. Note that I do not deny that one can move validly from the premise of (A) to its conclusion if one invokes presentism as an auxiliary premise. My claim is that the inference fails as a direct or immediate inference.

I think you want to argue that there is a covert tensing in “X does not still exist” which is absent in “X has ceased to exist”, which (according to you) is tenseless. But how? Doesn’t the verb ‘cease’ always imply a time at which X ceased to exist? Would it make sense to say that 2+2 has ceased to equal 4? How?

BV: In 'X does not still exist,' 'exist' is present-tensed. But 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as explained above . It can be read your tensed way, but it can also be read in my tenseless way. Surely you don't want to say that 'exists' has exactly the same meaning /sense as 'exists-now' or 'exists' (present tense). We could call that semantic presentism. I don't think anyone is a semantic presentist. And for good reason. You, as a nominalist, will not countenance abstracta such as numbers and sets and the other denizens of the Platonic menagerie. But you understand what you are opposing when you oppose their admission into our ontology in the Quinean sense (our catalog by category of what there is). And so you understand the notion of tenseless existence and tenseless property possession as when a 'Platonist' says that 7 is prime. The copula is tenseless, not present-tensed.

So, in summary, my problem (and I am always seeing problems) is how you think (A) and (B) differ.

Over to you.

BV: The Boston Blizzard of '78 was one hell of a storm. When it ended, did it cease to exist? Yes of course, if we are using 'exist' in the ordinary present-tensed way. The storm because wholly past, and in becoming wholly past it stopped being presently existent. Obviously, nothing can exist at present if it is wholly past. And it is quite clear that what no longer is present is not still present, and that what no longer presently exists is not still presently existent.

So far, nothing but platitudes of ordinary usage. Nothing metaphysical.

We venture into metaphysics when we ask: Does it follow straightaway from the storm's having become wholly temporally past, that it is nothing at all? I say No. If you say Yes, then you are endorsing presentism, a controversial metaphysical theory.

You can avoid controversy if you stick to ordinary language. If you have trouble doing this, Wittgensteinian therapy may be helpful.

Once More on Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing

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

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

The Londoner replies

You claim that the truth of the antecedent (1) is consistent with the falsity of the consequent (2), i.e. consistent with X not having ceased to exist. But that claim implies that both “X still exists” and “X has ceased to exist” could be false.

I don’t follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming Past and Becoming Nothing

Londoner in Lockdown writes,

I am still puzzling about the connection between your

(1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past.

and

(2) X ceases to exist.

I think I understand (2). It means that there was once such a thing as X, but there is no longer such a thing as X.

But what does (1) mean? Does it mean what (2) means? In that case, (2) indeed follows from (1).

But you can't have intended that. So what do you mean by (1)?

Perhaps a spatial analog of (1) will help convey what I mean:

1*) X ceases to be spatially present by becoming wholly elsewhere.

Now (1*) is not idiomatic English, but the thought is clear. And the thought is trivially true. Suppose the boundaries of the spatially present are given by the dimensions of my lot. So when I say 'here' I refer to the area of my lot together with all its sub-areas. Suppose a cat that is wholly within the boundaries of my lot trespasses onto your adjacent lot thereby becoming wholly elsewhere. Max was wholly here in my yard, but now he is wholly there in yours. Spatial translations such as this one typically occur without prejudice to the existence of the moving item. Thus the cat does not cease to exist by moving from my property onto your property. (Nor does the cat suffer any diminution of its degree of existence, if there are degrees of existence, or any change in its mode of existence, if there are modes of existence.)

In short, Max the cat exists just as robustly in your yard as in mine. Spatial translation is existence-neutral. No one is a spatial presentist. No one holds that all and only what exists here, exists.

Surely it is conceivable — whether or not it is true — that becoming wholly past is existence-neutral. It is conceivable that something that becomes wholly past not be affected in its existence by its becoming wholly past. On this understanding of (1), (1) does not straightaway — i.e., immediately, without auxiliary premises — entail (2). (1) and the negation of (2) are logically consistent.

Now if you insist that (1) entails (2), then I will point out that this is so only if you assume that all and only the temporally present exists.

Do my sparring partners now see that there is a genuine question here? The question is whether it makes sense to maintain that, among the items that exist in time, some are non-present. I say that it does make sense, whether or not in the end it is true; consequently, tenseless theories of time cannot be simply dismissed out of hand. A corollary of this is that presentism is not obviously true, or even more outrageously, a matter of common sense as some have the chutzpah to say.

A Time Puzzle for a Couple of Londinistas in Lockdown

I don't expect ever to change the minds of Messrs. Brightly and Buckner on any of the philosophical questions we discuss, but it may be possible to isolate the sources of disagreement. That would count as progress of a sort.

Suppose that

1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past.

Does it follow that

2) X ceases to exist?

YES: For an item in time to exist is for it to be temporally present. So when an item in time become wholly past it literally passes away and ceases to exist.

NO: What ceases to exist becomes nothing. Boston's Scollay Square, which is wholly past, is not nothing. One can refer to it; there are true statements about it; some have veridical memories of it; there are videos of interviews of people who frequented it; it is an object of ongoing historical research. To dilate a bit on the fifth point:

One cannot learn more and more about what is no longer (temporally) present if it is nothing at all. Only what exists can be studied and its properties ascertained. But we do learn more and more about Scollay Square. So it must be some definite item. But, pace Meinong, there are no nonexistent items. Therefore, Scollay Square exists non-presently. Therefore, what ceases to be present, does not cease to exist. It exists despite being past. It exists tenselessly at times earlier than the present time. The mere passage of time did not annihilate Scollay Square.

I incline toward the negative answer. But it rests on certain assumptions. Suppose we list them.

A1. There are no modes of existence. In formal mode, 'exist(s)' is univocal in sense across all contexts. So we cannot say that what ceases to be present exists, but in the mode of pastness.

A2. There are no degrees of existence. So we cannot say that what ceases to be present exists, but to a lesser degree than what presently exists.

A3. There are no Meinong-type nonexistent items. So we cannot say that what ceases to be present becomes nothing: it is a definite item but a nonexisting one.

I suspect that my London sparring partners will accept all three assumptions.

Perhaps the Londoners will reject both answers and with them, the question. Maybe one or both of them will give this little speech:

Look, you are just making trouble for yourself. You speak English and you understand how its tenses work. Why not just use them? Scollay Square no longer exists. You know what that means. It means that it existed but does not exist now. Just leave it at that. If you stick to ordinary language you will avoid entangling yourself in pseudo-problems.

Tenselessness as Disjunctive Omnitemporality?

There is presentism about existence and presentism about what exists. We have been discussing the latter.

The presentist about what exists seems forced to agree with the eternalist that existence by its very nature is tenseless and not tense-dependent. It seems that he must so agree if his thesis is not to be a tautology. For if the presentist holds that all and only what exists now exists now, then he asserts a merely logical truth, one to which the eternalist will readily assent. So he has to say that all and only what exists simpliciter exists now.

To exist simpliciter is to exist actually, not merely possibly, in a non-tense-dependent way, that is, to exist tenselessly. But what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly? It cannot be to exist timelessly for the simple reason that temporal items, items in time, are not timeless items, items outside of time.

(That the number 9, a timeless item, tenselessly exists and tenselessly instantiates such properties as being odd, is not particularly problematic, if you grant that numbers are denizens of the Platonic menagerie. And the same goes for the property of being odd.)

A natural suggestion is to say that a temporal item exists tenselessly just in case it either existed, or exists now, or will exist. But on this disjunctively omnitemporal analysis of tenselessness, presentism about what exists comes out false! Our presentist is then saying that all and only what existed, or exists now, or will exist, exists now. But this is false because, for example, Kepler existed but does not exist now.

I have made two main points.

First, the very formulation of a non-tautological version of presentism about what exists requires that the second occurrence of 'exists' in the formula 'Only what exists now exists' be read tenselessly.

Second, tenselessness cannot be understood as disjunctive omnitemporality.

So what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly? If no good answer can be given, then we won't know what we are affirming when we affirm either presentism or one of its competitors.

I hope the reader appreciates that I am not attacking presentism in defense of one its competitors. I am not a partisan in the 'time wars.' I stand above the fray like a good aporetician in keeping with the Maverick method. My aim is to lend credence (though not to prove) that, while the underlying problems are genuine, and important, they are insoluble. None of the extant theories, and indeed no possible theory our minds can construct, is a solution.