Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Time and Change

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • “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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…