Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Time and Change

  • Do Past-Tensed Truths Need Truthmakers?

    Cyrus wrote in an earlier thread, In the linked article, you write: That (some) truths refer us to the world as to that which makes them true is so obvious and commonsensical and indeed 'Australian' that one ought to hesitate to reject the idea because of the undeniable puzzles that it engenders. Motion is puzzling…

  • Presentism and the Determinacy of the Past

    On presentism, the present alone exists, and not in the trivial sense that the present alone exists at present, but in the substantive sense that the present alone exists simpliciter.  But if so, then the past is nothing, a realm of sheer nonbeing. But surely the past is not nothing: it happened, and is in…

  • Presentism and Regret

    I have done things I regret having done.  Regret is a past-directed emotion by its very nature. One cannot regret present or future actions or omissions.  So if I regret action A, A is wholly past.  What's more, I cannot regret a non-existent action.  But on presentism, all items in time are such that they…

  • Presentism and the Cross

    Alexander Pruss argues: 1) It is important for Christian life that one unite one’s daily sacrifices with Christ’s sufferings on the cross. 2) Uniting one’s sufferings with something non-existent is not important for Christian life. 3) So, Christ’s sufferings on the cross are a part of reality. 4) So, presentism is false. The Prussian argument…

  • Time and the Existing Dead

    Another round with David Brightly.  My responses are in blue. Bill says, We don't want to say that a dead man becomes nothing after death since he remains a particular, completely determinate, dead man distinct from others. If the dead become nothing after death then all the dead would be the same. If your dead…

  • Presentism and Truthmakers: A Reply to David Brightly

    I first want to apologize to David Brightly for not paying more attention to his ongoing gentlemanly critique of my ideas at his weblog, tillyandlola: Comments on the Maverick.    Although our minds work in very different ways, this is scant excuse for my not having engaged his incisive and well-intentioned critique more fully.  I…

  • Life’s Fugacity

    As we age, the passage of time seems to accelerate.  This is a mere seeming since, if time passes at all, which itself may be a mere seeming, time presumably passes at a constant rate.  When we are young, the evanescence of our lives does not strike us.  But to us mid-streamers and late-streamers the…

  • Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless?

    Is everything in time? Or are there timeless entities?  So-called abstracta are held by many to be timeless.  Among abstracta we find numbers, (abstract as opposed to concrete) states of affairs, mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sets, and Fregean (as opposed to Russellian) propositions, where a Fregean proposition (Gedanke) is the sense (Sinn) of a …

  • The Augustinian Meta-Predicament

    The Augustinian predicament is that, if you don't ask me what time is; I know. But if you ask me, I don't know. The meta-predicament is that, if you don't press me too hard, I know what the main issues in dispute are, and what the main theories of time state; but if you press…

  • Not Enough Time! A Philosopher’s Lament

    There is not enough time to understand this life in time, but then it is such a fleeting, paltry thing, such a blend of form and formlessness, such a chiaroscuro of light and dark, such a scene of desires insistent yet insatiable, ultimately unknowable and ultimately unreal — that the time allotted is perhaps time…

  • Pain and Time: An Aporetic Triad

    Here are three extremely plausible propositions that cannot all be true: 1) A wholly past (felt) pain is not nothing: it is real. 2) For (felt) pains, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived. 3) Wholly past (felt) pains are not perceived. Ad (1): To say that an item is wholly past is…

  • Do You Disappear When You Die? Comments on Yourgrau

    Here, by Palle Yourgrau. Comments by BV in blue.  HT: Vlastimil Vohanka. Many philosophers seem to think you simply 'disappear' when you die, 'erased' from the framework of reality as one would rub out a drawing on the blackboard. I think it would be a serious mistake to think this way. Time maga­zine had it…

  • Peter Unger on the Emptiness of the Present-Eternalist Debate

    Peter Unger doubts, with respect to the past, but not with respect to the future, whether there is any “concretely substantial difference” between presentism and eternalism (Empty Ideas, Oxford UP, 2014, 176 ff.). He argues that any appearance of a substantial difference is “illusory.” Both parties agree on such contingent past-tensed truths as that dinosaurs…

  • Non-Substantial Change, Trope Bundle Theory, and States of Affairs

    I am presently writing a review article for Metaphysica about Bo R. Meinertsen's Metaphysics of States of Affairs: Truthmaking, Universals, and a Farewell to Bradley's Regress (Springer 2018). Since I will probably incorporate the following critical remarks into my review, I want to give Bo a chance to respond.  Substantial and Non-Substantial Change One way…

  • Better ‘Has Been’ than ‘Never Was’

    Why, if the present alone is real?  The wholly past no longer exists. But this truism, accepted by all who understand English and its verb tenses, is not what the presentist in the philosophy of time maintains. He intends something substantive and non-tautological: what no longer exists does not exist at all, and what does…