Category: Time and Change
-
Is the Wholly Past Now Impossible?
Boston's Scollay Square is an example of a wholly past item. It existed, but it does not now exist. Boston's Copley Square, by contrast, existed and still exists: it has a past but it is not wholly past. In an earlier exercise I gave an anti-presentist argument one of the premises of which is: d) It…
-
Millianism and Presentism: An Aporetic Pentad
A Millian about proper names holds that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its referent. Thus the meaning of 'Socrates' is Socrates. The meaning just is the denotatum. Fregean sense and reasonable facsimiles thereof play no role in reference. If so, vacuous names, names without denotata, are meaningless. Presentism, roughly, is the…
-
Presentism: The Triviality Objection
Presentism in the philosophy of time is the thesis that the present moment enjoys an ontological privilege over the other two temporal modi. The basic idea is that only (temporally) present items (individuals, events, times) exist. If so, past and future items do not exist. What is no longer is not, and what is not…
-
Puzzling Over Presentism
Presentism in the philosophy of time is the thesis that only the (temporally) present exists. This is not the tautology that only present items (times, individuals, events . . .) exist at present; it is the substantive metaphysical thesis that only present items exist simpliciter. So if something no longer exists, it does not exist…
-
Presentism, Truthmakers, and Ex-Concrete Objects: Some Questions for Francesco Orilia
Here is an interesting little antilogism to break our heads against: A. Presentism: Only what exists at present, exists. B. Datum: There are past-tensed truths. C. Truthmaker Principle: If p is a contingent truth, then there is a truthmaker T such that (i) T makes true p, and (ii) T exists when p is true.…
-
Propositions About Socrates Before He Came to Exist
This continues the discussion with James Anderson. See the comments to the related article below. Here is Professor Anderson's latest comment with my replies. So are you saying that prior to the time Socrates comes into existence the proposition It is possible that Socrates come into existence doesn't exist at all? Yes, if either Socrates himself, or…
-
Presentism and the Existence Requirement
Why do some find the Existence Requirement self-evident? Could it be because of a (tacit) commitment to presentism? Here again is the Existence Requirement: (ER) In order for something to be bad for somebody, that person must exist at the time it is bad for him. (D. Benatar, The Human Predicament, 111,115) Assuming mortalism, after…
-
Can One Change One’s Race?
I raise the title question in the context of my recent study of Rebecca Tuvel's controversial article, "In Defense of Transracialism" (Hypatia, vol. 32., no. 2, Spring 2017, pp. 263-278). It raises a number of fascinating and important questions. I will argue that even if one can change one's sex, by having one's body altered by…
-
Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism
There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory. Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal. Egological egalitarianism is the view there is a plurality of equally real selves. I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically,…
-
Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory
What is time? Don't ask me, and I know. Ask me, and I don't know. (St. 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…
-
A Physicist’s Petitio Principii
One of my self-appointed tasks is to beat up on physicists when they play at philosophy and makes fools of themselves. The following is from an interview with Richard Muller in Physics Today: PT: You mention in your introduction that some physicists have concluded that the flow of time is an illusion. Why do you…
-
John Peterson’s Thomist Analysis of Change
1. The Riddle of Change. Change is ubiquitous. It is perhaps the most pervasive feature of our experience and of the objects of our experience. But is it intelligible? Change could be a fact without being intelligible. But the mind seeks intelligibility; hence it seeks to render change intelligible to it. There is something…
-
Past, Present, and Future Walked into a Bar . . .
. . . and things began to get tense.
-
Numerical and Qualitative Identity and Radical Flux
Philosophers often use 'numerically' in contrast with 'qualitatively' when speaking of identity or sameness. If I tell you that I drive the same car as Jane, that is ambiguous: it could mean that Jane and I drive one and the same car, or it could mean that Jane and I drive the same make and…
-
Our Knowledge of Sameness
How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness! A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper…