Time and Change – Page 8 – Maverick Philosopher

Schopenhauer: Causa Prima and Causa Sui as Contradictiones in Adjecto

Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (1813), sec. 20:

. . . causa prima ist, eben so gut wie causa sui, eine contradictio in adjecto, obschon der erstere Ausdruck viel häufiger gebraucht wird, als der letztere, und auch mit ganz ernsthafter, sogar feierlicher Miene ausgesprochen zu werden pflegt, ja Manche, insonderheit Englische Reverends, recht erbaulich die Augen verdrehn, wenn sie, mit Emphase und Rührung, the first cause, — diese contradictio in adjecto, — aussprechen. Sie wissen es: eine erste Ursache ist gerade und genau so undenkbar, wie die Stelle, wo der Raum ein Ende hat, oder der Augenblick, da die Zeit einen Anfang nahm. Denn jede Ursache ist eine Veränderung, bei der man nach der ihr vorhergegangenen Veränderung, durch die sie herbeigeführt worden, notwendig fragen muß, und so in infinitum, in infinitum!

I quote this passage in German because I do not have the English at hand, but also because the pessimist's German is very beautiful and very clear, and closer to English than any other philosophical German I have ever read.

Schopenhauer's claim is that a first cause (causa prima) is unthinkable (undenkbar) because every cause is an alteration (Veränderung) which follows upon a preceding alteration. For if every cause is an alteration that follows upon a preceding alteration, then the series of causes is infinite in the past direction, and there is no temporally first cause.

And so 'first cause' is a contradictio in adiecto: the adjective 'first' contradicts the noun 'cause.' Charitably interpreted, however, Schopenhauer is not making a semantic point about word meanings. What he really wants to say is that the essence of causation is such as to disallow both a temporally first cause and a logically/metaphysically first cause. There cannot be a temporally first cause because every cause is an alteration that follows upon a preceding alteration. And there cannot be a logically/metaphysically first cause for the same reason: if every cause and effect is an alteration in a substance then no substance can be a cause or an effect. Causation is always and everywhere the causation of alterations in existing things by alterations in other existing things; it is never the causation of the existing of things. For Schopenhauer, as I read him, the ultimate substrates of alterational change lie one and all outside the causal nexus. If so, there cannot be a causal explanation of the sheer existence of the world.

Here I impute to Schopenhauer the following argument:

Reality changes just in case it has different properties in different possible worlds.

Reality changes from not containing contingent beings to containing them iff there are possible worlds in which there are, and possible worlds in which there are not, contingent beings.

If every change requires a cause, then presumably the change just mentioned requires a divine cause.

To review the dialectic: if creatures are effects of a cause, and effects are changes, and every change requires a substrate, then what is the subject or substrate of exhihilation? What is creatio ex nihilo a change in? My very tentative suggestion is that it is a change in reality in accordance with the definitions just given.

Since the cause of this change cannot itself be a change, (1) must be rejected as well.

Coming into Being and Passing Away: Two Definitions of Chisholm Examined

Some changes are merely accidental or alterational. Others are substantial or existential. It is one thing for Tom to gain or lose weight, quite another for him to come to be or pass away. Alterational changes including gaining weight, shifting position, and becoming depressed. Such changes are changes in a thing that already exists and remains self-same through the change. Call that thing the substratum of the change. It does not change; what changes are its properties. In a slogan: no alterational change without unchange.

But coming-to-exist and ceasing-to-exist also count as changes. Call them existential changes. This prima facie distinction at the Moorean or datanic level between alterational and existential change leaves open three theoretical options: (a) reduce existential change to alterational change; (b) reduce alterational change to existential change; (c) maintain that they are mutually irreducible. (C) is the least theoretical of the three and the closest to the data; let's see if we can uphold it.

Now it seems obvious that existential change cannot be understood in terms of alteration of the very thing that undergoes it: before a thing exists it is simply not available to suffer any alteration, and likewise when it ceases to exist. Coming-to-be is not gain of a property, but gain of a thing together with all its properties; ceasing-to-be is not loss of a property, but loss of a thing together with all its properties. But it also seems obvious that existential change cannot be understood in terms of the alteration of anything distinct from the thing that undergoes it. Thus I don't think that the following tensed definitions of Roderick Chisholm shed any real light on coming-to-be and passing away ("Coming into Being and Passing Away" in On Metaphysics, U. of Minnesota Press, 1989, p. 56):

D1 x comes into being =df There is a property which is such that x has it and there is no property which is such that x had it

D2 x has just passed away =df Something that was such that x exists begins to be such that x does not exist.

Consider the second definition first. If Zeno the cat has just passed away, then the property of being triangular, my house, and me all begin to be such that Zeno does not exist. And conversely. No doubt. But surely the real change which is the ceasing to exist of a cat cannot be understood in terms of mere Cambridge alterations in Platonica or in concreta distinct from the cat. The right-hand side of (D2) cannot figure in a metaphysical explanation of the left-hand side. It is the other way around. The real change in the cat when it ceases to exist is the metaphysical ground of the Cambridge alterational change in the house. Now suppose a cat comes into being. Then of course there is some property that it has, and every property was such that the cat in question did not have it. But again, the real change that occurs when a cat comes into existence cannot be understood in terms of Cambridge alterations of properties.

So Chisholm's definitions, though true, shed no light on the metaphysics of coming-to-be and passing-away. Real existential change cannot be understood in terms of Cambridge changes.

But if Zeno's coming to be cannot be understood in terms of (D1), why can't we say that his coming to be is just the alteration of the gametes whence he sprang? Creation (exnihilation) aside, coming to be is coming to be from something that already exists. So why not say that when a substance comes to exist it comes to exist by the alteration of an already existing substance or substances?

Consider the house of the Wise Pig. It is made entirely of bricks. It came to be from those bricks. Assume that each brick is an Aristotelian primary substance. Did a new Aristotelian substance come into existence when the assiduous pig changed a pile of bricks into a house proof against the depredations of the Big Bad Wolf? Or did nothing new come into existence? It would be reasonable to hold to the latter view and maintain that all that happened was that an alterational change occurred to the bricks. Similarly when the house is disassembles. Nothing passes out of existence. You have what you started with, a loa of bricks.

It is different with cats and people. For example, when a person dies, its body is altered in various ways; but if the person ceases to exist at death, its ceasing to exist is not identical to the person's body being altered in these ways. A rational substance ceases to exist. And the same holds when a person comes into existence either at conception or some time thereafter. This coming into being cannot be identified with the alteration of such already existent material particulars as the mother's uterus and its contents. A rational substance comes to exist. Generation and corruption, to use the not entirely felicitous Aristotelian language, are at least in some cases irreducibly existential changes. Whether or not the coming to be of the Wise Pig's brick house is an addition to being, a person's coming to be is. (On the Boethian definition invoked by scholastics, a person is a primary substance of a rational nature.)

If a person's coming to be is a change, it is an existential change. It is not an alterational change in an existing substance or in existing substances. Nor do persons spring into existence ex nihilo. Persons develop from nonpersons and in such away that the nonpersons cease to exist and the person begins to exist. But if all change requires a substratum of change that remains self-same through the change, a substratum that provides continuity and ensures that the change is a change and not a replacement, what the devil is the substratum in the case of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be? The Aristotelian-scholastic answer is prime matter. Prime matter, however, though its postulation is well-motivated by a couple or three different lines of argumentation is arguably unintelligible. Prime matter is a wholly indeterminate and wholly formless really existent stuff of which all material substances are composed. It belongs wth G. Bergmann's bare particulars and Kant's Ding an sich in point of unintelligibility or so I would argue.

Peter Geach 1916-2013

Here is a Commonweal obituary.

The obit contains a couple of minor inaccuracies.

1. "Under his father's tutelage, one of Geach's earliest philosophical influences was the metaphysician J.M.E. McTaggart, who infamously argues in his 1908 book The Unreality of Time for, well, the unreality of time." This title is not a book but an article that appeared in the journal Mind (17.68: 457–474), in 1908.

McTaggart presents a full dress version of the famous argument in his 1927 magnum opus, The Nature of Existence, in Chapter XXXIII, located in volume II.

McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time is one of the great arguments in the history of metaphysics, an argument as important and influential as the Eleatic Zeno's arguments against motion, St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and F. H. Bradley's argument against relations in his 1893 Appearance and Reality, Book I, Chapter III. All four arguments have the interesting property of being rejected as unsound by almost all philosophers, philosophers who nonetheless differ wildly among themselves as to where the arguments go wrong. Careful study of these arguments is an excellent introduction to the problems of metaphysics. In particular, the analytic philosophy of time in the 20th century would not be unfairly described as a very long and very detailed series of footnotes to McTaggart's great argument.

2. "Along with Aquinas and McTaggart (whose system he presents in his 1982 book Truth, Love, and Immortality), Geach's main philosophical heroes were Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege." My copy of Truth, Love and Immortality shows the University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles) as the publisher and the publication year as 1979. The frontispiece features an unsourced quotation from McTaggart:

The longer I live, the more I am convinced of the reality of three things — truth, love and immortality.

On Spending Time

What will you buy with the time you spend? And will you be able to justify your purchases should you be called to account?

Dubious Compensation

Memory compensates us for the passage of time, but it also ensures that we will never forget that we are subject to it. Yet better to be a man than an animal held hostage to the passing moment but oblivious of the fact.

Another Example of Awful Science Journalism

My first example is here. Read it for context and for some necessary distinctions. Now for a second example. Adam Frank writes,

For Smolin there is no timeless world and there are no timeless laws. Time, he says, is real and nothing can escape it.

Time, of course, seems real to us. We live in and through time. But to physicists, time's fundamental reality is an illusion.

Ever since Newton, physicists have been developing ever-more exact laws describing the behavior of the world. These laws live outside of time because they don't change.

That means these laws are more real than time.

First of all, it can be true both that time is real and that not everything is in time.

Second, if you want to tell us that time is an illusion, just say that, don't say, oxymoronically, that its fundamental reality is an illusion. Obviously, if something has reality, let alone fundamental reality, then it cannot be an illusion.

Third, as I argued earlier, it is impossible to maintain both that time is an illusion and that, e.g., the Big Bang occurred 12-13 billion years ago. If you want to say that temporal becoming or temporal passage is an illusion, then say that; but don't confuse the rejection of temporal becoming with the rejection of time altogether. For it could well be that time is real, but exhausted by the B-series, as I explained in the earlier post. And this, I take it, is what most physicists maintain. They think of time as the fourth dimension of a four-dimensional space-time manifold. That is not a denial of the reality of time; it is a theory of what time is.

Fourth, it is intolerably sloppy to say that "to physicists," time is an illusion when, as is obvious, Smolin is a physicist who denies this!

Fifth, If the laws of physics don't change, how is it supposed to follow or "mean" (!) that "these laws are more real than time." What on earth is this guy getting at? Is he suggesting that time is an illusion because the laws of physics are real? The laws of physics are real and they 'govern' what happens in the changing physical world which is also real.

Frank, I take it, is a physicist. So he must be capable of precise thinking and clear writing. Why then does he write such slop as the above in his off-hours? Why can't he write something clear and coherent that is helpful to the interested layman?

I fear that a lot of our contemporary scientists are hopelessly bereft of general culture. They are brilliant in their specialties but otherwise uneducated. But that does not stop the likes of Dawkins and Krauss and Coyne and Hawking and Mlodinow from spouting off about God and time and the meaning of life . . . . They want to play the philosopher without doing any 'homework.' They think it's easy: you just shoot your mouth off.

Why Do We Need Philosophy?

Why do we need philosophy? There are several reasons, but one is to expose the confusions and absurdities of scientists and science journalists when they encroach ineptly upon philosophical territory. This from science writer Clara Moskowitz in Controversially, Physicist Argues Time is Real:

NEW YORK — Is time real, or the ultimate illusion?

Most physicists would say the latter, but Lee Smolin challenges this orthodoxy in his new book, "Time Reborn" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2013) . . . .

Time is an illusion? And this is supposed to be orthodoxy? But don't the cosmologists tells us that the universe began in a Big Bang some 12-13 billion years ago? If time is an illusion, then that statement and statements like it cannot be true. For if time is "the ultimate illusion," , then it is never true that event x is earlier than event y, that y is later than x, or that x and y are simultaneous (whether absolutely or relative to a reference-frame). But surely the Big Bang is earlier than my birth, and my blogging is later than my having had breakfast. If time is an illusion, however, then the so-called B-relations (as the philosophers all them) cannot be instantiated. The B-relations are: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. Physics cannot do without them. If time is an illusion, then it cannot be true that the speed of light is finite (in a vacuum, approx. 186, 282 mi/sec). But it is true, and because of it, sunlight takes time to arrive at Earth (about 8 min 19 sec). It arrives later (temporal word!) than it started out. Therefore, time cannot be an illusion.

My first point, then, is that the physicists themselves presuppose that time is not an illusion by the very fact that they employ such phrases as 'earlier than,' 'later than,' 'simultaneous with,' and a host of other temporal words and phrases. Suppose two cosmologists are discussing whether the universe began 15 billion years ago or 12 billion years ago. Debating this point, they presuppose that time is precisely not an illusion. The past-tensed 'began' and the little word 'ago' make it clear why. Reading on we come to this:

In a conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Warren Meck, theoretical physicist Smolin, who's based at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argued for the controversial idea that time is real. "Time is paramount," he said, "and the experience we all have of reality being in the present moment is not an illusion, but the deepest clue we have to the fundamental nature of reality."

Time is paramount? No doubt! No time, no physics. All of reality is in the present moment? So what happened in the past is not part of reality? When we inquire into what happened, whether as historians or as cosmologists, what then are we inquiring into? Unreality? Mere possibility? Fiction? Do you really want to say that all of reality is in the present moment? There is a deep confusion here (whether it is chargeable to Smolin's account or the science writer's, I don't know): It one thing to affirm the doctrine of presentism according to which only the temporal present and its contents are real; it is quite another to affirm, as Smolin seems to be doing, that time is not exhausted by the B-series, the series of events ordered by the above-mentioned B-relations.

Smolin said he hadn't come to this concept lightly. He started out thinking, as most physicists do, that time is subjective and illusory. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, time is just another dimension in space, traversable in either direction, and our human perception of moments passing steadily and sequentially is all in our heads.

We now see what is really going on here. Smolin is not opposing the claim that time is an illusion, but the claim that time is exhausted by the B-series, where the B-series (this term from McTaggart) is the series of events ordered by the B-relations. Clearly, there is a difference between saying that time is real, but exhausted by the B-series, and saying that time is unreal. There is nothing particularly controversial about maintaining that time is real. What is controversial is to maintain that real time involves not only the instantiation of the B-relations but also the (shifting) instantiation of the irreducible A-properties, pastness, presentness, and futurity.

As we ordinarily think of it, time passes, flows, indeed 'flies.' Tempus fugit! as the Latin saying goes. We think of events approaching us from the future, getting closer and closer until they become present, and then receding into the past becoming ever more past. Thus, as a natural man, I think of my death as approaching, becoming less and less future, and my birth as receding, as becoming more and more past. This belief in the reality of temporal becoming (as some philosophers call it) is part and parcel of our ordinary view of the world. But physics, pace Smolin, needn't concern itself with it.

Now it is not unreasonable to think of temporal passage or temporal becoming as a mind-dependent phenomena such that, in reality, there is no temporal becoming, and no (shifting) exemplification of the A-properties. All there is are events ordered by the B-relations. But this is not to say that time is an illusion but that real time is exhaustively analyzable in terms of the B-relations. Note also that if temporal becoming is mind-dependent, it doesn't follow that it is an illusion. Phenomenal colors are m ind-dependent but not illusory.

There is more, but it doesn't get any better, and I have exposed enough confusions for one day. To sum up:

1. One ought not confuse the claim that time is an illusion with the claim that time is exhausted by the B-series.

2. That time is real is presupposed by both common sense and the practice of physicists.

3. One ought not confuse presentism, the view that only the temporally present exists, with the claim that there is more to time than the B-series.

4. One ought not confuse the claim that temporal becoming is mind-dependent with the claim that temporal becoming is an illusion.

5. One ought not confuse the claim that temporal becoming is an illusion with the claim that time is an illusion, or the claim that time is real with the claim that temporal becoming is real.

Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

For the actualist, the actual alone exists: the unactual, whether merely possible or impossible, does not exist. The actualist is not pushing platitudes: he is not telling us that the actual alone is actual or that the merely possible is not actual. 'Merely possible' just means 'possible but not actual.' The actualist is saying something non-platitudinous, something that may be reasonably controverted, namely, that only the actual exists: the merely possible and the impossible do not exist.

Analogously for the presentist. For the presentist, the (temporally) present alone exists: the nonpresent, whether past or future, does not exist. The presentist is not pushing the platitude that the past is no longer. He is saying something stronger: the past is not at all.

For the actualist, then, the merely possible does not exist. There just is no such item as the merely possible fat man in my doorway. Nevertheless, it is true, actually true, that there might have been a fat man in my doorway. (My neighbor Ted from across the street is a corpulent fellow; surely he might have come over to pay me a visit. 'Might' as lately tokened is not to be read epistemically.) The just-mentioned truth cannot 'hang in the air'; it must be grounded in some reality. To put it another way, the merely possible — whether a merely possible individual or a merely possible state of affairs — has a 'reality' that we need somehow to accommodate. The merely possible is not nothing. That is a datum, a Moorean fact.

Similarly, it is true now that I hiked yesterday, even if presentism is true and the past does not exist. So there has to be some 'reality' to the past, and we need to find a way to accommodate it. Yesterday's gone, as Chad and Jeremy told us back in '64. Gone but not forgotten: veridically remembered (in part) hence not a mere nothing. That too is a datum.

The data I have just reviewed are expressed in the following two parallel aporetic tetrads, the first modal, the second temporal.

Modal Tetrad

1. The merely possible is not actual.
2. The merely possible is not nothing.
3. To exist = to be actual.
4. To exist = not to be nothing.

Temporal Tetrad

1t. The merely past is not present.
2t. The merely past is not nothing.
3t. To exist = to be present.
4. To exist = not to be nothing.

Each tetrad has limbs that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible. Philosophical problems arise when plausibilities come into logical conflict. The tetrads motivate ersatzism since the first can be solved by adopting actualist ersatzism (also known simply as actualism) and the second by adopting presentist ersatzism. (Note that one could be a presentist without being an ersatzer.)

The ersatzer solution is to deny the first limb of each tetrad by introducing substitute items that 'go proxy' for the items which, on actualism and presentism, do not exist. These substitute items must of course exist while satisfying the strictures of actualism and presentism, respectively. The substitute items must actually exist and presently exist, respectively. So how does it work?

The actualist maintains, most plausibly, that everything is actual. But the merely possible must be accommodated: it is not nothing. The merely possible can be accommodated by introducing actually existent abstract states of affairs and abstract properties. Merely possible concrete states of affairs are actual abstract states of affairs that do not obtain. Merely possible concrete individuals are abstract properties that are not instantiated. Suppose there are n cats. There might have been n +1. The possibility of there being in concrete reality n + 1 cats is an abstract state of affairs that does not obtain, but might have obtained. Suppose you believe that before Socrates came into existence there was the de re possibility that Socrates, that very individual, come into existence. Then, if you are an actualist, you could accommodate the reality of this possibility by identifying the de re possibility of Socrates with an actually existent haecceity property, Socrateity. The actual existence in concrete reality of Socrates would then be the being-instantiated of this haecceity property.

Possible worlds can be accommodated by identifying them with maximal abstract states of affairs or maximal abstract propositions. Some identify worlds with maximally consistent abstract sets, but this proposal faces, I believe, Cantorian difficulties. The main idea, however, is that possible worlds for the actualist ersatzer are maximal abstract objects. Now one of the possible worlds is of course the actual world. It follows immediately that the actual world must not be confused with the concrete universe. It may sound strange, but for the actualist ersatzer, the actual world is an abstract object, a maximal proposition.

The actualist, then, rejects (1) and replaces it with

1*. A merely possible concrete item is an actual abstract object that possibly obtains or possibly is instantiated or possibly is true.

The presentist ersatzer does something similar with (1t). He replaces it with

1t*. A merely past concrete item is a temporally present abstract object that did obtain or was instantiated or was true or had a member.

An Argument Against Actualist Ersatzism

Let's examine the view that possible worlds are maximal abstract propositions. If so, the actual world is the true maximal proposition, and actuality is truth. Given that there is a plurality of worlds, whichever world is actual is contingently actual. So our world, call it 'Charley,' being the one and only (absolutely) actual world, is contingently actual, i.e., contingently true. Contingent affirmative truths, however, need truth-makers. So Charley needs a truth-maker. The truth-maker of Charley is the concrete universe as we know it and love it. Since actuality is truth, the concrete universe is not and cannot be actual.

So the concrete universe exists but is not actual! But this contradicts (3) above, according to which existence is actuality. The actualist ersatzer is committed to all of the following, but they cannot all be true:

5. Actuality is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8. Everything that exists is actual: there are no mere possibilia or impossibilia.
9. The concrete universe exists.

This is an inconsistent pentad because any four of the limbs, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the first four limbs entails the negation of (9).

Curiously, in attempting to solve the modal tetrad, the actualist embraces an inconsistent pentad. Not good!

An Argument Against Presentist Ersatzism

A parallel inconsistent pentad is easily constructed. The target here is the view that times are maximal propositions.

5t. Temporal presentness is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8t. Everything that exists is present: there are no merely past or merely future items.
9. The concrete universe exists.

One sort of presentist erstazer is committed to all five propositions, but they obviously cannot all be true.

Times as Maximal Propositions

1. Here are three temporal platitudes: The wholly past is no longer present; the wholly future is not yet present; the present alone is present. Here are three closely related controversial metaphysical theses: the wholly past, being no longer is not; the wholly future, being not yet, is not; the present alone is. The second trio is one version of presentism. I grant that presentism is appealing, though it would be a mistake to take it to be common sense or immediate fallout from common sense. The platitudes are Moorean; deny them on pain of being an idiot. Not so with the heavy-duty metaphysical theses about time and existence advanced by the presentist. We can reasonably ask what they mean and whether they are true.

2. Now even presentists will admit that the past is not a mere nothing. Last Sunday's hike has some sort of reality that cries out for accommodation. After all it is now true that I hiked eight hours on Sunday. Even if there are no truth-makers, there still must be something that the true past-tensed sentence is about. Here I distinguish between two principles, Truth-Maker and Veritas Sequitur Esse.

3. We should also keep in mind that past times and events do not have the status of the merely possible. When Sunday's hike was over it did not change its modal status from actual to merely possible. It remained an actual event, albeit a past actual event. Soren Kierkegaard WAS engaged to Regine Olsen, but he was never married to her. Intuitively, the engagement belongs to the sphere of the actual whereas the marriage belongs to the sphere of the merely possible, not that it is possible now. Neither event is a mere nothing. Furthermore, the engagement has, intuitively, 'more reality' than the marriage. What was is more real than what might have been. Historians attempt to determine what the actual facts were. They are constrained by the reality of the past, whence it follows that past has some sort of reality. Historians are neither fiction writers nor students of mere possibilia.

4. I take it to be a Moorean datum that past events and times are not nothing and also not merely possible. Hence a theory of time that cannot accommodate these data is worthless. How can the presentist accommodate them? He has to do it in a manner consistent with his claim that past and future items do not exist at all, that only temporally present items exist.

5. One approach is the 'ersatzer' approach: one looks for substitutes for nonpresent times. Let's consider the view that times are maximal propositions. A proposition is maximal just in case it entails every proposition with which it is broadly logically consistent. Accordingly, past and future times are contingently false maximal propositions. But then the present time is the sole true maximal proposition, and temporal presentness is identical to truth.

This scheme seems to allow us to uphold the Moorean data mentioned in #s 2-4 while holding a version of presentism. If each time is a proposition, and propositions exist omnitemporally, then all times are always available to be referred to. Sunday's hike is a wholly past event. Hence, on presentism, it does not exist at all. But the maximal propositions that were true during the hike all exist and exist now. It is just that they are now false. Sunday's hike is not nothing because those maximal propositions are not nothing and each entails *BV hikes,* a proposition that is not nothing. Sunday's hike is not merely possible because those maximal propositions, though now false, were true.

What we have done is to substitute for nonexistent past events and times, existent and present but false propositions.

6. One problem I have with this approach is as follows. If nonpresent times are false maximal propositions, then the present time is the sole true maximal proposition. If the present time is the sole true maximal proposition, then presentness is truth. The concrete universe cannot, however, be said to be true. It follows that the concrete universe cannot be said to be temporally present. But surely this is false: it anythiingis temporally present the concrete universe is. For the presentist, whatever exists, exists at present. The concrete universe exists, ergo, it is present.

Here is a second argument. If a contingent, singular, affirmative proposition is true, then it is made true by an existing non-proposition. If the present time is the sole maximal true proposition, then it has a truth-maker. That truth-maker is the concrete universe in its present state. So the concrete universe must have the property of being temporally present to serve as the truth-maker of the present time. For only the present universe could make true the maximal proposition that alone is presently true.

The ersatzer approach puts Descartes before the whores the cart before the horse: it is the presentness of the concrete universe that explains the present truth of the maximal proposition with which the present time has been identified, and not the other way around. Temporal presentness cannot be truth. It cannot be 'kicked upstairs' to the level of abstracta.

7. In sum, the presentist must somehow account for the reality of the past since the past is not nothing and not something merely possible. But the above ersatzer approach fails. So what makes it true now that I hiked eight hours on Sunday? If I understood Rhoda's suggestion it is that God's veridical memory of my hiking on Sunday is the truth-maker of 'I hiked last Sunday.' We will have to consider Rhoda's suggestion in a separate post. Deus ex machina?

Presentism and Existence Simpliciter: Questions for Rhoda

For Alan Rhoda, "Presentism is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists, exists now, in the present. The past is no more. The future is not yet. Either something exists now, or it does not exist, period." Rhoda goes on to claim that presentism is "arguably the common sense position." I will first comment on whether presentism is commonsensical and then advance to the weightier question of what it could mean for something to exist period, or exist simpliciter.

Common Sense?

It is certainly common sense that the past is no more and the future is not yet. These are analytic truths understood by anyone who understands English. They are beyond the reach of reasonable controversy, stating as they do that the past and the future are not present. But presentism is a substantive metaphysical thesis well within the realm of reasonable controversy. It is a platitude that what no longer exists, does not now exist. But there is nothing platitudinous about 'What no longer exists, does not exist at all, or does not exist period, or does not exist simpliciter.' That is a theoretical claim of metaphysics about time and existence that is neither supported nor disqualified by common sense and the Moorean data comprising it.

In the four sentences that begin his article, Rhoda has two platitudes sandwiched between two metaphysical claims. This gives the impression that the metaphysical claims are supported by the platitudes. My point is that the platitudes, though consistent with the metaphysical theory, give it no aid and comfort.

Compare the problem of universals: It is a Moorean fact that my cup is blue and that I see the blueness at the cup. But this datum neither supports nor disqualifies the metaphysical theory that blueness is a universal, nor does it either support or disqualify the competing metaphysical theory that the blueness is a particular, a trope. Neither common sense, nor ordinary language analysis, nor phenomenology can resolve the dispute. Dialectical considerations must be brought to bear.

Existence Simpliciter

Be that as it may. If we pursue the above line we will be led into metaphilosophy. On to the central topic. 'Whatever exists, exists now' is open to the Triviality Objection: of course, what exists (present-tense) exists now! Enter existence simpliciter. The following is not a tautology: 'Whatever exists simpliciter, exists now.'

The problem is to understand exactly what existence simpliciter is. Let's recall that in this series of posts it is not the truth-value of presentism that concerns me, but something logically prior to that, namely, the very sense of the thesis. Only after a thesis is identified can it be evaluated. I am not being coy. I really don't understand what precisely the presentist thesis is. What's more, I have no convictions in the philosophy of time the way I do in the philosophy of existence. No convictions, and no axes to grind. For example, I am convinced that the Fregean doctrine of existence is mistaken, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, Quine and their latter-day torch-bearers such as van Inwagen. I am not at all convinced that presentism is wrong. Like I said, I am not clear as to what it states.

Alan can correct me if I am wrong, but I think what he means by 'existence simpliciter' is something like this:

ES. X exists simpliciter =_df (Ey)(x = y).

In plain English, an item exists simpliciter if it is identical to something. 'Identical to something' is elliptical for 'identical to something or other.' I ascribe (ES) to Alan on the basis of a comment of his to the effect that existence simpliciter is the unrestricted quantifier sense of 'exists.' I take it that unrestricted quantifiers range over unrestricted domains, and that an absolutely unrestricted domain contains everything: past items, present items, future items, atemporal items, merely possible items . . . . Presentism could then be put as follows:

P. (x)[(Ey)(x = y) =_df x exists now].

That is,

P*. Everything is such that it is identical to something iff it exists now.

Now if the quantifiers in (P) and (P*) range over everything, including past and future items, then the theses are trivially false. But if they range only over present items, then they are trivially true. To avoid this difficulty, we might formulate Rhoda's presentism thusly:

P**. All and only present items instantiate the concept being identical to something.

The idea, then, is that we have the concept existence simpliciter and this concept is the concept being identical to something. Accordingly the presentist is saying something nontrivial about this concept, namely, that all and only its instances are temporally present items.

Unfortunately, I am still puzzled. Is the verb instantiate' in (P**) present-tensed? No, that way lies Triviality. Is it timeless? No, there is nothing timeless on Rhoda's scheme. Is it disjunctive: 'did instantiate or do instantiate or will instantiate'? No, for that too is false: it is false that all items that did or do or will instantiate the concept identical to something are temporally present. Socrates did instantiate the concept but he is not temporally present. And obviously 'instantiate' in (P**) cannot be replaced by 'omnitemporally instantiate.' That leaves a tense-neutral reading of 'instantiate' which somehow abstracts from the timeless, the present-tensed, the omnitemporal and the disjunctive use of a verb.

I am having trouble understanding what what this tense-neutral use of 'instantiate' amounts to. But this may only be a problem for me and not for Rhoda's theory.

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

The presentist aims to restrict what exists in time to what exists in time now. Call this the presentist restriction. But if the presentist says that only what exists now, exists, he cannot possibly mean that only what exists at the time of his utterance or thought of the presentist thesis exists. If it is now 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini, the presentist thesis is not that only what exists at 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini exists. The presentist is not a solipsist of the present moment. He is a metaphysician, not a lunatic. Nor is presentism an infinite family of time-indexed theses, but one thesis about time and existence.

The presentist restriction is not to the time that happens to be present, but to each time: Each time t is such that whatever exists in time exists at t. Formulated so as to avoid the solipsism of the present moment, the formulation must quantify over times. But whatever we quantify over must exist: it must be there to be quantified over. So nonpresent times must exist. But nonpresent times cannot exist if presentism is true and only what is present exists.

Therefore, when formulated so as to evade SPM, presentism entails its own falsity. If true, then false. If false, then False. Ergo, necessarily false.

But 'surely' it cannot be that easy to refute presentism! So I must have gone wrong somewhere. Where exactly?

Over Sunday breakfast, Peter L. suggested that the presentist can make an exception in the case of (nonpresent) times. But then the presentist thesis is drastically weakened. Moreover, no presentist that I know of makes such an exception.

Common Ground Between Presentist and Anti-Presentist?

What the presentist affirms, roughly, is that only (temporally) present items exist: there are no nonpresent existents. The anti-presentist denies this, maintaining that there are nonpresent existents. Now there is no genuine dispute here unless the identity of the presentist thesis is perfectly clear and the anti-present is denying that very thesis.

Following some earlier suggestions of Peter Lupu, I will now try to formulate this dispute using the concept nonpresent existent. I will use 'NPE' to refer to this concept, a concept we may assume both the presentist and his opponents understand. A nonpresent existent, by stipulative definition, is one that exists in time, but is either merely past or merely future. Using NPE, presentism and anti-presentism may be defined as follows:

P. NPE is not instantiated

AP. NPE is instantiated.

The dispute, then, is about whether NPE is instantiated. NPE is a concept both parties understand. So it is common ground. The dispute is not about this concept, but about whether it is instantiated.

But note that 'is' occurs in both formulations. Does it have exactly the same sense in both (P) and (AP)? If not, then the common ground afforded us by NPE avails us nothing.

Yesterday (see link below) I distinguished five time-related senses of 'is.' Starting with (P), which sense of 'is' is operative in it? We can right away exclude the 'is' of atemporality since presentism is a thesis about temporal items. We can also exclude the 'is' of temporal presentness. The presentist cannot be charitably construed as saying that NPE is not now instantiated, for that is trivially true.

The 'is' of omnitemporality is not a suitable candidate either. For if NPE is not instantiated at every time, then we have quantification over times. But one cannot quantify over what does not exist. So nonpresent times exist. But if so, then NPE is instantiated, contrary to what the presentist intends.

On the disjunctively detensed reading of 'is', the presentist is saying that NPE was not instantiated or is not instantiated or will be not instantiated, and the anti-presentist is saying that the NPE was instantiated or is instantiated or will be instantiated.

Does this do the trick? At the moment I cannot see that it doesn't. But time is the hardest of nuts to crack and my 'nutcracker' may not be up to the job . . . .

Five Time-Related Senses of ‘Is’

I dedicate this post to that loveable rascal Bill Clinton who taught us just how much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is.

Credit where credit is due: Some of the inspiration for this post comes from a conversation with Peter Lupu and from an article he recommended, S. Savitt, Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective.

1. There is first of all the 'is' of atemporality. Assuming that there are timeless entities such as God (concrete) and the number 13 (abstract), any sentences we use to talk about them must feature tenseless verbs and copulae. Consider the proposition expressed by the sentence, '13 is prime.' 13 is prime, but not now and not always. If the truth were always true, it would be in time. The truth is timeless and so is the object 13 and the property of being prime. The same goes for '13 exists.' It is not true now nor at every time. It is true timelessly. It is worth noting that the timeless is' and 'exists' do not abstract from the temporal determinations of pastness, presentness, and futurity for the simple reason that numbers and such are not in time in the first place. So the 'is' of atemporality is not the result of a de-tensing operation whereby we abtract from the temporal determinations to lay bare the pure copula, the copula that merely 'copulates.' The 'is' in question is tenseless from the 'git-go.'

Perhaps we should distinguish between grammatical tense and logical tense. Every verb has a grammatical tense. Thus the verb in 'God exists' is in the present tense. But God exists timelessly, and so 'exists' in this instance is logically without a tense.

Consider John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, I am." Is that ungrammatical? Yes, but logically it makes sense.

2. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the 'is' of temporal presentness. Examples: 'Peter is smoking' and 'There are 13 donuts in the box.' There are now 13 donuts in the box.

3. The 'is' of omnitemporality. Savitt gives the example of 'Copper is a conductor of electricity.' The sentence is true at every time, not just at present. But it is not timelessly true since it is about something in time, copper. I think the example shows that the tenseless is not the same as the timeless. What is timelessly true is tenselessly true, but not conversely.

4. The Disjunctively Detensed 'Is.' We can de-tense 'is' as follows: x is detensedly F just in case x was F or is F or will be F. We can do the same with 'exists.' Thus, Socrates is detensedly wise iff Socrates was wise or is wise or will be wise. De-tensing involves abstracting from temporal determinations. A detensed copula is a pure copula: all it does is 'copulate' or link.

The 'am' in 'I am dead' is a pure copula, and the sentence is tenselessly true, but not presently true or timelessly true or omnitemporally true. Gott sei dank!

5. The Hypertenseless 'Is.' God exists atemporally and thus tenselessly while Socrates exists temporally but not presently or omnitemporally and thus he too exists tenselessly. If there is a hypertenseless sense of 'exist' it applies to both God and Socrates and abstracts from the way each exists, atemporally in the case of God, temporally in the case of Socrates.

In 'God and Socrates both exist,' the 'exist' is hypertenseless in that it is abstractly common to both the tenselessness of the 'exists' in 'God exists' and the tenselessness of the 'exists' in 'Socrates exists.'

Now what is this hypertenseless univocal sense of 'exists' that applies to both God and Socrates? Persumably it is the quantifier sense according to which x exists iff (Ey) x = y. Existence in this sense is identity-with-something-or-other. Absolutely everything, whatever its mode of existence, exists in this hypertenseless sense.

Now the presentist wants to say that, necessarily, it is always the case that only present items exist. But in what sense of 'exist'? It cannot be the first four, for reasons given in previous posts. So let's try the fifth sense. Accordingly, only present items are identical-with-something-or-other.

Does this work?

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

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 is the sense of an indexical-free sentence in the indicative mood. The following items are neither in space, nor causally active/passive, but some say that they exist in time at every time: 7, 7's being prime, {7}, 7 is prime. If an item exists in time at every time, then it is omnitemporal. If an item is 'outside' time, then it is timeless or eternal or, to be helpfully pleonastic in the manner of McCann, timelessly eternal.

Let us agree that a temporalist is one for whom everything is in time, while an eternalist is one for whom some things are not in time.

On p. 55 of his Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press 2012), Hugh McCann argues that the temporalist cannot formulate his thesis without presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs, at least of the negative sort. Here is how I see the argument.

Part of what the temporalist says is that

1. There are no timeless states of affairs.

How is 'there are no' in (1) to be understood? The temporalist must intend it to be taken in a way consistent with temporalism, thus:

2. There never have been, are not now, and never will be any timeless states of affairs.

Unfortunately, the eternalist will agree with the temporalist on the truth of (2). Consider 7's being prime. Both agree that at no time does this state of affairs exist. The agreement is unfortunate because it shows that the bone of contention cannot be formulated in terms of (2). The bone of contention must be formulated in terms of (1) taken tenselessly. But then the temporalist ends up presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs. For he presupposes that there is the timeless state of affairs, There being no timeless states of affairs.

Temporalism, when properly formulated, i.e., when formulated in a way that permits disagreement between temporalist and eternalist, refutes itself by implying its own negation.

Is this 'Mavericked-up' McCann argument a good argument or not? Have at it, boys.

A Parallel with the Problem of Formulating Presentism

We have seen in previous posts that to avoid tautology the presentist must reach for a tenseless sense of 'exists.' He cannot say, tautologically, that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now. For that is not metaphysical 'news.' It is nothing to fight over, and fight we must. He has to say: Whatever tenselessly exists, exists now. But then he seems to presuppose that there are times, as real as the present time, at which temporal individuals such as Socrates tenselessly exist. The upshot is that when presentism is given a nontautological formulation, a formulation that permits disagreement beween presentist and anti-presentist, it refutes itself. For if there are non-present times as real as the present time, then it is not the case that only present items exist.

Addendum (10 March): Hugh McCann Responds

On the argument from my ch. 3 about timeless states of affairs, I of course stand by it (as of this moment, at least). But I don’t think this argument alone would suffice to show that there is a B-series. It might be, for example, that the only timeless states of affairs that there are pertain to abstracta; things like Seven’s being prime, and so forth. If that were so we would get no B-series, because abstracta exhibit no temporal features at all, whereas entities in a B-series share before and after relations.

BV replies: Well, I didn't claim that McCann's argument suffices to show that there is a B-series, a series of events related by the so-called B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. Perhaps my use of 'eternalist' misled him. All I meant by it above, as I stated, is someone who holds that some entities are timeless. I wasn't using it in the more commonly accepted sense in which it implies a commitment to the B-series. So we agree that the above argues does not suffice to show that there is a B-series. It could be that there are timeless entities, and entities in time, but no B-series.

As for the analogous anti-presentist argument you go on to give, I subscribe to it. But all it shows, as far as I can see, is that we have to consider talk of tenseless states of affairs legitimate. But to show that isn’t to show very much. It doesn’t yet follow, for example, that we have to speak of Socrates as existing tenselessly. Socrates is not a state of affairs, and there is nothing paradoxical about saying there neither is, was, nor will be a tenseless Socrates. The question is just whether it is true, and there I am unsure of the answer. Furthermore, I can imagine someone claiming that when it comes to the concrete world, tenseless states of affairs—the B-series, in effect—is just a necessary fiction, something we need in order to be able to keep proper track of our memories. I have no knockdown argument for or against this position. I am inclined to think, however, that it is a vast oversimplification, just as I think presentism is.

BV replies: I think what McCann is getting at here is that an adequate formulation of presentism must presuppose the meaningfulness of talk of tenseless states of affairs, but needn't presuppose that there are tenseless states of affairs involving entities in time. If that is what he means, then my quick little argument seems unsound, and McCann shouldn't have subscribed to it. I'll have to think about it some more. What a miserably difficult topic this is!

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism. An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful. Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:

P. Only the (temporally) present exists.

A. Only the actual exists.

Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology. After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed. It is clear that no presentist thinks his thesis is a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the the various types of anti-presentism. There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms. This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P). If not present-tensed, then what?

A similar problem arises for the actualist. One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual. If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology. But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean?

We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:

DP. Only the present existed or exists now or will exist.

That is equivalent to saying that if x existed or exists or will exists, then x presently exists. And that is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible. This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:

DA. Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.

This too is false since the merely possible is not actual. It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.

We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.' Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that every happened or will happen is happening right now. He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now. The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment.

Similarly wth the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world. He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual necessary. The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary. The actualist is not a necessitarian.

There is no person like me, but I am not the only person. There is no place like here, but here is not the only place. There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.

In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?

To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).

We can't say that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists. So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists. I will say more about tenseless existence in a later post.

What do I mean by amodal existence? Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:

Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds
Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world
Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds
Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds
Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world
Actual being: one that exists in the actual world
Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.

In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:

It was the case that Tom exists
It is now the case that Tom exists
It will be the case that Tom exists.

My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.

But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty? This is what we need to examine. Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudoproblems.