John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963. (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that he is dead. But it is true, and indeed true now, that JFK is dead. Equivalently, 'dead' is now true of JFK. But this is puzzling: How can a predicate be true of a thing if the thing does not exist? After a thing ceases to exist it is no longer around to support any predicates. What no longer exists, does not still exist: it does not exist.
I am of the metaphilosophical opinion that the canonical form of a philosophical problem is the aporetic polyad. Here is our puzzle rigorously set forth as an aporetic tetrad:
1) Datum: There are predicates that are true of things that no longer exist, e.g., 'dead' and 'famous' and 'fondly remembered' are true of JFK.
2) Veritas sequitur esse: If a predicate is true of an item x, then x exists.
3) Presentism: For any x, x exists iff x is temporally present.
4) The Dead: For any x, if x is dead, then x is temporally non-present.
The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. To solve the tetrad, then, we must reject one of the propositions. It can't be (1) since (1) is a datum. And it can't be (4) since it, on the mortalist assumption, is obviously true. (To avoid the mortalist assumption, change the example to an inanimate object.) Of course, if an animal dies, its corpse typically remains present for a time; but an animal and its corpse are not the same. An animal can die; a corpse cannot die because a corpse was never alive.
One cannot plausibly reject (2) either. To reject (2) is to maintain that a predicate can be true of a thing whether or not the thing exists. This is highly counter-intuitive, to put it mildly. Suppose it is true that Peter smokes. Then 'smokes' is true of Peter. It follows that Peter exists. It seems we should say the same about Kennedy. It is true that Kennedy is dead. So 'dead' is true of Kennedy, whence it follows that Kennedy exists. Of course, he does not exist at present. But if he didn't exist at all, then it could not be true that Kennedy is dead, famous, veridically remembered, and so on. Kennedy must in some sense exist if he is to be the object of successful reference and the subject of true predications.
There remains the Anti-Presentist Solution. Deny (3) by maintaining that it is not only present items that exist. One way of doing this by embracing so-called eternalism, the view that past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.
But what is it for a temporal item, an item in time, to exist tenselessly? The number 7 and the proposition 7 is prime exist 'outside of time.' They exist timelessly. If the number and the proposition are indeed timeless or atemporal items, then it it makes clear sense to say that 7 tenselessly exists and that 7 is prime both tenseless exists and is tenselessly true. But it is not clear what it could mean to say that an item in time such as JFK exists tenselessly or is tenselessly dead or famous, etc.
The tenseless existence of a temporal item is not timeless existence. Nor is tenseless existence the same as omnitemporal/sempiternal existence: Kennedy does not exist at all times. He existed in time for a short interval of time. So what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly? Try this:
X exists tenselessly iff X either existed or exists (present tense) or will exist.
But this doesn't help. The disjunction on the right-hand side of the biconditional, with 'Kennedy' substituted for 'X' is true only because the past-tensed 'Kennedy existed' is true. We still have no idea what it is for a temporal item to exist or have properties tenselessly. Presumably, 'Kennedy exists tenselessly' says more than what the tensed disjunction says. But what is this more?
Interim Conclusion. If we can't find a way to make sense of tenseless existence, then we won't be able to reject (3) and we will be stuck with our quartet of inconsistent plausibilities. More later.
