{"id":3196,"date":"2020-04-11T06:57:10","date_gmt":"2020-04-11T06:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/11\/presentism-and-regret\/"},"modified":"2020-04-11T06:57:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T06:57:10","slug":"presentism-and-regret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/11\/presentism-and-regret\/","title":{"rendered":"Presentism and Regret"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 exist at present.  Therefore, presentism is false.  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1) There exist states of regret.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Every such state has as its accusative an event that exists.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) Every such state has as its accusative an event that is wholly past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore<\/span><\/p>\n

4) There exist wholly past events.<\/span><\/p>\n

5) If presentism is true, then there exist no wholly past events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore<\/span><\/p>\n

6) Presentism is false.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Doesn't this argument blow presentism clean out of the water?  It is plainly valid in point of logical form. Which premise will you deny?<\/span><\/p>\n

"You're begging the question! You are using 'exist(s)' tenselessly.  But on presentism, the only legitimate uses of 'exist(s)' are present-tensed."<\/span><\/p>\n

Reply<\/em>:  Please note that you too must use 'exist(s)' tenselessly to formulate your presentist thesis on pain of your thesis collapsing into the miserable tautology, 'Whatever in time exists (present-tense) exists (present-tense).'  That's fake news. To advance a substantive claim you must say, 'Whatever in time exists simpliciter exists at present' where 'simpliciter' is cashed out by 'tenselessly.'<\/span><\/p>\n

Comments enabled, but no comment will be allowed to appear that does not address the above argument.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Presentism and Regret”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotions","category-time-and-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}