Abstract
This paper presents an argument against the A-Theory of time. Briefly, I shall contend that the A-Theorist has no explanation for why the present moment in particular has the metaphysical privilege she accords it, and that this puts the theory at a disadvantage. In what follows, I shall begin by presenting this argument. I will follow that with some potential explanations for why the present moment is privileged and reasons militating against them, in addition to some other possible objections to my argument and my responses to them. The conclusion will be that the A-Theorist fails to provide either an obvious or a theoretical explanation of the present time’s privileged status and is thereby at a theoretical disadvantage to theories that do not posit a metaphysically privileged present time. Topics covered include the purported analogy between times and worlds, the possibility that times are individuated by what is true at them, and the semantic status of titles for date-times.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I owe this point to an anonymous referee.
I am again grateful to an anonymous referee for stressing this point.
I am grateful to Josh Rasmussen and Alex Pruss for examples.
This concept of distinct properties or facts grounding one another has elicited a great deal of recent research, see Audi (2012), Fine (2010), Schaffer (2009). That the grounded property or fact is explained by its ground is a ubiquitous theme in the literature; Audi (2012), for example, argues for the existence of grounding on the basis of our appeal to certain kinds of explanations, inferring that in them the explanans grounds the explanandum.
This trick played a key role in Prior’s development of an adequate tense logic. See Blackburn (2006) for details.
For a similar division among propositions, see Bourne (2006, p. 53), who also argues that times should be construed as sets, or set-theoretic constructs, of p-propositions.
I owe the quote to Daniel Rabinoff.
I thank Alex Skiles for pressing this objection.
I will thus be ignoring theories, for example, that jettison times in favour of sets of simultaneous events, or other time-like objects. As an anonymous referee alerted me, to counter such views we can easily repeat the main argument with sets of events (to continue the example) replacing times as possible bearers of metaphysical presentness. I have thus devoted my attention to what seems the nominalist version of the A-Theory most likely to damage my overall case, viz. tense-primitivism.
Arguments analogous to those I here make about histories with finite pasts can, of course, be made mutatis mutandis about histories with finite futures.
References
Adams, R. (1974). Theories of actuality. Noûs, 8(3), 211–231.
Audi, P. (2012). A clarification and defense of the notion of grounding. In F. Correia & B. Schnieder (Eds.), Grounding and explanation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benacerraf, P. (1965). What numbers could not be. Philosophical Review, 74, 47–73.
Blackburn, P. (2006). Arthur Prior and hybrid logic. Synthese, 150(3), 329–372.
Bourne, C. (2006). A future for presentism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broad, C. D. (1923). Scientific thought. London: Routledge.
Chisholm, R. (1990). Events without times: an essay in ontology. Noûs, 24(3), 413–427.
Fine, K. (2010). Some puzzles of ground. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 51(1), 97–118.
Grünbaum, A. (1965). The status of temporal becoming. Annals of the New York Academy of the Sciences, 138, 374–395.
Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lowe, E. J. (1998). Tense and persistence. In R. Le Poidevin (Ed.), Questions of time and tense. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCall, S. (1994). A model of the universe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Meyer, U. (2009). Times in tense logic. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 50(2), 201–219.
Meyer, U. (2013). The nature of time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Øhrstrøm, P., & Hasle, P. (1995). Temporal logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.
Plantinga, A. (1974). The nature of necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Prior, A. N. (1968). Papers on time and tense. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Reynolds, M. (1994). Axiomatisation and decidability of F and P in cyclical time. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 23, 197–224.
Schaffer, J. (2009). On what ground what. In M. Chalmers & R. Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sider, T. (2011). Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Stalnaker, R. (1976). Possible worlds. Noûs, 10(1), 65–75.
Stalnaker, R. (1984). Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tooley, M. (1997). Time, tense, and causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Vallicella, W. (1997). On an insufficient argument against sufficient reason. Ratio, 10(1), 76–81.
van Inwagen, P. (1983). An essay on free will. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Zalta, E. (1987). On the structural similarities between worlds and times. Philosophical Studies, 51(2), 213–239.
Zalta, E., Bueno, O., & Menzel, C. (2012). Worlds and propositions set free. Erkenntnis, 4, 1–24.
Zimmerman, D. (2005). The A-Theory of time, the B-Theory of time, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’. Dialectica, 59(4), 401–457.
Acknowledgments
I presented an earlier version of this paper at the 2013 conference for the Society for Exact Philosophy at the University of Montreal under the title “Times, Reasons, and Nowness: Why You Can’t Be an A-Theorist, Rationalist, and Comfortable at the Same Time.” I am grateful for the comments and criticism I received there, as well as those of Alex Pruss, Josh Rasmussen, Alex Skiles, and Alfredo Watkins.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mollica, L.C. Explanation and nowness: an objection to the A-Theory. Philos Stud 172, 2513–2530 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0430-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0430-9