Abstract
In this paper I explore how the tenseless copula is to be interpreted in sentences of the form “a is F at t”, where “a” denotes a persisting, changeable object, “F” stands for a prima facie intrinsic property and “t” for a B-time. I argue that the interpretation of the copula depends on the logical role assigned to the time clause. Having rejected the idea that the time clause is to be treated as a sentence operator, I argue: (1) that if “at t” is thought of as being associated with “a” or “F”, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly read as an “is” simpliciter; and (2) that if “at t” is treated as being associated with the copula, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly understood as expressing a disjunction of tensed copulas. I end the paper by explaining the importance of the issue. I indicate the ramifications interpretation of the tenseless copula has for the so-called problem of temporary intrinsics.
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Notes
Roughly, intrinsic properties are properties an object has purely in virtue of the way the object itself is. Putative examples are an object’s rest mass and its shape. Examples of non-intrinsic properties include being an uncle and being the highest building in Europe. General properties like having a rest mass and having a shape are often called “determinables”, while specific properties such as having rest mass m o and being straight often are called “determinates”.
Philosophers of time who, by contrast, “take tense seriously” and hold that the present moment is metaphysically privileged—by either being the only moment that exists or the only moment which has the A-property of being present—are often called “A-theorists”.
Perhaps I should say “prima facie temporal predication”. As we shall see, once we parse (1) and (2) in certain ways it can be questioned whether they actually involve temporal predication.
Tooley (1997, Ch. 5) does not agree on this, but he is not a traditional B-theorist. He claims that ‘the future’ is ontologically open in the sense that later B-times are not real as of earlier B-times. On this basis he maintains that utterances of tenseless sentences containing future B-times lack truth value as of the time of their utterance. I here assume the traditional ‘static’ block-universe reading of the B-theory of time. Moreover, Mellor, who is a staunch defender of the block-universe reading, does not appear to agree on this either, at least if the sentence lacks a time clause (1998, pp. 93–95). But his reasoning on this point I find somewhat obscure. Given that he allows “a is F”, read tenselessly, to change truth value over time, it is difficult to see what the difference between the present-tensed “is” and the tenseless “is” is for Mellor, although he does maintain that there is a distinction to be made.
Some claim that the addition of time clauses prevents “a is F” and “a is G” from being incompatible. I think this claim must be qualified though: more on this below, Sect. 7.
If the copula in (1) and (2) is allowed to be present-tensed, it will make sense to treat the time clauses as sentence operators. We would then have: “at t (a is [present tense] F)” and “at t′ (a is [present tense] G)”, i.e. constructions indicating at what B-times the shorter “a is [present tense] F” and “a is [present tense] G” (or utterances of them) are true. In that case, if the time clauses are exchanged in (1) and (2), the exchange will result in a truth value change; hence the time clauses will not be redundant. Notice, moreover, that, on this understanding of (1) and (2), the full sentences would be tensed eternal sentences. Thus, that a sentence is an eternal sentence does not entail—contrary to what is often presumed in the literature—that the sentence is a tenseless one.
According to the terminology made famous by Lewis (1986, p. 202), but invented by Johnston in his PhD thesis, enduring objects persist by being wholly present at distinct times, while perduring objects persist by having distinct temporal parts at distinct times.
However, if “F” and “G” are dispositional predicates, as opposed to categorical ones, then it is highly questionable whether the predicates can be ascribed to temporal parts. See my (2009) for arguments for the claim that they cannot.
Here we are only interested in the question whether the tenseless copula might be qualified by an extra time clause, since it is the meaning of the tenseless copula that is the subject matter of this paper. However, for the record I would like to point out that the addition of an extra time clause that functions as a sentence operator (“at t*(a-at-t is F)”) is redundant; incomprehensible if it modifies the subject expression (“a-at-t-at-t* is F”); and against the doctrine of perdurance if it modifies the predicate (“a-at-t is F-at-t*”). One motivating factor behind the doctrine of perdurance is the avoidance of time-indexed properties, or properties as relations to times (see Lewis 1986, p. 204).
The meaning of the tenseless copula when temporally qualified is discussed below in Sect. 6.
It is often argued that the problem of temporary relations is as pressing as the problem of temporary intrinsics (see e.g. Lewis 1988, pp. 69–71; Rea 2003, p. 256). How can one and the same thing bear and not bear a particular relation to a certain entity? From the perspective of an endurance theorist who thinks this is a genuine problem, replacement of intrinsic change with relational change merely moves one from the frying pan and into the fire. For my part, as I think that the problem of temporary intrinsic is based on a misconstrual of the endurance position (see Sect. 7)—and I would give the same diagnosis of the relational version of the “problem”—I do not think that such a move, with its anomalous view of prima facie intrinsic properties, would result in a stronger position.
However, Rychter says that we should think of an enduring object, such as a banana, timelessly: that is, we should adopt “an atemporal perspective [which] will show the banana somehow outside time, and bearing different relations to different times” (2008, p 165, italics original). But granted that the banana exists in time (it is, after all, an enduring entity), I want to know how we are to think of the banana in a more realistic way given the relations-to-times metaphysics.
It is to be noticed, however, that perdurantists ought to adopt such a parsing for sentences of the following type: “a, as a whole, is (derivatively) F at t” (see above, at the end of Sect. 4). Moreover, friends of time-indexed properties who accept the kind of space-time diagram discussed above (Sect. 5), and who will consequently want to add extra time clauses to “a is F-at-t” and “a is G-at-t′”, should adopt this kind of parsing for the extra time clauses.
This understanding of the role of the time clause is sometimes called “adverbialism”.
A-theorists often treat the tenseless copula in sentences such as (1) and (2) as a disjunction of tensed copulas. What I propose here is that B-theorists who accept alternative (c) should also do so, as otherwise they will end up endorsing incongruous statements. Notice, however, that this does not mean that such B-theorists must altogether give up the tenseless copula of the simpliciter variety (in non-mathematical contexts). For example, being traditional B-theorists, they may wish to say that “time t is before time t′ simpliciter”. Compare the resulting position with that of Smart (1963, pp. 138-139), who insists that the tenseless copula found in mathematics suffices for B-theorists.
I here think of paradigmatically tensed sentences such as “It will rain tomorrow”. However, as we saw above (Sect. 2, note 7), it is possible to construct eternal tensed sentences. The isolated fact that a certain sentence does not change in truth value over time does not, therefore, strictly prove that the sentence is tenseless. However, it is a strong indication that it is. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that in this section we are not regarding the time clauses as sentence operators—the eternal tensed sentences in note 7 have the form “at t (a is F)”.
One raised by an anonymous reviewer of the paper.
I am not altogether sure whether the inaccurate recording here entails (i) that the utterance of the sentence is false, or (ii) that the utterance fails to say anything to which a truth value can be assigned because the used sentence is ungrammatical. The important point is that the second utterance is not true. (Things get worse if we read the tenseless copula as saying “always was, is and always will be”. Consider the last conjunct. What could it mean to say “o will always be F at t”? Here “always” is not understood as a sentence operator (cf. Sect. 2) but as a part of the by “at t” qualified copula).
The “t ≠ t′” clause is, of course, arbitrarily added to (4ii); it could just as well be added to (3ii). The point is that when (3) and (4) are uttered in conjunction, given the principle of charity, such a clause should be understood as being implied by the utterance.
Notice that, on this interpretation, no matter where in time a’s having of F is located (as long as it is located somewhen in time), any utterance of “a is F” is true.
To make the example more straightforward, we can imagine a person who encounters the two sentences “a is bent” and “a is straight”, i.e. sentences with ordinary English predicates substituted for “F” and “G” and a copula which is not italicized (B-theorists do not always symbolize tenselessness by the use of italics).
Nor should s/he be taken to be adopting the conjunctive reading of the copula proposed by the anonymous reviewer (discussed above, Sect. 6).
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Acknowledgments
The bulk of this paper was written during a visit to the Centre for Time at the Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, Australia, July–December 2006, funded by STINT—The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. I am indebted to John Cusbert for his helpful comments. The paper was subsequently presented at the Higher Seminar in Theoretical Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden, March 2007; I thank the participants for helpful discussion. Anna-Sofia Maurin, Erik J. Olsson, Paul Robinson, Nils-Eric Sahlin and Lena Wahlberg also read the whole manuscript and gave me very valuable feedback. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis for their constructive criticism.
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Hansson Wahlberg, T. The Tenseless Copula in Temporal Predication. Erkenn 72, 267–280 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-009-9197-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-009-9197-3