Abstract
Temporal ontology is the part of ontology involving the rival positions of presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory. While this much is clear, it’s surprisingly difficult to elucidate the substance of the disagreement between presentists and eternalists (to focus on the most widespread positions). Certain events happened that are not happening now; what is it to disagree about whether these events exist (simpliciter, or else tenselessly)? In spite of widespread suspicion concerning the status and methods of analytic metaphysics, skeptics’ doubts about this debate have not generally been heeded, neither by metaphysicians, nor by philosophers of physics. This paper revisits the question in the light of prominent elucidation attempts from both camps (by Ted Sider, Christian Wüthrich, and Tom Stoneham). The upshot is that skeptics were right to be puzzled. The paper then explores a possible re-interpretation of positions in temporal ontology that links it to normative views about how we should live as temporal beings.
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Notes
I confine myself to discussing this standard version of presentism, leaving aside Jonathan Tallant’s ‘existence presentism’ (see e.g. Tallant 2014), both because of space limitations and because I think similar problems afflict that version.
Deasy (2015, 4).
Lawrence Lombard puts this point beautifully: ‘[T]here can be a debate between those who think that presently nonexistent things can now be members of classes, and that currently nonexistent things can now be constituents of singular propositions, and that things can have some properties (and bear relations to other things) at times at which they do not exist, and those who don’t think so. But, it seems clear who wins that debate. More importantly, however, it seems clear that such a debate is not about time or the existence of things that exist in time.’ (2010, p. 70).
Savitt (2011, pp. 26–29), which came to my attention after writing this article, argues for a similar conclusion.
Takeshi Sakon also makes this point (2015, p. 1091).
Jonathan Tallant also rejects Stoneham’s proposal, but his criticisms are based on substantial intuitions about which truthmaker principles to endorse in general (Tallant 2014).
See e.g. Deng (2013).
See also the closely related debate over whether presentism is a version of the A-theory (e.g. Tallant 2012).
Pace Lewis: ‘In saying that there are no other times, as opposed to false representations thereof, [presentism] goes against what we all believe. No man, unless it be at the moment of his execution, believes that he has no future; still less does anyone believe that he has no past.’ (1986, p. 204).
Cf Cockburn (1997).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jonathan Tallant, Giuliano Torrengo, David Ingram, Steven Savitt, Geurt Sengers, and audience members in Milan, Cambridge and Rotterdam for helpful comments on various drafts. This paper was written while I was a member of the TWCF project ‘Theology, philosophy of religion, and the sciences’.
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Deng, N. What is temporal ontology?. Philos Stud 175, 793–807 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0893-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0893-6