The discussion in the previous section crystallises the difficulty that confronts standard realism: given that a non-instantaneous tensed world is multi-anchored, constituted by facts anchored at multiple times, a mono-anchored representation of it will inevitably leave out some of the ways things are in the relevant world and hence will fail to be comprehensive. But now that it is put this way, the argument might appear to simply beg the question against the standard realist. More precisely, charging the standard realist with ignoring the tensed facts anchored at loci of obtainment other than the only one she is committed to acknowledge might seem dialectically inappropriate, considering that it is a core component of her view that reality features a single unique locus of obtainment. After all, in renouncing neutrality, the standard realist seems precisely to reject that a world like Fido’s is multi-anchored. She might therefore simply insist that, since t
2 is uniquely present and there are no other loci of obtainment but the present, nothing is missing from Fig. 3 (or Fig. 5, for that matter): Fido’s world is to be represented by means of a mono-anchored picture because it is mono-anchored. Moreover, the idea that reality is multi-anchored might appear to be closely connected to the robust conception of temporal passage, which the standard realist eschews, as we have seen above. Given this, the fact that the argument from comprehensiveness appeals to multi-anchoredness might seem to make it doubtful that it is really distinct from Fine’s argument from passage or that it has any advantage over the latter.Footnote 13
Given the delicate nature of the present dialectic, this might appear a reasonable worry, but ultimately, it proves ill-founded. The standard realist, in essence, faces a dilemma: despite appearances, dismissing the multi-anchoredness of a non-instantaneous tensed world does not in fact sit well with standard realism; if, on the other hand, the standard realist does take that path nonetheless, the plausibility of her defence against the argument from passage is seriously undermined.
Multi-Anchoredness in theory and practice
The rejection of neutrality, combined with the simultaneous acceptance of absolutism, does indeed appear to rule out that reality can be multi-anchored. But while this is the doctrine that the standard realist officially espouses, her overall representational practice deviates from it quite dramatically. Note, for instance, that, in the passage quoted above, Cameron has us first suppose that we are at the second moment of this three-moment history, before he goes on to introduce his single-rowed diagram. That diagram, then, shows us how he represents the tensed reality of this scenario at t
2. Had he represented it at t
1 or t
3, he would have surely drawn the bottom and the top rows of the three-rowed diagram above, respectively. Similarly, we have introduced Fig. 3 above by first assuming that we are looking at Fido’s world when t
2 is the standard realist’s unique locus of obtainment. Had we let the standard realist draw a picture of reality a moment earlier or later, the pictures she would have drawn in each case would look differently, featuring different tensed facts: in the former case, the standard realist would have drawn the column to the left in Fig. 4, and in the latter case, the column to the right. Thus, the standard realist, whenever she claims to tell Fido’s story in its full entirety, ends up disregarding two-thirds of the whole tensed story, though each time a different one.
Focusing on what the standard realist says, at a single time t, about how reality is over some period of time that includes t seems therefore to be rather misleading. For, as has been noted by many, the standard realist’s representational practice involves constant updating—a perpetual discarding of a just drawn picture of reality and immediately drawing a new one from scratch. Thus, if we observe the standard realist over the period from t
1 to t
3 as she continuously represents Fido’s world ‘in real time’, we shall witness that, by the end of that period, she will have drawn each of the columns in Fig. 4. In theory, the standard realist is supposed to hold that reality is, absolutely speaking, mono-anchored; however, her commitment to multi-anchoredness seems to surface in her representational practice.
Note that, apart from the conflict with the standard realist’s official doctrine, there is nothing wrong with this representational practice per se. What is problematic is the claim that mono-anchored pictures like Fig. 3 are both absolute in character and comprehensive in scope: for given that there are multiple distinct ways how things fundamentally are in Fido’s world, each constituted by various facts anchored at a different time, all of these must somehow figure in a diachronically comprehensive representation of Fido’s adventures, as dc and dcs require. Contrast the standard realist’s interpretation of pictures like Fig. 3 with the non-standard realist’s attitude towards them. Non-standard realists will regard each of the columns in Fig. 4 as expressing something true about Fido’s world, but they will deny that any of them reveals either the absolute or the whole truth about it, depending on the type of non-standard realism they defend. Finean fragmentalists, just like B-theorists, will comply with dc and dcs by positing a single picture which is supposed to represent how reality fundamentally is within the period from t
1 to t
3. Whereas that single picture is coherent but tenseless for B-theorists, the fragmentalist’s multi-anchored picture will be tensed but incoherent: the fragmentalist will incorporate the three columns in Fig. 4 by taking them to be proper parts of the fundamentally incoherent reality as a whole. A mono-anchored representation like Fig. 3, then, is absolute in character but partial in scope for the fragmentalist.
By contrast, Finean external relativists will take each of the three columns in Fig. 4 to represent a different, temporally relative reality. On this view, each column reveals a fundamental but temporally perspectival way reality is within the relevant period of time; the tensed story of Fido’s adventures, in its full entirety, involves three distinct temporal perspectives which resist being integrated into a single, ultimate way how things are in Fido’s world. Note that, once absolutism is given up, the other Finean principles as well as the idea of multi-anchoredness takes on a different meaning.Footnote 14 Thus, the external relativist is in fact in a position to accommodate, to some degree at least, whatever intuitive appeal the rejection of neutrality has: for each of the temporal perspectives will be oriented around a locus of obtainment that is, from within that perspective, uniquely privileged. A mono-anchored representation like Fig. 3 will be understood to say everything there is to say about reality, as of the relevant time—this kind of picture is relative in character but (relatively) comprehensive in scope. For the external relativist, there is no single multi-anchored picture of reality; rather, the multi-anchored nature of a non-instantaneous tensed world reveals itself in there being a plurality of temporally relative ways how things fundamentally are.
Consider now a third view, which we may call substandard realism. As far as the Finean principles are concerned, the substandard realist has the same commitments as the standard realist, but she behaves differently in practice. When she continuously represents Fido’s world over the period from t
1 to t
3, she consistently draws the same picture shown in Fig. 3; for the substandard realist, the fundamental tensed reality in Fido’s world is, absolutely speaking, multi-directional but mono-anchored. The multi-directional but mono-anchored picture in Fig. 3 would then really tell us everything we need know about how things are in Fido’s world, and there would be no need to draw any other picture at all.
But despite its similarity to substandard realism on paper, this is not how standard realism is supposed to work. On standard realism, a non-instantaneous tensed world is supposed to be something that constantly changes as a whole and whose fundamental representation therefore constantly requires a total revision that replaces facts that are anchored at a given time with ones that are anchored at the next. But this conception of tensed reality does not seem compatible with the idea that reality is, absolutely speaking, mono-anchored. As soon as one sees how the standard realist produces, over time, a plurality of mono-anchored pictures like Fig. 3, each privileging a different time as the unique locus of obtainment, it becomes clear that she must somehow allow that there is more to a non-instantaneous tensed world, in its full entirety, than what any one of her mono-anchored pictures depict. Intuitively, each of those pictures represents a state from or into which reality transitions within the relevant period; and as we have seen above, a comprehensive account of how this changing tensed reality is within the relevant period needs to involve, in some way and form, all of those states. The non-standard views offer two ways of accomplishing this: take those states as parts of the single fundamental way reality is from to t
1 to t
3, or insist that they constitute multiple, non-integrable fundamental ways reality is within that period. The standard realist does neither and refuses to acknowledge, in any one of her representations of reality, the multi-anchoredness she seems de facto committed to, which is precisely the reason why her view becomes the target of the argument from comprehensiveness.
Thinning passage further down
The representational practice that accompanies standard realism brings to light that dismissing the multi-anchoredness of a non-instantaneous tensed world is not a straightforward option for the proponent of this view. It might be objected that the above line of argument, in associating the standard realist’s representational practice with multi-anchoredness, tacitly presupposes something like the robust conception of passage that the standard realist rejects. Indeed, one might think that the standard realist’s thin conception of passage both adequately explains her representational practice and is compatible with a non-instantaneous tensed world’s being mono-anchored: the standard realist constantly renews her mono-anchored picture because time passes in the thin sense, without this involving any commitment to reality’s having multiple temporal anchors.Footnote 15
Unfortunately for the standard realist, this kind of response provides little relief either. It is true that the robust notion of passage seems to presuppose multi-anchoredness, but the argument from comprehensiveness appeals only to the latter and not to the former—indeed, for all the argument shows, a multi-anchored tensed world may still be one in which time does not pass. On the other hand, it is in fact very doubtful that, once the multi-anchoredness of a non-instantaneous tensed world is rejected, the thin conception of passage, or whatever is left from it, can be utilised to justify the standard realist’s representational practice or to respond to Fine’s argument from passage.
To see this, let us first distinguish between two theses one might have in mind when one talks of a thin conception of passage:
representationally thin passage (rtp)
A mono-anchored representation can accurately represent a non-instantaneous tensed world in which time passes.
metaphysically thin passage (mtp)
A non-instantaneous tensed world that is mono-anchored can be one in which time passes.
Recall the way in which the thin conception of passage was appealed to in responses to Fine’s argument discussed above: when, for instance, Pooley says, in effect, that a mono-anchored but multi-directed representation is all that is required “to express the passage of time”, he might well be understood as defending rtp rather than mtp. Or take our initial characterisation of the thin conception of passage: we have said that, according to it, there is nothing more to passage than reality’s presently being a certain way and its having been some other way. This, too, is in fact ambiguous between two readings: it may be understood either as a conception of passage that entails rtp only or one that entails mtp as well.
It seems to me that the standard realist’s appeal to the thin conception of passage both in response to the argument from passage and in her attempt to harmonise her representational practice with her rejection of multi-anchoredness of reality trades on the ambiguity between rtp and mtp: what makes the thin conception of passage seem at all acceptable is the former reading, but what the standard realist needs in both dialectical contexts is the latter. Note that mtp is stronger than rtp: the former entails the latter, but not vice versa. It may be that a mono-anchored but multi-directed picture is all that is needed to vindicate the thesis that time passes. But from this, it does not follow that time can pass in a genuinely, absolutely mono-anchored world. Indeed, one might wish to argue that a mono-anchored but multi-directed representation like Fig. 3 manages to capture temporal passage precisely because its multi-directedness signals that there is more to reality than what is represented by it: facts that are anchored at times other than the single one at which the represented facts are all anchored at. On this view, then, a mono-anchored but multi-directed representation accommodates passage to the extent that it implies the multi-anchoredness of the world it represents. But given this, it simply follows that such a representation cannot be absolutely comprehensive: if multi-directedness of a tensed world necessitates some form of multi-anchoredness, then there is more to reality than a multi-directed but mono-anchored representation can possibly represent.
But rtp may also be true simply because mtp is: if time genuinely passes in a mono-anchored tensed world, it is no surprise that a mono-anchored representation can capture temporal passage. However, this option raises a number of difficult questions for the standard realist. If what is meant by the thin conception of passage is something along the lines of mtp, then it allows for temporal passage in substandard realism as well. This, in and of itself, is bad news for the standard realist. For, despite the aforementioned elusiveness of the notion, it seems overwhelmingly plausible that no acceptable conception of passage can allow that a theory which is committed to the substandard realist’s representational practice succeeds in accommodating passage: a non-instantaneous tensed world that is accurately represented, at any time whatsoever, by means of a single mono-anchored picture must indeed be a ‘frozen’ one. Thus, if the standard realist were simply to bite the bullet and adopt the representational practice of the substandard realist, she would certainly bypass the argument from comprehensive but only at the cost of admitting defeat to the argument from passage. After all, as Lipman (2018, p. 97) observes, “[t]he closest that a standard A-theory comes to capturing the passage of time is in the constant rewriting of its description of the world.” One could perhaps argue that compatibility with substandard realism does not, by itself, disqualify a conception of passage. But if the sense in which time can be said to pass in standard realism is one in which it can also be said to pass in substandard realism, then we definitely have far less reason to take the standard realist’s response to the argument from passage seriously, to say the very least.
Alternatively, the standard realist might concede that a theory which is committed to the substandard realist’s representational practice is indeed precluded from accommodating passage but then argue that there is something wrong with that representational practice itself. More specifically, the standard realist might claim that the substandard realist’s representational practice, as described so far, is internally incoherent: if, on the one hand, reality can be accurately represented by the same mono-anchored picture at any time whatsoever, then that picture cannot be multi-directed like Fig. 3; if, on the other hand, we hold the multi-directedness of an accurate picture of reality fixed, then it cannot be that the same picture constitutes, over time, the only single accurate representation of reality. Thus, on this line of thought, what both justifies the standard realist’s representational practice and gives some substance to her thin conception of passage is the multi-directedness of a non-instantaneous tensed world.
It is difficult to see, however, how this response is supposed to work. Take the multi-directed but mono-anchored Fig. 3, featuring past-, present-, and future-directed facts all of which are anchored at t
2. Why exactly is it supposed to be incoherent to always represent reality with this picture and this picture only? Here is one possible reason: the obtaining of past- and future-directed facts represented by it somehow necessitates present-directed facts anchored at times earlier and later than t
2. But, as we have already seen above, if something like this is accepted, it must also be admitted that reality is multi-anchored and that a picture like Fig. 3 is not absolutely comprehensive. If, on the other hand, multi-directedness is completely independent of multi-anchoredness, what is supposed to be wrong with the substandard realist’s practice? If anything, the way in which the substandard realist represents Fido’s world seems be much more fitting than the standard realist’s representational practice, assuming that both are committed to interpreting that world as an absolutely mono-anchored yet primitively multi-directed one. Substandard realism does seem to make a travesty of the way most A-theorists envision reality to be; unlike standard realism, however, it at least does not involve any problematic discrepancy between theory and practice.
In short, appealing to a thin conception of passage does not offer a clear way out to the standard realist: the relevant conception of passage is either robust enough to justify her representational practice, in which case it is incompatible with genuine absolute mono-anchoredness, or it is thinned down to such an extent that it can no longer be plausibly employed to respond to the argument from passage or to make sense of the standard realist’s representational practice.