Abstract
Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions.
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Notes
See, for example, Forrest (2004)’s pastism, according to which the past lacks all properties (and events) that are tied to consciousness and mental activity; Smith (2002)’s presentism-eternalism hybrid view of time according to which both the past and the future exist but lack all those attributes bestowing concreteness (say, colour, weight, spatial extension).
For a presentism-centred overview of various issues debated in temporal ontology see Ingram and Tallant (2022).
The opinion that presentism is in agreement with common sense is held by presentists such as Bigelow (1996, p. 35), Hinchliff (1996, p. 131), Craig (2000, p. 8), Markosian (2004, p. 48), De Clercq (2006, p. 386), Kierland and Monton (2007, p. 485), Merricks (2007, p. 140), Orilia (2016, pp. 595–598), and Zimmerman (2011, p. 226); and by non-presentists such as Putnam (1967, p. 240), Sider (2001, p. 11), Petkov (2006, p. 207), and Wüthrich (2012, p. 441).
In this paper we assume that agreement and disagreement with common sense bear epistemic value. How this assumption might be motivated is of course an important issue, which however, except for some brief hints contained in § 2, we do not address in this paper.
However, as noted in fn. 4, Zimmerman (2011) accepts the received view of presentism’s commonsensicality.
This complaint, in a different way, has been expressed by a reviewer in connection to our study; in § 4.1.3 we shall see in what way, and whether we should worry about it.
To see our questionnaire in its original Italian form, see Supplementary Material.
Here are some more details on our pretests: nine out of the ten participants filled in their questionnaires in ways that would have qualified them as either pastists or eternalists (only one as presentist); however, after the conversations with them, eight out of those nine realised that their view was actually better captured by presentism, while one kept being rather uncertain and finally opted for eternalism.
We thank two reviewers who brought this point to our attention.
We owe this remark to a reviewer.
These flaws in our formulation were noticed by a reviewer.
We owe this remark to a reviewer.
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Acknowledgements
Ernesto Graziani and Francesco Orilia acknowledge the support of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research through the PRIN 2017 project “The Manifest Image and the Scientific Image” prot. 2017ZNWW7F_004. We wish to thank Ivana Bianchi for her very helpful suggestions about the formulation of the questionnaire; all those who helped to administer it, especially Chiara Di Pasquale, Zelinda Mazzoccone, and Anna Quartarone; last but not least, two anonymous reviewers for this journal, who gave very valuable comments on the previous version of this paper and greatly helped us to improve it.
Funding
Ernesto Graziani and Francesco Orilia have received funding from the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR), grant n. 2017ZNWW7F_004.
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Ernesto Graziani and Francesco Orilia jointly conceived and designed the research. Ernesto Graziani wrote most of the paper with some help from Francesco Orilia and Elena Capitani; Ernesto Graziani, Francesco Orilia, and Elena Capitani collaborated to the formulation of the questionnaire used in the study; Roberto Burro carried out the data analyses, drew the figures, and wrote their captions.
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Francesco Orilia is the national coordinator of the PRIN 2017 research project, funded by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR), grant n. 2017ZNWW7F_004 (“The manifest image and the scientific image”). The other authors declare they have no conflicting non-financial interests that are relevant to the content of this article.
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ethical approval for this study was received from the Research ethics committee of the University of Macerata.
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Graziani, E., Orilia, F., Capitani, E. et al. Common-sense temporal ontology: an experimental study. Synthese 202, 193 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04323-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04323-y