My central thesis is that presentism is incompatible with all of the main theories of persistence: endurance, exdurance and perdurance.

It is exceedingly frequent for people to speak of the ‘passing of time’. We do not, on the other hand, speak of the ‘passing of space’. There do not seem to be any common locutions concerning spatial passage analogous to those of time’s assumed passage. Further, there is a long held belief in the philosophy of time that there is no spatial analogue of the passage of time. This opinion does not take into account circumstances that cannot be noticed in (...) day-to-day existence and which indicate that there is such a spatial analogue. (shrink)

Temporal ersatzism is the view that past entities exist, but are not concrete. The view is analogous to modal ersatzism, according to which merely possible worlds exist, but are not concrete. The goal of this paper is to give the reader a sense of the scope of available temporal ersatzist views, the ways in which the analogy with modal ersatzism may be helpful in characterizing and defending those views, and the sorts of considerations that are relevant when evaluating particular versions (...) of temporal ersatzism. (shrink)

There is a lingering objection to the idea of the passage of time. Roughly speaking, the argument runs as follows: if time passes, its passage must occur at some rate, but there is no such rate; hence, the passage of time is a myth. While some philosophers try to reject premise, I wish to challenge the first premise by arguing that time may pass with or without a rate. My argument addresses two cases, one that identifies the passage of time (...) with changes in things and one that does not. I call the former view ‘the Priorian passage theory’, and the latter view ‘the pure passage theory’. I argue that each dynamic view of time is immune to the rate argument. Further, I suggest a possible extension of the Priorian passage theory, in which the passage of time is identified with the pure persistence of things. (shrink)

Endurantism, as opposed to perdurantism, is supposed to be the intuitive view. But the ‘endurantist intuition’ – roughly, that objects persist through time by being numerically identical and wholly located at all times at which they exist – is behind more than just endurantism. Indeed, it plays an important role in the motivation of some theories about the passage of time, and some theories about the nature of the subject. As we shall see, the endurantist intuition is often taken in (...) these cases to be a reason, or at least a motivation, to endorse one or the other of these metaphysical theories. Sometimes, it is even said to constitute a basis for an argument in their favour. In this article, I show that such an appeal to this ‘endurantist intuition’ is misleading and wrong. I do not deny that there is an intuition of this kind, but I deny that it can play any philosophically significant role as a reason – and even less as a basis for an argument – in defending metaphysical theories such as endurantism, dualism, or the A-theory. (shrink)

In this paper I shall “draw” a sketch of a version of Meinongian Presentism. After having briefly presented some data that presentists need to explain and three problems that typically affect presentism (the triviality objection, the problem of the reference of true propositions’ constituents that seem to involve merely past and merely future objects, the truthmaking problem), I shall clarify the bases of my theory. First, I shall reject the actualist presentist assumption, according to which there are no things that (...) do not exist now. Secondly, I shall introduce some notions (e.g., the ones of tensed properties and of temporal existence) that will be useful in order to clarify the contrast between eternalist and non-eternalist metaphysical theories of time. Thirdly, I shall define Meinongian Presentism. Finally, I shall try to demonstrate that this version can deal with the aforementioned problems and with the presentist data in a serious and perspicuous way. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe and defend the moving spotlight theory of time. I characterise the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of two theses: permanentism, the thesis that everything exists forever, and the A-theory, the thesis that there is an absolute, objective present time. I begin in Sect. 2 by clearing up some common misconceptions about the moving spotlight theory, focusing on the discussion of the theory in Sider. In doing so, I also fill-out the barebones (...) picture of the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of permanentism and the A-theory. In Sect. 3 I show how moving spotlighters can avoid the two common objections to their view, the McTaggartian argument that the view is contradictory, and the epistemic argument that the view implies that we should believe we are not located at the present moment. I conclude that the moving spotlight theory does not deserve its current relative unpopularity. (shrink)

Presentism is, roughly, the metaphysical doctrine that maintains that whatever exists, exists in the present. The compatibility of presentism with the theories of special and general relativity was much debated in recent years. It has been argued that at least some versions of presentism are consistent with time-orientable models of general relativity. In this paper we confront the thesis of presentism with relativistic physics, in the strong gravitational limit where black holes are formed. We conclude that the presentist position is (...) at odds with the existence of black holes and other compact objects in the universe. A revision of the thesis is necessary, if it is intended to be consistent with the current scientific view of the universe. (shrink)

Several philosophers have maintained in recent years that the endurance/perdurance debate is merely verbal: these prima facie distinct theories of objects’ persistence are in fact metaphysically equivalent, they claim. The present paper challenges this view. Three proposed translation schemes are examined; all are shown to be faulty. In the process, constructive reasons for regarding the debate as a substantive one are provided. It is also suggested that the theories may have differing practical implications.

There is a charge sometimes made in metaphysics that particular commitments are ‘hypothetical’, ‘dubious’ or ‘suspicious’. There have been two analyses given of what this consists in—due to Crisp (2007) and Cameron (2011). The aim of this paper is to reject both analyses and thereby show that there is no obvious way to press the objection against said commitments that they are ‘dubious’ and objectionable. Later in the paper I consider another account of what it might be to be ‘dubious’, (...) and argue that this too fails. I use Bigelow's (1996) Lucretian properties as a vehicle for the discussions of dubiousness that follow. As a consequence, the paper ends up offering a partial defense of Lucretianism. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the role of intuition in physics. The ways in which intuition is appealed to in physics are not well understood. To the best of my knowledge, there is no analysis of the different contexts in which we might appeal to intuition in physics, nor is there any analysis of the different potential uses to which intuition might be put. In this paper I look to provide data that goes some way to giving a sense (...) of the different contexts in which intuition is appealed to in physics. As I note in the conclusion, there is still much work to be done but I hope that the work here provides us with a first step in the journey to properly understand the use to which intuitions are put in physics and science more generally. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that truth is grounded: True propositions depend for their truth on the world. Some philosophers believe that truth’s grounding has implications for our ontology of time. If truth is grounded, then truth supervenes on being. But if truth supervenes on being, then presentism is false since, on presentism, e.g., that there were dinosaurs fails to supervene on the whole of being plus the instantiation pattern of properties and relations. Call this the grounding argument against presentism. Many presentists (...) claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, supervenience is compatible with presentism. In this paper, I claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, truth’s grounding gives the presentist no compelling reason to adopt the sort of supervenience principle at work in the grounding argument. I begin by giving two precisifications of the grounding principle: truthmaking and supervenience. In Sect. 2, I give the grounding argument against presentism. In Sect. 3, I argue that we should distinguish between eternalist and presentist notions of grounding; once this distinction is in hand, the grounding argument is undercut. In Sect. 4, I show how the presentist’s notion of grounding leads to presentist-friendly truthmaking and supervenience principles. In Sect. 5, I address some potential objections. (shrink)

In the present paper, I offer a new argument to show that presentism about time is incompatible with time travel. Time travel requires leaving the present, which, under presentism, contains all of reality. Therefore to leave the present moment is to leave reality entirely; i.e. to go out of existence. Presentist “time travel” is therefore best seen as a form of suicide, not as a mode of transportation. Eternalists about time do not face the same difficulty, and time travel is (...) compossible with eternalism. (shrink)

Ross Cameron puts forward a novel solution to the truthmaker problem facing presentism. I claim that, by Cameron's own lights, the view is not in fact a presentist view at all, but rather requires us to endorse a form ofPriority Presentism, whereby past objects are derivative and depend for their existence upon present objects. I argue that this view should be rejected.

This paper considers a problem for dynamic presentism that has received little attention: its apparent inability to accommodate the duration of events (such as conscious experiences). After outlining the problem, I defend presentism from it. This defence proceeds in two stages. First, I argue the objection rests on a faulty assumption: that duration is temporal extension. The paper challenges that assumption on several different ways of conceiving of temporal extension. This is the negative case and forms the bulk of the (...) paper. Second, after diagnosing the error leading to the identification of duration with temporal extension, I outline a new presentist-friendly account of duration that avoids the problem. In particular, a non-reductive account of duration is offered that treats it as a primitive quality which bestows its possessor with a certain modal quality: that the possessor potentially does not change whilst there are changes in its environs. This is the positive case. Together the positive and negative cases provide presentism with an interesting and novel way of overcoming the problem of duration. (shrink)

Presentists claim that only presently existing objects exist. One version of presentism is ersatzer presentism, according to which times are a kind of abstract object. Such a view is appealing because it affords the presentist an answer to the grounding objection—a potentially lethal objection to presentism. Despite this advantage, available versions of ersatzer presentism suffer from a heretofore unappreciated shortcoming: they cannot account for the truth of certain counterfactual claims about the past. We argue for this claim by considering two (...) views representative of ersatzer presentism—those of Thomas Crisp and Craig Bourne. After presenting our arguments against their views, we defend two crucial assumptions in those arguments. Finally, we offer a novel version of ersatzer presentism that appropriates the metaphysics of constitution in order to avoid the difficulty that current ersatzer presentist views face. (shrink)

Ross Cameron puts forward a novel solution to the truthmaker problem facing presentism. I claim that, by Cameron's own lights, the view is not in fact a presentist view at all, but rather requires us to endorse a form of Priority Presentism, whereby past objects are derivative and depend for their existence upon present objects. I argue that this view should be rejected.

Recently, some authors – call them Reformists – have argued that the traditional Presentism-Eternalism and Actualism-Possibilism debates in the metaphysics of time and modality respectively are unclear or insubstantial, and should therefore give way to the newer Temporaryism-Permanentism and Contingentism- Necessitism debates. In ‘On characterising the presentism/eternalism and actualism/possibilism debates’ (2016, Analytic Philosophy 57: 110-140), Ross Cameron defends the Conservative position that the traditional debates are both substantial and distinct from the Temporaryism-Permanentism and Contingentism- Necessitism debates. In this paper I (...) provide a Reformist response to Cameron’s arguments. (shrink)

Frege taught us how to understand one form of predication: an atemporal one. There is also a different, temporal form of predication, which I briefly introduce. Accordingly, there are two fundamentally different approaches to time: a reductive one, aiming to account for time in terms of Frege’s atemporal predication, and a non-reductive one, insisting that the temporal form of predication is sui generis, and that time is to be understood in its terms. I do not directly argue for or against (...) reductionism in this paper. Rather, by evaluating the debates on endurantism–perdurantism, A-theory–B-theory, and presentism–eternalism, I argue that these debates, although aiming to be fundamental, largely boil down to mere quarrels between alternative reductive approaches. We should take notice of this fact and reorient ourselves within the debate on time accordingly: the real issue is whether we should reduce or not. I briefly sketch in what sense endurantism, A-theory, and presentism may be developed on a properly anti-reductionist basis. (shrink)

The New A-theory of Time is the view, to be elaborated and defended in this article, that many times exist, and that time is real in virtue of every moment in time bearing each of the so-called A-properties: past, present and future. I argue that TNAT is at least as theoretically virtuous as mainstream views in the philosophy of time and may have some claim to being our best theory of time. I show that the properties ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ (...) can be understood as compatible intrinsic properties. Having demonstrated that this account of the A-properties is coherent, I go on to demonstrate how TNAT can give us an account of passage, change and the truth-conditions for temporal sentences. In the final section of the article, I develop a tentative argument in favour of TNAT, though concede that we have to settle for the result that TNAT is on a par with our other theories of time. In the remainder of this opening section, my aim is to situate the current proposal as a direct response to Mc.. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss an unconventional form of presentism which, I claim, captures better than all other versions of the doctrine the fundamental notion underpinning it, namely, the notion that 'only what is present is real'. My proposal is to take this maxim as stating, not the rather uncontroversial view that past things are not real now, but the more radical idea that they never were. This rendition of presentism is, I argue, the only one that is neither trivial (...) nor absurd. I examine this proposal by considering it against a sceptical hypothesis that bears similarities to it, viz., the hypothesis that the world was created five minutes ago. On this hypothesis, the past, all but five minutes of it, is unreal, in precisely the sense in which the presentism I discuss claims it is. I show that, assuming semantic externalism, this sceptical hypothesis cannot be sustained, but that a somewhat weaker hypothesis, the Creationist hypothesis that the world is 5,768 years old, cannot be refuted. Together, these conclusions enable a demarcation of those presentist intuitions that language and thought tolerate and those they do not. (shrink)

Epicurus seems to have thought that death is not bad for the one who dies, since its badness cannot be located in time. I show that Epicurus’ argument presupposes Presentism, and I argue that death is bad for its victim at all and only those times when the person would have been living a life worth living had she not died when she did. I argue that my account is superior to competing accounts given by Thomas Nagel, Fred Feldman and (...) Neil Feit. (shrink)

I argue that time travel to the past is impossible, given a certain metaphysical theory, namely, The Dynamic Theory of Time. I first spell out my particular way of capturing the difference between The Dynamic Theory of Time and its rival, The Static Theory of Time. Next I offer four different arguments for the conclusion that The Dynamic Theory is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel to the past. Then I argue that, even if I am wrong about this, (...) it will still be true that The Dynamic Theory entails that you should not want to travel back to the past. Finally, I conclude by considering a puzzle that arises for those who believe that time travel to the past is metaphysically impossible: What exactly are we thinking about when we seem to be thinking about traveling back in time? For it certainly does not feel like we are thinking about something that is metaphysically impossible. (shrink)

Presentism faces a familiar objection from truthmaker theory. How can propositions about the past be made true if past entities do not exist? In answering this question, there are, broadly, two roads open to the presentist. The easy road to presentism proceeds by capitulating to the demands imposed by truthmaker theory and finding truthmakers for claims about the past. This road typically involves the invocation of controversial metaphysical posits that must then be defended. The hard road to presentism resists the (...) demands of truthmaker theory by denying that all truths must be truth-made. The road is hard as it requires providing a principled restriction on the scope of truthmaker theory. In this paper, I argue that the hard road collapses back into the easy road; there is no hard road to presentism. (shrink)

This is an attempt to sort out what is it that makes many of us uncomfortable with the perdurantist solution to the problem of change. Lewis argues that only perdurantism can reconcile change with persistence over time, while neither presentism nor endurantism can. So, first, I defend the endurantist solution to the problem of change, by arguing that what is relative to time are not properties, but their possession. Second, I explore the anti-perdurantist strategy of arguing that Lewis cannot solve (...) the problem of change, for he cannot account for how some properties are possessed by objects in time. However, I argue that this strategy fails, for if by saying that objects in time can have properties ‘timelessly’ we mean “at no particular time” and “tenselessly”, only objects outside time can have properties in that way; but if we mean “for all the time they exist”, or “essentially”, perdurantists can account for this. Finally, I argue that actually perdurantism cannot solve the problem, but for different reasons: for either it sweeps the problem under the carpet, denying change, and in general subverting our conceptual scheme in a dangerous way, or it becomes equivalent to the endurantist picture that properties are had at times. Nor perdurantism is justified by the Relativity Theory or the B-theory of time, because while endurantism is certainly comfortable with presentism, it need not be committed to it; and even if it were, presentism need not be refuted by the Relativity Theory. (shrink)

Different versions of the A-theory of time are traditionally defined in terms of whether everything is present, or whether there are also past and future things. In this paper I argue that the traditional way of defining A-theories should be abandoned. I focus on the traditional definition of presentism, according to which always, everything is present. First, I argue that there are good reasons to reject all the most plausible interpretations of the predicate ‘is present’ as it appears in the (...) traditional definition of presentism. It follows that there are also good reasons to reject the most plausible interpretations of the traditional definitions of the other A-theories. I then argue that there is a better way of defining the A-theories, in terms of the question of whether existence has a beginning and an end. Finally, I argue that what goes for the traditional definition of presentism goes for the traditional definition of its modal analogue actualism, according to which necessarily, everything is actual : there are good reasons to reject the traditional definition of actualism in favour of a definition in terms of contingent existence. (shrink)

When we begin to investigate the persistence of objects through time, we find immediately that the sort of concerns embodied in Leibniz's Law cause philosophers to divide themselves into the two major camps of Purdurantists and Endurantists. What is required according to each for a given object at a given time to be identified with a given object at another time is held to be dramatically different, even while both often look to the same general sort of indicators for their (...) answers to identity questions: identity or similarity of physical properties, including relational properties like spatial location. I believe, however, that logically prior to the problem of the persistence of objects through time will be questions regarding the composition of objects--we must have coherent notions of what an object is, what it means for parts to compose an object, and what is required for an object to be considered to exist at a single time before we can discuss the continued existence of objects at other times. I believe that posing the problem of temporal gaps for both the Perdurantist and Endurantist to solve can help us uncover reasonable answers to these more basic questions, and thereby help us judge the comparative coherence of the parent theories. Towards this goal, we investigate here some of the assumptions of persistence theories--that Perdurantists are four-dimensionalists and Endurantists are Presentists, for example--before moving on to find reasonable explanations of the composition of objects from within each theory. Important at this stage is clarifying such concepts as parthood and the present. When we at length turn our attention to the problem of gaps, it becomes useful to distinguish two sorts of gaps, each with their own difficulties: a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object are scattered through space, and a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object do not exist in space at all. My contention here is that Perdurantism, paired with four-dimensional spacetime, provides the most coherent answers to the challenges presented throughout. (shrink)

I outline the debate in metaphysics between those who believe time is tensed and those who believe it is tenseless. I describe the terms in which this debate has been carried out, and the significance to it of ordinary tensed language and widespread common sense beliefs that time is tensed. I then outline a case for thinking that our intuitive beliefs about tense constitute an Adaptive Imaginary Representation (Wilson, in Biol Philos 5:37–62, 1990; Wilson, in Biol Philos 10:77–97, 1995). I (...) also outline a case for thinking that our ordinary tensed beliefs and tensed language owe their tensed nature to its being adaptive to adopt a temporally self-locating perspective on reality. If these conclusions are right, then common sense intuitions and temporal language will be utterly misleading guides to the nature of temporal reality. (shrink)

It is widely believed that presentism is compatible with both a libertarian view of human freedom and an unrestricted principle of bivalence. I argue that, in fact, presentists must choose between bivalence and libertarianism: if presentism is true, then either the future is open or no one is free in the way that libertarians understand freedom.

The aim of this paper is to consider some logical aspects of the debate between the view that the present is the only 'real' time, and the view that the present is not in any way metaphysically privileged. In particular I shall set out a language of first-order predicate tense logic with a now predicate, and a first order (extensional) language with an abstraction operator, in such a way that each language can be shewn to be exactly translatable into the (...) other. I shew that this translation is preserved at the metalinguistic level, so that equivalent truth conditions can be defined in a tensed metalanguage or an indexical metalanguage. I then make some remarks about the connection between proofs of relative consistency and metaphysical truth; and some historical remarks about Arthur Prior's use of formal logic in expressing his presentist views. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPresentism and endurantism are natural bedfellows: arguments have been mounted from endurantism to presentism and vice versa. I generalise an argument against the compatibility between presentism and endurantism offered recently by Tallant. I then show how to reformulate endurantism so that it is compatible with presentism. I demonstrate that this reformulated version of endurantism can do the same work with respect to the problem of temporary intrinsics as can standard definitions.

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] Walton’s thesis of transparency of photographs has spurred much dispute among critics. One of the popular objections is spatial agnosticism, an argument that concerns the inertia of egocentric spatial information vis-a-vis a photograph. In this paper, I argue that spatial agnosticism fails. Spatial agnostics claim, for a wrong reason, that a photographic image cannot carry egocentric spatial information. I argue that it is the disjuncture of the photographic world in which the (...) depicted object situated from the space in which the viewer of the photograph resides that renders the photograph spatially agnostic. It is the timeless photographic world rather than the photographic object that renders egocentric spatial information inert. With this new formulation of spatial agnosticism, I propose that spatial agnosticism needs to be coupled with the temporal dimension in the efforts to refute the thesis of transparency of photographs. (shrink)

This paper considers the prospects for a theory of intergenerational rights in light of certain ontologies of time. It is argued that the attempt to attribute rights to future persons or obligations to present persons towards future persons, faces serious difficulties if the existence of the future is denied. The difficulty of attributing rights to non-existent future persons is diagnosed as a particularly intractable version of the ‘problem of cross-temporal relations’ that plagues No-Futurist views like presentism. I develop a version (...) of the problem of cross-temporal relations regarding cross-temporal normative relations. I then consider and reject various solutions to the problem available to No-Futurists. The upshot of the discussion is that which ontology of time we choose sets constraints on the kinds of explanations we may offer for our future-directed obligations. (shrink)

According to the A-theory of time some instant of time is absolutely present. Many reject the A-theory on the grounds that it is inconsistent with current spacetime physics, which appears to leave no room for absolute presentness. However, some reject the A-theory on purely philosophical grounds. In this article I describe three purely philosophical arguments against the A-theory and show that there are plausible A-theoretic responses to each of them. I conclude that, whatever else is wrong with the A-theory, it (...) is not obviously a philosophically suspect theory. (shrink)

This paper motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, (...) is an attractive position that can do much of the same work in satisfying our intuitions about time as presentism, but without the ontological cost. (shrink)

Metaphysical theories of change incorporate substantive commitments to theories of persistence. The two most prominent classes of such theories are endurantism and perdurantism. Defenders of endurancestyle accounts of change, such as Klein, Hinchliff, and Oderberg, do so through appeal to a priori intuitions about change. We argue that this methodology is understandable but mistaken—an adequate metaphysics of change must accommodate all experiences of change, not merely intuitions about a limited variety of cases. Once we examine additional experiences of change, particularly (...) those in (special) relativistic circumstances, it becomes clear that only a perdurance account of change is adequate. (shrink)

By considering situations from the paradox of the twins in relativity, it is shown that time passes at different rates along different world lines, answering some well-known objections. The best explanation for the different rates is that time indeed passes. If time along a world line is something with a rate, and a variable rate, then it is difficult to see it as merely a unique, invariant, monotonic parameter without any further explanation of what it is. Although it could, conceivably, (...) be explained by the flow of something, it is better explained by the passing of a point present, which faces the problem that there is no absolute simultaneity in special relativity so that the present for an object is confined to just that object. This raises problems about presentism, eternalism, simultaneity, and special relativity. These issues are addressed first by giving accounts of presentism and eternalism and then an account of existence and times for objects relative to world lines. Finally, an analogy between a world of relativistic objects and Leibniz’s ontology of monads. (shrink)

So selbstverständlich es klingt, vom Geist, der Psyche oder auch der Seele eines Menschen zu reden, und so vertraut uns wissenschaftliche Disziplinen sind, die sich philosophisch oder empirisch damit beschäftigen, so schwer fällt es, ein einheitliches Merkmale dafür anzugeben, wann etwas ein psychisches Phänomen ist. Viele der potentiellen Merkmale decken eben nur einen Teil des Spektrums dessen ab, was wir gewöhnlich als psychisch bezeichnen würden, und sind damit bestenfalls hinreichende, aber sicher keine notwendigen Bedingungen des Psychischen. Im Mittelpunkt des folgenden (...) Artikels wird dagegen ein Merkmal stehen, von dem feststeht, daß es nicht hinreichend ist, von dem man aber vermuten kann, es sei zumindest notwendig: die Individualität psychischer Phänomene. Die Frage, mit der ich mich beschäftigen werde, ist, ob sich diese Vermutung mit Bezug auf eine Grnppe paradigmatisch psychischer Phänomene aufrecht erhalten läßt, die intentionalen Einstellungen. (shrink)

The question of what exists is often seen as one of the metaphysician’s primary concerns—an ontological stance is a central and basic component of a great many positions in metaphysics. Consider, in particular, the debate surrounding the metaphysics of time: the question of whether non-present entities exist is typically thought of as one of the fundamental issues at stake in the debate, with each position on the nature of time consisting in part of an answer to this question of ontology. (...) My purpose in this paper will be to raise some worries about this focus on ontology, and to sketch an alternative approach to conceptualizing the debate—one that I think can help us get a clearer and deeper understanding of the fundamental issues at stake. I’ll focus in particular on the case of time and the ontology of non-present objects, but the framework I present is ultimately meant to apply more broadly to a range of debates involving ontology. On the framework I propose, the basic question at stake in this and other analogous debates is the following: Of the various perspectives we might adopt on reality, which perspective is fundamental? I’ll explain what this means and how it can help us reconceptualize the relevant metaphysical issues. (shrink)

Take open-future Humeanism to comprise the following four tenets: (T1) that truth supervenes on a mosaic of local particular matters of fact; (T2) that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences; (T3) that there is a dynamic present moment; and (T4) that there are no future facts; that is, contingent propositions about the future obtain truth values only when their referents are actualised. Prima facie this is a deeply problematic metaphysic for the Humean, since given that the widely accepted (...) Humean conception takes all truths (inclusive of nomological truths) to supervene on an omnitemporal mosaic of local particular matters of fact, if there are no future facts, then the Humean can neither provide laws of nature, nor justify many everyday inductive inferences. However, I argue that this eternalist metaphysic is in tension with at least one of Hume’s central metaphysical claims concerning causation, e.g. that causal regularities may cease to hold at any time. In this paper I propose and defend one possible open-future Humean metaphysic which admits of “true-to-Hume” causal and nomological facts. Furthermore, although I am happy to concede that induction is problematic for the open-future Humean, I demonstrate that it poses no greater threat to the open-future conception than it does to the popular Lewisian conception of natural law. (shrink)