As far as our experience goes, we live in a dynamic present. Those two phenomenal features of experience—presentness and dynamism—are obviously connected. However, how they are connected is not obvious at all. In this paper, I criticise the view according to which the former can explain the latter, which I call sophisticated representationalism. My criticism will be based on an ambiguity in the notion of tense found in the philosophical literature, that between the perspectival understanding and the dynamic understanding of (...) tenses. The distinction is not just of independent interest, but it has a role in providing indirect evidence for the claim that the feeling of passage of time should be understood in non-representationalist terms. (shrink)

It is demonstrated that Hamblin's 15 tense theorem does not only hold for temporal logic with linear time but also for branching time. Furthermore three other theorems with finitely many tenses are shown.

The belief that some misfortunes are punishments sent from God has been affirmed by many different cultures and religions throughout human history. The belief has proved a pervasive one, and is still endorsed today by many adherents of the great western religions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Invariably, what is believed is that a present misfortune is divine punishment for a past sin. But could a present misfortune in fact be divine punishment for a future sin? That is, could God prepunish (...) people for their future transgressions? The aim of this paper will be to show that there are solid philosophical grounds for supposing that he could and would do so. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

We care not only about what experiences we have, but when we have them too. However, on the B-theory of time, something’s timing isn’t an intrinsic way for that thing to be or become. Given B-theory, should we be rationally indifferent about the timing per se of an experience? In this paper, I argue that B-theorists can justify time-biased preferences for pains to be past rather than present and for pleasures to be present rather than past. In support of this (...) argument, I appeal to the doctrine of temporal parts or “four-dimensionalism” for short. When held in conjunction with a certain evaluative principle about whose experiences matter, four-dimensionalism reconciles B-theory with some time-biased preferences. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the self-referential component which Searle rightly detects in the truth-conditions of perceptual judgments comes from the perceptual ‘mode' and is not an aspect of the ‘content' of the judgment, contrary to Searle's claim.

This book provides a detailed exposition of one of the most practical and popular methods of proving theorems in logic, called Natural Deduction. It is presented both historically and systematically. Also some combinations with other known proof methods are explored. The initial part of the book deals with Classical Logic, whereas the rest is concerned with systems for several forms of Modal Logics, one of the most important branches of modern logic, which has wide applicability.

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

The paper has two parts: First, I describe a relatively popular thesis in the philosophy of propositional attitudes, worthy of the name ‘taking tense seriously’; and I distinguish it from a family of views in the metaphysics of time, namely, the A-theories (or what are sometimes called ‘tensed theories of time’). Once the distinction is in focus, a skeptical worry arises. Some A-theorists maintain that the difference between past, present, and future, is to be drawn in terms of what exists: (...) growing-block theorists eschew ontological commitment to future entities; presentists, to future and past entities. Others think of themselves as A-theorists but exclude no past or future things from their ontology. The metaphysical skeptic suspects that their attempt to articulate an ‘eternalist’ version of the A-theory collapses into merely ‘taking tense seriously’– a thesis that does not imply the A-theory. The second half of the paper is the search for a stable eternalist A-theory. It includes discussion of temporary intrinsics, temporal parts, and truth. (shrink)

Prior's hitherto unpublished "Fable of the Four Preachers" illuminates the connection of the metaphysical issues of trans-world identity with moral trans-world continuity. The paper shows Prior's position with regard to genuine de re temporal possibility of individuals on the basis of chapter VIII of his Papers on Time and Tense. His position is that radical coming-into-being is not a genuine de re temporal possibility of individuals since there is no identifiable individual, before birth, who could be the subject of such (...) possibility. The paper strengthens Prior's claim by showing how an uncomfortable consequence of this intuitively appealing position can be avoided. As a result, the proper claim would be that the possibility of origin is general or de dicto: it is possible that someone be born to such and parents, but it is not possible of someone that he should be born to these or other parents. (shrink)

We present Prior's discussion of a puzzle about valditity found in the writings of the fourteenth-century French logician Jean Buridan and show how Prior's study of this puzzle may have provided the conceptual inspiration for his development of hybrid logic.

Ontological pluralism is the doctrine that there are different ways or modes of being. In contemporary guise, it is the doctrine that a logically perspicuous description of reality will use multiple quantifiers which cannot be thought of as ranging over a single domain. Although thought defeated for some time, recent defenses have shown a number of arguments against the view unsound. However, another worry looms: that despite looking like an attractive alternative, ontological pluralism is really no different than its counterpart, (...) ontological monism. In this paper, after explaining the worry in detail, I argue that considerations dealing with the nature of the logic ontological pluralists ought to endorse, coupled with an attractive philosophical thesis about the relationship between logic and metaphysics, show this worry to be unfounded. (shrink)

In Prior’s tense-logical analysis, we can avoid mentioning instants in our language by construing them as propositions of a special kind. Instead of qualifying instants by predicates, we may qualify propositions by modalities. Prior shows that by changing the informal interpretation of our modal-like language, we can similarly attempt to avoid ontological commitments to worlds and even to selves and other bona fide individuals. As he notes, the paraphrasing strategy works too generally to be of direct metaphysical use. I wish (...) to speak of several types of entities within one and the same language. This leads to the issue of cross-context identity: how to make sense of speaking of the same entity of one type relative to distinct entities of another type. My analysis employs the notion of world line. I discern a structure of mutually interrelated categories with three informal interpretations: tense, modal and egocentric. They correspond to different metaphysical views on the interrelations of time, logical alternatives and individuals. Prior’s dilemma regarding the possibility of modalizing, not only our talk concerning times and worlds, but even our discourse pertaining to the ‘real world of individuals’ does not vanish but reappears also in my setting. (shrink)

On one influential view, metaphysical fundamentality can be understood in terms of joint‐carving. Ted Sider has recently argued that (i) some first order quantifier is joint‐carving, and (ii) modal notions are not joint‐carving. After vindicating the theoretical indispensability of quantification against recent criticism, I will defend a logical result due to Arnold Koslow which implies that (i) and (ii) are incompatible. I will therefore consider an alternative understanding of Sider's metaphysics to the effect that (i) some first order quantifier is (...) joint‐carving, and (iii) intensional notions are not joint‐carving. Another result due to Koslow entails that (i) and (iii) are also incompatible. I will argue that this second result is inconclusive. Nevertheless, (iii) is incompatible with another tenet of Sider's metaphysics, namely that (iv) ‘being joint‐carving’ is itself joint‐carving. In order to resolve the inconsistency, I will tentatively argue that condition (iv) should be renounced. (shrink)

It is often assumed that an eternalist and a presentist will have the same emotional response to life's events because, regardless of one's metaphysical beliefs, we all have the same phenomenological experience of time passing and it is this experience that is relevant to emotional response. I question the assumption that beliefs about the metaphysics of time can have little impact on one's emotional responses and establish the position that scientific and metaphysical beliefs can offer succour.

What someone’s behaviour must be like if we are to be aware of their emotions in it Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s11097-011-9224-0 Authors Rowland Stout, School of Philosophy, UCD Dublin, Dublin 4, Republic of Ireland Journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Online ISSN 1572-8676 Print ISSN 1568-7759.

Arguing first that the best way to understand what a continuant is is as something that primarily has its properties at a time rather than atemporally, the paper then defends the idea that there are occurrent continuants. These are things that were, are, or will be happening—like the ongoing process of someone reading or my writing this paper, for instance. A recently popular philosophical view of process is as something that is referred to with mass nouns and not count nouns. (...) This has mistakenly encouraged the view that the only way to think of process is as the stuff of events, and has obscured the possibility of thinking of processes as individual continuants. (shrink)

Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...) futurists must adopt an objective, non-perspectival notion of actuality and subscribe to an A-theoretic, dynamic conception of reality. Moreover, given a natural understanding of “actual future”, it is perfectly sensible for open futurists to hold that a unique, objectively actual future exists, contrary to a common assumption in the current debate. The paper also contends that recognising the existence of a unique actual future helps open futurists to avoid potential misconceptions. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new reductive theory of modality, called the moodless theory of modality. This theory, and not modal realism, is the closest modal analogue of the tenseless theory of time. So, if the tenseless theory is true, and the temporality–modality analogy is good, it is the moodless theory that follows. I also argue that the moodless theory, considered on its own, is better than modal realism: arguments often thought to be decisive against modal realism are weak against it.

This paper develops a moodless theory of modality, intended to be as closely analogous to the tenseless theory of time as possible. It is argued that the new theory is distinct from David Lewis' modal realism and that it solves certain problems better than modal realism does, namely, the problem of advanced modalizing, the problem of necessitism, and the problem of conflict with common opinion.

We regularly talk of the experience of time passing. Some theorists have taken the supposed phenomenology of time passing to provide support for metaphysical accounts of the nature of time; opposing theorists typically granted that there is a phenomenology of time passing while seeking to dispute that any metaphysical conclusions about time can be drawn from this. In recent debates theorists have also begun to dispute that there is a phenomenology of time passing – plausibly, if there is not, then (...) there is no relevant experience to be explained away, or for metaphysical conclusions to be drawn from. In the present paper I offer one explanation of why such disputes about the experience of time passing may seem intractable. However, I suggest that there is a distinct and more tractable issue lurking in this area, concerning our experience of how certain phenomena persist over time. Interestingly, articulating how we experience different phenomena as persisting over time doesn't simply provide a challenge to one metaphysical view of persistence rather than another; instead, it generates an explanatory challenge for a variety of competing views of persistence and, by extension, a challenge for popular combinations of views of the metaphysics of persistence and of time. (shrink)

Certain kinds of prediction, foreknowledge, and future‐oriented action appear to require settled future truths. But open futurists think that the future is metaphysically unsettled: if it is open whether p is true, then it cannot currently be settled that p is true. So, open futurists—and libertarians who adopt the position—face the objection that their view makes rational action and deliberation impossible. I defuse the epistemic concern: open futurism does not entail obviously counterintuitive epistemic consequences or prevent rational action.

The apparent 'flow' of time is one of its most mysterious features, and one which discomforts both scientists and philosophers. One of the most striking assaults upon it is McTaggart's argument that the idea of temporal flow is demonstratively incoherent. In this paper I first urge that the idea of temporal flow is an important part of our intuitive understanding of time, underpinning several of our notions about rationality and time. Second, I try to undercut McTaggart's argument by showing that (...) it is not temporal flow which is illusory but rather the vicious regress McTaggart saw in that idea. A steadfast clinging to the notion of now, along with an analysis of McTaggart's argument reveals that the regress halts after but two steps. (shrink)

We seem to experience time as flowing. Yet according to the leading metaphysical picture of time, the block-universe theory, time in fact does not flow. Block-lovers typically react to this apparent tension by unhitching the sense of flow in our temporal experience from temporal reality, holding that temporal experience is systematically illusory. I shall develop a new block-friendly account of the sense of flow, which preserves a match of temporal experience and temporal reality. According to this account, the sense of (...) flow arises from higher-order temporal experience. (shrink)

We consider a simple modal logic whose nonmodal part has conjunction and disjunction as connectives and whose modalities come in adjoint pairs, but are not in general closure operators. Despite absence of negation and implication, and of axioms corresponding to the characteristic axioms of _T_, _S4_, and _S5_, such logics are useful, as shown in previous work by Baltag, Coecke, and the first author, for encoding and reasoning about information and misinformation in multiagent systems. For the propositional-only fragment of such (...) a dynamic epistemic logic, we present an algebraic semantics, using lattices with agent-indexed families of adjoint pairs of operators, and a cut-free sequent calculus. The calculus exploits operators on sequents, in the style of “nested” or “tree-sequent” calculi; cut-admissibility is shown by constructive syntactic methods. The applicability of the logic is illustrated by reasoning about the muddy children puzzle, for which the calculus is augmented with extra rules to express the facts of the muddy children scenario. (shrink)

Arthur Prior was one of the logicians who participated in the invention of the possible worlds’ semantics. The ontology, which is connected with his systems of modal logic, is unique. Prior tried to reduce the number of abstract entities as much as possible. Hence he did not elect to introduce possible worlds and possibilia into his ontology. In addition, he held a reductionist view, which is called modal actualism by Fine or modalism by Melia. Prior was inspired by various authors (...) but this paper mainly discusses the influence of two prominent sources, Wittgenstein and logicians from Warsaw School. Prior acknowledged Wittgenstein’s influence, when he discuss the view that possible worlds consist of propositions. The second important feature of Prior’s concept is the denial of the real existence of possible worlds and the denial of the existence of entities which are in them. It was probably enabled by Prior’s adoption of some systems of logic invented by logicians from the Warsaw school, especially Lesniewski’s and Łukasiewicz’s systems. (shrink)

Ockhamism implies that future contingents may be true, their historical contingency notwithstanding. It is thus opposed to both the Peircean view according to which all future contingents are false, and Supervaluationist Indeterminism according to which all future contingents are neither true nor false. The paper seeks to defend Ockhamism against two charges: the charge that it cannot meet the requirement that truths be grounded in reality, and the charge that it proves incompatible with objective indeterminism about the future. In each (...) case, the defence draws on the idea that certain truths are truths only courtesy of others and of what makes the latter true. After introduction of the Ockhamist view, its competitors and implications, a suitable definition of grounded truth is being devised that both is faithful to the spirit of the grounding-requirement and allows the Ockhamist to heed that requirement quite comfortably. Then two senses in which the future might be open are being introduced, indeterminacy as failure of predetermination by past and present facts, and indeterminacy as failure of entailment by past and present truths. It is argued that while openness in the former sense, but not in the latter sense, coheres with the Ockhamist view, it is only openness in the former sense that matters for objective indeterminism. (shrink)

In 1907, Alfred Stieglitz took what was to become one of his signature photographs, The Steerage. Stieglitz stood at the rear of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm II and photographed the decks, first-class passengers above and steerage passengers below, carefully exposing the film to their reflected light. Later, in the darkroom, Stieglitz developed this film and made a number of prints from the resulting negative. The photograph is a familiar one, an enduring piece of social commentary, but what exactly is (...) The Steerage which Stieglitz has given us? It is clearer what The Steerage is not. It is distinct from each of its prints and from its negative. These may be dusty or torn without The Steerage being so, and any one of these could be destroyed without thereby destroying The Steerage itself. Nor is The Steerage the set of its prints. The set could not have had different members, while The Steerage could have had more, fewer, or different prints.1 Similar reasoning rules out the mereological sum of parts of its actual prints, for The Steerage’s prints might not have comprised just these parts. We are left with a puzzle, what sort of thing is a photograph? This puzzle is not unique to photography. Similar reasoning generates an analogous puzzle for any repeatable work of art. Novels, poems, plays, symphonies, songs, and the rest share an ontological predicament and create a 1 general puzzle concerning the ontological status of repeatable works of art. It is widely held that the puzzle has an equally general solution, one which I will argue fails for systematic reasons. Although my target here is the supposed solution to the general problem, photography will remain the central case under scrutiny. I offer it as a model for our thinking about the wider class in order to reap the benefits of thinking in terms of concrete cases. Although this risks a trade-off with the generality of my conclusions—there are important differences of detail between the cases—I hope it is clear that the considerations I appeal to in photography are not idiosyncratic but shared by the wider class.. (shrink)

What is it that is doing the real work in Prior’s 1949 book Logic and the Basis of Ethics? As Prior’s title announces, it seems that the answer is logic. But what exactly does this mean to Prior?

ABSTRACTHegel's Phenomenology of Spirit provides a fascinating picture of individual minds caught up in “recognitive” relations so as to constitute a realm—“spirit”—which, while necessarily embedded in nature, is not reducible to it. In this essay I suggest a contemporary path for developing Hegel's suggestive ideas in a way that broadly conforms to the demands of his own system, such that one moves from logic to a philosophy of mind. Hence I draw on Hegel's “subjective logic”, understood in the light of (...) modern modal logic, in an attempt to model the way minds might be thought as connected by way of shared intentional contents. Here, we should not be surprised at some of the parallels that emerge between the approaches of Hegel and the modal logician Arthur Prior, as Prior had testified to the influence of his teacher, John N. Findlay, who himself had strong Hegelian leanings. In the final section, Robert Stalnaker's version of possible-world semantics is suggested as a framework within which Hegel's recognitive account of the mind might be understood. (shrink)

In the 1930s, C. I. Lewis, who was responsible for the revival of modal logic in the era of modern symbolic logic, characterized ‘intensional’ approaches to logic as typical of post-Leibnizian ‘continental philosophy’, in contrast to the ‘extensionalist’ approaches dominant in the British tradition. Indeed Lewis’s own work in this area had been inspired by the logic of his teacher, the American ‘Absolute Idealist’, Josiah Royce. Hegel’s ‘Subjective Logic’ in Book III of hisScience of Logic, can, I suggest, be considered (...) as an intensional modal logic, and this paper explores parallels between it and a later variety of modal logic—tenselogic, as developed by Arthur Prior in the 1950s and 60s. Like Lewis, Prior too had been influenced in this area by a teacher with strong Hegelian leanings—John N. Findlay. Treated as anintensional logic, Hegel’s subjective logic can be used as a framework for addressing issues ofintentionality—the mind’s capacity to be intentionally directed to objects. In this way, I suggest that the structures of his subjective logic can clarify what is at issue in the ‘Psychology’ section of theEncyclopaediaPhilosophy of Subjective Spirit. (shrink)

Here, I suggest a hitherto relatively unexplored way beyond the opposed Aristotelian realist and Kantian idealist approaches that divide recent interpretations of the categories or “thought determinations” of Hegel’s Logic, by locating his idealism within the terrain of recent debates in modal metaphysics. In particular, I return to the outlook of the first philosopher to attempt to bring Hegel into the analytic conversation, John Niemeyer Findlay, and consider Hegel’s idealism as instantiating the metaphysical position that, following the work of Findlay’s (...) former student, Arthur Prior, has come to be called “modal actualism”. (shrink)

Impostors are pseudo-problems masquerading as genuine problems. Impostors should be exposed. The problem of change appears genuine. But some, such as Hofweber ( 2009 ) and Rychter ( 2009 ), have recently denounced it as an impostor. They allege that it is mysterious how to answer the meta - problem of saying what problem it is: for even if any problem is genuinely about change per se, they argue, it is either empirical or trivially dissolved by conceptual analysis. There is (...) indeed an impostor in our midst. But it is the meta-problem of change. I defend the appearance that the problem of change is a genuine metaphysical problem about change. This vindicates philosophers’ lasting interest in it. It also illuminates what makes a problem metaphysical, how metaphysics relates to other inquiries, and how best to respond to attempts to undermine metaphysical problems. (shrink)

Is the objective passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? There are two easy routes to an affirmative answer: (1) provide a deflationary analysis of passage compatible with the block universe, or (2) argue that a privileged global present is compatible with relativity. (1) does not take passage seriously. (2) does not take relativity seriously. This paper is concerned with the viability of views that seek to take both passage and relativity seriously. The investigation proceeds by considering how traditional A-theoretic (...) conceptions of passage might be generalized to relativistic space-times without incorporating a privileged global present. I argue that the most promising position marries the idea that open possibilities for the future are settled as time passes with a ‘non-standard’ interpretation of the relevant formal models. (shrink)

I will show how a metaphysical problem of Arthur Prior’s can be solved by a logical tool he developed himself, but did not put to any foundational use: metric logic. The broader context is given by the key question about the metaphysics of time: Is time tenseless, i.e., is time just a structure of instants; or is time tensed, because some facts are irreducibly tensed? I take sides with Prior and the tensed theory. Like him, I therefore I have to (...) deal with a more specific metaphysical question: How can the instants of tenseless time be reduced to tensed facts? This is the point where, on the technical level, hybrid logic and metric logic come in. For present purposes, both can be seen as species of tense logic; and both are creations of Prior. In his argument for the tensed theory of time, Prior used hybrid tense logic to reduce instants. But, as he himself pointed out, this reduction runs into deep problems, because it immediately generalizes to other categories, for example and most importantly to persons. My main aim is to show that metric logic does not run into similar difficulties: It will help the tensed theory reduce instants, but it leaves persons untouched. I will also give reasons for preferring a metric to a hybrid logic of time that are independent of the metaphysical issue of reduction, but concern temporal reasoning, natural language semantics, and the epistemic side of time-keeping. (shrink)

This paper explores what could justify some intuitive temporal asymmetries regarding redemption and the distribution of ills and goods throughout an agent's lifespan. After exposing the inadequacies of causal explanations – based on our differential ability to affect the future, but not the past – a metaphysical explanation is outlined in relation to three competing temporal-ontological profiles of agents, and their varying accounts of a being's development. Only one of those conceptions of agents – supported by Presentism, the thesis that (...) everything is present – offers an account justifying the intuitive temporal asymmetries. Finally, consequences are then drawn for the possibility of true redemption. (shrink)

Presentism states that everything is present. Crucial to our understanding of this thesis is how we interpret the ‘is’. Recently, several philosophers have claimed that on any interpretation presentism comes out as either trivially true or manifestly false. Yet, presentism is meant to be a substantive and interesting thesis. I outline in detail the nature of the problem and the standard interpretative options. After unfavourably assessing several popular responses in the literature, I offer an alternative interpretation that provides the desired (...) result. This interpretation is then used to clarify the distinction between ‘real change’ from mere variation and temporal relativisation. Reflecting on my solution, I try to diagnose the source of confusion over these issues. Then, building upon Fine’s distinction between ontic and factive presentism, I elucidate what the presentist thesis specifically concerns and how best to formalise it. In the process I distinguish a weak and strong version of the presentist thesis. Finally, I end by drawing out some limitations of the paper. (shrink)

Drawing upon a conception of the metaphysics of conscious states and of first-person content, we can argue that Descartes's transition ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is both sound and one he is entitled to make. We can nevertheless formulate a version of Lichtenberg's objection that can still be raised after Bernard Williams's discussion. I argue that this form of Lichtenberg's revenge can also be undermined. In doing so it helps to compare the metaphysics of subjects, worlds and times. The arguments also apply (...) to Descartes's ‘second Cogito’, that it is one and the same subject that thinks, wills, imagines. (shrink)

Quentin Smith has argued that the new tenseless theory of time is faced with insurmountable problems and should be abandoned in favour of the tensed theory of time. Smith;s main argument attacks the fundamental premise of the tenseless theory: that tenseless truth conditions for tokens of tensed sentences adequately capture the meaning of tensed sentences. His position is that tenseless truth conditions cannot explain the logical relations between tensed sentences, thus the tensed theory must be accepted. Against Smith, this paper (...) adopts an alternative approach to the explanation of the entailment relations between sentences which contain indexicals. The approach drops the reliance upon tokens and instead relies on the evaluation of sentence types with respect to a context rather than upon actual or possible utterances of tokens of the types. This (new) version of the tenseless theory of time can adequately explain the relevant entailment relations between tensed sentences. (shrink)

In a recent article, ‘Tensed Time and Our Differential Experience of the Past and Future,’ William Lane Craig attempts to resuscitate A. N. Prior's ‘Thank Goodness’ argument against the B-theory by combining it with Plantinga's views about basic beliefs. In essence Craig's view is that since there is a universal experience and belief in the objectivity of tense and the reality of becoming, ‘this belief constitutes an intrinsic defeater-defeater which overwhelms the objections brought against it.’ An intrinsic defeater-defeater is a (...) belief that enjoys such warrant for us that it simply overwhelms the defeaters brought against it without specifically rebutting or undercutting them. Thus, Craig claims that an effete philosophical argument like McTaggart's paradox is nothing more than ‘an engaging and recalcitrant brain teaser whose conclusion nobody really takes seriously.’ It is difficult to reconcile this statement with Craig's own writings elsewhere. For Craig has vigorously argued in at least two other articles that 'hybrid A-B theorists like McCall, Schlesinger, and Smith [who give ontological status to both A-properties and B-relations] are in deep trouble’ since they are all effectively refuted by McTaggart's Paradox. It is not Craig's inconsistency regarding the significance of McTaggart conundrum that I want to draw attention to, however. Rather I wish to raise a different issue. (shrink)

Since McTaggart first proposed his paradox asserting the unreality of time, numerous philosophers have attempted to defend the tensed theory of time against it. Certainly, one of the most highly developed and original is that put forth by Quentin Smith. Through discussing McTaggart's positive conception of time as well as his negative attack on its reality, I hope to clarify the dispute between those who believe in the existence of the transitory temporal properties of pastness, presentness and futurity, and those (...) who deny their existence. We shall see that the debate centers around the ontological status of succession and the B-relations of earlier and later. I shall argue that Smith's tensed theory fails because he cannot account for the sense in which events have their tensed properties successively, and he cannot account for the direction of time. (shrink)

Presentism, some say, is either the analytic triviality that the only things that exist now are ones that exist now or the obviously false claim that the only things that have ever existed or will are ones that exist now. I argue that the correct understanding of presentism is the latter and so understood the claim is not obviously false. To appreciate this one has to see presentism as strictly analogous to anti-Lewisean actualism. What this modal analogue makes evident is (...) that singular tensed statements can have scope ambiguities and so can be thought of as true with the temporal operator represented by the tense read as having wide scope. Secondly, I argue that the analogy with the modal case also makes it clear that presentism must be understood as a thesis of the form: ‘the only things that have ever existed or ever will exist stand in relation R to this utterance’, and is not a substantive topic for debate until relation R is characterized in non-temporal terms. However, despite the strict analogy, I argue that presentism may be a harder position to defend than actualism, since the truth-maker objection, properly interpreted, with Lewis, as based on a supervenience thesis, has more force as an objection to presentism since supervenience is itself a modal notion. (shrink)