Traditional debates between semantic temporalists and eternalists appeal to the efficacy of temporal operators and the intuitive (in)validity of instances of temporal reasoning. In this paper, I argue that such debates are inconclusive at best and that under-explored arguments concerning perceptual experience, memory, and knowledge offer more productive means of advancing debates between temporalists and eternalists and rendering salient several significant potential costs and benefits of these views.

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.

In Re realism is the two-pronged view that, first, when this and that have the same color, this color and that color are identical. There is just one color, the universal. Second, on the view, this color exists just in case something has it. Say my cat has the same color as the dog I owned when I was a child. Since the dog existed before the cat, and precedence being irreflexive, it seems plausible to infer that the dog and (...) the cat are distinct. Now take the colors. Since the colors are allegedly in re, and thus perhaps somehow elements of the cat and dog, it seems plausible to infer that the dog's color also preceded the cat's color. And therefore that the cat's color cannot be identical with the dog's. Finally, since the in re realist understands the sameness of properties in terms of identity, it follows that the cat's color cannot be the same as the dog's. The problem generalizes: What is the relationship between universals and time? Ignoring the temporality of that which constitutes time, to be temporal is to have a temporal "feature." These "features" are of three kinds: precedence, times, and being present, past, etc. The fundamental question in each case is whether universals have the feature. Do universals precede? Are they at times? Are they present? Time, I argue, is essentially the field in which things happen. To happen, I argue, is for one thing to do something. For one thing to do something is for the thing to exemplify a property. Such exemplifications of properties by objects I call "states of affairs." Only states of affairs precede, are at times, or are present. Universals, not being states of affairs, are not temporal. But, by the same argument which shows that running is not temporal it can be shown that Jack is not, even though Jack's running obviously is. So far I have defined what it is to be temporal; primitive temporality. But since Jack is a constituent of something temporal, he may be justly thought of as derivatively temporal. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of the temporal asymmetry of deliberation seek the origins of the asymmetry either in the physics of the early universe or in the epistemic orientation of agents. An attempt is made in the following lines to consolidate the rival thesis that the temporal asymmetry of deliberation is rooted in an ontological divide between the past and the future. I argue that agents can deliberate about the future but not the past because while the past is in a sense (...) real, the future is nothing at all. The argument for the thesis includes striking a connection between deliberation and truth on the one hand and truth and being on the other. The argument thus proceeds, via a modal principle, from the asymmetry of deliberation into the semantics of propositions about the past, the present, and the future and from there to the ontology of the past, the present, and the future. The ‘ticket’ for transition in the argument from semantics to ontology is a truth-making principle, according to which propositions are true or false in virtue of an existing reality. (shrink)

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.

Philosophy and Literature is an internationally renowned refereed journal founded by Denis Dutton at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. It is now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Since its inception in 1976, Philosophy and Literature has been concerned with the relation between literary and philosophical studies, publishing articles on the philosophical interpretation of literature as well as the literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature has sometimes been regarded as iconoclastic, in the sense that it repudiates academic pretensions, (...) insidious jargon and institutional vogue. Dutton, who remains the editor, still writes a regular column. A distinctive feature of Philosophy and Literature was the annual Bad Writing Contest, held from 1995–98, which sought to identify (and publish) the ‘most stylistically lamentable passages’ of academic prose, often to great amusement. (shrink)

Philosophers have responded to McTaggart’s famous argument for the unreality of time in a variety of ways. Some of those responses are not easy to evaluate, since they involve, for example, sometimes murky questions concerning whether a certain infinite regress is or is not vicious. In this paper I set out a response that has not, I think, been advanced by any other author, and which, if successful, is absolutely clear-cut. The basic idea is simply that a tensed approach to (...) time can avoid McTaggart’s contradiction, and can also avoid any regress, vicious or otherwise, by specifying the times at which events have different tensed properties in a tenseless fashion — namely, by using dates. This answer to McTaggart’s argument is, however, open to four important objections. The first objection is that my answer to the second part of McTaggart’s argument is incompatible with something that McTaggart takes himself to have proved in the first part of his argument — the claim, namely, that “there can be no change unless some propositions are sometimes true and sometimes false.” The second objection is that the sentences that I claim can be used to specify when an event has a given tensed property do not in fact do so, since they turn out to be purely tenseless sentences. The third objection is that the sentences in question make use of tenseless verbs, and that it is not in fact possible to make sense of such verbs. The fourth and final objection is that it is not really possible to specify, in tenseless terms, when an event has a given tensed property, since dates have to be analyzed using the relation of temporal priority, and that relation, in turn, must be analyzed in terms of the tensed properties of pastness, presentness and futurity, so that the purportedly tenseless specification is implicitly tensed. I argue, however, that none of these four objections can be sustained. (shrink)

Can a present or future event bring about a past event? An answer to this question is demanded by many other interesting questions. Can anybody, even a god, do anything about what has already occurred? Should we plan for the past, as well as for the future? Can anybody precognise the future in a way quite different from normal prediction? Do the causal laws and the past jointly preclude free action? Does current physical theory entail a consistent version of backwards (...) causation? Recent articles on the problem of backwards causation have drawn attention to the importance of the principle of the fixity of the past: that the past is now fixed. It can be shown that the standard argument against backwards causation (the bilking experiment) simply builds in the assumption of past fixity. A fixed past deprives future events of past efficacy. This has naturally led to the speculation that by abandoning past fixity real power over the past may be possible.In this paper I show that in order to have an interesting thesis of backwards causation it is not enough simply to drop past fixity. More must go. In particular, to ensure what could be called future-to-past efficacy we must abandon two entrenched principles of permanence: the principle of permanent fixity, and the principle of permanent truth. The only alternative for backwards causal theorists is to embrace real contradictions in nature. (shrink)