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Presentism and the space-time manifold

In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press. pp. 163-246 (2011)

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  1. Time Primitivism.Pendaran Roberts - manuscript
    I present a novel view on the nature of time: primitivism. This view is the conjunction of two theses: that presence is concreteness and that the present changes, where change is a fundamental process that cannot be analyzed. After explaining this view in-depth, I look at how it explains the flow of time and solves many puzzles, for example, McTaggart’s famous paradox about the unreality of time.
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  • Productive Laws in Relativistic Spacetimes.Chris Dorst - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    One of the most intuitive views about the metaphysics of laws of nature is Tim Maudlin's idea of a Fundamental Law of Temporal Evolution. So-called FLOTEs are primitive elements of the universe that produce later states from earlier states. While FLOTEs are at home in traditional Newtonian and non-relativistic quantum mechanical theories (not to mention our pre-theoretic conception of the world), I consider here whether they can be made to work with relativity. In particular, shifting to relativistic spacetimes poses two (...)
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  • Common-sense temporal ontology: an experimental study.Ernesto Graziani, Francesco Orilia, Elena Capitani & Roberto Burro - 2023 - Synthese 202 (6):1-39.
    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 (...)
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  • Why is Presentism Intuitive?Ernesto Graziani - 2023 - Metaphysica 24 (2):181-201.
    Presentism is, roughly, the ontological view that only the present exists. Among the philosophers engaged in the metaphysics of time there is wide agreement that presentism is intuitive (or commonsensical) and that its intuitiveness counts as evidence in its favour. My contribution has two purposes: first, defending the view that presentism is intuitive from some recent criticisms; second, putting forth a genealogical (or debunking) argument aimed at depriving presentism’s intuitiveness of the evidential value commonly granted to it.
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  • The Sooner the Better: An Argument for Bias Toward the Earlier.Bradford Saad - 2024 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 10 (2):371-386.
    In this article I argue that we should be prudentially and morally biased toward earlier events: other things equal, we should prefer for good events to occur earlier and disprefer for bad events to occur earlier. The argument contends that we should accord at least some credence—if only a small one—to a theoretical package featuring the growing block theory of time and that this package generates a presumptive bias toward earlier events. Rival theoretical packages are considered. Under reasonable allocations of (...)
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  • Experience and Time: A Metaphysical Approach.David Builes & Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    What is the temporal structure of conscious experience? While it is popular to think that our most basic conscious experiences are temporally extended, we will be arguing against this view, on the grounds that it makes our conscious experiences depend on the future in an implausible way. We then defend an alternative view of the temporal structure of experience from a variety of different objections. Along the way, we hope to illustrate the wider philosophical ramifications of the relationship between experience (...)
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  • Presentism and representation: saying it without words.Sam Baron, Kristie Miller & Jonathan Tallant - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-33.
    The Triviality Argument against presentism maintains that we should reject presentism because there is no way to define the view that is not either trivially true or obviously false. We suggest that this style of argument over-emphasises purely linguistic means of representing a philosophical thesis. We argue that there is no reason to suppose that all philosophical theses must be linguistically representable, and thus that the failure to linguistically represent presentism is no big deal. It certainly shouldn’t lead us to (...)
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  • The Bare Past.Vincent Grandjean - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (5):2523-2550.
    In this paper, I first introduce one of the most prominent objections against the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), the so-called ‘epistemic objection’, according to which GBT provides no way of knowing that our time is the objective present and, therefore, leads at best to absolute skepticism about our temporal location, at worst to the quasi-certainty that we are located in the objective past. Secondly, I express my dissatisfaction regarding the various traditional attempts to address this objection, especially Merricks (...)
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  • Trouble on the Horizon for Presentism.Sam Baron & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1):2.
    Surface presentism is the combination of a general relativistic physics with a presentist metaphysics. In this paper, we provide an argument against this combination based on black holes. The problem focuses on the notion of an event horizon. We argue that the present locations of event horizons are ontologically dependent on future black hole regions, and that this dependence is incompatible with presentism. We consider five responses to the problem available to the surface presentist, and argue that none succeed. Surface (...)
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  • Lawful Persistence.David Builes & Trevor Teitel - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):5-30.
    The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...)
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  • Relativity and the A-theory.Antony Eagle - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 86–98.
    The special theory of relativity (STR) is widely supposed to be in tension with A-theories of time, those giving special significance to the present moment. A-theories are diverse in the features they regard as distinctive of the present, but all agree that there is an absolute fact of the matter about which events have the feature of presentness. Famously, the standard notion of simultaneity operationalised within the theory of relativity is not absolute. If A-theorists accept relativistic physics, they must either (...)
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  • Symmetric and asymmetric theories of time.Vincent Grandjean - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14403-14426.
    There is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional way of defining the A-theories of time. One reason is that these definitions rest on an ontological question—‘Do the future and the past exist?’—to which no non-speculative answer can be provided. Another reason is that these definitions fail to distinguish between various A-theories of time at all times and, therefore, cannot be regarded as essential to them. In the present paper, I make a fresh start in the debate, by introducing two (...)
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  • The Rotten Core of Presentism.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3969-3991.
    Recently, some have attempted to reformulate debates in first-order metaphysics, particularly in the metaphysics of time and modality, for reasons due to Williamson. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the likes of Cameron, Correia and Rosenkranz, Deasy, Ingram, Tallant, Viebahn, inter alia, have initiated and responded to attempts to capture the core of presentism using a formal, logical machinery. We argue that such attempts are doomed to fail because there is no theoretical core to presentism. There (...)
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  • Gallifrey Falls No More: Doctor Who’s Ontology of Time.Kevin S. Decker - 2019 - Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 2:1-21.
    Despite being time-travel adventure series, both classic Doctor Who (1963-1989, 1996) and its reboot (2005-present) have not seen the development of a coherent ontology of time for their fictional universe. As such, it is extremely difficult to review established theories of the nature of time in an attempt to shoe-horn Doctor Who into an existing framework. Difficulties include the evolution of the views of the central character, the alien “Doctor,” from a position that insists “time can’t be rewritten” to its (...)
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  • Une asymétrie temporelle: passé fermé et futur ouvert.Vincent Grandjean - 2020 - Philosophie de la Connaissance.
    Nous partageons, au sujet de la nature du temps, l’intuition fondamentale selon laquelle le futur est ouvert tandis que le passé est fermé. Par exemple, alors que nous pensons pouvoir influencer le cours du futur, nous savons qu’aucune de nos actions ne peut influencer le cours du passé. Cependant, bien que cette intuition soit largement partagée, identifier la nature de l’asymétrie qu’elle reflète n’est pas chose aisée. Dans cet article, j’explore différentes manières de caractériser l’asymétrie entre le ‘futur ouvert’ et (...)
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  • (1 other version)How is the asymmetry between the open future and the fixed past to be characterized?Vincent Grandjean - 2019 - Synthese (3):1-24.
    A basic intuition we have regarding the nature of time is that the future is open whereas the past is fixed. For example, whereas we think that there are things we can do to affect how the future will unfold, we think that there are not things we can do to affect how the past unfolded. However, although this intuition is largely shared, it is not a straightforward matter to determine the nature of the asymmetry it reflects. So, in this (...)
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  • Presentism and the Spans of Time.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1):200-214.
    Presentists, who believe that only present entities exist, face a problem of how to analyse tensed plural quantification. The idea, in broad outline, is that presentists can't employ the usual method for analysing tensed singular quantification, using primitive ‘slice’ tense operators, to analyse plurals. One option is to introduce a new theoretical primitive: a ‘span’‐operator. But there are reasons to worry about this option. For one, we might agree with Lewis that span‐operators are ill‐behaved or introduce unpalatable complexity. For another, (...)
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  • The cresting wave: a new moving spotlight theory.Kristie Miller - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (1):94-122.
    One argument for the moving spotlight theory is that it better explains certain aspects of our temporal phenomenology than does any static theory of time. Call this the argument from passage phenomenology. In this paper it is argued that insofar as moving spotlight theorists take this to be a sound argument they ought embrace a new version of the moving spotlight theory according to which the moving spotlight is a cresting wave of causal efficacy. On this view it is more (...)
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  • Presentism, persistence and trans-temporal dependence.Jonathan Tallant - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (9):1-12.
    My central thesis is that presentism is incompatible with all of the main theories of persistence: endurance, exdurance and perdurance.
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  • Passing Time.Nicky Kroll - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (1):255-268.
    I offer a novel account of temporal passage. According to this account, time passes in virtue of there being events in progress. I argue that such an account of temporal passage can explain the direction and whoosh of temporal passage. I also consider two prominent accounts of temporal passage and argue that they amount to special versions of the thesis that time passes in virtue of there being events in progress.
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  • Time, Metaphysics of.Natalja Deng - forthcoming - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks questions about the nature of reality – about what there is, and what it is like. The metaphysics of time is the part of the philosophy of time that asks questions about the nature of temporal reality. One central such question is that of whether time passes or flows, or whether it has a dynamic aspect.
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  • Partial Manifestations.Nick Kroll - 2016 - In Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Dispositions. pp. 85-91.
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  • A Study of Time in Modern Physics.Peter W. Evans - 2011 - Dissertation,
    This thesis is a study of the notion of time in modern physics, consisting of two parts. Part I takes seriously the doctrine that modern physics should be treated as the primary guide to the nature of time. To this end, it offers an analysis of the various conceptions of time that emerge in the context of various physical theories and, furthermore, an analysis of the relation between these conceptions of time and the more orthodox philosophical views on the nature (...)
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  • Why ‘NOW’?Peter J. Riggs - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (1):171-180.
    A recently published hypothesis on the nature of time by physicist Richard A. Muller seeks to provide an objective account of the present moment and the ‘flow’ of time. Muller also claims that his hypothesis makes testable predictions. It is shown that the predictions offered cannot be used to test Muller’s hypothesis, that the hypothesis does not rate scientific status, has a number of questionable metaphysical premises, and is merely a re-fashioning of the Growing Block theory of time.
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  • Contre les défenses du présentisme par le sens commun.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2018 - Igitur 9 (1):1-24.
    According to presentism, only the present exists. The view is in a bad dialectical situation since it has to face several objections based on physics and a priori arguments. The view remains nonetheless popular because it is, allegedly, more intuitive than alternative views, namely eternalism (past, present and future entities exist) and no-futurism (only past and present entities exist). In the essay, I shall not discuss whether intuitivity is an accurate criterion for ontological enquiry. I will rather argue that any (...)
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  • Presentism, Passage, Phenomenology and Physicalism.Kristie Miller & Jane Weiling Loo - 2016 - Manuscrito 39 (4):183-201.
    ABSTRACT Temporal dynamists argue that we should believe that there exists temporal passage because there being passage is the best explanation for the presence of our temporal phenomenology. Presentists argue that presentism is the best version of temporal dynamism. Therefore, conditional on us accepting temporal dynamism, we should accept presentism. In this paper it is argued that if we understand temporal passage as the presentist does, such an argument can succeed only if dualism is true. Thus, we conclude, either presentists (...)
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  • Imprints in time: towards a moderately robust past.Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (10):2429-2446.
    Presentism says that only present objects exist. But the view has trouble grounding past-tensed truths like “dinosaurs existed”. Standard Eternalism grounds those truths by positing the existence of past objects—like dinosaurs. But Standard Eternalism conflicts with the intuition that there is genuine change—the intuition that there once were dinosaurs and no longer are any. I offer a novel theory of time—‘The Imprint’—that does a better job preserving both the grounding and genuine change intuitions. The Imprint says that the past and (...)
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  • Exclusive Disjunctivism – Presentness without Simultaneity in Special Relativity.Nihel Jhou - 2017 - Analysis 77 (3):541-550.
    A-theoretic presentness is commonly regarded as non-solipsist and non-relative. The non-solipsism of a non-relative, A-theoretic presentness requires at least two space-like separated things to be present simpliciter together – this co-presentness further implies the global, non-relative, non-conventional simultaneity of them. Yet, this implication clashes with the general view that there is no global, non-relative, non-conventional simultaneity in Minkowski space-time. In order to resolve this conflict, this paper explores the possibility that the non-solipsism of a non-relative, A-theoretic presentness does not require (...)
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  • Epistemic Authority.G. Longworth - 2014 - Analysis 74 (1):157-166.
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  • Tense and Relativity.Andrew Bacon - 2018 - Noûs 52 (3):667-696.
    Those inclined to positions in the philosophy of time that take tense seriously have typically assumed that not all regions of space-time are equal: one special region of space-time corresponds to what is presently happening. When combined with assumptions from modern physics this has the unsettling consequence that the shape of this favored region distinguishes people in certain places or people traveling at certain velocities. In this paper I shall attempt to avoid this result by developing a tensed picture of (...)
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  • An A-theory without tense operators.Meghan Sullivan - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4-5):735-758.
    A-theorists think there is a fundamental difference between the present and other times. This concern shows up in what kinds of properties they take to be instantiated, what objects they think exist and how they formalize their views. Nearly every contemporary A-theorist assumes that her metaphysics requires a tense logic – a logic with operators like and. In this paper, I show that there is at least one viable A-theory that does not require a logic with tense operators. And I (...)
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  • Relativity and Three Four‐dimensionalisms.Cody Gilmore, Damiano Costa & Claudio Calosi - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (2):102-120.
    Relativity theory is often said to support something called ‘the four-dimensional view of reality’. But there are at least three different views that sometimes go by this name. One is ‘spacetime unitism’, according to which there is a spacetime manifold, and if there are such things as points of space or instants of time, these are just spacetime regions of different sorts: thus space and time are not separate manifolds. A second is the B-theory of time, according to which the (...)
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  • What is Presentism?Daniel Deasy - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):378-397.
    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 (...)
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  • Temporary Safety Hazards.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2016 - Noûs 50 (4):152-174.
    The Epistemic Objection says that certain theories of time imply that it is impossible to know which time is absolutely present. Standard presentations of the Epistemic Objection are elliptical—and some of the most natural premises one might fill in to complete the argument end up leading to radical skepticism. But there is a way of filling in the details which avoids this problem, using epistemic safety. The new version has two interesting upshots. First, while Ross Cameron alleges that the Epistemic (...)
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  • Present Time.Gustavo E. Romero - 2015 - Foundations of Science 20 (2):135-145.
    The idea of a moving present or ‘now’ seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine that only what is present exists, is in conflict with modern relativistic cosmology and recent advances in neurosciences. I argue for a tenseless view of time, where what we call ‘the present’ is just an emergent secondary (...)
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  • Specialness and Egalitarianism.Giovanni Merlo - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):248-257.
    There are two intuitions about time. The first is that there's something special about the present that objectively differentiates it from the past and the future. Call this intuition Specialness. The second is that the time at which we happen to live is just one among many other times, all of which are ‘on a par’ when it comes to their forming part of reality. Call this other intuition Egalitarianism. Tradition has it that the so-called ‘A-theories of time’ fare well (...)
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  • Relativity, the Open Future, and the Passage of Time.Oliver Pooley - 2013 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (3pt3):321-363.
    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 (...)
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  • The Open Future.Stephan Torre - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (5):360-373.
    A commonly held idea regarding the nature of time is that the future is open and the past is fixed or closed. This article investigates the notion that there is an asymmetry in openness between the past and the future. The following questions are considered: How exactly is this asymmetry in openness to be understood? What is the relation between an open future and various ontological views about the future? Is an open future a branching future? What is the relation (...)
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  • The Andromeda Paradox, Bricolage, and Perspectival Realism.John Yates - unknown
    Previous failures to resolve the Andromeda paradox are discussed, and a resolution is presented using bricolage.
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  • The Wave Theory of Time: A Comparison to Competing Tensed Theories.Nikk Effingham - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (1):172-192.
    This paper introduces a new theory in temporal ontology, ‘wave theory’, and argues for its attractions over and above existing tensed theories of time.
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  • Nothing to Come: A Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time.Fabrice Correia & Sven Rosenkranz - 2018 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer Verlag. Edited by Sven Rosenkranz.
    This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. -/- The authors devise (...)
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  • Presentism, Atemporality, and Time’s Way.Brian Leftow - 2018 - Faith and Philosophy 35 (2):173-194.
    After defining presentism, I consider four arguments that presentism and divine atemporality are incompatible. I identify an assumption common to the four, ask what reason there is to consider it true, and argue against it.
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  • Presentism and the Myth of Passage.Lisa Leininger - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4):724-739.
    Presentism is held by most to be the intuitive theory of time, due in large part to the view's supposed preservation of time's passage. In this paper, I strike a blow against presentism's intuitive pull by showing how the presentist, contrary to overwhelming popular belief, is unable to establish temporal change upon which the passage of time is based. I begin by arguing that the presentist's two central ontological commitments, the Present Thesis and the Change Thesis, are incompatible. The main (...)
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  • On Mellor and the Future Direction of Time.Lisa Leininger - 2014 - Analysis 74 (1):148-157.
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  • (1 other version)How is the asymmetry between the open future and the fixed past to be characterized?Vincent Grandjean - 2021 - Synthese 198 (3):1863-1886.
    A basic intuition we have regarding the nature of time is that the future is open whereas the past is fixed. For example, whereas we think that there are things we can do to affect how the future will unfold (e.g. acting in an environmentally responsible manner), we think that there are not things we can do to affect how the past unfolded (“what is done is done”). However, although this intuition is largely shared, it is not a straightforward matter (...)
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  • Characterising Theories of Time and Modality.Daniel Deasy - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (3):283-305.
    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 (...)
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  • Presentism Remains.Jonathan Tallant - 2017 - Erkenntnis 84 (2):409-435.
    Here I examine some recent attempts to provide a new way of thinking about the philosophy of time that question the central role of ‘presentness’ within the definition of presentism. The central concern raised by these critics turns on the intelligibility and theoretical usefulness of the term ‘is present’. My overarching aim is to at least challenge such concerns. I begin with arguments due to Deasy. Deasy develops a view that he calls ‘transientism’ and that he takes to be a (...)
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  • Temporal ersatzism.Nina Emery - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (9):e12441.
    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 (...)
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  • Measuring the present: What is the duration of ‘now’?Brittany A. Gentry - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9357-9371.
    Presentists argue that only the present is real. In this paper, I ask what duration the present has on a presentist’s account. While several answers are available, each of them requires the adoption of a measure and, with that adoption, additional work must be done to define the present. Whether presentists conclude that a reductionist account of duration is acceptable, that duration is not an applicable concept for their notion of the present, that the present has a duration of zero, (...)
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  • How to be an Ex-Post Egalitarian and an Ex-Ante Paretian.Ittay Nissan-Rozen - 2017 - Analysis 77 (3):550-558.
    It is well known that there is a conflict between three intuitive principles for the evaluation of risky prospects in distributional contexts, Ex-Post Egalitarianism, Ex-Ante Pareto and Dominance. In this paper, I return to Peter Diamond’s suggestion that we reject Dominance as a principle of rationality in distributional contexts and present a new argument in support of this position. The argument is based on an observation regarding the right way for a distributor to weigh reasons for actions. In some cases, (...)
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