There are two extant versions of the new tenseless theory of time: the date versionand the token-reflexive version. I ask whether they are equivalent, and if not, whichof them is to be preferred. I argue that they are not equivalent, that the date version isunsatisfactory, and that the token-reflexive version is correct. I defend the token-reflexive version against a string of objections from Quentin Smith. My defence involves a discussion of the ontological and semantic significance of truth conditions, and of (...) the connection between truth and reality on the one hand, and that between truth and meaning on the other. I argue that Smith's objections to the token-reflexive theory stem from his confusing these two aspects of the notion of truth. (shrink)

New B-Theorists of language, while conceding the untranslatability of tensed sentences by tenseless sentences, deny that the ineliminability of tense implies the reality of tensed facts. Thus, New BTheorist Nathan Oaklander explains, For a variety of reasons, ... recent defenders of the tenseless view have come to embrace the thesis that tensed sentences cannot be translated by tenseless ones without loss of meaning. Nevertheless, recent detensers have denied that the ineliminability of tensed language and thought entails the reality of temporal (...) properties. ... Tensed discourse is indeed necessary for timely action, but tensed facts are not, since the truth conditions of tensed sentences can be expressed in a tenseless meta-language that describes unchanging temporal relations between and among events. (shrink)

T. L. S. Sprigge; I *—The Presidential Address: The Unreality of Time, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 1–20, htt.

Part I of Language and Time is a defence of the tensed theory of time, the view that assertions about events happening now or being past or future are irreducible to tenseless assertions about the dates at which events happen or about their occurrence before or after other events. It claims that tensed sentences are not translatable by tenseless sentences, nor do they have the same truth conditions as tenseless sentences. They are reducible in neither of these senses either to (...) tenseless date sentences—e.g. “it is raining today” does not have the same truth conditions as “it is raining on 22 February 1994”; nor to token reflexive sentences—e.g. “it is raining now” does not have the same truth conditions as “it is raining simultaneously with this utterance”. Hence, Smith argues, since evidently some tensed sentences are true, they must express propositions of a different kind from tenseless propositions—viz. tensed propositions. (shrink)