Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is (...) obviously false if read as saying that everything that has existed, exits or will exist is present. If eternalism is taken as the negation of presentism, it is also either trivially false or obviously true. In this paper, I try to respond to the triviality objection on behalf of presentism. In second section, I will examine how the argument proceeds. In third section, I will reflect on three possible ways to respond but will argue that none of them succeeds in giving a satisfactory solution. I will then try to clarify the core idea of presentism and to suggest that if we characterise presentism accurately, the problem will disappear. In fourth section, I will offer a plausible definition of presentism and will show how it can avoid the triviality objection and demonstrate why it is advantageous to accept the version of presentism I offer. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that there is an analogy between time and modality: What is true of time, mutatis mutandis, should be true of modality, and vice versa. However, I think that the importance of this analogy has not been truly appreciated in the literature. In this paper, I try to offer a plausible account of the relationship between time and modality based on what is known as presentist ersatzism. If the attempt succeeds, it will be shown that ersatzists about (...) time are better able to explain what possible worlds are. (shrink)

The standard definition of an instantaneous temporal part cannot properly deal with cases involving time travel. This paper provides a new definition of an instantaneous temporal part by appealing to David Lewis's distinction between external time and personal time. The new definition avoids the problems because it does not allow more than one instantaneous temporal part of an object at each moment of its personal time. We argue that this new definition, combined with our new perdurantist semantic thesis, deals with (...) cases of time travel successfully. (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)