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Presentism
Edited by David Ingram (University of York)
About this topic
| Summary | Presentism is typically taken as the ‘common-sense’ account of time, and is most easily characterized as the combination of two theses. First of all, the presentist holds that only the present time exists, or conversely that no non-present times exist. Alternatively, this ontological thesis is often formulated solely in terms of present objects, i.e. as the thesis that only present objects exist or that no non-present objects exist. This makes presentism the natural foil for eternalism, which holds that past, present, and future times (or objects) are ontologically on par. Second, presentism is typically understood as an A-theoretic account of time committed to an objective, changing present. This commitment to a dynamic account of time is shared with similar A-theoretic accounts such as the growing block and moving spotlight views of time. |
| Key works | Contemporary presentism can trace its roots back to the work of A.N. Prior, but the classic contemporary defense of the view is provided by Bigelow 1996. Bigelow presents a forceful statement of presentism’s common-sense motivations as well as a popular template for responding to some of presentism’s most pressing objections. Markosian 2004 provides a useful summary of objections faced by presentism and defends a number of responses. Keller 2004 is an excellent survey of one of presentism’s central philosophical problems, the truthmaking objection, and argues against a number of responses available to the presentist. Bourne 2006 provides a powerful book-length defense of presentism, while Crisp 2007 argues for a similar account. Bourne and Crisp offer what is termed an ‘ersatz’ account of presentism that represents a state of the art response to truthmaking objections to presentism. Merricks 2007 and Tallant 2009 contain interesting further discussion of presentism and the truthmaking objection. Presentism is also often taken to face a challenge from relativity. Putnam 1967 and Rietdijk 1966 represent the classic presentation of this challenge. See Monton 2006 and Wüthrich 2010 for further discussion of the relationship between presentism and contemporary physics. |
| Introductions | Good introductions include Crisp 2003, Miller 2013, and Ingram & Tallant 2022. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Eternalism (277)
- Growing Block Views (117)
- The Open Future (315)
- Determinism (864)
- Fatalism (335)
- Temporal Eliminativism (72)
- Temporal Ontology, Misc (138)
Contents
450 found
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| 1 — 50 / 450 |
- Presentism and the Experience of Time.Mauro Dorato - 2015 - Topoi 34 (1):265-275.Presentists have typically argued that the Block View is incapable of explaining our experience of time. In this paper I argue that the phenomenology of our experience of time is, on the contrary, against presentism. My argument is based on a dilemma: presentists must either assume that the metaphysical present has no temporal extension, or that it is temporally extended. The former horn leads to phenomenological problems. The latter renders presentism metaphysically incoherent, unless one posits a discrete present that, however, (...)
- In Defense of Temporal Passage.Steven M. Duncan - manuscriptIn this paper, I endorse and defend the Common Sense View of Time (CSVT), i.e. Presentism plus the A-theory of time, by arguing for the objective reality of temporal passage.
- The Present.Steven M. Duncan - manuscriptWhile the nature of the past and the future have received a lot of attention from recent analytic philosophers, the present has been somewhat neglected. I think the notion of the present is somewhat misunderstood and hope to rectify some of those misunderstandings in this essay. It is high time that this was done. Let's do it now!
- Momentum and Context.Hans Halvorson - manuscriptA sentence's meaning may depend on the state of motion of the speaker. I argue that this context-sensitivity blocks the inference from special relativity to four-dimensionalism.
- The Time Flow Manifesto Chapter 4 Metaphysical Time Flow.Andrew Holster - manuscriptIn the philosophy of time, the neo-positivist is focussed above all else on sustaining the view called the static theory of time, as the very foundation of their scientific metaphysics. This is the deeply held metaphysical conviction of almost all ‘modern philosophical-scientific’ writers on time. In fact it is hardly too much to say that the entire official modern 20th Century philosophy of physics rests on the assumption that the static theory of space-time is the only concept of time we (...)
- A Believable A-Theory.Alexander Jackson - manuscriptThe A-theory of time is plagued by certain standard armchair problems: the presentism–eternalism dilemma, the problem of truth-makers, the alleged impossibility of cross-temporal relations, and the problem of temporary intrinsics. These challenges supposedly force A-theories to make incredible claims. I argue that these challenges are not deep antinomies in common sense, but rest on avoidable mistakes. Then I present a new A-theory that shows what’s possible once we move past the old problems. On this proposal, time’s passing is a metaphysically (...)
- An Empirical Argument for Presentism.David Builes & Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.According to orthodoxy, our best physical theories strongly support Eternalism over Presentism. Our goal is to argue against this consensus, by arguing that a certain overlooked aspect of our best physical theories strongly supports Presentism over Eternalism.
- 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.
- The Affective and Practical Consequences of Presentism and Eternalism.Mauro Dorato - forthcoming - Argumenta.In the dispute between presentism and eternalism, the affective dimensions of the debate have been somewhat neglected. Contemporary philosophers of time have not tried to relate these ontological positions with two of the most discussed maxims in the history of ethics – “live in the present” vs. “look at your life under the aspect of the eternity” (sub specie aeternitatis)– that since the Hellenistic times have been regarded as strictly connected with them. Consequently, I raise the question of whether the (...)
- Review of Patrick Todd, The Open Future. Why Future Contingents are All False. [REVIEW]David P. Hunt - forthcoming - Zeitschrift Für Theologie Und Philosophie.
- Time and Modality.Samuele Iaquinto - forthcoming - In Nina Emery (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge.Time and modality show remarkable similarities. Each of the most discussed theories in philosophy of time finds an analogous counterpart in modal metaphysics, suggesting that the parallel between the two notions is metaphysically deep. This chapter offers a brief overview of their analogies. Section 1 addresses the analogy between presentism and actualism. Section 2 explores the analogy between non-presentist theories and possibilism. Section 3 discusses the analogy between temporal and modal persistence.
- Presentism without Truth-Makers.Barry Ward - forthcoming - Chronos.We construct a presentist semantics on which there are no truth-makers for past and future tensed statements. The semantics is not an expressivist or projectivist one, and is not susceptible to the semantical difficulties that confront such theories. We discuss how the approach handles some standard concerns with presentism.
- Cross‐temporal grounding.Fabrice Correia & Giovanni Merlo - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (3):333-352.Cross-temporal grounding is a type of grounding whereby present facts about the past (for example that Caesar was alive) are explained in terms of past facts (for example that Caesar is alive) rather than in terms of other present facts. This paper lays the foundations for a theory of cross-temporal grounding. After introducing the general idea of a type of grounding connecting facts to past facts, we offer two arguments that past-directed facts require cross-temporal grounds—the ‘argument from intimacy’ and the (...)
- Time and the World: Every Thing and Then Some.M. Oreste Fiocco - 2024 - New York: Oxford University Press.This is a book about everything. Literally. It is also a book about how anything whatsoever happens. By answering the question what is a thing?, philosopher M. Oreste Fiocco reveals what it is to exist, what a being, any being at all, is. In this way, he illuminates reality as a whole and what it is to be real. Such profound matters require a special method of inquiry, which Fiocco introduces and elaborates. Any assumption about the world or anything in (...)
- Extensionalism, Temporal Ontology, and a Novel Compatibility Problem.Ernesto Graziani - 2024 - Argumenta.Extensionalism is, roughly, the view that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended (and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur). This view is widely acknowledged to be incompatible with thin presentism, the second most popular position in temporal ontology. In this paper, I argue that extensionalism is also incompatible with several other positions in temporal ontology, namely those positing the existence of non-present times that host sentience—positions I collectively refer (...)
- If presentism is false, then I don’t exist. On common-sense presentism.Jean-Baptiste Guillon - 2024 - Synthese 203 (5):1-36.For many presentist philosophers, e.g. Zimmerman (Contemp Debates Metaphys 10:211–225, 2008), a central motivation in favour of presentism is that it is supposed to be part of common sense. But the fact that common-sense intuitions are indeed presentist is usually taken for granted (and sometimes also conceded by eternalists). As has been shown in other domains of philosophy (e.g. free will), we should be careful when attributing some supposed intuitions to common sense, and Torrengo (Phenomenology and Mind 12: 50–55, 2017) (...)
- Presentism and Eternalism.David Ingram - 2024 - In Nina Emery (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge.Presentism and Eternalism are competing views about the ontological and temporal structure of the world, introduced and demarcated by their answers to questions about what exists and whether what exists changes. The goal of this chapter is to give the reader a clear understanding of Presentism and Eternalism, and a sense of some considerations used to critically assess the views by briefly rehearsing some of the main philosophical problems facing them.
- The Great Loop: From Conformal Cyclic Cosmology to Aeon Monism.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2024 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 1:1-16.Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology describes the cosmos as a collection of successive universes, the so-called aeons. The beginning and ending of our universe are directly connected to two other, anterior and posterior, universes. Penrose considers but rules out a different interpretation of conformal cyclic cosmology: that the beginning of our universe is connected to its own end in a cosmic loop. The paper argues that the view, aeon monism, should be regarded as a natural interpretation of conformal cyclic cosmology and (...)
- (1 other version)Pretence fictionalism about the non-present.Kristie Miller - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (6):1825-1859.Presentists hold that only present things exist. But we all, presentists included, utter sentences that appear to involve quantification over non-present objects, and so we all, presentists included, seem to commit ourselves to such objects. Equally, we all, presentists included, take utterances of many past-tensed (and some future-tensed) sentences to be true. But if no past or future things exist, it’s hard to see how there can be anything that those utterances are about, which makes them true. This paper presents (...)
- G E Moore’s Time Realism: Presentism, A-Theory, and the Ghost of Henry Sidgwick.Emily Thomas - 2024 - Gavin David Young Lectures in Philosophy 14:1–33.The ‘new realist’ G E Moore is hardly known as a metaphysician of time, yet I argue his 1910–11 lectures, later published as Some Main Problems of Philosophy, offer the first substantial English-language defence of presentism and the A-theory. This paper contextualises Moore’s positions, stressing his intellectual connections with J M E McTaggart and Bertrand Russell; explores his Common Sense metaphysics of time; and argues that his time realism owes a great debt to ‘old realist’ Henry Sidgwick.
- Truthmaking.Jamin Asay - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and (...)
- 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 (...)
- 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 (...)
- Fine’s Monster Objection Defanged.Damiano Costa, Alessandro Cecconi & Claudio Calosi - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):435-451.The Monster Objection has often been considered one of the main reasons to explore non-standard mereological views, such as hylomorphism. Still, it has been rarely discussed and then only in a cursory fashion. This paper fills this gap by offering the first thorough assessment of the objection. It argues that different metaphysical stances, such as presentism and three- and four-dimensionalism, provide different ways of undermining the objection.
- Existence is No Thing: Existents, Transience and Fixity.M. Oreste Fiocco - 2023 - Eternity and Contradiction. Journal of Fundamental Ontology 5 (8):43-68.Considering whether existence, i.e., being, is a thing might seem like the height of aimless metaphysical chin stroking. However, the issue—specifically, whether existence is a quality—is significant, bearing on how reality, this all-encompassing totality, is. On one view, reality at large is ontologically fixed, the sum total of things does not (and cannot) vary; on another view, reality is ontologically transient, the sum total of things varies. I first show that if existence is a thing, that reality is ontologically fixed (...)
- Endurantism, presentism, and the problem of temporary intrinsics.Yanssel Garcia - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (4):573-584.The most common form of endurantism takes enduring objects to be wholly located at every time they occupy. Such a view is believed to give rise to a problem concerning intrinsic change. My laptop may have been shut before, but it is currently open. Yet, if we understand endurantism as above, then my laptop is in possession of two contradictory properties: the shapes of being open and shut. This problem is known as the “problem of temporary intrinsics,” and, to avoid (...)
- 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.
- 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 (...)
- A critique of McTaggart’s argument and a defense of a version of presentism from a later Wittgensteinian perspective.Michael Grech - 2023 - Dissertation, University of BirminghamThe thesis attempts to do four things. First it provides an interpretation of McTaggat’s argument against the reality of time. McTaggart claims that the reality of time requires the reality of two series: the A- and the B-series. In the B-series events and times are positioned earlier/later than each other. This arrangement of events and times is unchanging. In the A-series events change from being future, to being present to being past events. They do so by instantiating incompatible A-series characteristics, (...)
- What do VR experiments teach us about time?Andrew J. Latham & Alex Holcombe - 2023 - Frontiers in Psychology 13:1082844.Gruber and Smith (2019) have conducted some interesting virtual reality (VR) experiments, but we think that these experiments fail to illuminate why people think that the present is special. Their experiments attempted to test a suggestion by Hartle (2005) that with VR one might construct scenarios in which people experience the same present twice. If that’s possible, then it could give us a reason to think that when we experience the present as being special, that’s not because it’s objectively so. (...)
- Presentism, Actualism, and Fatalism.Bradley Rettler - 2023 - Metaphysics 6 (1):13-23.In recent papers, Philip Swenson (2016) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and divine foreknowledge, and Michael Rea (2006) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and bivalence. In this paper, I respond to Swenson’s and Rea’s arguments. In each case, I develop a parody argument that seeks to show that actualism -- the view that everything is actual -- is inconsistent with the conjunction of (in the case of Rea) libertarianism (...)$35.45 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (3 more)Export citation
Bookmark - The Passage of Time as Causal Succession of Events.Avril Styrman - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy 120 (12):681-697.This work introduces a causal explanation of the passage of time, and contrasts it with rival explanations. In the causal explanation, laws of physics are shown to entail that events are in causal succession, and the passage of time is defined as their causal succession. The causal explanation is coupled with phenomenology of the passage of time, and contrasted with the project of making sense of the idea that time does not pass.
- Presentism: Past and Future.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2023 - In Remy Lestienne & Paul A. Harris (eds.), Time and Science, Volume 1: The Metaphysics of Time and Its Evolution. World Scientific Publishing. pp. 191-209.We aim to introduce presentism and to consider the question that presentism is supposed to answer. That is, if “only present objects exist” (or some appropriate precisification of the slogan) is the answer to a philosophical question, then (i) what is the question? And (ii) is it the right question to ask? We suggest that the question presentists are answering is not a good one to ask. We aim to articulate a question that presentists, or the heirs of presentism, should (...)$125.09 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark
- Augustine on the Existence of the Past and the Future.David Anzalone - 2022 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 104 (2):290-311.In the eleventh book of the Confessiones Augustine puts forward several considerations about the nature of time. The received view is that he held that only the present exists, while the past and the future do not exist. This received view has recently been attacked by Paul Helm and Katherin Rogers, who have offered alternative interpretations according to which Augustine held that the present has no privileged ontological status, and that past, present and future all equally exist. The aim of (...)
- Paradoxes of Time Travel to the Future.Sara Bernstein - 2022 - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.This paper brings two fresh perspectives on Lewis’s theory of time travel. First: many key aspects and theoretical desiderata of Lewis’s theory can be captured in a framework that does not commit to eternalism about time. Second: implementing aspects of Lewisian time travel in a non-eternalist framework provides theoretical resources for a better treatment of time travel to the future. While time travel to the past has been extensively analyzed, time travel to the future has been comparatively underexplored. I make (...)
- Special Relativity in Superposition.Ted Dace - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (2):199-213.By deriving the Lorentz transformation from the absolute speed of light, Einstein demonstrated the relativistic variability of space and time, enabling him to explain length contraction and time dilation without recourse to a "luminiferous ether" or preferred frame of reference. He also showed that clocks synchronized at a distance via light signals are not synchronized in a frame of reference differing from that of the clocks. However, by mislabeling the relativity of synchrony the "relativity of simultaneity," Einstein implied that this (...)
- Presentism & Passage.Paul R. Daniels - 2022 - Metaphysica 23 (2):369-384.According to the presentist, only the present moment exists and, as time passes, what’s present changes. However some argue that, if only one moment exists, the presentist cannot explain the passage of time. While the presentist historically appeals to surrogates—proxies which exist in the present but play the role of non-existent past times—to evade this sort of worry, the appeal to surrogates has come under renewed attack from Lisa Leininger. But hope is not lost for the presentist. I argue that (...)
- The Forgetful World: A defence of presentism in light of modern physics.Patrick Dawson - 2022 - Dissertation, University of SydneyThe aim of this thesis is to defend a presentist metaphysics. I respond to a series of objections against presentism, including some that draw on our best physics. I also explore ways in which presentism might play an active role in interpreting and constraining physical theory, beyond merely being consistent with it. -/- A unifying theme of this thesis is that I advocate for a reduction of presentism to its bare essentials. Within the proposed ontology, reality is three-dimensional. Time only (...)
- In Defence of a Dynamic View of Reality.Jerzy Gołosz - 2022 - Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press.This collection of papers consists of mostly previously published articles which develop a scientific research program designed to defend a dynamic view of reality, which is founded on the assumption of the existence of the flow of time. The vindication makes use of a metaphysical theory of the flow of time developed by the author which is based on the notion of dynamic existence. In this book, the author analyzes different aspects of the problem of the flow of time and (...)
- The Metaphysics of Ockhamism.Andrea Iacona - 2022 - In Alessio Santelli (ed.), Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues concerning Future Contingents. Springer.This paper investigates Ockhamism from a metaphysical point of view. Its main point is that the claim that future contingents are true or false is less demanding than usually expected, as it does not require particularly contentious assumptions about the future. First it will be argued that Ockhamism is consistent with a wide range of metaphysical views. Then it will be shown that each of these views leaves room for the claim that the future is open, at least on some (...)
- Presentism.David Ingram & Jonathan Tallant - 2022 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or in response (...)
- Ibn ‘Arabī on Divine Atemporality and Temporal Presentism.Ismail Lala - 2022 - TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 8 (1).Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is arguably the most influential philosophical mystic in Islam. He is also a presentist. This paper responds to the arguments of contemporary philosophers, Norman Kretzmann, William Lane Craig, Garrett DeWeese, and Alan Padgett, who argue that divine atemporality and temporal presentism are incompatible, through the temporal ontology of Ibn ‘Arabī. Ibn ‘Arabī asserts that all entities in the universe are loci of manifestation of God’s most beautiful Names. These divine Names constitute sensible reality. The (...)
- Five New Arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.Ned Markosian - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):158-181.According to The Static Theory of Time, time is like space in various ways, and there is no such thing as the passage of time. According to The Dynamic Theory of Time, on the other hand, time is very different from space, and the passage of time is an all-too-real phenomenon. This paper first offers some suggestions about how we should understand these two theories, and then introduces five new arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.
- Meaning in Life and the Nature of Time.Ned Markosian - 2022 - In Iddo Landau (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. New York: Oxford University Press.Many of the leading accounts of what makes a life meaningful are goal-based theories, according to which it is the pursuit of some specific goal (such as love for things that are worthy of love) that gives meaning to our lives. In this chapter I consider how these goal-based theories of meaning in life interact with the two main theories of the nature of time that have been defended in the recent metaphysics literature, namely, The Dynamic Theory of Time and (...)
- Presentist Fragmentalism and Quantum Mechanics.Paul Merriam - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (4):1-8.This paper states and gives three applications of a novel ‘Presentist Fragmentalist’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a cognate paper it was explicitly shown this kind of presentism is consistent with special relativity and that it has implications for how to understand time as it relates to the Big Bang. In this paper we narrowly focus on three applications. These are surely the most important conundrums for any proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics: Schrodinger’s Cat, Bell non-locality, and the Born rule. (...)
- Commentary: Physical time within human time.Kristie Miller & Danqi Wang - 2022 - Frontiers in Psychology 13.Gruber et al. (2022) and Buonomano and Rovelli (Forthcoming) aim to render Q18 consistent the picture of time delivered to us by physics, with the way time seems to us in experience. Their general approach is similar; they take the picture of our world given to us in physics, a picture on which there is no global “moving” present and hence no robust temporal flow, and attempt to explain why things nevertheless seem to us as they do, given that our (...)
- Presentism, Timelessness, and Evil.Ben Page - 2022 - TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 7 (2).There is an objection to divine timelessness which claims that timelessness shouldn’t be adopted since on this view evil is never “destroyed,” “vanquished,” “eradicated” or defeated. By contrast, some divine temporalists think that presentism is the key that allows evil to be destroyed/vanquished/eradicated/defeated. However, since presentism is often considered to be inconsistent with timelessness, it is thought that the presentist solution is not available for defenders of timelessness. In this paper I first show how divine timelessness is consistent with a (...)
- A Defense of Presentist Time Travel.Xuanpu Zhuang - 2022 - Filozofia Nauki 30 (4):101-117.Presentism usually holds that only present entities exist. In contrast to presentism, eternalism holds that past, present, and future entities all exist. According to some philosophers, presentism is intuitively incompatible with time travel. In this paper, I defend the compatibility between presentism and time travel by arguing for a plausible account of causation in the presentist framework. To achieve my goal, I respond to an objection to presentist time travel that is based on the nonexistence of the past: the Causation (...)
- Presentism and Times as Propositions.Luca Banfi & Daniel Deasy - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):725-743.Some Presentists—according to whom everything is present—identify instants of time with propositions of a certain kind. However, the view that times are propositions seems to be at odds with Presentism: if there are times then there are past times, and therefore things that are past; but how could there be things that are past if everything is present? In this paper, we describe the Presentist view that times are propositions ; we set out the argument that Presentism is incompatible with (...)
- Ontological Pluralism about Non-Being.Sarah Bernstein - 2021 - In Sara Bernstein & Tyron Goldschmidt (eds.), Non-Being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Nonexistence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-16.I develop ontological pluralism about non-being, the view that there are multiple ways, kinds, or modes of non-being. I suggest that the view is both more plausible and defensible than it first seems, and that it has many useful applications across a wide variety of metaphysical and explanatory problems. After drawing out the relationship between pluralism about being and pluralism about non-being, I discuss quantificational strategies for the pluralist about non-being. I examine historical precedent for the view. Finally, I suggest (...)
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