Abstract

The dissertation is a defense of presentism, the thesis that only presently existing things exist. Many arguments against presentism, including those of McTaggart and Mellor, rely on the claim that the tenses are indexicals. In the first chapter I argue that which aspects of language are indexical depends on what there is. In particular, I argue that if presentism is true, the tenses are not indexicals. I base my response to McTaggart's argument for the unreality of tense on the claim that the tenses are not indexicals. I include a modal analogue of McTaggart's argument, an argument for the unreality of the contingent, and respond to it in an analogous way. ;In the second chapter I discuss serious presentism, the thesis that objects have properties only when they exist. I discuss arguments by Plantinga and Prior and conclude that a presentist need not be a serious presentist and that serious presentism is false, false because present objects have properties when they do not exist, and false because past and future objects have properties now. I argue that a presentist, though not a serious presentist, can account for the independence of the past from the present without admitting the existence of past objects. ;One issue related to serious presentism is whether the presentist's quantifiers range over present objects only or over past and future objects as well. I argue that a presentist's quantifiers need not be existential and may range over past, present, and future objects. In the final chapter I develop a version of presentism I call unrestricted presentism