It is taken as obvious that there is a conflict between objective temporal passage and relativistic physics. The traditional formulation of temporal passage is the movement of a universe-wide set of simultaneous events known as the NOW; the Special Theory of Relativity implies that there is no NOW and therefore no temporal passage. The vast majority of those who accept the B-theory blockworld—the metaphysics of time most friendly to relativistic physics—deny that time passes. I argue that this denial is a (...) mistake. Contrary to overwhelmingly popular opinion, temporal passage does not need a NOW. To show this, I defend a relational understanding of temporal becoming, that I call B-coming, in which an event y B-comes with respect to x iff R xy. Temporal passage is then the difference in what has B-come at one point in a thing’s history with respect to what has B-come at an earlier point in that thing’s history. Appealing to this kind of relation is a strategy that is well-known but has been widely dismissed. This dismissal is premature; I show that the essential elements of temporal passage do not necessarily require a NOW. There can be passage without presentness. (shrink)

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 (...) problem is that satisfying the Change Thesis to establish passage requires the existence of more than one moment. This conflicts with the Present Thesis that only the present moment exists. The presentist's response is to appeal to surrogates to stand proxy for the past, so as to account for the difference between what does exist and what did exist. I argue that, for this surrogate strategy to be successful, the proposed surrogates must track what actually happened. I demonstrate that there is no guarantee that t.. (shrink)

© The Author 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Objective Becoming, Bradford Skow declares that he aims to defend the ‘anaemic’ passage of time in the block universe. This is in contrast to the ‘robust’ kind of passage – normally understood as the change in an objectively privileged present moment, the NOW – associated with A-theories of time. The defence of any sense of passage in the (...) block universe is a growing endeavour, but Skow seeks to defend it in a peculiar and roundabout way. Specifically, Skow argues that the best A-theory of robust passage is the moving spotlight theory of time, and if the best theory is inadequate, then one should accept the anaemic passage of the block universe. Skow, obviously, finds MST inadequate, and in doing so, accepts the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The following are purported to be common-sense features of the world: time’s passage, the unreality of the future, the existence of ‘genuine’ change. All of these common-sense features are accommodated by accepting the phenomenon of absolute becoming, a view of temporal passage in which the unreal future comes into existence in the present. Indeed, most philosophers who lay claim to common-sense views of time accept absolute becoming. I argue that absolute becoming has deeply unintuitive consequences. Specifically, proponents of absolute (...) becoming face what I call the coordination problem: in the absence of a connection between the existing present and the unreal future, one must, but cannot, explain how whatever comes into existence preserves the continuing regularity of the world. The standard options to explain the continuing regularity of the world take the form of appealing to enforcers—causation, laws of nature, and dispositions—to guarantee that what comes into existence preserves these regularities. I show that the very nature of a world in which there is no future means that enforcers cannot guarantee this regular nature of the world. Absolute becoming should therefore be rejected: the future does not come into existence; it already exists. (shrink)

David Lewis [1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers] famously declares that presentism is unable to allow for objects to persist and therefore should be rejected. The underlying idea is that presentism, in which only present entities exist, conflicts with persistence, which requires an object exist at multiple times. Both presentists and eternalists alike take this objection to be easily dismissed because the presentist can offer a tensed account of persistence in which an object persists iff it (...) exists and it will or did exist. Although it is the standard presentist response to Lewis, this strategy is inherently problematic. I show that if persistence is formulated in a tensed way, the presentist cannot distinguish a temporal series of unrelated instantaneous objects from a persisting object. Because there is no persistence in a temporal series of unrelated instantaneous objects, if the presentist cannot establish a difference between the two kinds of objects, the presentist’s account does not qualify as an adequate account of persistence. (shrink)