Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

What better topic of meditation for New Year's Morn than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year!  "I still live, I still think:  I still have to live, for I still have to think." (Nietzsche)

..............

If presentism is to be a defensible thesis, a 'presentable' one if you will, then it must avoid both the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity.  Having survived these hazards, it must not perish of unclarity or inexpressibility.

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

If 'exists' is used in the same way in both occurrences, then (1) is a miserable tautology and not possibly a bone of contention as between presentists and anti-presentists.  Note that (1) is a tautology whether 'exists' is present-tensed in both occurrences or temporally unqualified (untensed) in both.  To have a substantive thesis, the presentist must distinguish the present-tensed use of 'exist' from some other use and say something along the lines of

P. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter.

This implies that what no longer exists does not exist simpliciter, and that what will exist does not exist simpliciter.  It is trivial to say that what no longer exists does not presently exist, but this is not what the presentist is saying: he is is saying that what no longer exists does not exist period (full stop, simpliciter, at all, sans phrase, absolutely, pure and simple, etc.)

But the presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.'  (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) To wit,

SPM.  Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.

The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive but cannot be ruled out by logic alone.  To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955.  Presentist and anti-presentist agree that Dean existed and no longer exists.  (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.)  That is, both presentist and anti-presentist maintain that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being.  The presentist, however, thinks that Dean does not exist at all (does not exist simpliciter) while the anti-presentist maintains that Dean does exist simpliciter, but in the past.  In contrast to both,the present-moment solipsist holds that Dean never existed and for this reason does not exist at all.  Thus there are three positions on past individuals.  The presentist says that they do not exist at all or simpliciter.  The anti-presentist says that they do exist simpliciter.  The PM-solispist says that they never existed.

Clearly, the presentist must navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of present-moment solipsism.   So what is the presentist saying?  He seems to be operating with a metaphysical picture according to which there is a Dynamic Now which is the source and locus of a ceaseless annihilation and creation: some things are ever passing out of being and other things are ever coming into being.  He is not saying that all that is in being is all there ever was in being or all there ever will be in being.  That is the lunatic thesis of the present-moment solipsist.

The presentist can be characterized as an annihilationist-creationist in the following sense.  He is annihilationist about the past, creationist about the future.  He maintains that an item that becomes past does not lose merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but loses both presentness and existence.  And an item that becomes present does not gain merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but gains both presentness and existence.  Becoming past is a passing away, an annihilation, and becoming present is  a coming into  being, a creation out of nothing.

To many, the presentist picture seem intuitively correct, though I would not go so far as Alan Rhoda who, quoting John Bigelow, maintains that presentism is "arguably the commonsense position."  I would suggest that common sense, assuming we can agree on some non-tendentious characterization of same, takes no position on arcane metaphysical disputes such as this one.  (This is a fascinating metaphilosophical topic that cannot be addressed now.  How does the man on the street think about time?  Answer: he doesn't think about it, although he is quite adept at telling time, getting to work on time and using correctly the tenses of his mother tongue.)

So far, so good.  But there is still, to me at least, something deeply puzzling about the presentist thesis.  Consider the following two tensed sentences about the actor James Dean.  'Dean does not exist.'  'Dean did exist.'  Both tensed sentences are unproblematically true, assuming that death is annihilation.  (We can avoid this assumption by changing the example to Dean's silver Porsche.)  Because both sentences are plainly true, recording as they do Moorean facts, they are plainly logically consistent.

The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but  no longer exists, does not exist at all.  That is the annihilationist half of his characteristic thesis.  It is not obviously true in the way the data sentences are obviously true.  Indeed, it is not clear, to me at least, what exactly the presentist thesis MEANS.  (Evaluation of a proposition as either true or false presupposes a grasp of its sense or meaning.) When the presentist says, in the present using a present-tensed sentence,  that

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

he does not intend this to hold only at the present moment, else (1) would collapse into the trivially true present-tensed 'Dean does not exist.'  He intends something more, namely:

2. Dean does not presently exist at any time, past, present, or future.

Now what bothers me is the apparent present reference in (2) to past and future times.  How can a present-tensed sentence be used to refer to the past?  That's one problem.  A second is that (2) implies

3.  It is presently the case that there are past times at which Dean does not exist.

But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which (abstract objects aside) only the present time and items at the present time exist.

My underlying question is whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis. Does it make it between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of PM-solipsism only to founder on the reef of inexpressibility?

I have long held that time is the hardest of all philosophical nuts to crack.  I fear it is above my pay grade, and yours too.

Happy New Year!

Comments

[Edward Ockham]

Happy New Year!

You ask: whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis? I'm not entirely sure I understand this, because to understand it properly we would have to understand what the thesis was, and therefore would have the resources to express it.

Perhaps the problem is that the presentist thesis requires a theory of truth for which modern predicate logic has no resources. The theory of truth in MPL starts with the relation of 'satisfaction' between a predicate and any object. A sentence combining the name of the object and the predicate is true when the predicate is satisfied by the object, otherwise it is false. For example the predicate "—is a Roman" is satisfied by any person who is of Roman origin. It is not satisfied by any English, American or French person. (Nor is it satisfied by rocks, particles, planets etc). But then we have to explain how '— was a Roman' can be satisfied, since 'Caesar was a Roman' is clearly true. The predicate '—was a Roman' seems to be satisfied by that man, but the verb phrase 'is satisfied' is in the present tense, and therefore (since the presentist allows that any subject of a present tense affirmative statement exists) Caesar exists in some sense. But that is 'weak' presentism, if I understand you right. Caesar exists in some qualified sense, but not simpliciter. Strong presentism cannot be expressed using the standard assumptions of modern predicate calculus.

[Edward Ockham]

Actually I see you have tried to express the presentist thesis: You say "The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but no longer exists, does not exist at all". Let's express that 'not ... at all' by saying that there is no domain containing what did exist, but no longer exists. So it is easily expressed. But we are now faced with the task of explaining what makes "Caesar existed, but no longer exists" true. It clearly is a Moorean truth. But if true, it follows that the predicate "—existed, but no longer exists" is satisfied, and therefore the object satisfying it is in some domain. But then strong presentism, as defined, is false.

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks for the comments, Ed.

1. 'Caesar existed but no longer exists' is a Moorean truth.

2. If a predicate is true of x, then x exists.

3. Wholly past individuals do not exist. (Impilication of presentism).

This is an inconsistent triad: the first two propositions entail the negation of the third. And yet each prop. is extremely plausible.

You solve the problem by rejecting (3). But why wouldn't it be equally reasonable to deny (2)? Palle Yourgrau once argued that past individuals are nonexistent objects.

[Bill Vallicella]

Or we could put God to work.

We affirm (1) and (2) but substitute for (3)

3* Wholly past individuals exist as accusatives of the divine intellect.

(This may be Rhoda's sol'n. I'd have to reread his paper to be sure.)

[Edward Ockham]

>>You solve the problem by rejecting (3).

Actually I don't. What I reject (as always) is that there is any such relation as 'satisfying', between a predicate and some object. For if there is such a relation, it must relate existing things. The inconsistent triad is therefore

1. 'Caesar existed but no longer exists' (Moorean truth)
2. The truth of any affirmative subject-predicate sentence requires the existence of a 'satisfaction' relation between the predicate and some object.
3. Satisfaction is a relation between existing objects.

For (from 1,2) the satisfaction relation exists between '—existed but no longer exists' and some object (namely Caesar). From (3), it follows that this object (Caesar) exists. But that contradicts (1), that Caesar no longer exists. So one of the three above must be false.

Is (3) true? Well, satisfaction goes with the idea of a domain of objects, and surely if the domain exists, the objects exist? For we can say that some object was, but is no longer in the domain. And if an object is no longer in the domain, then surely that is what changes the truth value of a sentence like 'Caesar is a man'.

>>Palle Yourgrau once argued that past individuals are nonexistent objects.

I don't see the difference between this and 'weak' presentism. I.e. past individuals 'are' (present tense) objects in some sense, but not existing ones.

[Bill Vallicella]

So you reject (2) of your triad. But it seems to that a subject-predicate sentence is true iff the predicate is true of the subject (or rather the referent of the subject). Do you deny the following equivalence: 'Tom is tall' is true iff 'tall' is true of Tom?

Is there any difference between the locutions:

'Tall' is true of Tom
and
Tom satisfies 'tall'?

Why is it more reasonable to abandon (2) rather than (3)?

[Edward Ockham]

>> Do you deny the following equivalence: 'Tom is tall' is true iff 'tall' is true of Tom?

No, because you have pulled the verb (and hence the tense) out of the predicate. For the same reason I accept that 'Tom was tall' is true iff 'tall' was true of Tom. But there are strong grounds for rejecting

'Tom was tall' is true iff 'was tall' is satisfied by Tom.

The difference is that the predicate 'was tall' now includes the verb 'was', meaning that we have to express the relation in terms of a present tense verb phrase 'is satisfied'.

[Edward Ockham]

Regarding (3), I think I can avoid any difficulty by replacing 'Caesar existed' by 'there was such a thing as Caesar'. And we can replace (3) by

(3a) If a relation has relata, then it has such things as those relata.

But then it is true that there was such a thing as Caesar, but that there is no longer such a thing. Hence, if there is a satisfaction relation, we must agree that "there was such a thing as – " is satisfied by Caesar, and so must agree that the relation 'is satisfied by' has two relata, namely Caesar and the predicate "there was such a thing as – ". But if it currently has such relata (as it must, to make the proposition currently true), then it has such things as those relata. Yet we agreed there was no such thing as one of them, for there is no such thing as Caesar.

Your only way of escape is to deny that there are such things as the things related, while conceding that it relates these things. But that seems heroic.

In summary, the inconsistent triad is now

1a. There was such a thing as Caesar but now there is no longer such a thing.
2. The truth of any affirmative subject-predicate sentence requires a 'satisfaction' relation between two relata: the predicate and some object.
3a. If a relation has relata, then it has such things as those relata.