Being and Time: Another Presentist Puzzle

One type of presentism makes a double-barreled claim about the Being of all beings:  All beings are (i) in time (ii) at the present time. There is nothing 'outside' of time, and the there is nothing 'outside' of the present time.  To be just is to be temporally present.  Being = Presentness.  Since identity is symmetrical, the property identity proposition expressed by the immediately preceding sentence  does not fully convey what I want to convey.  What I want to convey is that Being reduces to Temporal Presentness on the type of presentism now being considered.   (If A reduces to B, it does not follow that B reduces to A.)

The presentism under discussion is involved in a double restriction:  Items in general are restricted to temporal items, and then temporal items are restricted to present items. And all of this as a matter of metaphysical necessity.

What then do we say about the Berlin Wall? It is wholly past. Being past, it is in time. For, by definition, an item is in time just in case it is the subject of a temporal predicate, whether a monadic A-determination, or a relational B-property.  The Wall is the subject of the predicate 'past', which is true of it; ergo, the Wall is in time.  To put the point B-theoretically, the Wall is such that, every time at which it existed is a time earlier than the present time. Ergo, the Wall is in time.

On the other hand, being past, the Wall is nothing. Presentism implies that the passage of time has consigned the Wall to the abyss of nonbeing. For if Being reduces to Presentness, and an item is wholly past, then said item is nothing. But if the Wall is nothing, then it has no properties, including the monadic property of being past, and the relational property of being earlier that the present, whence it follows that the Wall is not in time.

So the Wall is both in time and not in time. It is in time, because 'wholly past' is true of it.  It is not in time for the reason given in the immediately preceding paragraph.

Presentism, as a thesis about the very Being of all beings, restricts everything to the present time, including the temporal modes, past and future. In so doing, presentism negates itself by eliminating time. For there is no time if there are no distinctions among past, present, and future.

Comments

[Ostrich]

So there is the state of being wholly past, which is the verbal noun from the infinitive 'to be wholly past' which is from the verb phrase 'is wholly past'.

Again, what is the substantive philosophical issue here?

[Cyrus]

Ostrich,

So there is the state of being wholly past, which is the verbal noun from the infinitive 'to be wholly past' which is from the verb phrase 'is wholly past'.

Category mistake?

[David Brightly]

Bill,

Presentism, as a thesis about the very Being of all beings, restricts everything to the present time, including the temporal modes, past and future.

This is surely an inference too far. Presentism is a thesis about substantial change not accidental change. In a world with accidental change but no substantial change presentism would be vacuously true but time would remain.

Perhaps an alternative conclusion from the argument is that presentism implies that temporal determinations are not properties.