The Presentism of E. J. Lowe: Summary

This entry is Part One of a multi-part attempt to understand and evaluate the late E. J. Lowe's 'untimely' version of presentism.  It is 'untimely' in that he resists what he takes to be the reification of time and times, and because his presentism is very different from its contemporary competitors. I am basing my interpretation mainly on "Presentism and Relativity: No Conflict" in Ciuni, et al. eds., New Papers on the Present (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2013, 133-152) and on "How Real is Substantial Change," The Monist, vol. 89, no. 3 (2006), 275-293. Page references in parentheses refer to the first article unless otherwise noted. All emphases are in the original.

1) Lowe insists on "The ontological primacy of present reality and the objective status of temporal passage." (133)  These commitments justify calling him a presentist.

2) But he "repudiates [what he takes to be] the reification of time and 'times,' including the 'present moment' . . . ." (133) To reify is to treat as real what is not real. Lowe appears to be saying that there are no such items as times, and thus no such item as the present time. If so, one cannot quantify over times.  This would seem to scotch fairly standard definitions or definition-schemata of 'presentism' along the following lines:

(P1) Always, only present items exist.

That is: every time is such that only what is non-relationally present at that time exists simpliciter. 

3) The focus for Lowe is not on the present moment, but on the "fundamental reality of change . . . ." (133)

4) Change, however, is in every case "existence change -- that is, the coming into or going out of existence of entities of one kind or another . . . ." (133) We are being told that all change is existential or substantial change.  (See The Monist article cited above.) Now one kind of change is qualitative change as when a tomato goes from being green to being red.  This can be understood to be a species of existence change if properties are assayed as  tropes. The greenness trope in the tomato goes out of existence and  a redness trope comes into existence while the tomato stays in existence.  On this way of thinking, both the coming into existence of the tomato and its change of color are existential changes.

5) Objects (individual substances) change, but there are no events in addition to these changes.  We need only the object and its tropes: we need no events such as the event of a leaf's turning brown. Furthermore, there is no event of a trope's going out of existence or coming into existence.  If there were, a vicious infinite regress would ensue. (150) Events are "shadows cast by language rather than fundamental ingredients of temporal reality." (151) There are changes, but no events. I take Lowe to be saying that an event is an (illicit) reification of a change.  If an animal dies, there is no such event as the animal's death in addition to the dead animal. There is just the animal which ceases to exist. (137)

6) Because there are no events, change cannot be ascribed to events. Because there is no such entity as my birth, my birth has no properties such as occurring at a certain place or being past.  Because there are no events, no events change in their A-determinations, their monadic (non-relational) pastness, presentness, and futurity.  There is thus no event, my birth, that was once future, then present, then past, and then ever more past. To think otherwise is to confuse events with objects, which amounts to a reification of events, an illicit treatment of them as if they are objects when all they could be are changes in objects.

7) It is not just that nothing has A-determinations; there are no such determinations to be had. McTaggart's A-determinations  are pseudo-properties based on a "false analogy between events and objects." (136)  There are no times, no events, and no A-determinations. This puts paid to McTaggart's claim that the A-series is contradictory, which is a key lemma in his overall argument for the unreality of time.  That lemma requires that there be events and A-determinations.  Very roughly, what McTaggart argues is that time is unreal because (i) time requires the A-series, but (ii) said series is contradictory in that each event has all three of the A-determinations. D. H. Mellor is a contemporary philosopher of time who accepts McTaggart's argument against the A-series, but concludes, not that time is unreal, but that time is exhausted by the B-series.

8) But if there are no events, then there is no B-series either. There is no series of events ordered by the so-called B-relations, earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with.  This puts paid to the view of D. H. Mellor and others that real time (to allude to the title of Mellor's book) is exhausted by the B-series.  For Lowe, then, there are no times, no events, no A-series, and no B-series.

9) For Lowe, time is objectively real; it is not unreal as on McTaggart's view, nor is it in any sense   transcendentally ideal (Kant) or constituted in consciousness (Husserl).  But it is not real in the manner of a container or a dimension.  Time is just temporal passage.  Since time is objectively real, temporal passage is also objectively real and in no way mind-dependent.  Temporal passage "consists in the continual coming into and going out of existence of entities . . . ." (137) Lowe is referring to temporal entities only, those that are not timeless such as propositions. He has in mind objects (individual substances) such as a cat and its properties (assayed as tropes) such as being asleep.  This ceaseless existential change is what temporal passage consists in. In sum, for Lowe, time = temporal passage = the ever ongoing creation and annihilation of entities.

As I read him, Lowe is not maintaining that to exist = to be temporally present tout court, but that for temporal items, to exist = to be temporally present. This makes him an existence presentist with respect to temporalia. Recall that for Lowe, all change is existential (substantial) change. See (4) supra. 

10) We tend to think of time as the dimension of change, a fourth dimension in addition to the three spatial dimensions.  We tend to assume that "time is a dimension in which reality as a whole is extended." (Monist, 283)  If you think that objects persist by perduring, by having different temporal parts at different times, then you are making this assumption.  But most, though not all, endurantists make the same assumption when they say that an object endures by being 'wholly present' at each time at which the object exists. Lowe denies that time is a dimension. For if there are no times ordered by the B-relations, earlier and later, then time is not a dimension. Reality is not temporally extended.  Lowe seeks to uphold an endurantism that does not presuppose that time is a dimension.

11) Lowe's view of time is thoroughly dynamic by contrast with the static character of time on eternalism, and with the partially static and partially dynamic theories of Growing Block and Spotlight.  The reality of time "consists simply in the reality of change . . . . (140)  The latter "constitutes" temporal passage.  This of course implies that without change, there is no time; but we can live with that.  What's more, there are no events and there are no times, and so there is no present time.  Lowe concludes that we need no account of what times are, and in particular, no "ersatzist" account of time in terms of abstract objects such as propositions. He is opposing views like that of Craig Bourne, for whom "a time is a set of propositions that states the other truths about what happens at that time." (A Future for Presentism, Oxford UP, 2006, 52.)

12) The view that all change is existential change commits Lowe to the view that properties of things in time are not universals but tropes or modes (particularized properties). These are not temporal parts of objects.  (141) Tropes are therefore consistent with endurantism.  Suppose that a changes from being F at t1 to G at t2.  "We can continue to say that a itself exists at both t1 and t2 despite having no temporal parts, thus being, in that sense, 'wholly present' at both of these times." (141) I note in passing how Lowe helps himself to talk of times. 

13) The object that has tropes is neither a bundle of tropes not a bare particular or substratum that supports them. The 'relation' between an object and its tropes is left unclear. (141).

14)  Objects persist through changes in intrinsic properties. How? Change in intrinsic properties occurs when "monadic tropes"  successively "come into and go out of existence while it (the object) stays in existence." (142)

15)  Lowe's presentism: "When 'time passes' the content of reality itself changes -- entities come into and go out of existence." This is intended "literally and absolutely." Going out of existence is absolute annihilation. (146)  But then coming into existence would have to be creation out of nothing, would it not?

16) Yet "some things that exist today already existed yesterday." (146) For example, the very same person who exists and is 'wholly present' now also existed and was 'wholly present' yesterday. (146)

17) Only present objects and tropes exist.  The sum-total of these entities is ever changing. What ceases to be present is annihilated. But not everything that exists at present is annihilated at the same time.  Suppose Elliot, who was drunk yesterday, is sober today.  Elliot yesterday co-existed with a D-trope, and Elliot today co-exists with an S-trope. The tropes, however,  are not coexistent with each other since the D-trope was annihilated by the passage of time while the S-trope presently exists. Lowe's presentism thus implies the non-transitivity of co-existence. It also implies that, while temporal reality is ever created and annihilated by  the passage of time, not everything is annihilated or created at the same time.  The annihilation of Elliot's drunkenness left Elliot the object unscathed. 

Comments

[Cyrus]

Bill,

My Lowe is rusty:

12) The view that all change is existential change commits Lowe to the view that properties of things in time are not universals but tropes or modes (particularized properties).

But by the time of these papers Lowe holds that properties are unities of modes and universals. (This, if I recall, is a shift from his earlier work.)

I assume that you're not just using "tropes or modes" for this unity in virtue of the "victory of particularity", or an Armstrong-like argument against them.

More once I figure out which box my copies of Lowe are in. . .

[BV]

Cyrus,

Lowe, p. 141, "I used not to believe in tropes but conceived all properties to be universals."

The change in view, I take it, is that Lowe went from thinking that all properties are universals to the view that some are universals and some are tropes. I'd have to check, but his view might be one according to which Socrates exemplifies the universal and abstract property, humanity, and that this exemplifying gives rise to a property-instance or trope, Socrates' humanity, which inheres in S. but is not a state of affairs or an event, but a particularized property.

[Cyrus]

Bill,

I finally found my Lowe copies.

Something else to watch out for is that Lowe uses characterize, instantiate, and exemplify in distinct ways. He has modes instantiating universals, modes characterizing particular substances, and universals characterizing kind universals.

I need to verify this, but I have a note in the margin of margin that suggests Lowe holds that particular substances are kind instances.

[Cyrus]

See section 6.4 (Instantiation Versus Characterization) of The Four-Category Ontology for more on the latter distinction.

[Cyrus]

Bill,

More later, but here is some support for the particular substances as kind-instance thesis:

The first category and in a certain sense the most fundamental—even though in another sense all four of our categories are equally 'basic'—is the category of individual substance or particular object, which I have already mentioned. Corresponding to this category of particular, there is a basic category of universal, namely, the category of substantial universal or substantial kind, the correspondence consisting in the fact that each individual substance necessary instantiates—is a particular instance of—some substantial kind. The natural kinds tiger and gold, cited earlier, are examples of substantial universals. . .

E. J. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology, 21.

Lowe explicitly states that substantial particulars instantiate substantial kinds in his ontological square. He has modes instantiating property-universals in the same square.

[Cyrus]

Bill,

Here it is explicitly:

We need to be clear about exactly how items in these four categories are related to one another. I have already remarked that the relationship between an individual substance and its kind is one of instantiation, as is the relationship between a property- or relation-instance—a trope—and the corresponding non-substantial universal. A particular tiger is an instance of the kind tiger, and a particular redness—say of a certain individual flower—is an instance of the non-substantial universal or property redness.

E. J. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology, 21.

Lowe continues, distinguishing instantiation, characterization, and exemplification:

But this still leaves certain other crucial relationships between members of the different basic categories undescribed. Most importantly, there is the relationship between a property- or relation-instance and the individual substance or substances to which that instance belongs or which that instance relates. I call this the relationship of characterization. A particular betweenness characterizes the three individual substances (taken in a certain order) which it relates. (Here I leave aside the question of whether points of space exist as relata of betweenness relations and, if so, whether they qualify as 'individual substances'.) Paralleling this relationship at the level of particulars is a corresponding relationship at the level of universals. For, just as we say that a particular redness characterizes a certain individual substance, such as a particular flower, so we may say that the property or non-substantial universal redness characterizes a certain substantial universal or kind, such as the natural kind tomato. Speaking quite generally, then, and prescinding from the distinction between universals and particulars, we may say that characterization is a relationship between property- or relation-like entities on the one hand and substantial entities on the other. We may summarize our proposals so far in the form of the diagram in Fig. 2.1 which—as I mentioned in the previous chapter—I like to call 'the Ontological Square'.

It will be clear from this diagram that one important species of relationship between entities of different basic categories has yet to be given a name by us. This is the relationship between an individual substance and some non-substantial universal to which it is indirectly related either via one of its property or relation-instances or via its substantial kind. I propose to call this sort of relationship exemplification. Thus, in the present system of ontology, it is vital to distinguish clearly between instantiation, characterization, and exemplification. An individual ripe tomato instantiates the kind tomato, is characterized by a particular redness, and exemplifies the non-substantial universal or property redness. The tomato's particular redness, by contrast, instantiates the property redness. And the kind tomato is characterized by the property redness.

ibid., 21–23.

It's worth noting that he also states that modes or properties that characterize substantial particulars or universals don't constitute them in (I believe) the later, aforementioned section on the instantiation versus characterization.

It's also worth noting that even though Lowe talks about “relation-instances” in these paragraphs, he thinks that there are probably no relations, and makes a good show of reducing or eliminating them in There Are (Probably) No Relations. I've emailed you a copy in case you're interested.

[Cyrus]

One last, even clearer quote on individual objects as kind-instances (I don't want to belabour):

The topmost category is the category of entities or beings, to which anything whatever uncontentiously belongs. At the next immediate level, there is an exhaustive and exclusive division between universals and particulars. Universals then divide into two sub-categories: properties and relations on the one hand and kinds on the other. The particular instances of kinds are individual objects, whereas the particular instances of properties and relations are, respectively, monadic and relational modes

ibid., 38.

The bolding is mine.