Maverick Philosopher

Pain and Time: An Aporetic Triad

Here are three extremely plausible propositions that cannot all be true:

1) A wholly past (felt) pain is not nothing: it is real.

2) For (felt) pains, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived.

3) Wholly past (felt) pains are not perceived.

Ad (1): To say that an item is wholly past is to say that it does not overlap the present. A felt or phenomenal pain is a pain exactly as it is experienced  from the first-person point of view of the one who endures it, with all and only the properties it appears to have from the point of view of the one who endures it.  It is not to be confused with the physical cause of the pain if there is one. Now yesterday's excruciating migraine headache, which is wholly past, is not nothing: it happened. It is now an object of veridical memory. Since the memory is veridical, its intentional object cannot be unreal.  The pain  is also a subject of presently true past-tensed statements such as 'The pain was awful.' Given that veritas sequitur esse, that no true statement is about what is wholly unreal or nonexistent, yesterday's migraine pain cannot be unreal or nonexistent. The remembered wholly past pain is actual not merely possible; factual not fictional; real not imaginary.  Of course, it is not temporally present. But it is real nonetheless.  It is or exists. It is included in the ontological inventory.  To deny this is to deny the reality of the past. 

Ad (2): The being or existence of a felt pain is just its being-perceived.  A felt pain cannot exist apart from its being experienced. Again, it is not to be confused with an external, objective, physical cause of the pain sensation, if there is one.  Esse est percipi is not true of the physical cause of the felt pain.  But surely it is true of the pain precisely as it is endured from the first-person perspective of the one who endures it.

Ad (3): Yesterday's particular pains are over, and thank goodness: they are not being perceived or felt or experienced by anyone.  

Each of these propositions is extremely plausible if not self-evident. Each is, or is very close to being, a Moorean fact, a datum, a given, something not reasonably denied. I myself am inclined to say that each of the limbs of the triad is true. But of course they cannot all be true on pain of logical contradiction.  Any two limbs of the triad entail the negation of the remaining limb. For example, The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3).  What we have here, then, is a paradigmatic philosophical problem: apparent data in logical conflict.

To avoid a logical contradiction, we must reject or revise one or more of the propositions in a principled way, i.e., by endorsing a theory that excludes the proposition.  Here are four solution strategies:

A. Deny (1) by Adopting Presentism. This is the view that all and only what exists now, exists.  This is not the tautology that all and only what exists now exists now, or exists in the present-tensed sense of 'exists.' It is a substantive (non-tautological) and highly controversial metaphysical thesis that restricts the ontological inventory to temporally present items.  To avoid tautology, we can formulate it like this: all and only the temporally present exists simpliciter.  (What exactly 'simpliciter' means here is of course part of the problem. Tenseless existence is presumably the best candidate for existence simpliciter.) Presentism entails that wholly past and wholly future items do not exist, are not real. So yesterday's pain does not exist simpliciter, and (1) is false. Problem solved.  The past pain, being wholly past, is nothing at all. It is not just that it is now nothing at all -- which is a mere tautology given the standard meanings of  'past,' 'present,' and 'now' -- but that it is nothing at all, period!

But of course the problem is solved only if presentism makes sense and is true.  And that is a big 'if.'

B. Deny (1) by Rejecting Veritas Sequitur Esse. 'JFK was assassinated' is past-tensed but presently true.  It is true now that he was assassinated. But there are no truths about what does not exist. So I reason: since 'JFK was assassinated' is true, and is about JFK, he must (tenselessly) exist: wholly past items exist (are real, have being) despite being temporally non-present. You might resist my conclusion by making a Meinongian move: there are truths about beingless items and one can refer to such items.  Even though JFK has ceased to exist, he is still in some sense available to serve as an object of reference and a subject of true statements.

C. Deny (2) by Adopting  Materialism about the Mental. A token-token identity theorist will say that a particular pain episode is just a brain state. Now such a state, being wholly objective, can exist without being felt by anyone, in which case (2) is false. The eliminative materialist proposes a more radical solution: there are no mental states at all. Therefore, there are no felt pains and (2) is false.  

D. Deny (3) by Adopting 'Eternalism.'  This is a position in the philosophy of time entailed by the B-theory of time. The B-theorist denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege.  All times and their occupants are both temporally and existentially equal. Every time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter.  This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness.  There just is no irreducible monadic mind-independent property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The B-theory excludes presentism according to which there is a genuine, irreducible, property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property.  Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent.  If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist, not just now (which is trivial) but at all.  The B-theory leads to what is known in the trade as 'eternalism' according to which the catalog of what exists is not exhausted by present items, but includes past and future ones as well.  See here for more.

If eternalism is true, then (3) above is false. The third limb of our antilogism states that past felt pains are not perceived. But if not perceived, then they do not exist. But on eternalism they do exist, tenselessly, whence it follows that yesterday's headache is tenselessly being perceived, whatever that might mean.

In a thorough discussion, I would then proceed to argue that each of these four attempts at a solution requires theories that are as problematic as the original problems.  Once that case is made, a case will have been made that the above problem is an aporia in a strict sense, a problem that is fully intelligible and genuine, but insoluble by us.

Addendum (11/18)

Jonathan Barber writes, 

I think you could distinguish between (a) the quale of pain (the raw sense data) and (b) the experience of pain – the mental effect produced by the raw sense data. Past qualia are not real - they simply do not exist. Past experiences are real. So in proposition 1 of your aporetic triad you are using 'pain' in sense (b), whereas in propositions 2 and 3 you are using 'pain' in sense (a).

Response.  Barber's criticism, in terms I find more congenial, would go like this. There is a difference between a pain experience and its content, where the latter is the sensory quale. Past qualia are not real. Past experiences are real.  'Felt pain' in (1) refers to the experience whereas in 'felt pain' in (2) and (3) refer to the quale. I would say in response that while one can distinguish in thought between experience and quale, neither can exist in reality without the other.  So if the past pain experience exists, then so does its qualitative content.

Do You Disappear When You Die? Comments on Yourgrau

Here, by Palle Yourgrau. Comments by BV in blue.  HT: Vlastimil Vohanka.

Many philosophers seem to think you simply 'disappear' when you die, 'erased' from the framework of reality as one would rub out a drawing on the blackboard. I think it would be a serious mistake to think this way. Time maga­zine had it right when it represented the death of bin Laden, hence his 'nonexistence,' with a picture of him on the cover, crossed out with a big X. If you’re lecturing on the capture and killing of bin Laden, you might draw a picture of him on the blackboard, and then conclude your lecture by drawing, as Time did, a big X across that drawing. That would be the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do would be to simply erase the drawing, to rub it out. A blank blackboard does not represent the death of bin Laden. On the contrary, it represents nothing. Bin Laden, on dying, did not become nothing, just as he did not come from nothing. (Ex nihilo, nihil fit.)

Let us assume that a (human) person is just an animated human body and that there is no Platonic soul or Cartesian res cogitans or anything relevantly similar of an immaterial nature that continues to exist after bodily death.  Let us assume that at death all of a person's mental and spiritual functions cease. The issue is whether a person, upon dying, becomes nothing. To make the question totally clear, assume that the person's corpse has been fully cremated. Is a person after death and cremation nothing at all? I am with Yourgrau part of the way: Bin Laden is not now nothing. One simple consideration is this: bin Laden is an object of veridical memories and the subject of many true propositions.  So he can't be nothing.  The wholly past is actual, not merely possible; factual, not fictional; real, not imaginary. Those are datanic claims, it seems to me, or very near datanic. They lay claim to being Moorean facts beyond reasonable dispute.

If presentism in the philosophy of time is the claim that all and only temporally present items exist, then presentism is false. The dead rise up to mock those who would restrict the ontological inventory to what exists at present.  At Halloween and at every season.

What about Yourgrau's claim that bin Laden did not come from nothing?  That is true if all it means is that prior to his conception there were two gametes that had to join to produce his zygotic self. In simpler terms, bin Laden did not come from nothing because he had material causes and they were not nothing. (Nor was the copulation of his parents nothing.)  But it is false if it means that, prior to bin Laden's conception, that very individual, bin Laden, was something real, and not nothing. 

The following temporal asymmetry strongly recommends itself: what no longer exists is not nothing; but what does not yet exist is nothing. It seems quite clear that we do refer successfully to wholly past individuals and events such as bin Laden and his being killed.  It is rather less clear how anyone, including God, could refer to bin Laden, that very individual qua individual, before his conception.  See A Most Remarkable Prophecy for some reasons.

But let's not worry at the moment about future individuals, if any; let's focus on past individuals, and, in particular, the human dead, about whom we all  have a lively interest.

Just this, however, seems to have escaped many, if not most philosophers who’ve written about the metaphysics of death. Shelly Kagan, for example, writes in his popular study Death that “nonexistence is nonexistence. It’s no kind of con­dition or state that I am in at all [after I’ve died]." Kagan seems to believe that when you’ve died and ceased to exist, there’s “no one left” to be in any sort of state or con­dition. There’s no one left even to be in the state of nonex­istence, to have the property of nonexistence. He seems to subscribe to W.V. Quine’s doctrine that “in our common- sense usage of ‘exist’, that [bin Laden] doesn’t exist, means simply that there is no such entity at all.” If there’s no such entity, ob­viously, there’s no such entity to occupy the state of nonexist­ence, to have the property of nonexistence.

As I said, this is a widely held view among philosophers of death. To choose another prominent example, consider what Francis Kamm writes in Morality, Mortality: “Life can sometimes be worse for a person than the alternative of nonexistence, even though nonexistence is not a better state of being.” For Kamm, nonexistence is never a better state of being than is exist­ence because for her, apparently, nonexistence is not a state of being at all.

Kamm and Kagan, however, are mistaken. What they say is true not of Socrates but of the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy is indeed not in a state of nonexistence for the simple reason that there is no such person as the tooth fairy. By con­trast, there is such a person as Socrates. Nathan Salmon, in “What Is Existence?” puts the matter succinctly: “‘Kripke exists’ is true whereas ‘Napoleon exists’ is false. Kripke has existence. Napoleon has nonexistence.”

When you die and cease to exist, you aren’t 'erased', you aren’t 'rubbed out', nor do you turn into a different kind of being. You forfeit your existence, not your essence. Death affects that you are, not what you are. Thus, assuming, for the sake of argument, that persons are concrete objects and that that is part of their essence, when Socrates died he didn’t cease being concrete. He went from being an existent concrete object to being a nonexistent concrete object. And the same is true, analogously, of an inorganic concrete ob­ject like a rock. This will no doubt sound paradoxical (not to say, downright crazy) to many people. Surely, what’s not there can’t be concrete! After all, if something’s concrete, you can trip over it in the dark, whereas there’s no need to worry about tripping over the nonexistent. True enough, if we’re speaking about an actual, an existent concrete object. But here we’re speaking of concrete objects that have ceased to exist— i.e. that have lost their existence, but not their es­sence. (Indeed, what would it mean for something to lose its essence? What would make it that very thing that had lost it?

The moral, then, is this: Concreteness should not be con­fused with actuality.

What Yourgrau is proposing is a Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian theory of wholly past individuals such as Socrates.  Socrates, unlike the Tooth Fairy, is real, not imaginary or fictional or mythical. But Socrates does not exist.  His present nonexistence, though, does not entail his being nothing at all. He is something: a nonexistent essence. Yourgrau, by contrast is an existent essence. But Yourgrau too will die, and when he does, he will become a nonexistent essence and join the company of Socrates and all the other concrete nonexistent individual essences.  To get a sense of what is meant by 'individual essence' here, consider any concrete thing that exists such as the table in front of you and 'peel away' (in thought) its existence.  'Peel away' the thing's Dasein.  What's left over is the thing's quiddity or whatness or Sosein or individual essence.  But don't confuse this individual essence with an abstract property such as a Plantingian haecceity. It is not a property of the thing, but the thing itself 'minus' its existence. And it is not abstract, but concrete.  The distinction between (individual) essence and existence, while made by the mind, has a foundation in things, a basis in reality.  We are in the vicinity of the distinctio realis of the Thomists.  But as I read Yourgrau, he is pushing further in a Meinongian direction.  If I understand Thomas, an essence cannot be without existence; what Yourgrau is envisaging, however, are individual essences that are without existence. This is tantamount to Meinong's Independence of Sosein from Sein.

So you've got your existent essences and your nonexistent essences.  When you die, you don't disappear or cease to be; you remain as a nonexistent essence.  You don't remain in existence as a nonexistent essence; that would be contradictory. So what Yourgrau might be saying is that you remain in being as a nonexistent essence.  Accordingly, essences ARE but only some of them EXIST. Indications are that Yourgrau holds that existent essences are all and only the temporally present ones. That would make him a kind of presentist.  He would avoid my anti-presentist objection above by saying that, while the dead do not exist, they are.  Or he could go full Meinongian and say that a dead person is an essence or Sosein that has no Sein whatsoever.  This is Meinong's famous doctrine of Aussersein according to which nonexistent objects are jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Accordingly, when I remember my dead mother and say things about her, she is the beingless object of my veridical memories and the beingless subject of my statements. 

Here is one place where I would insert the blade of critique. It is difficult to understand how there could be items that have no being whatsoever but are yet mind-independent.  My dead mother is irremovably resident in the past no matter what anyone says or thinks about her, and whether anyone thinks about her at all.Her fate, and yours too, dear reader, will be to enter oblivion, and sooner than you think. But to be forever and wholly forgotten is not to be nothing. She will forever be something. But how can anything be something if it has no being at all?

But Yourgrau needn't go all the way with Meinong. He could say that the dead, while they they do not exist, yet ARE.

A difference between me and Yourgrau is that I would say that the dead (and all wholly past items) are actual, not merely possible. Yourgrau does not say this since for him, to exist is to be actual.  But then what is the modal status of the dead? Here the critical blade comes out again. 

If, when a thing ceases to exist, it ceases to be actual, what modal status does it acquire? 'Actual' is a modal word; it is a member of the (alethic) modal family including 'possible,' 'merely possible,' 'impossible,' 'necessary,' 'contingent,' and 'noncontingent.'  So when Socrates ceased to exist,  did he become merely possible? No. Past individuals are not merely possible individuals. They actually were. 

Since Yourgrau accepts concrete individual essences, he might say the following. Before Socrates was conceived, he WAS as a merely possible individual, an essence without existence.  When he came into existence, he became actual: his essence was actualized. When he ceased to exist, he ceased to be actual and became -- what? An impossible individual essence? (If nothing can have two beginnings of existence, and our man has had one, then it is impossible that he exist and be actual again.)  There are nasty questions here.  For example, how can the modal status of an item change over time?  More later. It's Saturday night. Time to punch the clock, pour myself a drink, and tune in Judge Jeannine.

This difficulty of speaking coherently of the dead is by no means confined to philosophers of death, nor, indeed, to philosophers of any stripe. It’s especially noticeable in book dedications, where authors simply cannot bring themselves to refer to the dead, themselves, substituting instead refer­ence to the memory of the dead. When you think about it, however, this is absurd. Unlike the dead, our memories of the dead are alive and well, and in any case, are a poor substitute for the loved ones being honored in the dedications. It’s your mother who taught you to love music, not your memories of your mother, your father who first took you to a poetry reading, not your memories of your father, and so on. What could be more different from a dead parent than a living memory? The nonexistence of the dead should make us more attuned to what’s real, not less. For the dead relative is every bit as real as, though less existent than, the living memory. “Never . . . think of a thing or being we love but have not actually before our eyes,” Simone Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace, “without reflecting that perhaps this thing has been destroyed, or this person is dead. May our sense of reality not be dissolved by this thought but made more intense. . . . Love needs reality”

This is an extract from the book 'Death and Nonexistence' by Palle Yourgrau (Oxford University Press, August 2019).

Yourgrau makes some excellent and true points here.  The dead are real.  When I remember my dead mother I remember her, not my memory of her.  But his Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian theory raises some difficult questions.  

Peter Unger on the Emptiness of the Present-Eternalist Debate

Peter Unger doubts, with respect to the past, but not with respect to the future, whether there is any “concretely substantial difference” between presentism and eternalism (Empty Ideas, Oxford UP, 2014, 176 ff.). He argues that any appearance of a substantial difference is “illusory.” Both parties agree on such contingent past-tensed truths as that dinosaurs once roamed the earth. They agree that there are such truths about the past whether we know them or not. The parties to the dispute further agree that these truths are fixed and determinate, and as such unalterable. To employ one of Unger's examples, was Abe Lincoln as a boy ever friends with a boy named 'David'? According to Unger, he either was or was not, and there is a fact of the matter one way or the other. No matter that we don't know which. Unger: “. . . our Presentist and our Eternalist will agree that 'what's past is already fixed and determined; it's a done deal which cannot possible be undone.” (2014, 177) In sum, both parties to the controversy agree that there are truths about the past; that some of them are known to be true; that these truths, whether known or not, form a complete set; and that these truths cannot be changed.

Unger's point is that presentist and eternalist differ only in the ways they talk and think about the collection of agreed-upon Moorean facts. The eternalist, but not the presentist, will say that dinosaurs tenselessly exist and tenselessly roam the earth at times millions of years earlier than the time at which the eternalist speaks, etc. The presentist, but not the eternalist, will just use ordinary English with its tenses: dinosaurs don't exist now, but they used to exist millions of years ago, and when they existed they roamed the earth, etc. There is no “concretely substantial difference” between what the presentist holds and what the eternalist holds with respect to the past. (2014, 178) Their disagreement is trivial and insubstantial because they differ merely on how to talk about a body of agreed-upon facts.

But this can't be right since, while there is much that presentists and eternalists agree on, there are substantive points of disagreements that divide them. Unger says on behalf of the presentist that “a tenseless way of talking and thinking will have us (at least tend to) 'spatialize time,' thus (tending to make or) making obscure to us the dynamic aspect of concrete reality . . . .” (2014, 177, emphasis in original). Right here Unger himself unwittingly points to a substantive disagreement that divides presentists and eternalists, or at least those (the majority) of the latter who are B-eternalists. Is there a dynamic aspect of concrete reality? Surely it is a substantive question whether concrete, mind-independent reality is static or dynamic. If real time is exhausted by the B-series, then B-eternalism advocates a static view of time and change unacceptable to presentists.

It surely seems that the following related questions are also substantive: Is temporal passage real or is it mind-dependent? Is time a fourth dimension of a four-dimensional manifold, space-time, which features time as its fourth dimension? Is the existence of temporal items independent of when they exist, or does the existence of such items depend on when they exist? Is existence reducible to temporal presentness, or not? Are the truths about the past on which presentists and eternalists agree brute truths or are they truths grounded in items external to the truths? Suppose we pursue the last question.

Presentist and eternalist agree on the contingent truth that Socrates existed but does not now exist. What is this truth about? The natural answer is that it is about Socrates. The presentist, however, for whom only the present exists, cannot avail himself of this natural answer. For if present items alone exist, then Socrates does not exist in which case he cannot be referred to: the reference relation is such that, necessarily, if a name refers to, or is about, a thing, then the thing exists. The presentist has to say, implausibly, that 'Socrates' is about something else such as Socrates' haecceity, or else that the name is not about anything, and that therefore the truth in question is a brute truth. To say that it is a brute truth is to say that it is just true! When he was alive, the present-tensed 'Socrates exists,' or rather the proposition expressed by the Greek equivalent, was about Socrates, and true in virtue of Socrates' existence, but after he ceased to exist, 'Socrates existed,' which became true on Socrates' demise, is not about him. That is surely strange.

The eternalist, recoiling in disgust, will say that the truth that Socrates existed is about Socrates who exists tenselessly at (some but not all of the) times earlier than the time of this observation, and that, therefore, the truth in question is not a brute truth, but one grounded in the (tenseless) existence of Socrates. Whatever the merits of the competing views, we certainly seem to have here a substantive disagreement, one that pivots on the question whether singular, affirmative truths about merely past items need truth-makers or truth-grounds. Maybe they do; maybe they don't. Either way, this is not a dispute about different ways of talking and thinking about some agreed-upon collection of Moorean facts.

Unger also says on behalf of the presentist that

. . . there aren't any such tenseless senses of, or forms of, 'exist' and 'be,' and any other naturally available constructions featuring verbs. . . . when it is said that two and three make five, the only real sense of that is the same as the single sense of what's stated when it's said that two and three now make five. . . . So, properly, we should say that two and three always did make five, and they now do make five, and they always will make five. (2014, 176-7.)

But here too there are points of substantive disagreement. It is a substantive question whether or not numbers are timeless entities. Suppose they are. Then the copula in '7 is prime' will have to be tenseless. Talk about the timeless is tenseless. Since it is a substantive question whether there are timeless items, it is a substantive question whether there are tenseless senses of 'exist' and 'be.' Suppose I say to my class, “David Hume is an empiricist who believes that every significant idea is traceable to a corresponding sensory impression.” It is an interesting substantive question whether the verb forms in this sentence are tenseless or tensed.

Non-Substantial Change, Trope Bundle Theory, and States of Affairs

I am presently writing a review article for Metaphysica about Bo R. Meinertsen's Metaphysics of States of Affairs: Truthmaking, Universals, and a Farewell to Bradley's Regress (Springer 2018). Since I will probably incorporate the following critical remarks into my review, I want to give Bo a chance to respond. 

Substantial and Non-Substantial Change

One way a thing can change is by coming into being or passing away. This is called substantial change.  We could also call it existential change. The other way could be called alterational change. This occurs when a thing, persisting for a time, alters in respect of its intrinsic properties during that time.  Consider the ripening of a tomato. This typically involves the tomato's going from green to red.  This change in respect of color is an alterational, or accidental, or non-substantial change. One and the same entity (substance) persists through a non-zero interval of time and instantiates different properties (accidents) at different times.  As I would put it, there is no alterational change without existential unchange: numerically the same tomato is green, hard, inedible, etc. at time t and red, soft, and edible at later time t*. Bo and I are both assuming that things in time persist by enduring, not by perduring. 

The Problem of Non-Substantial Change of Continuants

This is 

. . . the problem of how to ground the fact that continuants 'persist through change'. For instance, a tomato's changing from red to green [sic] is a case of non-substantial change, and how do we ground the fact that the tomato that has changed exists both before and after the change? The bundles of basic trope theory essentially have the members they actually have and are therefore incompatible with such change. (Meinertsen 2018, 49)

The problem is that we want to say that one and the same tomato goes from being green to being red. We want to be able to uphold the diachronic identity of the tomato as it alters property-wise.  But this is impossible on basic bundle-theoretic trope theory because trope bundles have their members essentially.  This means that if bundle B has trope t as a member, then it is impossible that B exist without having t as a member. The counterintuitive upshot is that a green tomato assayed as a bundle of tropes ceases to exist when it ceases to be green.  This implies that our tomato when so assayed cannot undergo alterational, or accidental, or non-substantial change when it goes from green to red, hard to soft, etc.  It implies that every change is a substantial change. I agree with Meinertsen that this is a powerful objection to the basic bundle-of-tropes assay of ordinary particulars.

Does a State of Affairs Ontology Face the Same Problem?

Meinertsen says that it does not:

State of affairs ontology has no problem in dealing with the problem of non-substantial change. None of the properties of a particular in a state of affairs -- which as we shall see in Chap. 5 is a bare particular -- is included in it, as opposed to instantiated by it. Hence, it changes non-substantially if and only it ceases to instantiate at least one of these properties or whenever it instantiates a new property. (49)

It seems to me, though, that states of affairs (STOA) ontology faces, if not the very same problem, then a closely related one.

Critique

It is true that a bare particular does not include its properties: the bare or thin particular stands to its properties in the asymmetrical external relation of instantiation.  So what Meinertsen is telling us is that it is the bare particular that remains numerically the same over time while some of its properties are replaced by others. This is what grounds the diachronic numerical identity of the continuant.  The substratum of change is the bare particular 'in' the tomato, not the tomato as a whole.

But this answer is less than satisfactory. What changes over time is not a thin particular, but a thick particular. It is the green tomato with all its properties that loses one or more of them and becomes a red tomato.  This is supported by the fact that we do not see or otherwise perceive the thin particular; we do, however, see and otherwise perceive thick particulars.  What we have before us is a tomato that we see to be green and feel to be  hard, etc.,  and that we then later see to be red and feel  to be soft, etc.  

Arguably, then, it is the thick particular that is the substratum of non-substantial change, not the thin particular. If so, then a problem arises similar to the problem that arose for the bundle-of-tropes theory. How?

Well, the green tomato is a STOA whose nature is N1, where N1 is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the intrinsic properties of the green tomato. The red tomato is a STOA whose nature is N2, where N2 is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the intrinsic properties of the red tomato.  These STOAs differ numerically for they differ in one or more constituents.  The first has greenness as a constituent, the second does not. A STOA is a complex, and two complexes are the same iff they have all the same constituents. 

So what's the problem? The problem is that any non-substantial change in the green tomato assayed as a STOA destroys its identity just as surely as any non-substantial change in the green tomato assayed as a bundle of tropes destroys its identity. On either account, there is no adequate explanation of non-substantial change. This is because there is no numerically self-same substratum of change that endures through the change in properties. The thin particular is not plausibly regarded as the substratum. I note en passant that Gustav Bergmann regarded bare particulars as momentary entities, not as persisting entities.

The problem set forth as an aporetic sextad:

1. There is no change in intrinsic properties of an ordinary particular over time without a numerically self-same substratum of change. (endurantist assumption)
2. The green tomato changes to red. (pre-theoretical datum)
3. The green tomato that changes to red is a thick particular. (pre-theoretical datum)
4. Thick particulars are STOAs. (theoretical claim)
5. STOAs are complexes. (true by definition)
6. Two complexes are the same iff they share all constituents. (theoretical claim)

These six propositions are collectively inconsistent. My question to Meinertsen: which of these propositions will you reject? Presumably, he will have to reject (3) and say that 'the green tomato' refers to an invisible thin particular, and it is this item that changes from green to red and that serves as the substratum of change.

What do I say?  For now I say merely that, pace Bo, on the issue before us, STOA ontology is no better than the bundle-of-tropes theory.

Better 'Has Been' than 'Never Was'

Why, if the present alone is real? 

The wholly past no longer exists. But this truism, accepted by all who understand English and its verb tenses, is not what the presentist in the philosophy of time maintains. He intends something substantive and non-tautological: what no longer exists does not exist at all, and what does not yet exist does not exist at all.  But if the first half of the substantive thesis is true, then why is it better to be a has-been rather than a never-was? X cannot be better than y unless x is different from y.

Presentism, taken full-strength, implies that there is no difference between what has been and what never was. For the wholly past has fallen into the same hole out of which the 'never was' never arose. How then can presentism be common sense as many of its noted contemporary defenders say? It appears to conflict with the widespread commonsensical intuition that 'has been' is better than and therefore different from 'never was.' 

Sometimes, when we reflect upon our accomplishments, we append the thought, "And no one can ever take that away from me." You are no longer at the top of your game, but you once were -- and no one can take that away from you. They said you couldn't do it but you did, and they can't take that away from you. 

Interestingly, not even divine omnipotence extends to the erasure of the past. What was is forever inscribed in indelible ink in the roster of being.  Aquinas admitted it: not even God can restore a virgin. 

Two points. First, what was has an ontological status superior to that which never was -- which has no ontological status at all. Second, what was, though logically contingent at the time of its occurrence, is now in a sense necessary, but without ceasing to be logically contingent.  The mere passage of time works  a modal promotion, from contingency to necessitas per accidens, accidental necessity.  Socrates freely drank the hemlock, hence his drinking was logically contingent.  But once past, the deed cannot be undone by god or mortal, chance or fate. Cannot. Under the aspect of eternity, however, the heroic act remains logically contingent.

How curious the reality of the past!  On the one hand, the wholly past seems to possess a lesser degree of being than the present and is therefore inferior to the present in point of reality. On the other, the wholly past, unlike the present, is unalterable. Bad news and good news.

The main point however, is that the past is real, a realm of actualities, not mere possibilities. How that fact jibes with presentism is a nice question.  We can expect from the presentists  some fancy footwork.

Why has presentism been so 'popular' these past ten or twenty years?

The Past Present

The past is gone, you say? But it has brought you to this fullness of life, this level of accomplishment, this richness of memory, and this wealth of experience. Thus is the past present.

Ostrich Presentism

The following remark in Wittgenstein's Zettel seems to fit my sparring partner, Bad Ostrich, to a T.

456. Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called "loss of problems." (Problemverlust) Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world become broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial. Russell and H. G. Wells suffer from this.

Here is a problem, or rather a question, that seems genuine and 'deep.'  Do only present items exist, or do wholly past and wholly future items also exist?  For this question to make sense, 'exist' in both occurrences cannot be in the present tense. If it were, 'Only present items exist' would be logically true and 'Past and present and future items all exist' would be logically false. The presentist claim would then be non-substantive (trivial), and the 'eternalist' claim would be substantive, but necessarily false.

Well, maybe the question just doesn't make sense.  This seems to be the Ostrich's view. He seems to think that logical as opposed to metaphysical presentism is the only game in town: 'Only the present exists' is susceptible of only one reading, the logical reading, whereas I think it is susceptible of two readings, the logical one and a metaphysical one.  In one of his earlier comments, the Ostrich writes:

He [the logical presentist] is putting forward not a substantive metaphysical thesis, but rather a substantive thesis about language, a thesis about the meaning of ‘exists’ and ‘at present’.

The thesis, I take it, is that 'exists' can only be used correctly in the present-tensed way.  If so, 'Boethius exists' is nonsense, if it is a stand-alone, as opposed to an embedded, sentence. ('It was the case that Boethius exists' is not nonsense.) In other words, 'exists' has no correct tenseless use.

Now if there are timeless entities, then 'exists' can be used both tenselessly and correctly. But I expect the Ostrich will have no truck with the timeless.  His claim will then presumably be that 'exists' has no correct tenseless use in respect of any temporal item, and that temporal items are the only ones on offer.

What about the disjunctively omnitemporal use that I have already explained? Surely it is true to say that Boethius exists in that he either existed or exists or will exist, where each disjunct is tensed.  This is true because the first disjunct is true.  The Ostrich could say that the disjunctively omnitemporal use is not genuinely tenseless since it is parasitic upon tensed expresssions.

The Ostrich bids us consider

. . . the question of whether a thing could exist without existing in the present. The logical presentist might then question what is meant by ‘no longer exists’. The natural interpretation is ‘existed, but does not exist’. But then the thing doesn’t exist, period. 

Using tensed language we can say, truly, that Boethius existed, but does not exist.  Why not be satisfied with this?  

The past-tensed 'Boethius existed' is true. It is true now.  What makes it true? The Ostrich will presumably say that nothing makes it true, and there is no need for anything to make it true; it is just true!  I expect the Ostrich to adopt A. N. Prior's redundancy theory of the present according to which everything that is presently true is simply true. (Cf. C. Bourne, 2006, 42 f.)  Just as 'It is true that ____' is redundant. 'It is now the case that ___' is redundant.

For Prior, all tensed sentences are present-tensed.  Thus the past-tensed 'Boethius existed' MEANS that it is now the case that Boethius existed.  Given the redundancy of 'It is now the case that ____,' we are left with 'Boethius existed.'  And that is all!  There is no need or room for a metaphysics of time.  There is nothing more to say about the nature of time than what is said in a perspicuous tense logic.

Thus the Ostrich. I am not satisfied. Past-tensed contingent truths need truth-makers.   'BV exists' is true. It can't just be true. It needs a truth-maker.  A plausible candidate is the 200 lb animal who wears my clothes. It will be the case that BV no longer exists. When that time comes, 'BV existed' will be true. If 'BV exists' needs a truth-maker, then so will 'BV existed.'

As with BV, so with Boethius.

If 'Boethius existed' needs a truth-maker, and nothing at present can serve as truth-maker, then the pressure is on to resist the Ostrich thesis that 'exists' can only be correctly used in the present-tensed way.

"Only the Present Exists"

The above title gives the gist of presentism in the philosophy of time. It is an answer to Quine's ontological inventory question: What is there?  What, by category, should we count as existent?  The presentist answer is that only (temporally) present items exist: wholly past and wholly future items do not exist.  Among these items are times, events, processes, individual substances, property-instantiations.  

'Only the present exists' is doubly ambiguous. 

FIRST AMBIGUITY

It is first of all ambiguous as between a tautology and a substantive thesis. It depends on how one construes 'exists.'  Is it present-tensed?  Then we get a tautology:

TAUT:  Only the present exists at present.

Presentists, however, are not in the business of retailing tautologies. They are out to advance a substantive and therefore non-tautological claim about what exists.  But to do this, their characteristic thesis cannot sport a present-tensed use of 'exists.'  So they have to say something like this:

SUBS: Only the present exists simpliciter.

But what does 'simpliciter' mean?  One might take it to mean 'tenseless.' Thus

SUBS*: Only the present exists tenselessly.

That is not a tautology. One might reasonably object that (SUBS*) is false on the ground that there are (tenselessly) wholly past and wholly future items such as Julius Caesar, his assassination, and my death.  That is what the so-called 'eternalists' maintain: 

E: Past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

All existents are on a par in point of existence. All are equally real.  Boethius exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as I do.  It is just that he exists in the past.  Now most eternalists are B-theorists.  They accept the B-theory of time. And so they would say that 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' can and must be cashed out relationally in terms of the B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with.  Boethius exists in the past in that he tenselessly exists at times earlier than some reference time such as the time of my writing this sentence.  He exists just as I do, but elsewhen.  London is elsewhere relative to here, where I flourish, but is no less real than where I flourish.  Gloomier, no doubt, but no less real.

The main thing for 'present' purposes is that presentism and eternalism are both substantive claims. Neither is a tautology and neither is a contradiction.  Note also that if 'exists' in 'Past, present, and future items all exist' is read present-tensedly, then the sentence just mentioned would be a contradiction. We also note that to formulate either presentism or eternalism we must invoke a tenseless sense of 'exists.' 

SECOND AMBIGUITY

Now we notice that 'Only the present exists' is also ambiguous as between

SPM: Only this present exists: there is (tenselessly) exactly one time, the present, at which everything (tenselessly) exists.

and 

PP:  Only the present present exists: there are (tenselessly) many times, and every time t is such that everything that exists exists (tenselessly) at t.

The first view is Solipsism of the Present Moment.  This is a lunatic view, although it seems logically possible. It amounts to saying that everything that ever existed and everything that ever will exist exists now. Imagine that the entire universe, together with fossils, monuments, memories, and dusty books just now sprang into existence, lasts a while, and then collapses into non-being.

Presentism as usually understood affirms something like (PP), which implies that there are past presents, a present present, and future presents.  The idea is that, at any given time, whether past, present, or future, all that exists is what exists at that time. If reality is the totality of what exists, (PP) implies that reality is always changing. (PP) implies that reality is 'dynamic' whereas (E) implies that it is static.

(PP) strikes me as problematic. (PP) implies that there are (tenselessly) many different times. But there cannot be (tenselessly) many times if at each time there is only what exists at that time. For if at each time there is only what exists at that time, then at each time there are no times other than that time.  Is there a formulation of presentism that is consistent with its own truth?  I suspect that there isn't.

Presentism is at present very popular among philosophers.  I am wondering why.  Some distinguished writers actually say that it is common sense. What?  The proverbial man on the street has no opinion on any of these questions.

What is Time?

Si nemo a me querat, scio, si quarenti explicare velim, nescio.

Augustinus (354-430), Confessiones, lib. XI, cap. 14.

Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.

Augustinus, Contra Academicos, 1. 2. 6

Time is a tangle of the most elusive and difficult topics in philosophy. For a mere mortal to grapple with any of them may be hubris, given the Augustinian predicament: “If no one asks me, I know [what time is]; if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I do not know.”

But undaunted we proceed under the aegis of the second quotation above: “Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great.”

Feser on Vallicella on Feser on the Truth-Maker Objection to Presentism

I argued in my first critical installment that Edward Feser in his stimulating new book, Aristotle's Revenge, does not appreciate the force of the truth-maker objection to presentism in the philosophy of time. Ed's response to me is here. I thank Ed for his response. Herewith, my counter-response.

So, as I say, I don’t think the “truthmaker objection” is very impressive or interesting.  Bill disagrees.  He asks us to consider the following propositions:

(1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

(2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

(3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.

(4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.

The problem, Bill says, is that “the limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent.”

But I would deny that there is any inconsistency.  There is a presently existing fact that serves as the truthmaker for past-tensed truths such as the truth that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March – namely, the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.  To be sure, Caesar no longer exists and his assassination is no longer taking place.  But the fact that he was assassinated on the Ides of March still exists.  

I take it that Ed accepts all four of the above propositions as stated. So far, agreement. We also agree that 'Julius Caesar was assassinated' is past-tensed, true, presently true, contingently true, needs a truth-maker, and has a truth-maker. But whereas I take the fearsome foursome to be collectively logically inconsistent, in that any three of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition,  Ed finds no logical inconsistency whatsoever. Hence he finds the truth-maker objection to presentism to be neither impressive nor interesting.

The nub of the disagreement is precisely this: Ed thinks that the fact that Caesar was assassinated suffices as truth-maker for 'Caesar was assassinated' even if presentism is true. That is precisely what I deny. If by 'fact that,' Ed means 'true proposition that,' then I say that Ed is confusing a truth-bearer with a truth-maker.  But I hesitate to tax him with such an elementary blunder. So I will take him to be saying that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact of Caesar's having been assassinated.  This is a concrete state of affairs, the subject constituent of which is Caesar himself. This state of affairs cannot exist unless Caesar himself exists.  Now Feser grants the obvious point that Caesar no longer exists.  That is is a datum that no reasonable person can deny. It follows that the truth-making state of affairs no longer exists either. 

On presentism, however, what no longer exists does not exist at all.  Presentism is not the tautological thesis that only the present exists at present.  Everybody agrees about that. So-called 'eternalists' in the philosophy of time will cheerfully admit that only present items exist at present. But they will go on to say that wholly past and wholly future items exist as well, and just as robustly as present items. It is just that they exist elsewhen, analogously as Los Angeles, although elsewhere relative to Phoenix, exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as Phoenix.

It is important to be clear about this. Presentism is a hard-core, substantive,  metaphysical thesis, in the same metaphysical boat with the various anti-presentisms, e.g, the misnamed 'eternalism.'   Presentism is not logically true or trivially true; it is not common sense, nor is it 'fallout' from ordinary language.  Speaking with the vulgar I say things like, 'The Berlin Wall no longer exists.' I am using ordinary English to record a well-known historical fact. Saying this, however, I do not thereby commit myself to the controversial metaphysical claim that wholly past items are nothing at all and that present items alone exist, are real, or have being. The Berlin sentence and its innumerable colleagues are neutral with respect to the issues that divide presentists and eternalists.

Presentism is the controversial metaphysical claim that only the (temporally) present exists, period. Or at least that is the gist of it, pending various definitional refinements. On presentism, then, Caesar does not exist at all. If so, there is nothing to ground the truth that Caesar was assassinated. We don't even need to bring in truth-making facts or states of affairs.  It suffices to observe that, on presentism, wholly past individuals such as Caesar do not exist.  One should now be able to see that the grounding problem represented by (1)-(4) is up and running.  

It is a datum that 'Caesar was assassinated' (or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance of the sentence) is a contingent, past-tensed truth. It is also a datum that this truth is true now.  Now my datum might be your theory. But since Feser will grant both of these datanic points, I need say nothing more here in their defense. Given the datanic points, and given that the problem is soluble, one must either accept the truth-maker principle and reject presentism, or accept presentism and reject the truth-maker principle. And this is what most philosophers of time do. Trenton Merricks, for example, does the latter. (Truth and Ontology, Oxford, 2007)  Back to Feser:

To get an inconsistency, Bill would have to add to the list some further claim like:

(5) Only facts about what does exist (as opposed to facts about what used to exist) can serve as truthmakers.

But that would simply beg the question against the presentist.  And of course the presentist would say: “There will be no inconsistency if you get rid of (5).  ‘Problem’ solved!”

Not at all. There is no need to add a proposition to the tetrad to generate inconsistency. It is of course understood by almost all truth-maker theorists that only existing truth-makers can do the truth-making job.  There are few if any Meinongian truth-maker theorists.  Few if any will maintain, for example, that 'There are golden mountains' is made true by Meinong's nonexistent golden mountain. That being well-understood, it must also be understood that truth-maker theorists do not hold that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  They don't build presentism into truth-maker theory. What they hold is that some, if not all, truths need (existing) truth makers.  Truth-maker theory is neutral on the question that divides presentists from eternalists. Now the past-tensed  'Caesar existed' is true.  It cannot just be true: there must be something 'in the world,' something external to the sentential representation, that grounds its truth. But what might that be on presentism?  If only present items exist, then Caesar does not exist. And if Caesar does not exist, then there is nothing that could serve as the truth-maker of 'Caesar existed.'

One ought to conclude that the quartet of propositions supra is collectively inconsistent. If the tetrad is not a full-on aporia, an insolubilium, then either one must reject presentism or one must reject the truth-maker principle.

The Temporal Neutrality of Truth-Maker Theory and Whether I Beg the Question

I do not assume that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  What I assume is that only existing items can serve as truth-makers.  To appreciate this, consider timeless entities.  God, classically conceived, is an example: he is not omnitemporal, but eternal. He doesn't exist in time at every time, but 'outside of' time.  Now consider the proposition that God, so conceived, exists.  What makes it true, if true? Well, God. It follows that a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to do its job.  Or consider so-called 'abstract' objects such as the number 7. It is true that 7 exists.  What makes this truth true? The number 7! So again a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to serve as a truth-maker. But it must exist. 

Truth-maker theory, as such, takes no stand on either of the following two questions: Does everything that exists exist in time? Does everything that exists in time exist at the present time?

I therefore plead innocent to Ed's charge that I beg the question. Consider 'Caesar existed.' I don't assume that this past-tensed truth needs a presently existing truth-maker to be true.  I assume merely that it needs an existing truth-maker to be true. It is not that I beg the question; it is rather that Feser fails to appreciate the consequences of his own theory. He fails to appreciate that, on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.  It is because Caesar does not exist at all that I say that 'Caesar existed' lacks a truth-maker on presentism. It is not because he doesn't exist at present. Of course he doesn't exist at present!

Feser's Dilemma

It seems to me that Ed is uncomfortably perched on the horns of a dilemma. Either the truth-maker of a past-tensed truth is fact that or it is a fact of.  But it cannot be a fact that, for such an item is just a true proposition, and no proposition can be its own truth-maker. For example, the fact that (the true proposition that) Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. On the other horn, the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' can be a fact of, i.e., a concrete state of affairs, but on presentism this fact does not exist. For on presentism, Caesar, who does not now exist, does not exist at all. Hence the fact of does not exist  either, for its existence depends on the existence of its constituents, one of which is the roman emperor in question.

I suggests that Ed does not see the dilemma because he equivocates on 'fact.'  That should be clear from his talk, above, of "facts about."  He wants to say that "facts about" are truth-makers. but no truth-making fact is about it constituents. A "fact about" can only be a proposition.  It is a fact about Caesar and Brutus that the latter stabbed the former (Et tu, Brute?), But that "fact about" is just a true proposition that needs a truth-maker. The gen-u-ine truth-maker, however, is not about anything.  For example, the truth-maker of 'I am seated' is a concrete fact-of that has as one of its constituents the 200 lb sweating animal who wears my clothes. This truth-making fact is not about me; it contains me.

Michael Dummett sees the problem with presentism very clearly:

. . . the thesis that only the present is real denies any truth-value to statements about the past or the future; for, if it were correct, there would be nothing in virtue of which a statement of either type could be true or false, whereas a proposition can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true. We must attribute some form of reality either to the past, or to the future, or both.  (Truth and the Past, Columbia UP, 2004, p. 74.)

Feser again:

The point I was trying to make, in any event, is that past objects and events were real (unlike fictional objects and events, which never were).  That fact is what serves as the truthmaker for statements about past objects and events.  Statements about present objects and events have as their truthmakers a different sort of fact, viz. facts about objects and events that are real.  

Ed and I will agree that Caesar's assassination is an actual past event: it is not something that merely could have happened way back when but didn't, nor is it a fictional event of the sort that one finds in historical novels. Ed is committed to saying that this event was real.  But if so, then it is true now that Caesar was assassinated. What makes it true?  Feser's answer is that the fact that Caesar was assassinated is what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated.  But this is not a satisfactory answer since it merely repeats the datum. It is given that Caesar was assassinated. The problem is to explain what makes this true given the truth of presentism.

It is obvious that the true proposition that Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. That would be to confuse a truth-maker with a truth-bearer. The truth-maker cannot be an item in the 'representational order'; it must be something in the 'real order' of concrete spatiotemporal particulars.  The truth-maker must be either Caesar himself, battle scars and all, or a concrete state of affairs that has him as a constituent. But if presentism is true, then there is no such man. And if Caesar does not exist, then no concrete state of affairs involving him exists.  But now I am starting to repeat myself.

Bill also writes:

I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered.

End quote.  In fact I have answered it.  Yes, “Caesar was assassinated” needs an existing truthmaker.  And that truthmaker is not Caesar or his assassination (neither of which exist anymore) but the fact that he was assassinated (which does still exist – after all, it is as much a fact now as it was yesterday, and will remain a fact tomorrow).  To this Bill objects that “obviously this won't do [because] the past-tensed truth cannot serve as [its] own truth-maker.”  But again, this conflates facts with propositions, and these should not be conflated. 

Ed's response is a very strange one. I am suggesting that Ed might be conflating truth-makers with truth-bearers, truth-making facts with propositions.  He says he is not. Fine. But since I explicitly made the distinction, he cannot reasonably accuse me of conflating truth-making facts with propositions.  In any case, it definitely seems to me that Ed is succumbing to the conflation in question, as I have explained above.

Are My Objections Sound Only if I Have a Correct Alternative Theory?

This is a fascinating metaphilosophical question. Ed again:

One further point.  Even if the defender of the “truthmaker objection” could get around the criticisms I have been raising, the objection nevertheless will succeed only if some alternative to presentism is correct.  And as I argue in Aristotle’s Revenge, none of the alternatives is correct.  So it will not suffice for the critic merely to try to raise problems for the presentist’s understanding of truth-making.  He will also have to defend some non-presentist understanding of truth-making, which will require responding to the objections I’ve raised against the rivals to presentism.

In particular, the critic presupposes that we have a clear idea of what it would be for past objects and events and future objects and events to be no less real than the present is, and thus a clear idea of what it would be for such things to be truthmakers.  But I claim that that is an illusion.  The eternalist view is in fact not well-defined.  It is a tissue of confusions that presupposes errors such as a tendency to characterize time in terms that intelligibly apply only to space, and to mistake mathematical abstractions for concrete realities.  Indeed, on the Aristotelian view of time that I defend in the book, the approaches to the subject commonly taken by various contemporary writers are in several respects wrongheaded.  Again, what I say about the truthmaker objection must be read in light of the larger discussion of time in Aristotle’s Revenge.

I deny what Feser asserts in the second sentence of the quotation immediately above. The assertion seems to trade on a confusion of possible theories and extant theories. Even if there is no tenable extant competitor to Feser's version of presentism -- which is of course only one of several different versions -- it does not follow that there is no possible tenable competitor theory.  That is one concern. Another is more radical. 

It may be that all of the extant theories in the philosophy of time are untenable and open to powerful objections. In particular, I am not an 'eternalist' and I am very sensitive to the problems it faces. To mention one, it seems that eternalism needs an understanding of tenseless existence and tenseless property-possession that I suspect is unintelligible. Could all the extant theories be false? Why not? They might all, on deep analysis, turn out be logical contraries of each other.

An even more radical thought: It may be that all possible theories (all theories that it is possible for us to formulate)  in the philosophy of time are untenable and rationally insupportable in  the end  in such a way as definitively to give the palm to one of theories over all the others.

But even apart from the two radical proposals just bruited, it is not entirely clear why, if the objections I have raised are sound, I would have to consider Feser's (putative) refutations of the other theories.  If my objections are in fact sound, then I can stop right there.  In any case, I did in installment three of my ongoing critique consider Feser's notion that the truth-makers of past-tensed truths all exist at present.  By the way, it is not clear to me how this notion (causal trace theory) is supposed to cohere with what Feser says elsewhere in his section on time. How does it cohere with what we discussed above?  It is one thing to say that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact that C. was assassinated, and quite another to say that the truth-maker exists in the present in the form of present effects of C.'s past existence.  

Time to punch the clock!

Is the Past Wholly Determinate? Edward Feser's Presentism, Part III

This is the third in a series. Part I here; Part II here.

On the principle of bivalence, every proposition is either true, or if not true, then false. Given that bivalence holds for what presently exists, it is difficult to see how it could fail to hold for what did exist. Why should the present, which is wholly determinate, become less than wholly determinate when it becomes past? However things stand with the future, one reasonably views the past as a realm of reality and thus as wholly determinate. Our knowledge of the past is spotty, but not the past itself. It WAS, and I would add: it ACTUALLY was.  When a thing passes away it does not pass from actuality to mere possibility; it remains actual, though no longer temporally present. Or so it would seem if we are realists about the past. The historian studies past actualities, not past possibilities. Compare Kierkegaard's engagement to Regine Olsen to his marriage to her.  There is a sense in which both events belong to the past. The crucial difference is that the first event actually occurred while the second was a mere possibility.  This is a difference that an adequate philosophy of time must be able to accommodate.  

One point to keep in mind is that if  the past is wholly determinate, as determinate as the present, this is the case whether or not determinism is true. The determinate is not to be confused with the determined. Consider the proposition that my grandfather Alfonso drank a glass of 'dago red' on New Year's Day, 1940. Bivalence ensures that the proposition is either true or false but not both. If the proposition is true and the event occurred, it doesn't matter whether the event was caused by prior events under the aegis of the laws of nature, or not. To say that the past is determinate is not to say that past events are determined; it is to say that, e.g., the past individual Alfonso V. cannot be such that he neither drank nor did not drink red wine on the date in question. It had to be one or the other if bivalence holds for the past.

Of course, no one now remembers whether or not this event occurred, and there is no written record or other evidence of the event's having occurred. If the event occurred, nothing in the present points back to it as to its cause.  Some past events, states, individuals, and property-instantiations leave causal traces in the present, but not all do.  My grandfather's gravestone and the dessicated bones lying beneath it are causal traces in the present of  a long-dead and wholly past individual. But there is nothing in the present that bears upon the truth of the proposition that Alfonso drank a glass of  red wine on New Year's Day, 1940,  assuming it is true. If true, it is true now but lacks a present truth-maker. 

Now if one were to hold both that there are truth-makers for all past-tensed truths, and that presentism is true, then one would have to hold that the past is not wholly determinate. For if presentism is true, all existing truth-makers must exist at present. (I assume, and I think Feser does as well, that there are no nonexistent or 'Meinongian' truth-makers.) But then there wouldn't be enough truth-makers for all the past-tensed truths. The following quartet of propositions is collectively inconsistent:

a) The past is wholly determinate: bivalence holds for every proposition about the past.
b) Presentism is true: only present items exist.
c) Contingent truths have (existing) truth-makers.
d) Not every contingent truth about the past has a presently existing truth-maker.

The members of the quartet are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  The first three propositions, taken together, entail that every contingent truth about the past has a presently existing truth-maker.  But this contradicts the fourth member, (d).  (d) is well-nigh self-evident as I have already established with the example of Alfonso and his wine. There is nothing that exists in the present that could make true the proposition in question, if it is true.  With how many men did Caesar cross the Rubicon? Were any of them barefoot? And when he met his end on the Ides of March, what was the exact size and shape and length and composition of the blade that entered his body?

So how do we solve this bad boy?  I suspect that it is insoluble, but to argue this out goes well beyond the scope of a mere blog post.  Some will solve it by abandoning  presentism.  This is precisely what Ed Feser will not do. But before discussing his suggestion, let me say just a little in support of (a).

Bivalence, as a principle of logic, strikes me as pretty solid.  But now consider: could the applicability of a principle of logic depend on when it is applied?  Could the passage of time restrict its application? Take identity: for any x, x = x.  Everything is self-identical. If this is true for temporally present values of 'x,' I should think it would be true also for past values of 'x.'  I am self-identical, but so is Alfonso, who is wholly past. When he ceased to exist, he didn't cease to be self-identical. When I refer to him now, I refer to the same man I referred to when I referred to him when he was alive. And when I cease to exist,  I won't cease to be self-identical.  I won't become self-diverse, or neither self-identical nor self-diverse.  The mere passage of time cannot bring it about that a principle of logic that applies to a thing in the present ceases to apply to that thing when it become past.

Likewise, when I cease to exist, I won't go from being a completely determinate individual to an incomplete object.  

Define a completely determinate, or complete, individual x as one  such that, for any pair of predicates, one the complement of the other, one member of the pair must be true of x, but not both, and not neither.  For example, 'non-smoker' is the complement of the predicate 'smoker.' If neither of these predicates is true of Peter, then Peter is an incomplete object.  Since Peter exists at present, he is one or the other. As it happens, he is a smoker.  When he dies, it will become true that he was a smoker, not that he was neither a smoker nor a non-smoker.

A Question for Feser

Feser is clearly a presentist: ". . . what actually exists in the strict sense is what exists now." (Aristotle's Revenge, 239) What then of the past and the future? It is trivially true, and mere fallout from ordinary language, that the (wholly) past is no longer. But it does not follow that the past is nothing or does not exist at all or has no reality. Feser appreciates the reality of the past. The question is whether he can adequately account for it.

The past and future exist now only in the loose sense that they are, as it were, causally contained in what exists now . . . . Future entities, states, and events are contained within the present as potentials which might be actualized. Past entities, states, and events are contained within the present insofar as their effects on the present remain. The present points forward to a range of things which might yet be caused to exist. The present also points backward toward formerly existing things qua causes proportionate to the effects that now exist. But again, what actually exists in the strict sense is what exists now. (Aristotle's Revenge, 239, italics in original.)

We are being told that wholly past items exist in that their effects in the present exist.  Here is an example, mine, not Feser's. Tom stood outside of Sally's window a few days ago.  That event on presentism does not exist. It is not just that it does not exist now -- which is trivially true -- it does not exist period. For on presentism, only what exists now exists period or simpliciter.  And yet  Tom's standing outside of Sally's window is not nothing: it actually occurred. The evidence that it occurred are Tom's distinctive footprints. On the causal trace theory, a version of which Feser is promoting, the reality of the past event is adequately accounted for by the footprints Tom left.  The theory is ontological, not epistemological. The footprints are not merely evidence of what occurred in the recent past; the footprints are the reality of what occurred in the recent past.

Now one objection to this scheme is that there are not enough present items to represent all past items.  There are not enough truth-makers in the present for all past-tensed truths. Big Al drank a glass of dago red on New Year's Day, 1940.  That event left no trace in the present. And yet it occurred. 

So if the past is wholly determinate and if past-tensed truths need truth-makers, then presentism is in trouble.  There are other objections to the causal trace theory.  I may consider them later.

Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: A Problem and Feser's Solution

The is is the second installment in my critique of Edward Feser's defense of presentism in his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge.  Here is Part I of the critique.

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

It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.   A relation cannot hold unless the things between which or among which it holds all exist.  A weaker, and hence even more plausible, claim is that all relations are existence-symmetric: if R relates a and b, then either both relata exist or both do not exist. Both the stronger and the weaker claims rule out the possibility of a relation that relates an existent and a nonexistent. So if Cerberus is eating my cat, then Cerberus exists. And if I am thinking about Cerberus, then, given that Cerberus does not exist, my thinking does not relate me to Cerberus.  This implies that  intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is, as Franz Brentano says, relation-like (ein Relativliches).

But if presentism is true, and only temporally present items exist, then no relation connects a present with a non-present item, whether a wholly past item or a wholly future one. This seems hard to accept for the following reason.

I ate lunch  an hour ago. So the event of my eating (E) is earlier than the event of my typing (T). How can it be true that E bears the earlier than relation to T, and T bears the later than relation to E, unless both E and T exist? But E is non-present. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  It's not just that E does not exist now, which is trivially true, but that E does not exist at all. And if E does not exist at all,  then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T which does exist, and not merely in the present-tensed sense of 'exists,' but in the sense in which E does not exist.   If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are non-present, then presentism is false.

The principle that all genuine relations are existence-symmetric seems inconsistent with presentism.  Now which of these two principles is more reasonably believed?  I should think it is the first.

How might the presentist respond? Since E does not exist on his view, while T does, and E is earlier than T, he must either (A) deny that all relations are existence-symmetric, or (B) deny that earlier than is a relation. He must either allow the possibility of genuine relations that connect nonexistents and existents, or deny that T stands in a temporal relation to E.

To  fully savor the problem we  cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. All genuine relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a genuine relation.

3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.

4. Some events are earlier than others.

Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  Now (4) cannot be rejected because it is a datum.

Will you deny (1) and say that there are relations that are neither existence-entailing nor existence-symmetric?  I find this hard to swallow because of the following argument.  (a) Nothing can have properties unless it exists.  Therefore (b) nothing can have relational properties unless it exists. (c) Every relation gives rise to relational properties:  if Rab, then a has the property of standing in R to b, and b has the property of standing in R to a.  Therefore, (d) if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.

Will you deny (2) and say that earlier than is not a genuine relation?  What else could it be?

Will you deny presentism and say that that both present and non-present items exist?  Since it is obvious that present and non-present items cannot exist in the present-tense sense of 'exists,'  the suggestion has to be that present and non-present (past or future) items exist in a tenseless sense of 'exist.'  But what exactly does this mean? 'Eternalism' is also problematic and I am not endorsing it. 

The problem is genuine, but there appears to be no good solution, no solution that does not involve its own difficulties.

But if there is a solution it would have to be by rejecting presentism since it is the least credible of the four propositions above.

Feser's Response

Feser maintains that objections to presentism along the foregoing lines rest on the assumption that "for a relation to hold between two things, they both have to exist now." (301) But this is not the operative assumption. The operative assumption is simply that for an n-adic relation to hold between or among n relata, all the relata have to exist, period. They have to exist simpliciter; they don't have to exist now.  The eternalist can easily satisfy the demand by saying that events E and T exist simpliciter despite E's being earlier than T.  Whatever problems eternalism has, it has this going for it: it can explain how a past event can stand in a relation to a present event.  

It is important to bear in mind that the presentist too must make use of the notion of existence simpliciter.  The thesis of presentism is not the logical truth that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now.  It is the thesis that whatever exists simpliciter exists now.  Equivalently: only present items exist simpliciter.  From this it follows that wholly past items such as the event of my having eaten lunch do not exist simpliciter. But then the objection is up and running.

I conclude that Feser has not defused the objection to presentism from trans-temporal relations.

 

The is is the second installment in my critique of Edward Feser's defense of presentism in his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge.  Here is Part I of the critique.

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

It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.   A relation cannot hold unless the things between which or among which it holds all exist.  A weaker, and hence even more plausible, claim is that all relations are existence-symmetric: if R relates a and b, then either both relata exist or both do not exist. Both the stronger and the weaker claims rule out the possibility of a relation that relates an existent and a nonexistent. So if Cerberus is eating my cat, then Cerberus exists. And if I am thinking about Cerberus, then, given that Cerberus does not exist, my thinking does not relate me to Cerberus.  This implies that  intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is, as Franz Brentano says, relation-like (ein Relativliches).

But if presentism is true, and only temporally present items exist, then no relation connects a present with a non-present item, whether a wholly past item or a wholly future one. This seems hard to accept for the following reason.

I ate lunch  an hour ago. So the event of my eating (E) is earlier than the event of my typing (T). How can it be true that E bears the earlier than relation to T, and T bears the later than relation to E, unless both E and T exist? But E is non-present. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  It's not just that E does not exist now, which is trivially true, but that E does not exist at all. And if E does not exist at all,  then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T which does exist, and not merely in the present-tensed sense of 'exists,' but in the sense in which E does not exist.   If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are non-present, then presentism is false.

The principle that all genuine relations are existence-symmetric seems inconsistent with presentism.  Now which of these two principles is more reasonably believed?  I should think it is the first.

How might the presentist respond? Since E does not exist on his view, while T does, and E is earlier than T, he must either (A) deny that all relations are existence-symmetric, or (B) deny that earlier than is a relation. He must either allow the possibility of genuine relations that connect nonexistents and existents, or deny that T stands in a temporal relation to E.

To  fully savor the problem we  cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. All genuine relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a genuine relation.

3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.

4. Some events are earlier than others.

Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  Now (4) cannot be rejected because it is a datum.

Will you deny (1) and say that there are relations that are neither existence-entailing nor existence-symmetric?  I find this hard to swallow because of the following argument.  (a) Nothing can have properties unless it exists.  Therefore (b) nothing can have relational properties unless it exists. (c) Every relation gives rise to relational properties:  if Rab, then a has the property of standing in R to b, and b has the property of standing in R to a.  Therefore, (d) if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.

Will you deny (2) and say that earlier than is not a genuine relation?  What else could it be?

Will you deny presentism and say that that both present and non-present items exist?  Since it is obvious that present and non-present items cannot exist in the present-tense sense of 'exists,'  the suggestion has to be that present and non-present (past or future) items exist in a tenseless sense of 'exist.'  But what exactly does this mean? 'Eternalism' is also problematic and I am not endorsing it. 

The problem is genuine, but there appears to be no good solution, no solution that does not involve its own difficulties.

But if there is a solution it would have to be by rejecting presentism since it is the least credible of the four propositions above.

Feser's Response

Feser maintains that objections to presentism along the foregoing lines rest on the assumption that "for a relation to hold between two things, they both have to exist now." (301) But this is not the operative assumption. The operative assumption is simply that for an n-adic relation to hold between or among n relata, all the relata have to exist, period. They have to exist simpliciter; they don't have to exist now.  The eternalist can easily satisfy the demand by saying that events E and T exist simpliciter despite E's being earlier than T.  Whatever problems eternalism has, it has this going for it: it can explain how a past event can stand in a relation to a present event.  

It is important to bear in mind that the presentist too must make use of the notion of existence simpliciter.  The thesis of presentism is not the logical truth that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now.  It is the thesis that whatever exists simpliciter exists now.  Equivalently: only present items exist simpliciter.  From this it follows that wholly past items such as the event of my having eaten lunch do not exist simpliciter. But then the objection is up and running.

I conclude that Feser has not defused the objection to presentism from trans-temporal relations.

 

Existence Simpliciter

Here is London Ed, recently returned from his African sojourn, raising some good questions anent my entry, A Critique of Edward Feser's Defense of Presentism, Part I:

>> the presentist idea is not adequately captured by saying that wholly past items no longer exist, since all who understand English will agree to that. The presentist idea is that wholly past items do not exist at all.

But what does ‘exist at all’ mean?

BV: That's part of the problem and part of the fun. You are not saying anything metaphysical when you say that Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists. You are simply pointing out an historical fact.  You are not committing yourself to presentism or any version of anti-presentism such as 'eternalism' (a howling misnomer if you want my opinion).  You are not 'committing metaphysics' if I may coin a phrase. Committing metaphysics, the presentist is saying that Scollay Square does not exist at all: it is NOTHING because it is wholly past.  That is surely not obvious or commonsensical or the view of the man in the street.

To see that, consider that Scollay Square is, as we speak, the intentional object of veridical memories, and the subject of true predications, e.g., 'Scollay Square attracted many a horny young sailor on shore leave.'  How then could it be NOTHING?  It seems obviously to be SOMETHING, indeed something wholly determinate and wholly actual despite being wholly past. If you say the famous square exists tenselessly at times earlier than the present time (the time simultaneous with my writing), then you uphold its existence but open yourself up to questions about what exactly tenseless existence is, questions that are as easy to formulate as they are hard (or impossible) to answer satisfactorily. Cashing out 'exists at all' in terms of 'exists tenselessly ' is the main way of explaining it. 

>> it does not exist, period

Same question. What do ‘period’ and ‘at all’ add?

BV:   'Period,' 'full stop,' 'at all,' simpliciter, sans phrase -- I am using these as stylistic variants of one another. See above response.

>> But note carefully that the second formulation is accurate only if 'exists' is not read as present-tensed, in which case the formulation is tautological, but as 'exists simpliciter,' in which case it is not.

So what does simpliciter add?

BV: See the first response.

>> What exactly it means to 'exist at all' or to 'exist 'simpliciter' is part of the problem of formulating a coherent version of presentism that can withstand close scrutiny. For present purposes we will assume that we understand well enough what these phrases mean.

Yes to the first sentence, no to the second (speaking for myself, perhaps others understand).

BV:  But surely, Ed, you understand more or less and well enough to have this discussion. Or are you feigning incomprehension? Or petering out (insider jargon that alludes to Peter van Inwagen's habit of saying that he doesn't understand something.)  I will assume that you are not feigning or petering, but doing what analytic philosophers do, namely, demanding CLARITY.  Fine. But can't you see that there is a difference between holding that the wholly past is nothing at all and holding that the wholly past is not nothing at all?  This is the great problem of the reality of the past.  My view is that it is a genuine problem, not a pseudo-problem, but that it is insoluble by us. I don't mean that one cannot give a solution to it. I mean that one cannot give a finally satisfactory solution to it.  That makes me a solubility skeptic about this problem.

>> As Feser himself says, on presentism, "there are no past events,"

OK, but there clearly were past events. I wonder if the whole problem rests on an equivocation. We read "there are no past events" as "there were no past events" which has the whiff of paradox and mystery. I caught myself in that equivocation exactly as I was reading it, followed by a double take. Well of course there are no past events, because they have passed over. But there were such things.

Of course you are well aware of that, and we have been on opposite sides of the question for many years. You feel there is some non-trivial sense in which "there are no past events" can be true. I fail to grasp that sense.

BV: You think the following are both obvious: (a) There were past events, and (b) There are no past events.   I will grant you that (a) is practically self-evident although not perfectly obvious.  Could not the universe have started up right at the beginning of the present with dusty books, etc, as Russell once suggested? Is that not a logical possibility? I can't take that seriously as a real possibility because it implies that there were no past presents -- which seems to commit us to the Solipsism of the Present Moment.  

But I disagree with you about (b).  You think (b) is obvious.  In one sense it is.  It is obvious if 'there are' is in the present tense.   For then you are saying, trivially, that there are now no (wholly) past events. But in another sense (b) is not obvious, although it might be either false or incoherent. Distinguished philosophers have maintained that there are tenselessly events that are past in the sense that they are earlier than present events, where the A-determination (McTaggart) 'present'' is cashed out B-theoretically.

Is there some non-trivial sense in which 'there are no past events' could be true?  You say that if there is such a sense, you cannot grasp it. I say that there is such a sense and that I can grasp it.  

I can grasp it because I can grasp what the (unqualified) presentist is saying. He is saying that when a temporal item such as an event loses the A-determination presentness, it becomes nothing at all. It is annihilated.  I can understand that because I can understand how it might not be annihilated. It would not be annihilated if (i) there are no irreducible A-determinations, where such a determination is irreducible if irreducible  to a B-relation, or (ii) there are irreducible A-determinations but they have no bearing on the tenseless existence of events and other temporal items.

Alles klar?

Gotta meet a man for lunch. 

A Critique of Edward Feser's Defense of Presentism, Part I

Ed Feser very kindly sent me a copy of his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science (Editiones Scholasticae, 2019).  As I noted in my journal: 

Synchronicity. Feser's latest book, with its section on time and its defense of presentism, has arrived at just the right time -- as I am immersed in my chapter on time for my metaphilosophy book. A mere coincidence, no doubt!?

Herewith, some critical commentary by way of a 'thank you' to Ed for his ongoing generosity.

According to Feser, "The classical form taken by the A-theory [of time] is presentism, according to which only the present is real, with past events no longer existing and future events not yet existing (237-238) Let's focus on the past and not worry about the future. With respect to the past, the presentist idea is not adequately captured by saying that wholly past items no longer exist, since all who understand English will agree to that.  The presentist idea is that wholly past items do not exist at all. John F. Kennedy's assassination, for example, is a wholly past event.  (A wholly past event is one that doesn't overlap the present.)  Standard presentism implies that this event does not exist at all. It is not just that it does not exist at present -- which is trivially true -- but that it does not exist, period. As Feser himself says, on presentism, "there are no past events," (300) and "past things and events do not exist."(301)  These latter are accurate formulations.  But note carefully that the second formulation is accurate only if 'exists' is not read as present-tensed, in which case the formulation is tautological, but as 'exists simpliciter,' in which case it is not.  What exactly it means to 'exist at all' or to 'exist 'simpliciter' is part of the problem of formulating a coherent version of presentism that can withstand close scrutiny. For present purposes we will assume that we understand well enough what these phrases mean.

But then a certain 'grounding problem' or 'truth-maker problem' arises that very much impresses me, but leaves Feser unfazed: "it seems to me unimpressive." (300)  Here is my formulation of the grounding problem, so-called because it is the problem of providing ontological grounds for grammatically past-tensed truths.  Truth-makers, if there are any, are ontological grounds of true truth-bearers, whether declarative sentences, statements, propositions, whatever you deem to be the primary truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values.

1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.

4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.

The limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent. 'Kennedy was assassinated' is contingent, past-tensed, true, and known to be true. So (1) is true.  The sentence is also true at present.   It IS the case that JFK WAS assassinated.  So (2) is true.   

(3) is an exceedingly plausible principle, especially if restricted to contingently true affirmative singular propositions. Consider ' I am seated' assertively uttered by BV now as he sits in front of his computer. The sentence is (or expresses) a contingent truth.  Now would it be at all plausible to say that this sentence is just true?  Define a brute truth as a contingent truth that is just true, i.e., true, but not in virtue of anything external to the truth. The question is then: Is it plausible that 'I am seated' or the proposition it expresses be a brute truth?

I say that that is implausible in the extreme. There has to be something external  to the truth-bearer that plays a role in its being true and this something cannot be anyone's say-so. At a bare minimum, the subject term 'I' must refer to something extra-linguistic, and we know what that has to be: the 200 lb animal that wears my clothes.  So at a bare minimum, the sentence, to be true, must be about something, something that exists, and indeed exists extra-mentally and extra-linguistically.

Without bringing in truth-making facts or states of affairs, I have said enough to refute the notion that 'I am seated' could be a brute truth.  So far so good.

Now if 'I am seated' needs a truth-maker (in a very broad sense of the term), then presumably 'Kennedy was assassinated' does as well.  It can no more be  a brute truth than 'I am seated' could be a brute truth. 

Now Feser does not oppose truth-makers tout court.  He appears to be proposing a revision of  the truth-maker principle as formulated in (3). Could the truth-makers for past-tensed truths be different in kind from those for present-tensed truths? This is what Feser appears to be proposing: “. . . the truthmaker for the statement that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March is simply the fact that Julius Caesar actually was assassinated on the Ides of March, and nothing more need be said.” (Feser 2019, 301)  A little farther down, he writes, 

The whole point of presentism, after all, is that the past and future don't have the same kind of reality that the present does. Hence it shouldn't be surprising if the truthmakers for statements about the past and future are unlike the truthmakers for statements about the present. (301)

Feser seems to be proposing the following. In the case of the present-tensed 'BV exists,' the truth-maker is BV. But when BV is no more and it is true that BV existed, the truth-maker of the past-tensed truth will be the fact that BV existed and will not involve BV himself.

As it seems to me, this proposal betrays a failure to appreciate the difference between a fact construed as a true proposition, and a truth-maker, which cannot be a (Fregean or abstract) proposition. A truth-bearer cannot serve as a truth-maker. On one common use of 'fact,' a fact is just a true (abstract) proposition. We may refer to such facts as facts that. A fact that cannot serve as a truth-maker. Facts that need truth-makers. 'It is a fact that Venus is a planet' says no more and no less than 'It is true that Venus is a planet.' The factuality of a fact that is just its being true; if an item is true, however, it must be a truth-bearer and cannot be a truth-maker.

Now just as we can sensibly ask what makes it true that Venus is a planet, we can sensibly ask what makes it a fact that Venus is a planet. The answer must make reference to Venus itself which is neither a proposition nor a fact that, but a massive chunk of the physical world. What we need as a truth-maker is a fact of. What we need is the concrete state of affairs or fact of Venus' being a planet, a state if affairs which has as a constituent Venus itself. Therefore, nothing is accomplished by saying that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the fact that Caesar was assassinated. That amounts to saying that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the truth that he was assassinated. Obviously, no truth-maker has been specified. A truth-bearer cannot serve as a truth-maker.

Here is a second problem. Read again the second quotation:

The whole point of presentism, after all, is that the past and future don't have the same kind of reality that the present does. Hence it shouldn't be surprising if the truthmakers for statements about the past and future are unlike the truthmakers for statements about the present. (301)

The second problem is that on standard presentism, there is no distinction between kinds of reality. The claim is not that the wholly past and the wholly future have a different kind of reality or existence than the present, but that the past and future are not real or existent at all. On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. It passes out existence entirely; it does not retain a lesser kind of existence or exist in a looser sense of 'exist.'  As Feser himself says, “But the presentist holds that past things and events do not exist.” (301) 

I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered. He wants to hold both to presentism and the truth-maker principle, but he hasn't shown how this is possible. Feser tells us that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the fact that Caesar was assassinated, and that nothing more  need be said.  But obviously this won't do. The past-tensed truth cannot serve as it own truth-maker.  

Presentism: A Bit of Discussion with Dale Tuggy

The topic of presentism in the philosophy of time came up during Dale Tuggy's visit last weekend.  Dale anounced that he's a presentist.  So I pressed him a bit. I had him consider some such grammatically past-tensed truth as 'JFK was assassinated.' This sentence is contingently true and indeed contingently true at present.  Although the sentence is about a wholly past event, the sentence is now true. Using tensed language, we speak truly when we say that it IS true that Kennedy WAS assassinated.  What I have just set forth is a Chisholmian pre-analytic datum or a Moorean fact, a given that cannot be reasonably controverted.

I then brought up the need for truth-makers for at least some truths.  (I am not a truth-maker maximalist.) Consider ' I am seated' said by BV now as he sits in front of his computer. The sentence is (or expresses) a contingent truth.  Now would it be at all plausible to say that this sentence is just true?  Define a brute truth as a contingent truth that is just true, i.e., true, but not in virtue of anything external to the truth. The question is then: Is it plausible that 'I am seated' or the proposition it expresses be a brute truth?

I say that that is implausible in the extreme. There has to be something external  to the truth-bearer that plays a role in its being true and this something cannot be anyone's say-so. At a bare minimum, the subject term 'I' must refer to something extra-linguistic, and we know what that has to be: the 200 lb animal that wears my clothes.  So at a bare minimum, the sentence, to be true, must be about something, something that exists, and indeed exists extra-mentally and extra-linguistically.

Without bringing in truth-making facts or states of affairs, I have said enough to refute the notion that 'I am seated' could be a brute truth.  So far so good.

Now if 'I am seated' needs a truth-maker (in a very broad sense of the term), then presumably 'Kennedy was assassinated' does as well.  It can no more be  a brute truth than 'I am seated' could be a brute truth. 

Dale balked at this, claiming that the Kennedy sentence is a brute truth. It is easy to see his reason for saying it. The reason is presentism.

Roughly, presentism is the view that only temporally present items (times, events, individuals, property-instantiations, etc.) exist, full stop.  Whatever exists, exists now, where the first occurrence of 'exists' cannot be present-tensed -- that way lies tautology and triviality -- but must be in some sense be tenseless. 

It is not at all clear that presentism can be given a formulation that is at once both precise and coherent. What I have just said is very rough and I have papered over some nasty difficulties. But I think I have conveyed what the presentist is trying to say.  He is out to restrict the totality of what (tenselessly) exists to what presently exists.  An 'eternalist' -- the going term but a howling misnomer -- by contrast resists the restriction, holding as he does that the totality of what (tenselessly) exists includes past, present, and future items.  

Now if presentism is true, then JFK does not exist at all. It is not just that he does not exist now -- that's trivial -- but that he does not exist period. Well then, how can 'Kennedy was assassinated' be true?  There is nothing in existence to serve as truth-maker.  Neither Kennedy nor the event of  his being assassinated exist.  There is nothing for that sentence to be about. For on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.

The truth-maker principle and presentism come into conflict.  Tuggy's 'solution' is to deny that past-tensed truths need truth-makers and hold that they are brute truths. The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent affirmative truths need existing truth-makers.

4) Presentism: Only present items exist.

The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  It's a nasty problem. Which proposition will you deny?

Some will deny (1) by holding that all past-tensed truths are either false or without truth-value. Good luck with that!

Some will deny (2). Also a non-starter.

Some will deny or revise (3) by maintaining that past-tensed truths are brute truths. This is Tuggy's line.  Very hard to swallow!

Some will deny (4).  This might be the best solution, but it too has its drawbacks which I can't go into now.

It may be that the problem is insoluble in the sense that, no matter which solution you offer, that solution will give rise to puzzles as bad or worse than the original puzzle.  I am tempted to say something along these lines.  But then I am aporetically inclined.

But for now my purpose is merely to induce in Tuggy some skepticism about presentism.   One ought to be skeptical of it since it conflicts with the truth-maker principle which in my minimalist formulation is exceedingly plausible, more plausible, I would say, than presentism, about which there are serious doubts that it is susceptible of a coherent formulation.

And please note that if one rejects presentism one is not thereby forced to embrace eternalism. While they cannot both be true, they can both be false.

On Ceasing to Exist: An Aporetic Tetrad

John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963.  (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that he is dead. But it is true, and indeed true now, that JFK is dead.  Equivalently, 'dead' is now true of JFK.  But this is puzzling: How can a predicate be true of a thing if the thing does not exist?  After a thing ceases to exist it is no longer around to support any predicates. What no longer exists, does not still exist: it does not exist.

I am of the metaphilosophical opinion  that the canonical form of a philosophical problem is the aporetic polyad. Here is our puzzle rigorously set forth as an aporetic tetrad:

1) Datum: There are  predicates that are true of things that no longer exist, e.g., 'dead' and 'famous' and 'fondly remembered' are true of JFK.

2) Veritas sequitur esse: If a predicate is true of an item x, then x exists.

3) Presentism: For any x, x exists iff x is temporally present.

4) The Dead: For any x, if x is dead, then x is temporally non-present.

The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  To solve the tetrad, then, we must reject one of the propositions. It can't be (1) since (1) is a datum. And it can't be (4) since it, on the mortalist assumption, is obviously true. (To avoid the mortalist assumption, change the example to an inanimate object.) Of course, if an animal dies, its corpse typically remains present for a time; but an animal and its corpse are not the same. An animal can die; a corpse cannot die because a corpse was never alive.

One cannot plausibly reject (2) either. To reject (2) is to maintain that a predicate can be true of a thing whether or not the thing exists. This is highly counter-intuitive, to put it mildly.  Suppose it is true that Peter smokes.  Then 'smokes' is true of Peter.  It follows that Peter exists.  It seems we should say the same about Kennedy. It is true that Kennedy is dead. So 'dead' is true of Kennedy, whence it follows that Kennedy exists. Of course, he does not exist at present. But if he didn't exist at all, then it could not be true that Kennedy is dead, famous, veridically remembered, and so on.  Kennedy must in some sense exist if he is to be the object of successful reference and the subject of true predications.

There remains the Anti-Presentist Solution.  Deny (3) by maintaining that it is not only present items that exist. One way of doing this by embracing so-called eternalism, the view that past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

But what is it for a temporal item, an item in time, to exist tenselessly?  The number 7 and the proposition 7 is prime exist 'outside of time.'  They exist timelessly.  If the number and the proposition are indeed timeless or atemporal items, then it it makes clear sense to say that 7 tenselessly exists and that 7 is prime both tenseless exists and is tenselessly true.  But it is not clear what it could mean to say that an item in time such as JFK exists tenselessly or is tenselessly dead or famous, etc.

The tenseless existence of a temporal item is not timeless existence. Nor is tenseless existence the same as  omnitemporal/sempiternal existence: Kennedy does not exist at all times.  He existed in time for a short interval of time.  So what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly?  Try this:

X exists tenselessly iff X either existed or exists (present tense) or will exist.

But this doesn't help. The disjunction on the right-hand side of the biconditional, with 'Kennedy' substituted for 'X' is true only because the past-tensed 'Kennedy existed' is true. We still have no idea  what it is for a temporal item to exist or have properties tenselessly.  Presumably, 'Kennedy exists tenselessly' says more than what the tensed disjunction says. But what is this more?

Interim Conclusion.  If we can't find a way to make sense of tenseless existence, then we won't be able to reject (3) and we will be stuck with our quartet of inconsistent plausibilities.  More later.

Excluded Middle, Presentism, Truth-Maker: An Aporetic Triad

Suppose we acquiesce in the conflation of Excluded Middle and Bivalence.  The conflation is not unreasonable.  Now try this trio on for size:

Excluded Middle: Every proposition is either true, or if not true, then false.
Presentism: Only what exists at present, exists.
Truth-Maker: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker.

The limbs of the triad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. Why inconsistent?

I will die. This future-tensed sentence is true now. It is true that I will die. Is there something existing at present that could serve as truth-maker? Arguably yes, my being mortal. I am now mortal, and my present mortality suffices for the truth of 'I will die.' Something similar holds for my coat. It is true now that it will cease to exist.  While it is inevitable that I will die and that my coat will cease to exist, it is not inevitable that my coat will be burnt up (wholly consumed by fire).  For there are other ways for it to cease to exist, by being cut to pieces, for example, or by just wearing out.

By 'future contingent,' I mean a presently true future-tensed contingent proposition.  The following seems to be a clear example: BV's coat will sometime in the future cease to exist by being wholly consumed in a fire. To save keystrokes: My coat will be burnt up.

By Excluded Middle, either my coat will be burnt up or my coat will not be burnt up. One of these propositions must be true, and whichever one it is, it is true now. Suppose it is true now that my  coat will be burnt up. There  is nothing existing at present that could serve as truth-maker for this contingent truth.  And given Presentism, there is nothing existing at all that could serve as truth-maker.  For on Presentism, only what exists now, exists full stop.  The first two limbs, taken in conjunction, entail the negation of the third, Truth-Maker.  The triad is therefore inconsistent.

So one of the limbs must be rejected. Which one?

An Objection

You say that nothing that now exists could serve as the truth-maker of the presently true future-tensed  contingent proposition BV's coat will be burnt up. I disagree.  If determinism is true, then the present state of the world together with the laws of nature necessitates every later state.   Assuming the truth of the proposition in question, there is a later state of the world in which your shabby coat is burnt up. The truth-maker of the future contingent proposition would then be the present state of the world plus the laws of nature.  So if determinism is true, your triad is consistent, contrary to what you maintain, and we will not be forced to give up one of the very plausible constituent propositions.

Question: Is there a plausible reply to this objection? No. I'll explain why later.

From the B-Theory of Time to Eternalism

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (St. Augustine)  This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time, the B-theory of time, and shows how it sires the position in temporal ontology called 'eternalism.'

On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). If the B-theory is correct, then our ordinary sense that events approach us from the future, arrive at the present, and then recede into the past is at best a mind-dependent phenomenon, at worst an illusion. Either way, not something that really occurs.  For on the B-theory, there are no such irreducible  monadic A-properties as futurity, presentness and pastness. There is just a manifold of tenselessly existing events ordered by the B-relations. Time does not pass or flow, let alone fly. There is no temporal becoming or temporal passage. My birth is not sinking into the past, becoming ever more past, nor is my death  approaching from the future, getting closer and closer.  Tempus fugit does not express a truth about reality.  At best, it picks out a truth about our experience of reality. 

The B-theorist does not deny that there is time. He does not hold that time is an illusion or mere appearance. What he denies is that the sense we all have that time passes or flows is an ingredient in real time.  His claim is that real or objective time is exhausted by the B-series and that temporal becoming is at best subjective.

If there is no temporal becoming in reality, then change  is not a becoming different or a passing away or a coming into being.  When a tomato ripens, it does not become ripe: it simply is (tenselessly) unripe at certain times and is (tenselessly) ripe at certain later times.  And when it ceases to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.

You could say that that the B-theorist has a static view of time that strips way its 'dynamism.'

Employing a political metaphor, one could say that a B-theorist is an egalitarian about times and the events at times: they are all equal in point of reality.  Accordingly, my blogging now is no more real (but also no less real) than Socrates' drinking the hemlock millenia ago.  Nor is it more real than my death which, needless to say,  lies in the future.  (But this future event is not approaching or getting closer.) Each time is present at itself, but no time is present, period.  

This is to say that the present moment enjoys no ontological privilege. There is nothing special about it in point of being or existence.  So, on the B-theory, you can't say that the present alone exists. You can no more say this than you can say that here, the place here I am now, alone exists.

This is not to say that the B-theorist does not have uses for 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.'  He can speak with the vulgar while thinking with the learned.  Thus a B-theorist can hold that an utterance at time t of 'E is past' expresses the fact that E is earlier than t.  An old objection is that this does not capture the meaning of 'E is past.' For the fact that E is earlier than t, if true, is always true; while 'E is past' is true only after E. This difference in truth conditions shows a difference in meaning. The B-theorist can respond by saying that his concern is not with semantics but with ontology. His concern is with the reality, or rather the lack of reality, of tense, and not with the meanings of tensed sentences or sentences featuring A-expressions. The B-theorist can say that, regardless of meaning, what makes it true that E is past at t is that E is earlier than t, and that, in mind-independent reality, nothing else is needed to make 'E is past' uttered at t true.

Compare 'BV is hungry' and 'I am hungry' said by BV. The one is true if and only if the other is.  But the two sentences differ in meaning. The first, if true, is true no matter who says it; but the second is true only if asserted by someone who is hungry. Despite the difference in meaning, what makes it true that I am hungry (assertively uttered by BV) is that BV is hungry. In sum, the B-theorist need not be committed to the insupportable contention that A-statements are translatable salva significatione into B-statements.

The B-theorist, then, denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege.  Every time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter.  This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness.  There just is no irreducible monadic property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The B-theory excludes presentism according to which there is a genuine, irreducible, property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property.  Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent.  If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist, not just now (which is trivial) but at all.  The B-theory leads to what is known in the trade as 'eternalism' according to which the catalog of what exists is not exhausted by present items, but includes past and future ones as well.

Please note that the B-theory is incompatible not only with presentism, but with any theory that is committed to irreducible A-properties.  Thus the B-theory rules out 'pastism,' the crazy theory that only the past exists and 'futurism,' the crazy view that only the future exists.  It also rules out the sane view that only the past and the present exist.

Why be a B-theorist?  McTaggart has a famous argument according to which the monadic A-properties lead to contradiction.  We should examine that argument in a separate post.  The argument is endorsed by Hugh Mellor in his Real Time.

Another consideration is that the physics of Einstein & Co, has no need of temporal becoming.  So if physics gets at the world as it is in itself apart from our subjective additions, then real time is exhausted by the B-series.

Presentism Misunderstood

One misunderstanding floated in the Facebook Medieval Logic forum is that presentism in the current analytic philosophy of time is the thesis that 'exists' and 'is present' are synonyms.  

Not at all. It is obvious that 'exists' and 'is present' do not have the same meaning or sense. If I say that God exists, I need not be  saying that God is present, and this  for the simple reason that God, if eternal as opposed to everlasting, is 'outside of time' and therefore neither past, nor present, nor future.  

Some philosophers hold that numbers and other so-called 'abstract objects' are timeless entities.  If they are, then they are precisely not present.  A fortiori, they are not past or future either.  If they exist, then they exist 'outside of time.'  But then 'exists' and 'is present' can't have the same meaning.

Now suppose there are no timeless entities and that everything is 'in time.'  It would still not be the case that 'exists' and 'is present' have the same meaning or sense.  The following questions make sense and are substantive in the sense that they do not have trivial answers:

Is everything that exists present? Or are there things that exist that are not present?

But the following questions have trivial answers:

Is everything present present? Or are there present things that are not present?

The answer to the first question in the second pair is a tautology and thus trivially true. The answer to the second is a contradiction and thus trivially false.

Since the first two questions are substantive, 'exists' and 'is present' are not synonyms.

G. E. Moore famously responded to the hedonist's claim that the only goods are pleasures by asking, in effect: But is pleasure good?  The point is that the sense of 'good' allows us reasonably to resist the identification of goodness and pleasure.  For it remains an open question whether pleasure really is good. Similarly, the sense of 'exists' allows us reasonably to resist the identification of existence and temporal presentness. If a thing exists it remains an open question whether it is present.  There exists a prime number between 3 and 7. 'Is it present?' is a legitimate question. It won't be if numbers are timeless.  So again we see that 'exists' and 'is present' are not synonymous expressions.

Consider now my cat Max. Max exists (present tense) and he is temporally present. Is his existence exhausted by his temporal presence? Or is he temporally present because he exists? These are legitimate questions. It is not obvious that Max's existence is exhausted by his temporal presentness. It could be that there is more to his existence than his temporal presentness.  Since these questions make sense and are substantive, it follows that 'existence' and 'temporal presentness' are not synonyms.

If the presentist is not making a synonymy claim, what claim is he making? One type of presentist puts forth the following equivalence:

P. Necessarily, for all items x in time, x (tenselessly) exists iff x is present.

This is not a semantic claim, but an ontological claim, a claim about what exists.  The presentist  is saying that a correct ontological inventory of temporal items restricts them to present items.  As opposed to what? As opposed to the 'pastist' who holds that the ontological inventory counts both past and present items as existing, and the the 'eternalist' who includes past, present, and future items in the count.

Ed the medievalist writes,

I know nothing about the modern view of presentism, or where the term ‘presentism’ comes from. Is the view that the extension of ‘(temporally) present men’ and ‘men who exist’ could change so that some men could be in the present while no longer existing? Or so that some men could exist while no longer being in the present?

Absolutely not. Presentism implies that every present man exists, and every existing man is present. 

Presentism and Bodily Resurrection

Are presentism and bodily resurrection logically compatible? Edward Buckner wonders about this. He got me wondering about it.  So let me take a stab at sorting it out. 

The Resurrection of the Body

I will assume the traditional doctrine of the resurrection according to which (i) resurrection is resurrection of the (human) body, and (ii) this resurrected body will be numerically identical to the body that lived and died on Earth. In other words, the pre-mortem and post-mortem bodies of a person are one and the same.  After the resurrection you will have the very same body that have now. This is compatible with the resurrected body being property-wise different from the earthly body.   I take this same-body view to be the traditional view. We find it, for example, in Aquinas:

For we cannot call it resurrection unless the soul return to the same body, since resurrection is a second rising, and the same thing rises that falls; therefore resurrection regards the body which after death falls, rather than the soul which after death lives. And consequently if it is not the same body which the soul resumes, it will not be a resurrection, but rather the assuming of a new body. (1952, 952, quoted from here)

For the sake of concretion, let's assume the hylomorphic dualism of Aquinas according to which a human being is a composite of soul and body where the soul is the form of the body. For Aquinas, the soul continues to exist after the body ceases to exist, and resurrection is the uniting of that soul with its body, not some body or other, but its body, the same one it had on Earth.

Presentism

I should also say something about presentism. The formulation of presentism is fraught with difficulties, but for present (!) purposes presentism is an ontological thesis about temporal entities and says nothing about any atemporal or timeless entities that there might be.  An ontological thesis is a thesis about what fundamentally exists, and the ontological thesis of presentism is that only present items exist. This is of course not the tautological claim that only present items are present or that only present items presently exist. It is the claim that only present items exist in the sense of belonging to the ontological inventory. It is the claim that only present items exist in the sense of 'exist' that the presentist shares with the eternalist when the latter claims that past and future items also exist. (This is admittedly not quite satisfactory, but I must move on, brevity being the soul of blog.)

The claim, then, is that for any x in time, x exists if and only x is present. This is a biconditional formulation. More common is the 'only if' formulation: x exists only if x is present.  It is presumably taken to be self-evident and not worth pointing out that all that is present exists. 

Presentism implies that what no longer exists, does not exist at all, and that what does not yet exist, does not exist at all.  Please note that it is trivial to say that the wholly past no longer exists. For that is but Moorean fallout from ordinary language and no controversial ontological thesis.  The presentist is saying something controversial, namely, that temporal reality is restricted to what exists at present. What no longer exists, does not exist at all. This is far from obvious, which allows so-called eternalists to deny it. Steven D. Hales puts it like this:

Presentists agree that there may be things that do not exist in time, like abstract objects or God, but the root presentist idea is that everything that exists in time is simultaneous. You can’t have (tenselessly) existing things at
different places in time. Everything that [tenselessly] exists, exists at once.

Presentism is rejected by those who hold that both past and present items exist, and by so-called eternalists who maintain the unrestricted ontological thesis that all temporal items (individuals, events, times) exist, whether past, present, or future.

Buckner's Question

Suppose all that exists is present. So Socrates, no longer present, no longer exists. But at some point in the future, Socrates will be resurrected and come to be judged. So Socrates no longer exists, yet will exist, assuming the possibility of bodily resurrection.

Does this mean presentism is inconsistent with bodily resurrection? 

The question is better formulated in terms of Socrates' body. It doesn't exist at present, obviously, and on presentism it does not exist in the past or in the future either.  But if it doesn't exist in the future, how can Socrates' earthly body and resurrected body be numerically the same body?  Buckner smells a contradiction:

p. Socrates' body does not exist at all: not in the past, not in the present, and not in the future. (presentism)

~p. Socrates' body exists in the future. (resurrection doctrine)

The conclusion would then be that presentism and the traditional resurrection doctrine are logically incompatible.

If this is what Buckner is driving at, the presentist could answer as follows.  It is true now that Socrates' body does not exist. It is also true now that Socrates' body WILL exist.  Where's the contradiction? There is none.  The following propositional forms are logically consistent:

It is the case that ~p

It will be the case that p.

A Fly in the Ointment?

If it is true, and true at present, that Socrates' soul will, in the fullness of time, be re-united with his body, what is the truth-maker of this proposition? Contingent propositions need truth-makers. On presentism, the truth-maker must be a presently existing entity of some sort. Obviously, it cannot be a future entity.  So what, in the present, makes true the future-tensed proposition?

Since questions about bodily resurrection presuppose the existence of God, we are entitled to invoke God as truth-maker. We can perhaps say that it is God's present willing to resurrect Socrates' body that makes true the future-tensed proposition that Socrates will get his body back.

But then it seems that our presentism cannot be of the open future sort. 

Is the Wholly Past Now Impossible?

Boston's Scollay Square is an example of a wholly past item. It existed, but it does not now exist. Boston's Copley Square, by contrast, existed and still exists: it has a past but it is not wholly past.

In an earlier exercise I gave an anti-presentist argument one of the premises of which is:

d) It is not the case that Scollay Square is [now] either merely possible or impossible: what passes away does not become merely possible or impossible.

The Ostrich objected:

I didn’t follow the assumption (d) above. Scollay Square  is impossible, having perished. 

The question is this:  When a thing that actually existed passes away and becomes wholly past, does it cease to be actual and become impossible?  Can the passage of time affect an object's  modal status?

I say No; the Ostrich says Yes.  My No, however, will be nuanced by a distinction I shall introduce shortly.

A Concession

I concede to the Ostrich that there is a sense in which Scollay Square, that very item, is now impossible: it cannot be restored to existence. (If you made a copy of it, the copy would not be it.) After the demolition was complete, there was nothing anyone could do to bring back that very item.  In this respect the demolition of the famous square is like a person's loss of virginity. If you lose your virginity at time t, then there is nothing anyone can do after t to undo the loss. (Repairing a girl's hymen would not do the trick. Hymenoplasty is possible but it is not the same as restoration of virginity.) 

Now there is no need to drag the Deity into this debate, but I will do it anyway just to throw the issue into relief. Not even God can restore a virgin or bring back Scollay Square (where many a sailor lost his virginity).  This is because it is the very natures of time and existence that prevent the restoration.  (Now please forget that I even mentioned God, and do not ask me any questions about divine omnipotence.)

Let's consider another example. Our patron Socrates was executed by the Athenian state. That event might not have occurred. That is, his execution was not metaphysically necessary. In the patois of 'possible worlds,'  there are possible worlds in which Socrates is executed and possible worlds in which he is not.  Therefore, his execution was metaphysically contingent and remains sub specie aeternitatis metaphysically contingent despite the fact that the execution cannot be undone.  But if the execution cannot be undone and was impossibly undone from the moment of the event onward, then how can the execution be contingent?  Is it not necessary?  Obviously, we need to make a distinction.

Metaphysical versus Time-Bound Modalities

We have to make a distinction between metaphysical modalities and time-bound modalities.  We can say that Socrates' execution, while metaphysically contingent, nevertheless enjoys necessitas per accidens and its undoing impossibilitas per accidens.  Nothing hinges on this particular terminology, but there is a distinction to be made here.

Someone could say, and the Ostrich perhaps will say, that before Socrates came to be, he was merely possible, that when he came to be he became actual, and that after he passed away he became impossible. If this makes sense, then our man's modal status is time-dependent.

I think the following are logically consistent:

1. It is impossible that an actual being that no longer exists be restored to existence.

2. A metaphysically contingent being that exists in the sense that it existed, exists, or will exist retains its modal status when it passes away. Socrates exists in this disjunctive sense. When Socrates ceased to exist (assuming no immortal soul) he retained his modal status: actual but not necessary.

(1) is a concession to the Ostrich. But (2) is also true. I am inclined to accept  a Growing Block theory of time: as time passes the 'block of reality' gets bigger and bigger. Everything that IS is actual, and everything that WAS is also actual.  The past is not nothing: it is real.  

Socrates is (in the disjunctive sense) an actual being.  This may be the same as saying that he is tenselessly actual. His passing away does not affect his metaphysical modal status. He is no longer temporally present but he is nonetheless metaphysically actual. 

Furthermore, he remains a contingent being after his passing.  He does not become an impossible being.

So I think we can achieve a sort of irenic if not quite Hegelian  synthesis. The Ostrich is speaking from the perspective of the present. (I suspect he is a presentist and I should like him come clean on this.) From the point of view of the present, the wholly past is now impossible in the sense that nothing ANYONE can do can restore the past or bring it back.  I believe I have accommodated, with all due charity, the insight of the Ostrich.

But we also have the power to view things 'from above,' We are time-bound to be sure, but we are also "spectators of all time and existence" as Plato once taught us.  Looking down upon this scene of flux and folly we can 'see' with the eye of the mind the tenseless modal relationships that obtain here below. These are not affected by the passage of time.

For example, no contingent being  is impossible.  Socrates is a contingent being.  Ergo, Socrates is not impossible.  He was not impossible before he became present; he was not impossible when he was present; and he is not impossible now when he is past. He is tenselessly contingent.

The stable view sub specie aeternitatis is just as valid as the view from one's shifting temporal location.

Taking Stock

The question is this: When a thing that actually existed, or an event that actually occurred, passes away and becomes wholly past, does it cease to be actual and become impossible? 

The Ostrich answers in the affirmative.  I think this answer is sustainable only if presentism is true.  Presentism, however, is hard even to formulate (nontrivially), let alone evaluate.  

I must now demand of the Ostrich that he come clean and tell us whether he is indeed a presentist.  If I am not mistaken most if not all of the medieval philosophers he studies are presentists; if so, he may be unaware that there are alternatives to ptesentism.  It may just seem obvious to him when it ought not seem obvious to him. 

Millianism and Presentism: An Aporetic Pentad

A Millian about proper names holds that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its referent. Thus the meaning of 'Socrates' is Socrates.  The meaning just is the denotatum. Fregean sense and reasonable facsimiles thereof  play no role in reference. If so, vacuous names, names without denotata, are meaningless.

Presentism, roughly, is the claim that present items alone exist. This implies that no past or future items exist in the sense of 'exists' that the presentist shares with the eternalist who maintains that past, present, and future individuals all exist.  What exactly this sense is is a nut we will leave for later cracking. 

Now Socrates is a wholly past individual: he existed, but he does presently exist. It follows on presentism that Socrates does not exist at all. The point is not the tautology that Socrates, who is wholly past, does not exist at present. The point is that our man does not exist, period: he is now nothing at all.  

We now have the makings of an aporetic pentad:

1) 'Socrates' has meaning. (Moorean fact)

2) The meaning of a proper name is its referent.  (Millian thesis)

3) If a name refers to x, then x exists.  (Plausible assumption)

4) 'Socrates' refers to a wholly past individual. (Moorean fact)

5) There are no past individuals. (Presentism)

It is easy to see that the pentad is logically inconsistent: the limbs cannot all be true. Which should we reject?

Only three of the propositions are candidates for rejection: (2), (3), (5).   Of these three, (3) is the least rejectable, (5) is the second least rejectable, and (2) the most rejectable.

So I solve the pentad by rejecting the Millian thesis about proper names.

You might budge me from my position if you can give me a powerful argument for the Millian thesis.

Here, then, we have an 'aporetic' polyad that is not a genuine aporia. It is soluble and I just solved it.

The Recalcitrant Ostrich will probably disagree.

Presentism: The Triviality Objection

Presentism in the philosophy of time is the thesis that the present moment enjoys an ontological privilege over the other two temporal modi. The basic idea is that only (temporally) present items (individuals, events, times) exist.  If so, past and future items do not exist. What is no longer is not, and what is not yet is not. Presentism presupposes the A-theory of time according to which pastness, presentness, and futurity are monadic properties irreducible to the B-relations earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than.  Presentness is an absolute property. To say of an event that it is present is not to say that it is simultaneous with a reference to it or perception of it.  

Presentism, then, is the claim all that exists is present, or

P) Nothing exists that is not present.

On a present-tensed reading of 'exists,' however, (P) collapses into a tautology:

P1) Nothing presently exists that is not present.

This trivial truth is not what the presentist intends. What he intends is a restriction of temporal things, things in time, to present things:

P2) Nothing exists in time that is not present.

I am assuming that there  are timeless things, numbers for example.  If there are no timeless things, and everything is in time, then (P2) reduces to 

P2*) Nothing exists that is not present.

The trouble with (P2) and its starred cousin, however, is that they seem obviously false. Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists. That is: it did exist, but it does not now exist.  Given that it did exist, it is a temporal item as opposed to an atemporal item such as a number.  Now it it reasonable to think that its being past has consigned it to utter nonexistence?  Arguably not. Here is a little argument.

a) What exists is actual. 
b) What does not exist is either merely possible or impossible. 
c) If a wholly past object such as SS does not exist, then it is either merely possible or impossible. From (b)
d) It is not the case that SS is either merely possible or impossible: what passes away does not become merely possible or impossible.
e) SS exists. From (c), (d), by modus tollens.
f) SS is not present. Datum.
g) Something exists in time that is not present.  From (e), (f).

The intuition behind the argument is that actuality includes the past.  An historian is neither a fiction writer nor a speculator about the merely possible. If it is true that Socrates drank hemlock, then there there was a time when Socrates drinks hemlock, Socrates himself, not his haecceity.

The foregoing is a version of the triviality objection to presentism.  It has the form of a dilemma. (P) is trivally true if read as (P1) or trivially false if read as (P2), and these are the only two ways of reading (P).  Either way it is trivial.

Convinced? 

For a full-blown technical treatment, see Ulrich Meyer, The Triviality of Presentism.

Puzzling Over Presentism

Presentism in the philosophy of time is the thesis that only the (temporally) present exists. This is not the tautology that only present items (times, individuals, events . . .) exist at present; it is the substantive metaphysical thesis that only present items exist simpliciter. So if something no longer exists, it does not exist at all. 

But what could this mean? It is counterintuitive and, contrary to what prominent presentists claim, not commonsensical. After all, the past is not nothing. It was and it actually was.  When Boston's Scollay Square ceased to exist, it did not quit the actual world and become a merely possible object. It became a past actual object. 

There are those who remember Scollay Square. Some of their memories are veridical and some are not. How is this possible if there is nothing that they are remembering?  What makes the veridical memories veridical? I will assume that we do not want to say that the past exists only in the flickering memories of mortals.  However things stand with the future, the reality of the past is near-datanic.

Historians of Boston study Scollay Square making use of various physical remnants, documents such as newspaper stories, photographs and whatnot.  Are these historians writing fiction or speculating about possibilities? No, they are faithfully trying to record reality, past reality. So again, what no longer exists cannot be nothing.  What is no longer temporally present retains some sort of ontological status.

These datanic points do not of course refute the presentist, but they present (pun intended!) a serious challenge to him, namely the challenge of accounting for them while holding fast to the thesis that only what presently exists exists simpliciter.  Past-tensed contingent truths about Scollay Square -- 'During the War Scollay Square was where sailors on shore leave in Boston went for girls and tattoos' -- presumably need truthmakers; on presentism these will have to exist at present. What sort of item presently existing could do the job? Several suggestions have been made, none of them satisfactory.

Here is a related datum, a given, a Moorean deliverance that I think most would be loath to deny:

DATUM: if it is true that a was F, or that a F'ed, then it was true that a is F, or that a Fs.

For example, if it is true that John F. Kennedy was in Dallas on 22 November 1963, then it was true on that date that he is in Dallas on that date.  For a second example, if it is true that Socrates drank hemlock, then it was true that Socrates drinks hemlock.

It seems to follow that the present present cannot be the only present: there had to have been past presents, past times that were once present. For example there was the present when JFK was assassinated. That is a past present. Only what was once present could now be past. Suppose you deny this. Then are you saying that there are past items that were never present.  But that cannot be right. For the past is the present that has passed away. 

So what is the presentist maintaining? He cannot be maintaining

P-Taut: Only present items presently exist

for this is not a substantive metaphysical claim contradicted by the eternalist's equally substantive denial, but a mere tautology. Nor can he be telling us that

P-Solip: Only presently present items exist simpliciter

for this is solipsism of the present moment, a lunatic thesis. It amounts to the claim that all that ever existed, exists, and will exist exists now, where 'now' is a rigid designator of the present moment.  If our presentist pals cannot be saying that only what exists at the present present exists simpliciter, then they they must be telling us that only what exists at a given present (whether past, present, or future) exists.  Thus

P-Cont: At every time t, only what is present at t, exists simpliciter.

But this seems contradictory: it implies that at each time there are no non-present times and that at each time there are non-present times. For if one quantifies over all times, then one quantifies over present and non-present times in which case there are all these times including non-present times. But the bit following the quantifier in (P-Cont) takes this back by stating that only what is present at a given time exists simpliciter.

It is obvious that (P-Taut)  and (P-Solip) are nonstarters.  So we were driven to (P-Cont).  But it is contradictory. The presentist wants to limit the ontological inventory, the catalog of what exists, to temporally present items.  To avoid both tautology and the solipsism of the present moment, however, he is forced to admit that what exists cannot be limited to the present. For he is forced to admit that there are times that are not present.

My interim conclusion is that presentism makes no clear sense.  This does not support eternalism, however, for it has its own problems. 

Presentism, Truthmakers, and Ex-Concrete Objects: Some Questions for Francesco Orilia

 Here is an interesting little antilogism to break our heads against:

A. Presentism: Only what exists at present, exists.

B. Datum: There are past-tensed truths.

C. Truthmaker Principle: If p is a contingent truth, then there is a truthmaker T such that (i) T makes true p, and (ii) T exists when p is true.

Each of these propositions is plausible, but they cannot all be true.  Any two of  the propositions, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. 

For example, it is true, and true now, that Kerouac wrote On the Road. This truth is both past-tensed and contingent.  So, by (C),  this truth has a truthmaker that now exists. A plausible truthmaker such as the fact of Kerouac's having written On the Road  will have to have Kerouac himself as a constituent. But Kerouac does not now exist, and if presentism is true, he does not exist at all.  Assuming that a truthmaking fact or state of affairs cannot exist unless all its constituents exist, it follows that there is no present truthmaker of the past-tensed truth in question.  So if (C) is true, then (A) is false: it cannot be the case that only what exists now, exists.  I will assume for the space of this entry that (B) cannot be reasonably denied.

So one way to solve the antilogism is by rejecting presentism. Presentists will be loathe to do this, of course, and will try to find surrogate items to serve as constituents of present truthmakers.

Different sorts of surrogate items have been proposed. I will consider the surrogate or proxy favored by Francesco Orilia in his rich and penetrating "Moderate Presentism," Philosophical Studies, March 2016. (He would not call it a surrogate or a proxy, but that is what I think it is.)

Orilia's favored surrogates are ex-concrete objects. Consider the sentence

1) Garibaldi was awake on October 26, 1860 at 8:30 a.m.

This sentence is past-tensed, and if true, then contingently true. So, if true, it needs a truthmaker. We are told that the truthmaker of (1) is the present event  or state of affairs -- Orilia uses these terms interchangeably, see p. 598, n. 1) - - consisting of Garibaldi's exemplifying of the time-indexed past-tense property of having been awake on October 26, 1860 at 8:30 a. m.  But of course Orilia does not mean that concrete Garibaldi himself presently exemplifies the property in question; he means that the ex-concrete object Garibaldi presently exemplifies it.  After all, concrete Garibaldi is long gone.

What is an ex-concrete object?

The emperor Trajan is a merely past object (particular). On typical (as opposed to moderate) presentism, his being past implies that he does not exist at all. For Orilia, however, "merely past objects have not really ceased to exist, but have rather become ex-concrete." (593) The idea seems to be that they continue to exist, but with an altered categorial status. Merely past objects were concrete  but are now ex-concrete, where this means that they are "neither abstract nor concrete." (593, quotation from T. Williamson.)

So when Trajan became wholly past, he yet continued to exist as an ex-concrete object. Hence Trajan still exists -- as an ex-concrete object.  And the same goes for Garibaldi. Since the statesman still exists as ex-concrete he is available now to exemplify such properties as the property of having been awake on October 26, 1860 at 8:30 a.m. His exemplification of this property constitutes a present event or state of affairs that can serve as the truthmaker for (1).

Can an item change its categorial status?

Orilia is well aware that there is something dubious about the supposition that an item can change or lose its categorial status. For it seems as clear as anything that categorial features are essentially had by the items that have them. Numbers, sets, and (Fregean) propositions are candidate abstracta. There is little or no sense to the notion that the number 9, say, could become concrete or ex-abstract. For the number 9, if abstract, is abstract in every possible world, assuming, plausibly, that numbers are necessary beings. Similarly, it is difficult to understand how a  statue, say, if destroyed could could continue to exist as an ex-concrete object. It is not even clear what this means.

Pushing further

Orilia tells us that "backward singular terms should be taken at face value as referring to the very same objects they used to refer [to] when they were not, so to speak, backward." (593, emphasis added.)   So uses of 'Garibaldi' now refer to the very same object that uses of the name refereed to when Garibaldi was alive. But now the referent is an ex-concrete object whereas then it was a concrete object. So I ask: how can concrete Garibaldi be the same as ex-concrete Garibaldi when they differ property-wise? I now invoke the contrapositive of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. 

If x, y differ property-wise, then they differ numerically; concrete Garibaldi and ex-concrete Garibaldi differ property-wise in that the former but not the latter is concrete; ergo, they cannot be numerically the same (one and the same).  If so, then the temporally forward and backward uses of singular terms such as "Garibaldi' cannot refer to the same object, contra what Orilia says.

Orilia will readily grant me that an haecceity of a wholly past concrete object, assuming there are haecceities,  is a presently existing surrogate of the individual. My question to him is: why is this not also the case for ex-concrete objects? Of course, they are not haecceities. But they too 'go proxy' in the present for past objects such as Garibaldi and Leopardi, and they too are  distinct from full-fledged concrete objects.

It seems to me that Orilia's position embodies a certain tension.  His moderate presentism denies that there are past events or states of affairs, in line with standard or typical presentism, but allows that there are past objects (589).  But these past objects are ex-concrete. The latter, then, are not past objects strictly speaking (as they would be on a B-theory) but proxies for past objects. So there may be some waffling here. Connected with this is the fact that it is not clear how concrete Garibaldi, say, relates to ex-concrete Garibaldi. We are told in effect that they are the same, but they cannot be the same. Their relation wants clarification.

Are ex-concrete objects subject to the 'aboutness worry'?

If I am sad that my classmate Janet Johnston has died and is no longer with us, presumably it is the loss of Janet herself that saddens me. There is no comfort in the thought that ex-concrete Janet is still 'with us,' any more than there would be at the thought that her haecceity, now unexemplified, is still 'with us.'

Truthmaking troubles

Yesterday I drank some Campari. What makes this past-tensed, contingent truth true?  Note the difference between:

2) BV's having yesterday drunk Campari (A case of a present object's past exemplification of an untensed property) 

and

3) BV's being such that he drank Campari yesterday (A case of a present object's present exemplification of a past-tensed property.)

(2) is a past event or state of affairs, while (3) is a present event or state of affairs. Since Orilia's moderate presentism rejects past (and future) events, he must take (3) to be the truthmaker of the truth that yesterday I drank some Campari. But it seems to me that the truthmaker of 'Yesterday I drank some Campari' is not (3), but (2).  This sentence is true because yesterday I exemplified the untensed property of drinking Campari, not because today I exemplify the past-tensed property of having drunk Campari yesterday. Why? Well, I can have the past-tensed property today only because I had the untensed property yesterday.  The latter is parasitic upon the former. 

The same problem arises for Orilia's sentence (1). We are told that the truthmaker of (1) is the present event  or state of affairs consisting of Garibaldi's exemplifying of the time-indexed past-tense property of having been awake on October 26, 1860 at 8:30 a. m. Ex-concrete Garibaldi cannot now have the time-indexed past tense property unless concrete Garibaldi had the untensed property of being awake on October 26, 1860 at 8:30 a. m. Or so it seems to me.

To conclude, I am not convinced that Orilia (the man in the middle, below) has provided us with truthmakers for past-tensed truths.

Image credit: Francesca Muccini, 5 June 2018, Recanati, Italy.  The philosopher to the left of Francesco is Mark Anderson, Francesca's husband.

 

Propositions About Socrates Before He Came to Exist

This continues the discussion with James Anderson. See the comments to the related article below. Here is Professor Anderson's latest comment with my replies.

So are you saying that prior to the time Socrates comes into existence the proposition It is possible that Socrates come into existence doesn't exist at all?

Yes, if either Socrates himself, or an haecceity property that deputizes for him, is a constituent of the proposition in question. For it is surely obvious that before Socrates came to exist, he did not exist, and so was not available to be a constituent of a proposition, a state of affairs, or anything at all. As for the putative property identity-with-Socrates, I have already shown to my satisfaction that there cannot be any such property if properties are necessarily existent abstract objects. 

No, if we think of 'Socrates' along Russellian lines as a definite description in disguise replaceable by something like 'the most famous of the Greek philosophers, a master dialectician who published nothing but whose  thoughts were presented in dialogues written by his star pupil and who was executed by his city-state on the charge of being a corrupter of youth.'  I have no objection to saying that, prior to the time Socrates comes into existence, the following proposition exists: It is possible that some man having the properties of being famous, Greek, etc, come into existence.

Are you thereby committed to the contingent existence of propositions?

Not across the board.

Or would you favor full-blown nominalism about propositions?

Not at all. Here is an argument for propositions that impresses me.

Here's my reasoning laid out step by step. Perhaps you can tell me where you would want to jump out of the cab.

1) Socrates came into existence at t.

2) It is possible that Socrates come into existence at t. [actuality entails possibility]

It is a modal axiom that everything actual is possible. So of course actuality entails possibility.  But it doesn't follow that before Socrates came into existence, that he, that very individual, was possible. For it might be that he, that very individual,  becomes possible only at the instant he becomes actual. If a thing is actual, then it is possible; but that says nothing about when it is possible.

3) The proposition It is possible that Socrates come into existence at t is true. Call this proposition P. (P is a tenseless proposition, although it makes reference to a particular time.)

You are moving too fast. Yes, the proposition P is true. But that P is tenseless is a further premise of your argument and should be listed as such and not introduced parenthetically.  Can you prove that P is tenseless? It is not obvious or a non-negotiable datum.

I grant that there are tenseless propositions. Whales are mammals. Numbers are abstract objects. 7 plus 5 is 12.  The same goes for their negations. But one cannot assume that every proposition is tenseless. (I grant that every Fregean proposition is tenseless, but that is a technical use of 'proposition.')  It might be that P is true only at t and at times later than t. 

4) P is necessarily true. [by S5]

Not if P is true only at t and at times later than t.  Does this violate S5?  Not obviously. On S5, Poss p --> Nec Poss p.  Can it be shown that 'p' here includes within its range propositions of de re possibility such as P? 

5) P is true at all times. [because necessary truths cannot fail to be true]

6) P is true prior to t (i.e., before Socrates comes into existence).

7) Prior to t, it is possible that Socrates come into existence (at t).

I have given reasons to deny each of these propositions.

At the very least, we have a stand-off here. Professor Anderson has not proven his point.  Perhaps I cannot prove my point either. Then we would have an aporia.

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: A Most Remarkable Prophecy

Presentism and the Existence Requirement

Why do some find  the Existence Requirement self-evident? Could it be because of a (tacit) commitment to presentism?  

Here again is the Existence Requirement:

(ER) In order for something to be bad  for somebody, that person must exist at the time it is bad for him. (D. Benatar, The Human Predicament, 111,115)

Assuming mortalism, after death a person no longer exists. It is easy to see that mortalism in conjunction with the Existence Requirement entails that being dead is not bad for the person who dies. (of course it might be bad for others, but this is not the issue.)  Our Czech colleague Vlastimil V., though he is not a mortalist, accepts this line of reasoning. For he finds (ER) to be well-nigh self-evident. Vlastimil's view, then, is that if one is a mortalist, then then one ought to hold that the dead are not in a bad way; they are not, for example, deprived of the goods they would have had had they been alive.

Initially, I thought along the same lines. But now it seems less clear to me. For now I suspect that a tacit or explicit commitment to the questionable doctrine of presentism is what is driving the sense that (ER) is self-evident. Let's think about this.

At a first approximation, presentism is the ontological thesis that only present items exist. But 'present' has several senses, so we'd better say that on presentism, only temporally present items exist.  If so, then what is wholly past does not exist, and likewise for what is wholly future. But let's not worry about future items. And to avoid questions about so-called abstract objects, which either exist at all times or else timelessly, let us restrict ourselves to concreta. So for present purposes, pun intended,

P. Presentism is the ontological thesis that, for concrete items, only temporally present items exist.

Note that 'exist' in (P) cannot be present-tensed on pain of siring the tautology, Only what exists now exists now. The idea is rather that only what exists now exists simpliciter.

Consider Tom Petty who died recently.  On mortalism, he no longer exists. On presentism, what no longer exists (i.e., what existed but does not now exist) does not exist at all. So on presentism, Petty does not exist at all. If so, dead Petty cannot be subject to harms or deprivations. 

It is beginning to look as if presentism is what is driving the Existence Requirement. For if presentism is true it is impossible that a person be subject to a harm or deprivation at a time at which he does not presently exist. For a time at which he does not presently exist is a time at which he does not exist at all. And if he does not exist at all, then he cannot be subject to harm or deprivation.  

What if presentism is false? One way for it to be false is if the 'growing block' theory is true. We could also call it past-and-presentism. On this theory past and present items exist, but no future items exist.

On the 'growing block' theory, dead Petty exists. (This is obviously not a present-tensed use of 'exists.') He does not exist at present, but he exists in the sense that he belongs to the actual world.  Once actual, always actual. Is this wholly clear? No, but it is tolerably clear and plausible. After all, we are making singular reference to Petty, a concrete actual individual, as we speak, and this is a good reason to hold that he exists, not at present of course, but simpliciter.

But what does this mean? It is not easy to explain. But if we don't have a notion of existence simpliciter, then we won't be able to make any of of the following substantive (non-tautological) claims:

A. Presentism: Only what exists now exists simpliciter.

B. Past-and-Presentism: Only what exists now and what did exist exists simpliciter.

C. Futurism: Only what exists in the future exists simpliciter.

D. Eternalism: All past, present, and future items exist simpliciter.

We understand these theories, more or less despite the questions they raise; we understand how the theories differ, and we understand that (C) is absurd. So we have an understanding of existence simpliciter. Perhaps we could say that x exists simpliciter just in case x  is actual as opposed to merely possible.

I consider (B) preferable to (A). 

We don't want to say that a dead man becomes nothing after death since he remains a particular, completely determinate, dead man distinct from others. If the dead become nothing after death then all the dead would be the same. If your dead father and your dead mother are both nothing, then there is nothing to distinguish them.  I am assuming the reality of the past. The assumption is not obvious. An anti-realist about the past might say that the past exists only in memory and thus not in reality. But that strains credulity unless you bring God into the picture and put him to work, as presentist Alan Rhoda does in Presentism, Truthmakers, and God.

Nor do we want to say that a person who dies goes from being actual to being merely possible. There is clearly a distinction between an actual past individual and a merely possible past individual.  Schopenhauer is an actual past individual; his only son Willy is a merely possible past individual.

Now suppose that something like the 'growing block' theory is true. Then one would have reason to reject the Existence Requirement.  One would have reason to reject the claim that a thing can be a subject of harm/deprivation only when it exists (present tense).  One could hold that Petty is deprived of musical pleasure on the strength of his having existed. Having existed, he exists simpliciter. Existing simpliciter, he is available to be the subject of harms, deprivations, awards, posthumous fame, and what all else. 

Summary

If I am on the right track, one who subscribes to the Existence Requirement must also subscribe to presentism. But presentism is by no means self-evident. (ER) inherits this lack of self-evidence.  This supports my earlier claim that the following aporetic triad is rationally insoluble:

1) Mortalism: Death ends a person's existence.

2) Existence Requirement: For something to be bad for somebody, he must exist at the time it is bad for him.

3) Badness of Death: Being dead is bad for the one who dies.

The Epicurean denies (3) and accepts (1) and (2). Benatar denies (2) and accepts (1) and (3). I say we have no rationally compelling reason to go either way. 

Related articles

Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement

Benatar, Death, and Deprivation

David Benatar on Death and the Challenge of the Epicurean Argument in its Hedonist Form

Can One Change One's Race?

I raise the title question in the context of my recent study of  Rebecca Tuvel's controversial article, "In Defense of Transracialism" (Hypatia, vol. 32., no. 2, Spring 2017, pp. 263-278). It raises a number of fascinating and important questions. I will argue that even if one can change one's sex, by having one's body altered by surgery and hormonal 'therapy,' one cannot change one's race, and to think otherwise is to equivocate on 'identity.' 

The Question and One of its Presuppositions

Can one change one's race? Suppose your parents are both white. Can you do anything, or have anything done to you, to become black, say? Common sense says: of course not!  But common sense is subject to philosophical scrutiny.

Note first that our question rests on a presupposition, namely, that race has some sort of reality. It presupposes the existence of at least two different races, the racial terminus a quo and the racial terminus ad quem. In plain English, the presupposition is that there is the race one is and the different race one wants to become. So race has to be real. For if race had no reality whatsoever, there could be no real change from one race  to the other. It is clear, then, that one cannot be an eliminativist about race and racial differences while holding that one can change one's race. There would be nothing one was changing from and nothing one was changing to.

Race and Money 

But from the fact that race is real it does not follow that race is not to some extent socially constructed or construed. For money is surely real without prejudice to its being a social construct. That money is intersubjectively real is shown by the fact that there is a real and important difference between losing and not losing a thousand dollars. That money is a social construct is shown by the fact that without homo oeconomicus there would be no money. Gold ore is not money, nor are gold coins in a human-free world. And the same goes for counterfeit and  non-counterfeit Confederate dollars.  They are not legal tender because there is no social system now in existence that accepts them as such.  As interesting artifacts of the Confederacy, Confederate notes  of course have considerable monetary value. But they themselves are not money. You can't use Confederate notes to buy Confederate notes.  (Buying is essentially different from bartering and trading.) You would have to use 'real' money such as U. S. dollars or Euros or Bitcoin. What makes a bit of metal or a piece of paper real money is its acceptance and use by humans as a means of exchange.

So it is only within a system of social relations that money is money. It follows that it is not the intrinsic properties of coins and notes and cognate instruments such as their size, shape, mass, and color that make these instruments money. 

Money is real; money is a social construct; ergo, some real things are social constructs. So it might be that race is real despite being a social construct. But we need to dig deeper.

Money doesn't grow on trees. It doesn't occur in nature like leaves on trees. Human animals do occur in nature and grow from other human animals, their parents.  A human animal does not have to be accepted as human by other humans to be a human animal. Think of a baby human adopted and cared for by wolves. The biology of that individual is not a social construct. It is no more a social construct than the gold ore of which gold coins are made. The coin is money in virtue of socio-economic relations; the gold as metal is independent of the socio-economic nexus. The same goes for human organisms. They cannot be socialized apart from society, but they can be the biological individuals they are apart from society. 

Now sex and race are grounded in biology; race therefore cannot be a social construct in the way money is if it is a social construct at all.  Granted, racial theories and classifications are social constructs. But what they theorize about and classify cannot be plausibly viewed as a social construct.  Otherwise there couldn't be false theories or mis-classifications. Here, then, are some datanic starting points to be presumed epistemically innocent until proven guilty.

• Race has to have some sort of reality if there is to be racial change.
• A change in race cannot be a mere relational change but must be an intrinsic change. 
• The reality of race is consistent with aspects of it being socially constructed. Racial classifications and theories, for example, are social constructs. 
• Race cannot be a purely social construct.

A 'Temporal' Argument Against Race Change

Can I change my race? No. I can no more change my race than I can change the fact that I was born in California.  I might have been born elsewhere, of course, but as a matter of contingent fact, I am a native Californian.  Despite the logical contingency of my California birth, there was nothing I or anyone, including God, could have done to change or annul that fact about my place of birth.  A change of birth place was thereafter impossible.  

The same goes for race. My race is determined by my biological ancestors. Since both were white, I am white.  To change my race I would have to change a past fact, namely, that I am the product of the copulation of two white parents. But that fact, being past, cannot now be changed or annulled. The argument, then, is this:

1) If I can change my race from white to black, say, then I can change some fact in the distant past, namely, the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

2) But it is not the case that I can change any past fact including the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

Ergo

3) It is not the case that I can change my race.

The argument assumes that it is nomologically necessary that parents of the same race have offpsring of the same race, that, e.g., white parents have white offspring. The assumption is obviously true. 

A 'Modal' Argument Against Race Change

Although I was born in California to parents both of whom are white, I might have been born elsewhere to the same parents. But might I have been born to different parents? Is there a possible world in which I have parents other than my actual parents?  If my actual parents are P1 and P2, might I have have had a different pair of parents, say, P1 and P3, or P4 and P5?  Not if we accept Saul Kripke's thesis of the Essentiality of Origin.  I share the intuition: I wouldn't be me if I had had different parents: my very identity as a biological individual rides on having precisely those parents.  I now argue as follows:

4) It is metaphysically impossible that I have different parents than the ones I have;

5) My actual parents are both white;

6) White parents have white offspring; ergo,

7) It is metaphysical impossible that I be non-white; ergo,

8) It is metaphysically impossible that I change my race.

A Response to These Arguments

The point, then, is that it is impossible to change one's race even if it is possible to change one's sex. Tuvel has a response to something like these arguments. Tuvel couches the objection in these terms:

. . . race is a matter of one's biological ancestry, and this is not changeable. If cogent, then changing race would be unlike changing sex. To change sex, we can change hormones, genitalia, and other bodily features. But to change race, we would have to change features external to one's body, such as the fact of genetic ancestry. As a biological reality not restricted to to the body, but dependent on one's genetic heritage, changing race is thus impossible. (266-267)

This is a very powerful argument.  To turn it aside one needs a make a drastic move, which is what Tuvel does. She maintains that one's "race is a matter of social definition." (267) It is a social construct and as such, "race is malleable." (267, emphasis in original) It follows that "there is no fact of the matter about her [Rachel Dolezal's] 'actual' race' from a genetic standpoint. . . ." (267, emphasis in original) There is no "truth" about a person's "real" race. (267)

The point, I take it, is not that race and racial differences are devoid of reality entirely, but that they have the reality of social constructs without a biological basis.  Society assigns you your race. Thus the difference between white and black is not grounded in any biological difference.  To be white/black/Hispanic, etc. is to be deemed such within a given society. If so, "it is at least theoretically possible to change races." (267) " . . . whether is is practically possible will depend on a society's willingness to adjust its rules for racial categorization to better accommodate individual self-identification." (267)

The idea, then, is that if a person identifies as black, say, and society recognizes and accepts this "felt sense of identity," then one is black. (264)

Surely this is preposterous.

Changing the Subject and Playing Fast and Loose with Identity

The question was whether one can change one's race. The answer from Tuvel is yes, one can change one's racial identity by (i) changing one's racial self-identification and (ii) getting society to accept one's new self-identification. But this amounts not to changing one's race but to changing the subject. No doubt one can change one's race in her sense. But race in her sense floats free of the undeniable biological reality of race.  One's racial identity is no more malleable than one's species identity.  As a biological individual, I am an instance of h. sapiens and and there is nothing I or anyone can do to change that. Not even the Cat Man, Dennis Avner, could change his species identity (He died a suicide recently in Tonopah, Nevada.) Similarly with my race. It is bound up with my biological identity.  

On top of that, Tuvel conflates the identity of a biological individual with its self-construal or self-identification as this or that.  

Related articles

Is Reason a White Male Euro-Christian Construct?

Modality, Possible Worlds, and the Accidental-Essential Distinction

The Left's Transracial Monster

Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism

There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory.

Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal.

Egological egalitarianism is the view  there is a plurality of equally real selves.  I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically, that he alone is real and that others, if they exist at all, exist only as merely intentional objects for him. The problem of Other Minds may concern us, but that is an epistemological problem, one that presupposes that there are other minds/selves. On ontological egalitarianism, then, no self enjoys ontological privilege.

Spatial egalitarianism is the that there is a plurality of equally real places.  Places other than here are just as real as the place picked out by a speaker's use of 'here.'  I take it we are all spatial egalitarians.  No one, not even a Manhattanite, thinks that the place where he is is the only real place.  Here is real but so is yonder.  No place enjoys ontological privilege. All places are equal. 

Temporal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real times.  Times other than the present time are just as real as the present time. No time enjoys ontological privilege, which implies that there is nothing ontologically special about the present time. All times are equal. No time is present, period.  This is called the B-theory of time. Here is a fuller explanation.

Modal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real possibilities.  Possibilities other than those that are actual are just as real as those that are actual. It is plausible to think of possibilities as coming in maximal or 'world-sized' packages.  Call them possible worlds.  On modal egalitarianism, then, all possible worlds are equally real.  No world enjoys ontological privilege.  Our world, the world we take to be actual, is not absolutely actual; it is merely actual for us, or rather, actual at itself.  But that is true of every world: each is actual at itself. No world is actual, period.  In respect of actuality, all possible worlds are equal. 

What is curious about these four types of ontological egalitarianism is that, while the first two are about as close to common sense as one is likely to get, the second two are not.  Indeed, the fourth will strike most people as crazy. Was David Lewis crazy?  I don't know, but I hear he was a bad driver. 

Related: Philosophers as Bad Drivers?

Related articles

What is Potentiality? An Exploration

Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (St. Augustine)  This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time. 

On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). If the B-theory is correct, then our ordinary sense that events approach us from the future, arrive at the present, and then recede into the past is at best a mind-dependent phenomenon, at worst an illusuion. Either way, not something that really occurs.  For on the B-theory, there are no such irreducible  monadic A-properties as futurity, presentness and pastness. There is just a manifold of tenselessly existing events ordered by the B-relations. Time does not pass or flow, let alone fly. There is no temporal becoming.  My birth is not sinking into the past, becoming ever more past, nor is my death  approaching from the future, getting closer and closer.  Tempus fugit does not express a truth about reality.  At best, it picks out a truth about our experience of reality. 

The B-theorist does not deny that there is time. He does not hold that time is an illusion or mere appearance. What he denies is that the sense we all have that time passes or flows is an ingredient in real time.  His claim is that real or objective time is exhausted by the B-series and that temporal becoming is at best subjective.

If there is no temporal becoming in reality, then change  is not a becoming different or a passing away or a coming into being.  When a tomato ripens, it does not become ripe: it simply is unripe at certain times and is ripe at certain later times.  And when it ceases to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.

You could say that that the B-theorist has a static view of time that strips way its 'dynamism.'

Employing a political metaphor, one could say that a B-theorist is an egalitarian about times and the events at times: they are all equal in point of reality.  Accordingly, my blogging now is no more real (but also no less real) than Socrates' drinking the hemlock millenia ago.  Nor is it more real than my death which, needless to say,  lies in the future.  (But this future event is not approaching or getting closer.) Each time is present at itself, but no time is present, period.  And each time (and the events at it) exists relative to itself, but no time exists absolutely.

This is to say that the present moment enjoys no privilege. There is nothing special about it.  So you can't say that the present alone exists.

This is not to say that the B-theorist does not have uses for 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.'  He can speak with the vulgar while thinking with the learned.  Thus a B-theorist can hold that an utterance at time t of 'E is past' expresses the fact that E is earlier than t.  An old objection is that this does not capture the meaning of 'E is past.' For the fact that E is earlier than t, if true, is always true; while 'E is past' is true only after E. This difference in truth conditions shows a difference in meaning. The B-theorist can respond by saying that his concern is not with semantics but with ontology. His concern is with the reality, or rather the lack of reality, of tense, and not with the meanings of tensed sentences or sentences featuring A-expressions. The B-theorist can say that, regardless of meaning, what makes it true that E is past at t is that E is earlier than t, and that, in mind-independent reality, nothing else is needed to make 'E is past' uttered at t true.

Compare 'BV is hungry' and 'I am hungry' said by BV. The one is true if and only if the other is.  But the two sentences differ in meaning. The first, if true, is true no matter who says it; but the second is true only if asserted by someone who is hungry. Despite the difference in meaning, what makes it true that I am hungry (assertively uttered by BV) is that BV is hungry. In sum, the B-theorist need not be committed to the insupportable contention that A-statements are translatable salva significatione into B-statements.

The B-theorist, then, denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege.  Every time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter.  This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness.  There just is no irreducible monadic property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The B-theory excludes presentism according to which there is a genuine, irreducible, property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property.  Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent.  If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist, not just now (which is trivial) but at all.

Please note that the B-theory is incompatible not only with presentism, but with any theory that is committed to irreducible A-properties.  Thus the B-theory rules out 'pastism,' the crazy theory that only the past exists and 'futurism,' the crazy view that only the future exists.  It also rules out the sane view that only the past and the present exist.

Why be a B-theorist?  McTaggart has a famous argument according to which the monadic A-properties lead to contradiction.  We should examine that argument in a separate post.  The argument is endorsed by Hugh Mellor in his Real Time.

Another consideration is that the physics of Einstein & Co, has no need of temporal becoming.  So if physics gets at the world as it is in itself apart from our subjective additions, then real time is exhausted by the B-series.

A Physicist's Petitio Principii

One of my self-appointed tasks is to beat up on physicists when they play at philosophy and makes fools of themselves.  The following is from an interview with Richard Muller in Physics Today:

PT: You mention in your introduction that some physicists have concluded that the flow of time is an illusion. Why do you think that’s not the case?

MULLER: The flow of time does not exist in the usual spacetime diagram of physics. Time is mysterious; in any relativistic coordinate system, it is linked to space. And yet time is different—and I mean much more than simply a sign in the metric. Time flows. Choose any coordinate system and you can stand still in space but not in time. That different behavior breaks the otherwise glorious spacetime symmetry. Moreover, there is a special moment in time we call “now.” No such special location exists in the dimensions of space.

Is this guy serious?  His argument boils down to: The flow of time is not an illusion because time flows!  There is no spacetime symmetry because there is a special moment in time called 'NOW.'  Well thank you very much for resolving this thorny question at long last.  The 'diameter' of this circular reasoning is embarrassingly short. Both interviewee and interviewer need a course in Logic 101.

The following entry will give you some idea of the theory that our physicist thinks he has refuted.

Related articles

Why Physics Needs Philosophy

John Peterson's Thomist Analysis of Change

1. The Riddle of Change. Change is ubiquitous. It is perhaps the most pervasive feature of our experience and of the objects of our experience.  But is it intelligible? Change could be a fact without being intelligible.  But the mind seeks intelligibility; hence it seeks to render change intelligible to it.  

There is something puzzling about change inasmuch as it seems to imply a contradiction. When a thing changes, it becomes different than what it was. But unless it also remains the same, we cannot speak, as we do, of one thing changing. But how can this one thing be both the same and different?  We ought not assume that there is an insoluble problem here. But we also ought not assume that a simple solution is at hand, or that some simple fallacy has been committed. We must investigate.  We do well to begin with some mundane, Moorean fact.

Suppose avocado A, which was unripe a week ago is ripe today. This is an example of alterational (as opposed to existential) change. Aristotelians and Thomists speak of accidental (as opposed to essential) change. But a wise man does not quibble over terminology.  The point is that the avocado has become different. But it has also remained the same. It is easy to see that there is no (alterational) change without unchange, i.e., without the persistence of a substratum of change which, as substratum of change, does not change.

 

This is because alteration (accidental change) is neither destruction nor duplication. The ripening of an avocado does not cause it to cease to exist.  And it is clear that one cannot speak of change if there are two avocados, A and B, indiscernible except in respect of ripeness/unripeness, such that A is unripe at time t while B is ripe at time t* (t*> t). Alteration requires that one and the same thing have incompatible properties at different times. This is necessary for alteration; whether it is sufficient is a further question.

Thus there is an apparent contradiction: the ripe avocado is both the same and not the same as the unripe avocado. If you think this puzzle is easily solved, then you haven't understood it. You cannot understand philosophy unless you understand the problems to which its theories and theses are the responses. Philosophy may be more than aporetics, but it is at least aporetics. If you lack the 'aporetic sense' then you lack the "feeling of the philosopher" Plato describes at Theaetetus 155.

2. Reality is contradiction-free. There are no contradictions in reality, but only in our thoughts about reality. That there are no contradictions in reality is not perfectly obvious, but it is very reasonably assumed to be true, and we have to start somewhere. Now if it is true, and if, as is obvious, changes occur, then the apparent contradiction has to be removed. If the apparent contradiction cannot be removed, that is, shown to be merely apparent, then change, which obviously exists in some sense, will have to be demoted to the status of a Bradleyan appearance. (See F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Book I, Chapter 5.)

The task, then, is to remove the apparent contradiction.

3. Avocado A, having altered, is both the same and different. How is that possible? One solution involves a distinction between numerical and qualitative sameness. A is numerically the same over the interval during which it goes from unripe to ripe, but not qualitatively the same over that interval. The sense in which A is the same is not the same as the sense in which A is not the same: A is numerically the same over the interval but not qualitatively the same over the interval. I will say no more about this solution in this post.

4. Instead of distinguishing two senses of 'same,' one can distinguish two senses of 'individual.' On an Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis, as presented by John Peterson ("Persons and the Problem of Interaction," The Modern Schoolman LXIII, January 1985, 131-137), the individual₁ is the primary substance, the avocado in our example. This primary substance is the individual substance, the individual this-such, together with its accidents. The primary substance at time t (when the ripening process begins) is the unripe avocado, and the primary substance at t* (when the process is completed) is a numerically different primary substance. It follows that the primary substance is not the substratum of change!

The substratum of change — that which stays the same throughout the change — is the individual₂, the secondary substance 'in' the individual₁. The secondary substance 'in' a primary substance is its individuated essence. Primary substances are capable of independent existence. Secondary substances, as constituents of primary substances, are not capable of independent existence. Yet these secondary substances are what ground diachronic identity.  So what grounds identity over time and underlies the change and persists through it is the individuated essence.

One can see how this distinction between two senses of 'individual' removes the contradiction. It is the individual₂ (the individuated essence) that is the same over time, and the individual₁ that is different over time. There is no one concretum that is the same and different. There are two 'things'  in the changing concretum. 

It follows that the unripe avocado I saw on my counter a week ago is not numerically the same ripe avocado that I see on my counter today. It is a numerically different avocado.

5. The scholastic analysis can be applied to persons and the problem of their identity over time and through change. Persons are individuals₂. Thus they are individuated essences or secondary substances. Elliot drunk and Elliot sober are the same person because the same individuated essence, the same instance of humanity, underlies the change in accidents.  But they are numerically different primary substances and thus numerically different human animals.

Peterson thinks this solution superior to the Cartesian view according to which a person is identified with a res cogitans. On the Cartesian view, the person is a primary as opposed to a secondary substance. As a primary substance, the person on the Cartesian view is capable of independent existence. Given that a person remains self-same through change, the res cogitans must remain self-same though change. But then how can Elliot drunk and Elliot sober be the same person? "For individuals₁, as was said, are not substrates through any change but are rather the termini in any change, that is, the terminus ad quem [endpoint toward which] and terminus a quo [endpoint from which] of a change." (p. 135)

6. Let us now consider existential or substantial change. When an avocado ripens, it acquires the property of being ripe and loses the property of being unripe. It seems as obvious as anything that alterational or accidental change requires a substratum. But when the ripe avocado becomes the stuff of guacamole, it suffers a much more radical change. The avocado ceases to exist. Can one speak here too of a substratum of change, something in the thing that remains the same through the change?

There is likewise a difference between Elliot's sobering up and Elliot's dying. When he sobers up, the substratum of the change on the Thomistic view is his individuated essence. But what is the substratum of the radical existential change which occurs when he dies? Peterson writes, "The substrate of this change, of course, cannot be a particular human essence since it is just this which has passed away." (135) The particular human essence is subject to passing away since it is a compound of form and matter. So Peterson proposes the Aristotelian view according to which "The substrate of change in the case of essential change is simply the potentiality on the part of any individual to become something essentially different from what it is." (135) This potentiality is matter. Since it is that which individuates the form, matter is an individual in a third sense. There are then three senses of 'individual':

Individual₁ = primary substance
Individual₂ = secondary substance = substrate of accidental change
Individual₃ = matter = substrate of essential or existential change

7. Possible Lines of Critique

A. Peterson's theory implies that the unripe avocado and the ripe avocado are two primary substances, not one. (Likewise for Elliot sober and Elliot drunk.)  But since now there is only one, the ripe one, the unripe one must have passed out of existence. This consequence of Peterson's theory seems to collide with the Moorean fact mentioned above, namely, that alterational or accidental change does not involve the destruction of the thing that changes. If the thing that changes is the unripe avocado one sees and touches, then that thing does not remain self-same over time: it passes out of existence. What remains the same over time is the individuated essence which one does not see and which is not a substance in its own right.

B. Matter, as the substrate of essential change, is prime matter.  It is very difficult to see how the notion of materia prima can be rendered intelligible.

Related articles

Carnap and Clarity

Aquinas and Why the New Atheists are Right

Feser on Sex, Part II

Past, Present, and Future Walked into a Bar . . .

. . . and things began to get tense.

Numerical and Qualitative Identity and Radical Flux

Philosophers often use 'numerically' in contrast with 'qualitatively' when speaking of identity or sameness.  If I tell you that I drive the same car as Jane, that is ambiguous: it could mean that Jane and I drive one and the same car, or it could mean that Jane and I drive the same make and model of car, but not one and the same car. To take a second example, six bottles of beer in a typical six-pack are numerically distinct but qualitatively identical. Suppose you want a beer from the six-pack. It won't matter which bottle of the six I hand you since they are all qualitatively the same (qualitatively identical) in respect of both bottle and contents, at least with regard to the properties that you would find relevant such as quantity, taste, inebriatory potential, etc. If I hand you a beer and you say you want a different beer from the same six-pack, you mean a numerically different one. If I reply by saying that they are all the same, I mean they are all qualitatively the same.

If A and B are numerically identical, it follows that they are one and the same. A and B are one, not two.  If A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they are one and the same. But they might be.  For if A and B are numerically identical, then they share all properties, in which case they are qualitatively identical.  Furthermore, if A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they share every property: it suffices that they share some properties.

To see this, suppose that you and I both order the 'monster chimichanga' at the local Mexican eatery. We have ordered the same item, qualitatively speaking.  But it turns out that the one served to you is slightly more 'monstrous' (a wee bit bigger) than mine. That doesn't change the fact that they are qualitatively the same or qualitatively identical as I use these phrases.  The chimis are two, not one, hence numerically different.  They are the same in that they share most properties.

I suppose we could nuance this by distinguishing strict from loose qualitative identity.  Strict implies indiscernibility; loose does not. 

Can One Step Twice into the Same River?

Stephen Law (HT: Sed Contra) thinks one can make short work of a Heraclitean puzzle if one observes the numerical-qualitative distinction:

If you jump into a river and then jump in again, the river will have changed in the interim. So it won't be the same. But if it's not the same river, then the number of rivers that you jump into is two, not one. It seems we're forced to accept the paradoxical - indeed, absurd - conclusion that you can't jump into one and the same river twice. Being forced into such a paradox by a seemingly cogent argument is a common philosophical predicament.

This particular puzzle is fairly easily solved: the paradoxical conclusion that the number of rivers jumped into is two not one is generated by a faulty inference. Philosophers distinguish at least two kinds of identity or sameness. Numerical identity holds where the number of objects is one, not two (as when we discover that Hesperus, the evening star, is identical with Phosphorus, the morning star). Qualitative identity holds where two objects share the same qualities (e.g. two billiard balls that are molecule-for molecule duplicates of each other, for example). We use the expression 'the same' to refer to both sorts of identity. Having made this conceptual clarification, we can now see that the argument that generates our paradox trades on an ambiguity. It involves a slide from the true premise that the river jumped in the second time isn't qualitatively 'the same' to the conclusion that it is not numerically 'the same'. We fail to spot the flaw in the reasoning because the words 'the same' are used in each case. But now the paradox is resolved: we don't have to accept that absurd conclusion. Here's an example of how, by unpacking and clarifying concepts, it is possible to solve a classical philosophical puzzle. Perhaps not all philosophical puzzles can be solved by such means, but at least one can. 

Problem Solved?

Not so fast.  Although superficially plausible, the above solution/dissolution of the puzzle begs the question against the doctrine of Heraclitean flux. Law goes at Heraclitus with the numerical-qualitative identity distinction.  But this distinction presupposes a distinction between individuals and qualities.  Given this distinction one can say that one and the same individual has different qualities at different times.  Thus one and the same river is stepped into at different times. But on a doctrine of Heraclitean flux, there are no individuals that remain self-same over time.  There is no substrate of change.  Change cuts so deep that it cannot be confined to the properties of a thing leaving the thing, as the substrate of change, relatively unchanged.  For Heracliteans as for Buddhists, it's flux all the way down.

Law taxes Heraclitus with an illicit inferential slide from

The river jumped into the second time is not qualitatively the same

to

The river jumped into the second time is not numerically the same.

But there is no equivocation on 'same' unless we can sustain a distinction between the thing and its properties.  Is this distinction unproblematic?  Of course not. It reeks with problems. Just what is a thing in distinction from its properties?  A Bergmannian bare particular? An Armstrongian thin particular? An Aristotelian primary substance? There are problems galore with these conceptions. Has anyone ever really clarified the notion of prote ousia in Aristotle? Nope. Is a thing a bundle of its properties? More problems. And what is a property? An abstract object? In what sense of 'abstract'? A universal? A trope?  Will you say that there are no properties at all, only predicates?  And what about the thing's HAVING of properties? What is that? Instantiation? Is instantiation a relation? If yes, does it sire Bradley's Regress?  Are properties/concepts perhaps unsaturated in Frege's sense?  Can sense be made of that?  Is HAVING some sort of containment relation? Are the properties of a thing ontological constituents of it? And what could that mean? And so it goes.

We are presented with a puzzle and a seeming absurdity: There is no stepping twice into the same river. The Moorean rebuttal comes quickly: Of course, there is! Common sense, convinced that it is  right, attempts to dissolve the puzzle by making a simple distinction between numerical and qualitative identity.  The dissolution seems to work — but only if we remain on the surface of the troubled waters. Think a little more and you realize that the distinction presupposes a deeper distinction between thing and properties. But now we are launched into a labyrinth of ontological problems for which there is no accepted solution. The unclarity of the individual-property distinction percolates back upwards to disturb the numerical-qualitative distinction. 

Law has not definitively solved the Heraclitean puzzle.

The Numerical-Qualitative Distinction is Valid at the Level of Ordinary Language

We need to make the distinction, of course: it is fallout from, and exegesis of, ordinary usage.  'Same' is indeed ambiguous in ordinary English. The distinction does useful work at the level of ordinary language. The Heraclitean, however, need not be taken as contesting, at that level, the truth that one can step twice into the same river.  He is making a metaphysical claim: there is in reality, below the level of conventional talk and understanding, radical flux. If so, there is nothing that remains self-same over time, such as a river,  into which one can step twice.

Summary

To think clearly and avoid confusion one must observe the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity. But this distinction, which is serviceable enough for ordinary purposes, rests on a distinction, that of individual and property, which is metaphysically murky. Therefore, the common sense distinction cannot be used to dispatch the Heracliteans' metaphysical claim.

The deep metaphilosophical issue here concerns the role and status of Moorean rebuttals to seemingly crazy metaphysical claims. The illustrious Peter van Inwagen famously denies the existence of artifacts.  But he is not crazy, and you won't be able to blow him out of the water with some simple-minded distinction.

See Peter van Inwagen, Artifacts, and Moorean Rebuttals 

Our Knowledge of Sameness

How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. 

How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.

But this answer seems open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all.  Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware -- not mediately via inference -- that they are the same.  Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.

What is the nature of this awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference?   And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?

A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change.  Change  is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change. 

Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters iff it has incompatible properties at different times.  Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana,  has objectively changed in respect of color.

But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.

I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana.   I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for.

Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.

How then do I know it?

Related articles

Anderson Against Modes of Being: The Case of Berkeley

Worry and Regret and Time

Worry and regret form a pair in that each involves flight from the present; worry flees the present toward an unknown future, regret toward an unchangeable past.  The door to Reality, however, is hinged on the axis of the Now.  If access is to be had to the nunc stans it is only via the nunc movens. Past and future are but representations in comparison to the reality of the moving now.

Related articles

Bill O'Reilly the Other Night

Substantial Change, Prime Matter, and Individuation

Eric Levy wants to talk about prime matter.  I am 'primed' and my powder's dry:  Nihil philosophicum a me alienum putamus. "I consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to me."

Change, Accidental and Substantial 

There is no change without a substrate of change which, in respect of its existence and identity, does not change during the interval of the change. In a slogan: no change without unchange. No becoming other (alter-ation, Ver-aenderung) without something remaining the same. In the case of accidental change, the substrate is materia secunda, in one of its two senses, a piece of paper, say, as opposed to paper as a kind of material stuff. It is a piece of paper that becomes yellow with age, not paper as a kind of stuff. In the case of substantial change the substrate is said to be prime matter, materia prima. On the scholastic view, prime matter must exist if we are to explain substantial change. (See Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, pp. 171 ff.) Thus to the problems with substantial change already mentioned (in an earlier portion of this  text not yet 'blogged') we may add the problems that are specific to prime matter. Besides the route to prime matter via substantial change, there is the route via the very procedure of hylomorphic analysis. Traversing these routes will give us a good idea of why the positing of prime matter has seemed compelling to scholastics.

Given that thought sometimes makes contact with reality, one can ask: what must real things be like if thought is to be able to make contact with them? What must these things be like if they are to be intelligible to us? A realist answer is that these mind-independent things must be conformable to our thought, and our thought to them. There must be some sort of isomorphism between thought and thing. Since we cannot grasp anything unstructured, reality must have structure. So there have to be principles of form and organization in things. But reality is not exhausted by forms and structures; there is also that which supports form and structure. In this way matter comes into the picture.  Forms are determinations.  Matter, in a sense that embraces both primary and secondary matter, is the determinable as such.

Proximate matter can be encountered in experience, at least in typical cases. The proximate matter of a chair consists of its legs, seat, back. But this proximate matter itself has form. A leg, for example, has a shape and thus a form. (Form is not identical to shape, since there are forms that are not shapes; but shapes are forms.) Suppose the leg has the geometrical form of a cylinder. (Of course it will have other forms as well, the forms of smoothness and brownness, say.) The cylindrical form is the form of some matter. The matter of this cylindrical form is wood, say. But a piece of wood is a partite entity the parts of which have form and matter. For example, the complex carbohydrate cellulose is found in wood. It has a form and a proximate matter. But cellulose is made of beta-glucose molecules. Molecules are made of atoms, atoms of subatomic particles like electrons, and these of quarks, and so it goes.

Hylomorphic analysis is thus iterable. The iteration cannot be infinite: the material world cannot be hylomorphic compounds 'all the way down,' or 'all the way up' for that matter. The iteration has a lower limit in prime or primordial or ultimate matter (materia prima), just as it has an upper limit in pure form, and ultimately in the forma formarum, God, the purely actual being. Must hylomorphic analysis proceed all the way to prime matter, or can it coherently stop one step shy of it at the lowest level of materia secunda? I think that if one starts down the hylomorphic road one must drive to its bitter end in prime matter. (Cf. Feser's manual, p. 173 for what I read as an argument to this conclusion.) Ultimate matter, precisely because it is ultimate, has no form of its own. As John Haldane describes it, it is "stuff of no kind." (“A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind” in Form and Matter, ed. Oderberg, p. 50) We could say that prime matter is the wholly indeterminate determinable. As wholly indeterminate, it is wholly determinable.

(Question: if prime matter is wholly indeterminate, is it also indeterminate with respect to being either determinate or indeterminate? Presumably not.  Is there a problem lurking here?)

The Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter

While it is easy to appreciate the logic that leads to the positing of prime matter, it is difficult to see that what is posited is coherently thinkable. Here is one consideration among several. Call it the Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter. It may be compressed into the following aporetic dyad:

1. Prime matter exists.

2. Prime matter does not exist.

Argument for limb (1). There is real substantial change and it cannot be reduced to accidental change. All change is reduction of potency to act, and all change requires an underlying substrate of change that remains self-same and secures the diachronic identity of that which changes. The substrate of a change is the matter of the change. What changes in a change are forms, whether accidental or substantial. Without the potency-act and matter-form distinctions we cannot accommodate the fact of change and avoid both the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux and the Eleatic denial of change. Or so say the scholastics. In the case of accidental change, the subject or substrate is secondary matter (materia secunda). But substantial change is change too, and so it also requires a substrate which cannot be secondary matter and so must be prime matter. Given what we must assume to make sense of the plain fact of both accidental and substantial change, “prime matter must exist.” (Feser's manual, p. 172) It must exist in reality as the common basis of every substantial change.

Argument for limb (2). Prime matter is pure potency. It has to be, given the exigencies of accounting for substantial as opposed to accidental change. As pure potency, prime matter is wholly indeterminate and wholly formless. In itself, then, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually, as is obvious. But it also does not exist potentially: prime matter does not have potential Being. This is because the principle of the metaphysical priority of act over potency requires that every existing potency (e.g., the never actualized potency of a sugar cube to dissolve in water) be grounded in something actual (e.g., the sugar cube). The pure potency which is prime matter is not, however, grounded in anything actual. (Note that one cannot say that prime matter is a pure potency grounded in each primary substance. Prime matter is the ultimate stuff of each primary substance; it is not potency possessed by these substances.) Therefore, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually and it does not exist potentially. This is also evident from the first of the twenty-four Thomistic theses:

Potency and act are a complete division of being. Hence whatever is must be either pure act or a unit composed of potency and act as its primary and intrinsic principles. (Quoted by Feser, Schol. Metaph., p. 31)

If so, prime matter does not exist. For prime matter is neither pure act nor composed of potency and act. It is interesting to observe that while purely actual Being can itself be by being something actual, purely potential Being cannot itself be by being something potential (or actual). God is actual Being (Sein, esse) and an actual being (Seiendes, ens). But prime matter is neither potential nor actual. So prime matter neither is actually nor is potentially.

It thus appears that we have cogent arguments for both limbs of a contradiction. If the contradiction is real and not merely apparent, and the arguments for the dyad's limbs are cogent, then either there is no prime matter, the very concept thereof being self-contradictory, or there is prime matter but it is is unintelligible to us. One could, I suppose, be a mysterian about prime matter: it exists but we, given our cognitive limitations, cannot understand how it could exist. (Analogy with Colin McGinn's mysterianism: consciousness is a brain process, but our cognitive limitations bar us from understanding how it could be.) But I mention mysterianism only to set it aside.

But perhaps we can avoid contradiction in the time-honored way, by drawing a distinction. A likely candidate is the distinction between prime matter in itself versus prime matter together with substantial forms. So I expect the following scholastic response to my antinomy:

Prime matter exists as a real (extramental) factor only in primary substances such as Socrates and Plato. It exists only in hylomorphic compounds of prime matter and substantial form. But it does not exist when considered in abstraction from every primary substance. So considered, it is nothing at all. It is not some formless stuff that awaits formation: it is always already formed. It is always already parcelled out among individual material substances. Once this distinction is made, the distinction between prime matter in itself and prime matter together with substantial forms, one can readily see that the 'contradiction' in the above dyad is merely apparent and rests on an equivocation on 'exist(s).' The word is being used in two different senses. In (1) 'exists' means: exists together with substantial form. In (2), 'exist' means: exist in itself. Thus the aporetic dyad reduces to the logically innocuous dyad:

1*. Prime matter exists together with substantial forms.

2*. Prime matter does not exist in itself in abstraction from substantial forms.

Unfortunately, this initially plausible response gives rise to a problem of its own. If prime matter really exists only in primary substances, then prime matter in reality is not a common stuff but is parcelled out among all the primary substances: it exists only as a manifold of designated matters, the matter of Socrates, of Plato, etc. But this conflicts with the requirement that prime matter be the substratum of substantial change. Let me explain.

If a new substance S2 comes into existence from another already existing substance S1 (parthenogenesis may be an example) then prime matter is what underlies and remains the same through this change. Now this substratum of substantial change that remains the same must be something real, but it cannot be identical to S2 or to S1 or to any other substance. For if the substratum of substantial change is identical to S1, then S1 survives, in which case S2 is not a new substance generated from S1 but a mere alteration of S1. Don't forget that substantial change cannot be reduced to an accidental change in some already existing substance or substances. In substantial change a new substance comes to be from one or more already existing substances. (I will assume that creation or 'exnihilation' does not count as substantial change.)

If, on the other hand, the substratum of change is identical to S2, then S2 exists before it comes to exist. And it seems obvious that the substratum of substantial change underlying S2's coming to be from S1 cannot be some other substance. Nor can the substratum be an accident of S2 or S1. For an accident can exist only in a substance. If the substratum is an accident of S1, then S1 must exist after it has ceased to exist. If the substratum is an accident of S2, then S2 must exist before it comes to exist.

The argumentative punchline is that prime matter cannot exist only in primary substances as a co-principle tied in every case to a substantial form. If prime matter is the substratum of substantial change, then prime matter must be a really existent, purely potential, wholly indeterminate, stuff on its own.

The Problem of the Substrate

The problem just presented, call it the Problem of the Substrate or the Problem of the Continuant, may be pressed into the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. Prime matter is the substrate of substantial change.

2. Prime matter does not exist in reality except as divided among individual material substances.

3. The substratum of a substantial change cannot be identified with any of the substances involved in the change, or with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance. (For example, the substratum of the substantial change which is Socrates' coming into existence from gametes G1 and G2 cannot be identified with Socrates, with G1, with G2, with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance.)

 4. There is substantial change and it requires a really existent substrate.

The tetrad is inconsistent issuing as it does in the contradiction: Prime matter does and does not exist only in individual material substances.

The obvious solution is to deny (2). But if we deny (2) to solve the Problem of the Substrate, then we reignite the Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter. We solved the Antinomy by making a distinction, but that distinction gave rise to the Problem of the Substrate/Continuant. We appear to be in quite a pickle. (For more on the Substrate/Continuant problem, see John D. Kronen, Sandra Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan, “The Problem of the Continuant: Aquinas and Suárez on Prime Matter and Substantial Generation,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Jun., 2000), pp. 863-885.)

The Problem of Individuation

Finally a glance at the related ontological, not epistemological, problem of individuation. This problem is actually two problems. There is the problem of individuation proper, namely, the problem of what makes an individual substance individual as opposed to universal, and there is the connected problem of differentiation, namely, the problem of what makes numerically different individual substances numerically different. It is clear that prime matter cannot be the principle of differentiation. For one thing, prime matter is common to all material substances. For another, prime matter as pure potency is indeterminate, hence not intrinsically divided into parcels. Moreover, pace Feser, prime matter cannot “bring universals down to earth” in his phrase: it cannot be the principle of individuation, narrowly construed. (Schol. Metaph., p. 199) For what makes Socrates an individual substance rather than the substantial form he shares with Plato cannot be common, indeterminate, amorphous, matter.

Prime matter is not up to the job of individuation/differentiation. It is designated matter (materia signata quantitate) that is said to function as the ontological ground or 'principle' of individuation and numerical difference. Unfortunately, appeal to designated matter involves us in an explanatory circle. Designated matter is invoked to explain why Socrates and Plato are individual substances and why they are numerically different individual substances. But designated matter cannot be that which individuates/differentiates them since it presupposes for its individuation and differentiation the logically (not temporally) antecedent existence of individual material substances. Why are Socrates and Plato different? Because their designated matters are different. Why are their designated matters different? Because they are the matters of different substances. The explanation moves in a circle of rather short diameter.

Feser considers something like this objection but dismisses it as resting on a confusion of formal with efficient causality. But there is no such confusion in the objection as I have presented it. Efficient causality does not come into it at all. No one thinks that there is an agent who in a temporal process imposes substantial form on prime matter in the way that a potter in a temporal process imposes accidental form upon a lump of clay. I can grant Feser's point that prime matter and substantial form are related as material cause to formal cause. I can also grant that prime matter and substantial form are mutually implicative co-principles neither of which can exist without the other. Granting all this, my objection remains. Prime matter in itself is undifferentiated. It it differentiated and dimensive only in combination with substantial forms. But this is equivalent to saying that prime matter is differentiated and dimensive only as the designated matter of particular individual substances. But then designated matter cannot non-circularly explain why numerically different substances are numerically different. For the numerical difference of these matters presupposes the numerical difference of the substances.

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.)  He is saying that what no longer exists is  nothing.

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 in 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, Moorean, '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?  Just what is the presentist trying to say, and can it be said?

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!

Related articles

Aristotle on the New Year

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.)  He is saying that what no longer exists is  nothing.

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 in 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, Moorean, '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?  Just what is the presentist trying to say, and can it be said?

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!

Vita Brevis

This mess we are in, this predicament, the fall into time . . . leaves us no time for its solution.

The Idolatry of the Transient

It is because we want more than the transient that we cling to it.

Time Trouble

It is troubling that our lives will end.  But for some of us it is even more troubling that they are constantly ending.  It is not as if we are fully real now and later will not be; it is rather that our temporal mode of existence is not fully real.  At each moment our lives are passing away.  There is no completion, no rest, no final satisfaction, no fullness of being, in any moment.  For this reason, living forever in this mode of existence is no solution at all. It is not as if what exists in time fully exists, but in time; rather it is that temporal existence is a deficient mode of existence.

Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism

The following is an excerpt of an e-mail from the Barcelona lawyer, Daniel Vincente Carillo.  As I mentioned to him in a private e-mail, I admire him for tackling these great questions, and doing so in a foreign language.  The pursuit of these questions ennobles us while humbling us at the same time.  Carillo writes,

In the contest between theism and metaphysical naturalism we have only four possible scenarios:

 

1st. An uncaused and necessary universe: It doesn't exist by another being and it cannot cease to exist (absolute and eternal universe).

 

BV:  This is indeed a doxastic possibility.  (By calling the possibility doxastic, I leave it open whether it is a real possibility.)  But one ought to distinguish between omnitemporality and eternality.    The omnitemporal exists at every time, and is therefore 'in time.'  The eternal does not exist 'in time.'  A universe that cannot cease to exist is in time and therefore not eternal. This could be a merely terminological matter.

 

2nd. A caused and necessary universe: It exists by another being but it cannot cease to exist (infinite series of universes).

 

BV: It is true that what is caused to exist is caused by another, since nothing can cause itself to exist,  not even God.  To say that God is causa sui, then, does not mean that he causes himself; it  means that he is not caused by another.  'Causa sui,' shall we say, is a privative expression.  So far, so good.

 

But Carillo may be conflating the necessary with the omnitemporal.  To say that a universe is necessary is to make a modal claim, one that is much stronger than the merely temporal claim that the universe in question exists at every time.  Suppose time is actually infinite in both past and future directions and that the universe (or a universe) exists at every time.  Then the universe is omnitemporal: it exists at every time.  But it doesn't follow that the universe is necessary.  Metaphysical necessity is a modal, not temporal notion.  The necessary is that which cannot not exist.  An omnitemporal universe could well be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent.

 

In the jargon of 'possible worlds,' a necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds.  An omnitemporal being is one that exists at every time in a world in which there is time.  Clearly, if x is omnitemporal, it does not follow that x is necessary. 

 

3rd. An uncaused and contingent universe: It doesn't exist by another being but it can cease to exist (universe from nothing).

 

BV: But even if an uncaused universe could NOT cease to exist, it might still be contingent.  Suppose that there is an uncaused universe U which is such that: if it exists, then it cannot cease to exist.  U's being contingent is not ruled out.  If it is necessary that U continue to exist if it does exist,it does not follow that U necessarily exists.  For there might not have been that universe at all.

 

4th. A caused and contingent universe: It exists by another being and it can cease to exist (created universe).

 

BV:  But again, if U exists ab alio, this is logically consistent with U's never ceasing to exist.  Suppose God creates a universe which has the essential property of being  omnitemporal.  He creates a universe out of nothing that exists at every time.  Since it exists at every time, there is no time at which it does not exist.  And because there is no time at which U does not exist, it never ceases to exist.  (If x ceases to exist, then there are two times, t and t*, t < t*, such that x exists at t but does not exist at t*.)  So a universe can depend for its existence on God even if it cannot cease to exist.

 

The first three options characterize atheism/naturalism, while the last one is peculiar to theism. But are they equally rational? Definitely not.

 

BV: A minor point is that atheism and naturalism are not the same.  The latter entails the former, but the former does not entail the latter. (The case of McTaggart, atheist but non-naturalist).

 

Despite my criticism above, the three naturalist options Carillo lists do seem to exhaust the possibilities if we assume that a metaphysical naturalist is also a metaphysical realist, an assumption which is quite 'natural.'  But if one were a naturalist and some sort of anti-realist or idealist, that would be a further option.

Now how does Carillo exclude the third option?  He writes:

It looks like the 3rd possibility is the weakest, since nothingness cannot create anything at all. The act of creation, like any other act of producing something, presupposes that the creator and the creature exist simultaneously at least in some moment. However, by its very notion, nothingness cannot exist simultaneously with the universe at any moment. Therefore, a universe from nothing is impossible . . . .

This is entirely too quick.  True, nothingness cannot create anything.  But someone who holds that the universe just exists as a matter of brute fact, i.e., contingently without cause or reason, is not committed to maintaining that nothingness has creative power.  As I recall from Russell's debate with Copleston, Russell ends up saying that the universe just exists and that is all!  That is not a good answer, in my opinion, but one cannot refute it by pointing out that nothingness cannot create anything.  The whole point of naturalism is that there are neither creatures nor creator.

Related articles

Nothing is Written in Stone

Modal Axioms

Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

You Are Going to Die.

Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens.  He's dead.  In Platonic perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed.  So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

Did the Universe Have a Beginning in Time?

Some of you may remember the commenter 'spur' from the old Powerblogs incarnation of this weblog.  His comments were the best of any I received in over ten years of blogging.  I think it is now safe to 'out' him as Stephen Puryear of North Carolina State University.  He recently sent me a copy of his Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2014, vol. 92, no. 4, 619-629).  He asked me to share the link with my readers, and I do so with pleasure.  In this entry I will present the gist of Puryear's  paper as I understand it.  It is a difficult paper due to the extreme difficulty of the subject matter, but also due to the difficulty of commanding a clear view of the contours of Puryear's dialectic.   He can tell me whether I have grasped the article's main thrust.  Comments enabled.

The argument under his logical microscope is the following:

1. If the universe did not have a beginning, then the past would consist in an infinite temporal sequence of events.
2.  An infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite.
3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite.
4. The temporal sequence of past events was formed by successive addition.
5. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.

Premise (3) is open to a seemingly powerful objection.  Puryear seems to hold (p. 621) that (3) is equivalent to the claim that it is impossible to run through an actually infinite sequence in step-wise fashion.  That is, (3) is equivalent to the claim that it is impossible to 'traverse' an actual infinite. But this happens all the time when anything moves from one point to another. Or so the objection goes.  Between any two points there are continuum-many points.  So when my hand reaches for the coffee cup, my hand traverses an actual infinity of points. But if my hand can traverse an actual infinity,  then what is to stop a beginningless universe from having run through an actual infinity of events to be in its present state?  Of course, an actual infinity of spatial points is not the same as an actual infinity of temporal moments or events at moments; but in both the spatial and the temporal case there is an actual infinity of items.  If one can be traversed, so can the other.

The above argument, then, requires for its soundness the truth of (3).  But (3) is equivalent to

3*. It is impossible to traverse an actual infinite.

(3*), however, is open to the objection that motion involves such traversal.  Pace Zeno, motion is actual and therefore possible.  It therefore appears that the argument fails at (3).  To uphold (3) and its equivalent (3*) we need to find a way to defang the objection from the actuality of motion (translation).  Can we accommodate continuous motion without commitment to actual infinities?  Motion is presumably continuous, not discrete.   (I am not sure, but I think that the claim that space and time are continuous is equivalent to the claim there are no space atoms and no time atoms.) Can we have continuity without actual infinities of points and moments?

Some say yes.  William Lane Craig is one.  The trick is to think of a continuous whole, whether of points or of moments, as logically/ontologically prior to its parts, as opposed to composed of its parts and thus logically/ontologically posterior to them. Puryear takes this to entail that a temporal interval or duration is a whole that we divide into parts, a whole whose partition depends on our conceptual activities. (This entailment is plausible, but not perfectly evident to me.)  If so, then the infinity of parts in a continuous whole can only be a potential infinity.  Thus a line segment is infinitely divisible but not infinitely divided.  It is actually divided only when we divide it, and the number of actual divisions will always be finite.  But one can always add another 'cut.'  In this sense the number of cuts is potentially infinite.  Similarly for a temporal duration.  In this way we get continuity without actual infinity.

If this is right, then motion needn't involve the traversal of an actual infinity of points, and the above objection brought against (3) fails.  The possibility of traversal of an actual infinite cannot be shown by motion since motion, though continuous, does not involve motion through an actual infinity of points for the reason that there is no actual infinity of points: the infinity is potential merely.

We now come to Puryear's thesis.  In a nutshell, his thesis is that Craig's defence of premise (3) undermines the overall argument.  How?  To turn aside the objection to (3), it is necessary to view spatial and temporal wholes, not as composed of their parts, but as (logically, not temporally) prior to their parts, with the parts introduced by our conceptual activities. But then the same should hold for the entire history of the universe up to the present moment.  For if the interval during which my hand is in motion from the keyboard to the coffee cup is a whole whose parts are due to our divisive activities, then the same goes for the metrically infinite interval that culminates in the present moment.  This entails that the divisions within the history of the universe up to the present are potentially infinite only.

But then how can (1) or (2) or (4) be true?  Consider (2).  It states that an infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite.  Think of an event as a total state of the universe at a time.  Now if temporal divisions are introduced by us into logically prior temporal wholes such that the number of these actual divisions can only be finite, then the same will be true of events:  we carve the history of the universe into events.  Since the number of carvings, though potentially infinite is always only actually finite, it follows that (2) is false.

The defense of (3) undercuts (2).

So that's the gist of it, as best as I can make out.  I have no objection, but then the subject matter is very difficult and I am not sure I understand all the ins and outs.  

John Anderson, Heraclitus the Obscure, and the Depth of Change

A. J. Baker on John Anderson: ". . . there are no ultimates in Anderson's view and in line with Heraclitus he maintains that things are constantly changing, and also infinitely complex . . . ." (Australian Realism, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 29, emphasis added)

Change is a given.  From the earliest times sensitive souls have been puzzled and indeed aggrieved by it.  "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complains in a letter to Franz Overbeck.  But are things constantly changing?  And what could that mean?

We need to ask four different questions. Does everything change? Do the things that change always change? Do the things that always change continuously change? Do the things that change change in every respect?

1. Does everything change? The first point to be made, and I believe the Andersonians would agree,  is that it is not obviously true that everything changes, or true at all. There are plenty of putative counterexamples. Arguably, the truths of logic and mathematics are not subject to change. They are not subject to change either in their existence or in their truth-value. There is no danger that the theorem of Pythagoras will change from true to false tomorrow. If you say that the theorem in question is true only in Euclidean geometry, then I invite you to consider the proposition expressed by 'The theorem of Pythagoras is true only in Euclidean geometry.' Is the truth of this proposition, if true, subject to change?

Here is an even better example. Consider the proposition P expressed by ‘Everything changes.’ P is either true or false. If P is true, then both P and its truth-value change, which is a curiously self-defeating result: surely, those who preach that all is impermanent intend to say something about the invariant structure of the world and/or our experience of the world. Their intention is not to say that all is impermanent now, but if you just wait long enough some permanent things will emerge later. Clearly, P is intended by its adherents as changelessly true, as laying bare one of the essential marks of all that exists. But then P’s truth entails its own falsity. On the other hand, if P is false, then it is false. Therefore, necessarily, P is false. It follows that the negation of P is necessarily true. Hence it is necessarily true that some things do not change. The structure of the (samsaric) world does not change.   The world is 'fluxed up,' no doubt about it; but not that 'fluxed up.'

2. Do the things that change always change? I take ‘always’ to mean ‘at every time.’ Clearly, not everything subject to change is changing at every time. The number of planets in our solar system, for example, though subject to change, is obviously not changing at every time.  The position of my chair, to take a second example, is subject to change but is obviously not changing at every time.

 

3. Do the things that change continuously change? To say that a change is continuous is to say that between any two states in the process of change, there are infinitely many – indeed, continuum-many – intermediate states. To say that a change is discrete, however, is to say that there are some distinct states in the process of change such that there are no intermediate states between them. Now although some changes are continuous, such as the change in position of a planet orbiting the sun, not all changes are continuous. If I lose a tooth or an eye, that is a discrete change, not a continuous one. To go from having two eyes to one, is not to pass through intermediate states in which I have neither two nor one.  A switch is off, then on.  Although a continuous process may be involved in the transition, the change in switch status -- 0 or 1 -- is discrete, not continuous.

 

Hence it cannot be true that each thing that changes continuously changes.

4. Do the things that change change in every respect? No; consider the erosion of a mountainside. Erosion of a mountainside is a change that is occurring at every time, and presumably continuously; but there are properties in respect of which the mountainside cannot change if there is to be the change called erosion, for instance, the property of being a mountainside. Without something that remains the same, there cannot be change. There cannot be erosion unless something erodes.  Alterational change requires a substrate of change which, because it is the substrate of change, precisely does not change. There is no alterational change without unchange.  Hence if change is all-pervasive, in the sense that every aspect of a thing changes when a change occurs in the thing, then there is no change. Compare Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 277.

In sum, I have given reasons to believe that (i) some things are unchangeable; (ii) among the things that are changeable, some are merely subject to change and not always changing; (iii) among the things that are always changing, only some are continuously changing; and (iv) there is no (alterational as opposed to existential) change without unchange.

Therefore, those who lay great stress on the impermanence of the world and our experience of it need to balance their assertion by proper attention to the modes of permanence. For example, if we are told that everything is subject to change, does not the very sense of this assertion require that there be something that does not change, namely the ontological structure of (samsaric) entities? And if a thing is changing, how could that be the case if no aspect of the thing is unchanging? Furthermore, how could one become attached to something that was always changing? Attachment presupposes relative stability in the object of attachment. Jack is attached to Jill because her curvacity and cheerfulness, say, are relatively unchanging features of her. If she were nothing but change 'all the way down,' then there would be nothing for Jack's desire to get a grip on. But without desire and attachment, no suffering, and no need for a technology of release from suffering.

It is a mistake to think that change is all-pervasive. So those who maintain that all is impermanent need to tell us exactly what they mean by this and how they arrived at it. Is it not onesided and unphilosophical to focus on impermanence while ignoring permanence?

If all being is pure becoming, then there is no being -- and no becoming either.

 

Getting back to Anderson, if his claim is that things are constantly changing, what does that mean?  Does it mean that everything that changes changes always, or continuously, or in every respect, or all three?

Aristotle on the New Year

Ed sends his best wishes from London in the form of a quotation from The Philosopher:

"Since the 'now' is an end and a beginning of time, not of the same time however, but the end of that which is past and the beginning of that which is to come, it follows that, as the circle has its convexity and its concavity, in a sense, in the same thing, so time is always at a beginning and at an end". (Physics book IV  222 a28)

The saying of the Stagirite smacks of presentism.  I find presentism puzzling.  See my Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis from almost exactly two years ago.

Theme music: Simon and Garfunkel, A Hazy Shade of Winter.

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Time

Time is a goddess of healing -- for a time.  She heals the wounds that come inevitably to those who must march to her beat.  She brings us ill and makes us well again until such time as she does us in for good.

This Just Now In: There is no Now! More Bad Philosophy from a Physicist

One of the tasks of philosophy is to expose bad philosophy.  Scientists pump out quite a lot of it.   Physicists are among the worst.  I have given many examples.  Here is another one.  Let's get to work.  Dartmouth physicist Marcelo Gleiser writes in There is No Now, 

You say, “I’m reading this word now.” In reality, you aren’t. Since light travels at a finite speed, it takes time for it to bounce from the book to your eye. When you see a word, you are seeing it as it looked some time in the past. To be precise, if you are holding the book at one foot from your eye, the light travel time from the book to your eye is about one nanosecond, or one billionth of a second. The same with every object you see or person you talk to. Take a look around. You may think that you are seeing all these objects at once, or “now,” even if they are at different distances from you. But you really aren’t, as light bouncing from each one of them will take a different time to catch your eye. The brain integrates the different sources of visual information, and since the differences in arrival time are much smaller than what your eyes can discern and your brain process, you don’t see a difference. The “present”—the sum total of the sensorial input we say is happening “now”—is nothing but a convincing illusion.

Gleiser is confusing seeing with object seen.  True, light travels at a finite speed. So the word seen is the word as it was one nanosecond ago.  But it doesn't follow that I am not seeing the word now. The seeing occurs now at time t, the word seen, however, is not the word as it is at t, but the word as it was at t* (t*<t). 

When I glance at the sun, I see it as it was about eight minutes ago.  But it does not follow that the seeing (glancing) is not occurring now, or that there is no now.

Suppose that at time t I am visually aware of a word and of a cat.  I am focused on the word, but the cat is nearby in the periphery of my visual field.  So the seeing of the word and the seeing of the cat are simultaneous seeings.  But the word I see is the word as it was one nanosecond ago, whereas the cat I see is the cat as it was, say, 10 nanoseconds ago.  So I grant that there are a couple of illusions here.

The first illusion is that if a seeing occurs at time t, then the object seen is as it is at t. This cannot be given the well-known facts that Gleiser adduces.  The object seen is as it was at an earlier time t*.  But if you see through (forgive the pun) the first illusion, you may still succumb to the second.  The second illusion is that objects seen at the same time t are as they were at the same time t*, where t* is earlier than t.  In my example, the seeing of the word and the seeing of the cat occur at the same time, call it t.  But, given that word and cat are at different distances from the subject, there is no one time t*, earlier than t, such that word and cat were as they were when they were seen.

But again, that does not show that the present moment or the Now is an illusion.

Gleiser's thesis is that there is no Now, that it is a "cognitive illusion."  He sums up:

To summarize: given that the speed of light is fast but finite, information from any object takes time to hit us, even if the time is tiny. We never see something as it is “now.” However, the brain takes time to process information and can’t distinguish (or time-order) two events that happen sufficiently close to one another. The fact that we see many things happening now is an illusion, a blurring of time perception.

Gleiser is just confused.  There is an illusion, but it is the illusion that we see things as they are now.  But that is not to say that there is no Now, or that the Now is an illusion.  In fact, Gleiser presupposes that there is a Now when he says that we never see anything as it is now.  Right now the Sun is in some definite state, but the physics of visual perception make it impossible to see the Sun as it is now.  If it had gone supernova three minutes ago, it would appear to us now as it usually does.

Geiser confuses an epistemological claim -- We never see anything distant from us as it is at the precise time of the seeing -- with an ontological claim: there is no present moment.

There is other nonsense in Gleiser's piece.   Take this sentence: "The notion of time is related to change, and the passage of time is simply a tool to track change."  I'll leave it to the reader to sort this out.  I've had enough!

Related entries:

Do Physicists Bullshit?

Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?

"We're Just a Bit of Pollution," Cosmologist Says

Related articles

Why Do We Need Philosophy?

Nonsense From the Science Page of the New York Times

Philosophy Always Buries Its Undertakers

 

Is Dying an Accidental or a Substantial Change?

On animalism, I am just a (live) human animal.  And so are you.  But there is a reason to think that I cannot be identical to my animal body.  The reason is that it will survive me. (Assume that there is no natural immortality of the soul.)  Assume that I die peacefully in my bed. I went to bed, but now I don't exist: what occupies my place in the bed is a (human) corpse.  A dramatic change took place in the immediate vicinity of the bed.  One and the same  human body went from alive to dead.  This suggests that dying is an accidental as opposed to a substantial change.  If I understand it, this is roughly the Corpse Objection to animalism.  The objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me.  Me and my body have different persistence conditions.

But there is another way to look at the situation.  Me and my body have the same persistence conditions.  My body will not survive me.  Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change.  When I die, the animal body that I am ceases to exist and one or more new bodies begin to exist.  (If my death is peaceful, as opposed to, say, 'Islamic,' then only one new body begins to exist.)  So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist.  The change is not alterational but existential.  This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive.  As Patrick Toner puts it:

Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive.  This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts,  -- there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal.  When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. ("Hylemorphic Animalism" in Phil Stud, 155, 2011, pp. 65-81)

An Objection

This strikes me as problematic.  Suppose dying is a substantial change and that Peter and Paul die peacefully at the same instant in the same place.  Peter and Paul cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2  begin to exist.  Suppose C1 is Peter's corpse and C2 is Paul's corpse.  What accounts metaphysically for C1's being Peter's corpse and opposed to Paul's, and vice versa? What makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's?

Why should there be a problem?  Dying is a substantial change, but it is not annihilation. (At the other end, being born is a substantial change but it is not exnihilation: no animal is born ex nihilo.)   Since dying is not annihilation, a corpse comes to be when Peter dies. And since the change is substantial, not accidental, the substance Peter ceases to exist and a numerically different substance, C1, begins to exist.  Now every change is a change in a substratum or subject.  So what is the subject of the change when Peter dies?  Answer: prime matter, materia prima.  This is what all the scholastic manuals tell me.

But if prime matter underlies substantial change, and provides the continuity between Peter and his corpse, then, given that prime matter is wholly indeterminate and bare of all forms, substantial and accidental,  the continuity that prime matter allows does not distinguish between the change from Peter to Peter's corpse and the change from Paul to Paul's corpse.  The substratum of these two changes is the same, namely, prime matter.  If so, what makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's?  That's my problem.

This problem does not arise if dying is an accidental change. For then we can say that Peter's designated matter (materia signata quantitate) which is numerically distinct from Paul's continues in existence as Peter's corpse.  We have an accidental change, a change from being alive to being dead in a particular parcel of designated matter.

Toner's Reply

Patrick Toner's reply is that designated, not prime, matter accounts for the different continuities.  Peter's corpse is continuous with Peter because the same designated matter is present in Peter and his corpse, but a different parcel of designated matter is present in Paul and his corpse.  The fact that the matter underlying the two changes is prime, however,  does not prevent the matter from also being designated.  Toner in effect rejects my assumption that the substratum of a substantial change cannot be a particular parcel of designated matter. 

What I had gathered from the manuals (e.g. Feser's, p. 171 et passim) was that (i) materia prima is the subject of substantial change; (ii)  materia secunda is the subject of accidental change; (iii)  every change is either substantial or accidental; (iv) no change is both; (v) no change is such that its subject or substrate is both materia prima and materia secunda.

But if Toner is right, I am wrong about  (v).

Toner draws on Joseph Bobik's commentary on De Ente et Essentia:

When we talk about quantified matter ... we are not talking about anything other than the matter which is part of the intrinsic constitution of an individual composed substance, that matter which can also be described as prime, as designated, and as nondesignated... Thus, to talk about prime matter, quantified matter, nondesignated matter, and designated matter is to talk about the same thing, but to say four different things about it, to describe it in four different ways. To speak of quantified matter, or perhaps better of matter as quantified, is to speak of what the matters of all individual composed substances have in common, namely, that in their matters which accounts for the possibility of their matter's being divided from the matters of other individual substances; it is to speak of that which makes it possible for individual composed substances to have matter in common as part of their essence. Matter as designated presupposes, and adds to, matter as quantified; and what it adds is actual circumscription so as to be just so much. To say that matter is quantified is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out, and nothing else. To say that matter is designated is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out and circumscribed to be just so much, just so much as is in Jack or Paul or any given individual composed substance. (148, emphasis added)

Response to the Reply

The Bobik passage implies that some one thing can be described in two different ways, as designated matter and as prime matter.  But then what is the one thing that can be described in these two ways?  Presumably, it is a particular parcel of designated matter, the matter of precisely Peter, say, which is numerically distinct from the matter of precisely Paul.  Materia signata is matter in the concrete, and prime matter would then be an abstraction from it and from every discrete parcel of designated matter.

If prime matter is but an abstraction, how can it serve as the real substratum of any such real change as is the dying of an animal? That is a real, concrete, change.  If every change is a change in something, then the something must itself be real and concrete and particular. That's one problem.

A second is that if both substantial and accidental changes are changes in a concrete parcel of designated matter, then what becomes of the distinction between substantial and accidental changes?  Can every change be viewed as one or the other?  Is it just a matter of the same change being described in two different ways?

This requires further development and in any case it is just the beginning of the aporetics of prime matter, something to be pursued in subsequent entries.

Conclusion

Given the extreme difficulty of the notion of prime matter, a difficulty that transfers to the notion of substantial change, I don't see that the objection I raise above has yet been adequately answered.

Related articles

Patrick Toner on Hylomorphic Animalism

Some Concepts of Matter

Coming into Being and Passing Away: Two Definitions of Chisholm Examined

Patrick Toner on Hylomorphic Animalism

Herewith, some  comments on and questions about Patrick Toner's fascinating paper, "Hylemorphic Animalism" (Philos Stud, 2011, 155: 65-81). 

Patrick Toner takes an animalist line on human persons.  Animalism is the doctrine that each of us is identical to an animal organism.  A bit more precisely, "Animalism involves two claims: (1) we are human persons and (2) human persons are identical with animals." (67)

Animalism

Let's consider the second claim.  Toner endorses Eric Olson's 'thinking animal' argument for (2).  Based on Toner's summary, I take the argument to go as follows.  I am now sitting in a chair thinking a thought T.  There is also now an animal sitting in this very chair and occupying the same space.  Is the animal also thinking T?  There are four possibilities.

 

a. I am identical to the animal occupying my chair, and the thinker of my thoughts is identical to this animal.

b. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with an animal that thinks all my thoughts.

c. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal.

d. There is no animal in my chair; hence I am not not identical to it.

Of the four possibilities, Toner considers (a) to be actual.  "It's the least ugly of the choices.  Indeed, it's positively common-sensical, compared with the other rather nutty options." (70)

I agree that (b) and (d) can be excluded right away.   But I don't see that (c) is 'nutty' and I don't see that (a) is "positively common-sensical." Common sense has nothing to say about abstruse metaphysical topics such as this one. 

The Corpse Objection to Animalism

On (a), the thinker of my thoughts is numerically identical to this living human organsm with which I am intimately associated. But If I am (identically) my body, then me and my body ought to have the same persistence conditions.  But they don't:  when I die I will cease to exist, but (most likely) a corpse will remain.  Now if a = b, then there is no time t at which a exists but b does not exist, and vice versa. So if there are times when I do not exist but my body does exist, then I cannot be identical to my body.  On (a), I will not survive death, but my body will: it will survive as a corpse.  Therefore I am not identical to my body.  

Toner's Response to the Corpse Objection

The Corpse Objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me.  My body exists now before my death and it will exist then after my death.  It is the same body dead or alive.  Toner's response is a flat denial of survival.  My body will not survive me.  Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change.  When I die the animal body that I am will cease to exist and one or more new bodies will begin to exist. So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist.  The change is not alterational but existential.  This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive.  As Toner puts it:

Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive.  This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts,  -- there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal.  When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. (71)

Two Questions

1. One question is  whether, assuming that I am just this living animal body, my dying is an accidental change or a substantial change. I will suggest that it is more plausible to think of it as an accidental change.

If my dying  is an accidental change, then something that exists now in one form will exist post mortem in a different form.  This something could be called the proximate matter of my body.  This matter is organized in a certain way and its organs and various subsystems are functioning in such a way that the entire bodily system has the property of being alive.  (For example, the lungs are oxygenating the blood, the heart is pumping the blood to the brain, the pathways to the brain are unobstructed, etc.)  But then suppose I drown or have a massive heart attack or a massive stroke.  The body then ceases to have the property of being alive. On this way of looking at things, one and the same body can exist in two states, alive and dead.  There is diachronic continuity between the living and dead bodies, and that continuity is grounded in the proximate matter of the body.

If, on the other hand, my dying is a substantial  change, and I am just this living body, then at death I cease to exist entirely, and what is left over, my corpse, is something entirely new, 'an addition to being' so to speak.  I cease to exist, and a corpse comes to exist.  But then the only diachronic continuity as between the live body and the corpse is prime (not proximate) matter.

But what makes the corpse that comes to exist my corpse?  Suppose I am just a living animal and that I die at t1.  A moment later, at t2, two corpses come into existence. Which one do you bury under the 'BV' tombstone?  Which is the right one, and what makes it the right one?  Or suppose Peter and I die at the same instant, in the same place, and that dying is a substantial change.  Peter and I cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2  come into existence. Which is my corpse and which is Peter's?  Practically, there is no problem: we look different and our looking different and having different dimensions, etc. is due to our different proximate matter, matter that is the same under two different and successive forms.

What this suggests is that dying is an accidental change, not a substantial change.  It is an accidental change in the proximate matter of a human body. But if so, then the Corpse Objection holds and animalism is untenable.

There is also the very serious problem that substantial change requires prime matter, and prime matter is a very questionable posit.  But I won't pursue this topic at present.

2. My second main question concerns how animalism is compatible with such phenomena as the unity of consciousness and intentionality.  On animalism I am just a living human animal.  The thinker of my thoughts is this hairy critter occupying my blogging chair.  Is it the whole of me that is the res cogitans?  Or only a proper part of me?  Presumably the latter.  If an animal thinks, then presumably it thinks in virtue of its brain thinking.

The animalist thus seems committed to the claim that the res cogitans, that which thinks my thoughts, is a hunk of living intracranial meat.  But it is not so easy to understand how meat could mean.  What a marvellous metabasis eis allo genos whereby meat gives rise to meaning, understanding, intentionality! It is so marvellous that it is inconceivable.  My thinkings are of or about this or that, and in some cases they are of or about items that do not exist.  I can think about Venus the planet and Venus the goddess and I can think about Vulcan even though there is no such planet.  How can a meat state possess that object-directedness we call intentionality?  Brains states are physical states, and our understanding of physical states is from physics; but the conceptuality of physics offers us no way of understanding the intentionality of thought.

And then there is the unity of consciousness.  Can animalism account for it?  At Plato's Theaetetus 184c, Socrates puts the following question to Theaetetus: ". . . which is more correct — to say that we see or hear with the eyes and with the ears, or through the eyes and through the ears?" Theatetus obligingly responds with through rather than with. Socrates approves of this response:

Yes, my boy, for no one can suppose that in each of us, as in a sort of Trojan horse, there are perched a number of unconnected senses which do not all meet in some one nature, the mind, or whatever we please to call it, of which they are the instruments, and with which through them we perceive the objects of sense. (Emphasis added, tr. Benjamin Jowett)

The issue here is the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold of sensory data. Long before Kant, and long before Leibniz,  Plato was well aware of the problem of the unity of consciousness. (It is not for nothing that A. N. Whitehead described Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato.)

Sitting before a fire, I see the flames, feel the heat, smell the smoke, and hear the crackling of the logs. The sensory data are unified in one consciousness of a selfsame object. This unification does not take place in the eyes or in the ears or in the nostrils or in any other sense organ, and to say that it takes place in the brain is not a good answer. For the brain is a partite physical thing extended in space. If the unity of consciousness is identified with a portion of the brain, then the unity is destroyed. For no matter how small the portion of the brain, it has proper parts external to each other. Every portion of the brain, no matter how small, is a complex entity. But consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold is a simple unity. Hence the unity of consciousness cannot be understood along materialist lines.

Conclusion

I tentatively conclude that option (c) above -- I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal -- is, if not preferable to Toner's preferred option, at least as good as it, and not at all "nutty.'  The Corpse Objection to Animalism seems like a good one, and Toner's response to it is not compelling, involving as it does the idea that dying is a substantial change, a response that brings with it all the apories surrounding substance and prime matter.  Finally, it is not clear to me how animalism can accommodate intentionality and the unity of consciousness.

But perhaps Professor Toner can help me understand this better.

Related articles

Hylo- or Hylemorphic?