Maverick Philosopher

Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

For the actualist, the actual alone exists: the unactual, whether merely possible or impossible, does not exist.  The actualist is not pushing platitudes: he is not telling us that the actual alone is actual or that the merely possible is not actual.  'Merely possible' just means 'possible but not actual.' The actualist is saying something non-platitudinous, something that may be reasonably controverted, namely, that only the actual exists: the merely possible and the impossible do not exist.

Analogously for the presentist.  For the presentist, the (temporally) present alone exists: the nonpresent, whether past or future, does not exist.  The presentist is not pushing the platitude that the past is no longer.  He is saying something stronger: the past is not at all.

For the actualist, then, the merely possible does not exist.  There just is no such item as the merely possible fat man in my doorway.  Nevertheless, it is true, actually true, that there might have been a fat man in my doorway.  (My neighbor Ted from across the street is a corpulent fellow; surely he might have come over to pay me a visit. 'Might' as lately tokened is not to be read epistemically.)    The just-mentioned  truth cannot 'hang in the air'; it must be  grounded in some reality.  To put it another way, the merely possible -- whether a merely possible individual or a merely possible state of affairs -- has a 'reality' that we need somehow to accommodate.  The merely possible is not nothing.  That is a datum, a Moorean fact.

Similarly, it is true now that I hiked yesterday, even if presentism is true and the past does not exist.  So there has to be some 'reality' to the past, and we need to find a way to accommodate it.  Yesterday's gone, as Chad and Jeremy told us back in '64.  Gone but not forgotten: veridically remembered (in part) hence not a mere nothing.  That too is a datum.

The data I have just reviewed are expressed in the following two parallel aporetic tetrads, the first modal, the second temporal.

Modal Tetrad

1. The merely possible is not actual.
2. The merely possible is not nothing.
3. To exist = to be actual.
4. To exist = not to be nothing.

Temporal Tetrad

1t. The merely past is not present.
2t. The merely past is not nothing.
3t. To exist = to be present.
4. To exist = not to be nothing. 

Each tetrad has limbs that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible. Philosophical problems arise when plausibilities come into logical conflict.  The tetrads motivate ersatzism since the first can be solved by adopting actualist ersatzism (also known simply as actualism) and the second by adopting presentist ersatzism.  (Note that one could be a presentist without being an ersatzer.)

The ersatzer solution is to deny the first limb of each tetrad by introducing substitute items that 'go proxy' for the items which, on actualism and presentism, do not exist.  These substitute items must of course exist while satisfying the strictures of actualism and presentism, respectively.  The substitute items must actually exist and presently exist, respectively.  So how does it work?

The actualist maintains, most plausibly,  that everything is actual.  But the merely possible must be accommodated: it is not nothing.  The merely possible can be accommodated by introducing actually existent abstract states of affairs and abstract properties.  Merely possible concrete states of affairs are actual abstract states of affairs that do not obtain.  Merely possible concrete individuals are abstract properties that are not instantiated.  Suppose there are n cats.  There might have been n +1.  The possibility of there being in concrete reality n + 1 cats is an abstract state of affairs that does not obtain, but might have obtained.   Suppose you believe that before Socrates came into existence there was the de re possibility that Socrates, that very individual, come into existence.  Then, if you are an actualist, you could accommodate the reality of this possibility by identifying the de re possibility of Socrates with an actually existent haecceity property, Socrateity.  The actual existence in concrete reality of Socrates would then be the being-instantiated of this haecceity property.

Possible worlds can be accommodated by identifying them with maximal abstract states of affairs or maximal abstract propositions.  Some identify worlds with maximally consistent abstract sets, but this proposal faces, I believe, Cantorian difficulties.  The main idea, however, is that possible worlds for the actualist ersatzer are maximal abstract objects.  Now one of the possible worlds is of course the actual world.  It follows immediately that the actual world must not be confused with the concrete universe.  It may sound strange, but for the actualist ersatzer, the actual world is an abstract object, a maximal proposition.

The actualist, then, rejects (1) and replaces it with

1*.  A merely possible concrete item is an actual abstract object that possibly obtains or possibly is instantiated or possibly is true.

The presentist ersatzer does something similar with (1t).  He replaces it with

1t*.  A merely past concrete item is a temporally present abstract object that did obtain or was instantiated or was true or had a member.

An Argument Against Actualist Ersatzism 

Let's examine the view that possible worlds are maximal abstract propositions.  If so, the actual world is the true maximal proposition, and actuality is truth.  Given that there is a plurality of worlds, whichever world is actual is contingently actual.  So our world, call it 'Charley,' being the one and only (absolutely) actual world, is contingently actual, i.e., contingently true.  Contingent affirmative truths, however, need truth-makers.  So Charley needs a truth-maker.  The truth-maker of Charley  is the concrete universe as we know it and love it.  Since actuality is truth, the concrete universe is not and cannot be actual.

So the concrete universe exists but is not actual!  But this contradicts (3) above, according to which existence is actuality.  The actualist ersatzer is committed to all of the following, but they cannot  all be true:

5. Actuality is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8. Everything that exists is actual: there are no mere possibilia or impossibilia.
9. The concrete universe exists.

This is an inconsistent pentad because any four of the limbs, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the first four limbs entails the negation of (9).

Curiously, in attempting to solve the modal tetrad, the actualist embraces an inconsistent pentad.   Not good!

An Argument Against Presentist Ersatzism

A parallel inconsistent pentad is easily constructed.  The target here is the view that times are maximal propositions.

5t. Temporal presentness is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8t. Everything that exists is present: there are no merely past or merely future items. 
9. The concrete universe exists.

One sort of presentist erstazer is committed to all five propositions, but they obviously cannot all be true. 

Related articles

Times as Maximal Propositions

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

Defining Presentism

Times as Maximal Propositions

1. Here are three temporal platitudes: The wholly past is no longer present; the wholly future is not yet present; the present alone is present.  Here are three closely related controversial metaphysical theses: the wholly past, being no longer is not; the wholly future, being not yet,  is not; the present alone is.  The second trio is one version of presentism.  I grant that presentism is appealing, though it would be a mistake to take it to be common sense or immediate fallout from common sense.  The platitudes are Moorean; deny them on pain of being an idiot.  Not so with the heavy-duty metaphysical theses about time and existence advanced by the presentist.  We can reasonably ask what they mean and whether they are true.

2. Now even presentists will admit that the past is not a mere nothing.  Last Sunday's hike has some sort of reality that cries out for accommodation.  After all it is now true that I hiked eight hours on Sunday. Even if there are no truth-makers, there still must be something that the true past-tensed sentence is about.  Here I distinguish between two principles, Truth-Maker and Veritas Sequitur Esse.

3. We should also keep in mind that past times and events do not have the status of the merely possible. When Sunday's hike was over it did not change its modal status from actual to merely possible.  It remained an actual event, albeit a past actual event.  Soren Kierkegaard WAS  engaged to Regine Olsen, but he was never married to her.  Intuitively, the engagement belongs to the sphere of the actual whereas the marriage belongs to the sphere of the merely possible, not that it is possible now.  Neither event is a mere nothing.  Furthermore, the engagement has, intuitively,  'more reality' than the marriage.  What was is more real than what might have been.  Historians attempt to determine what the actual facts were.  They are constrained by the reality of the past, whence it follows that past has some sort of reality.  Historians are neither fiction writers nor students of mere possibilia.

4. I take it to be a Moorean datum that past events and times are not nothing and also not merely possible. Hence a theory of time that cannot accommodate these data is worthless.  How can the presentist accommodate them?  He has to do it in a manner consistent with his claim that past and future  items do not exist at all, that only temporally present items exist. 

5.  One approach is the 'ersatzer' approach: one looks for substitutes for nonpresent times.  Let's consider the view that times are maximal propositions.  A proposition is maximal just in case it entails every proposition with which it is broadly logically consistent.  Accordingly, past and future times are contingently false maximal propositions.   But then the present time is the sole true maximal proposition, and temporal presentness is identical to truth.

This scheme seems to allow us to uphold the Moorean data mentioned in #s 2-4 while holding a version of presentism.  If each time is a proposition, and propositions exist omnitemporally, then all times are always available to be referred to.  Sunday's hike is a wholly past event.  Hence, on presentism, it does not exist at all.  But the maximal propositions that were true during the hike all exist and exist now.  It is just that they are now false.  Sunday's hike is not nothing because those maximal propositions are not nothing and each entails *BV hikes,* a proposition that is not nothing.  Sunday's hike is not merely possible because those maximal propositions, though now false, were true.

What we have done is to substitute for nonexistent past events and times, existent and present but false propositions.

6.  One problem I have with this approach is as follows.  If nonpresent times are false maximal propositions, then the present time is the sole true maximal proposition.  If the present time is the sole true  maximal proposition, then presentness is truth.  The concrete universe cannot, however, be said to be true.  It follows that the concrete universe  cannot be said to be temporally present.  But surely this is false: it anythiingis temporally present the concrete universe is.  For the presentist, whatever exists, exists at present.  The concrete universe exists, ergo, it is present.

Here is a second argument.  If a contingent, singular, affirmative proposition is true, then it is made true by an existing non-proposition.  If the present time is the sole maximal true proposition, then it has a truth-maker.  That truth-maker is the concrete universe in its present state.  So the concrete universe must have the property of being temporally present to serve as the truth-maker of the present time.  For only the present universe could make true the  maximal proposition  that alone is presently true.

The ersatzer approach puts Descartes before the whores the cart before the horse:  it is the presentness of the concrete universe that explains the present truth of the maximal proposition with which the present time has been identified, and not the other way around.  Temporal presentness cannot be truth.  It cannot be 'kicked upstairs' to the level of abstracta.

7.  In sum, the presentist must somehow account for the reality of the past since the past is not nothing and not something merely possible.  But the above ersatzer approach fails.  So what makes it true now that I hiked eight hours on Sunday?  If I understood Rhoda's suggestion it is that God's veridical memory of my hiking on Sunday is the truth-maker of 'I hiked last Sunday.'  We will have to consider Rhoda's suggestion in a separate post.  Deus ex machina? 

Related articles

Defining Presentism

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

Common Ground Between Presentist and Anti-Presentist?

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

Presentism and Existence Simpliciter: Questions for Rhoda

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

Five Time-Related Senses of 'Is'

Presentism and Existence Simpliciter: Questions for Rhoda

For Alan Rhoda, "Presentism is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists, exists now, in the present. The past is no more.  The future is not yet.  Either something exists now, or it does not exist, period." Rhoda goes on to claim that presentism is "arguably the common sense position."  I will first comment on whether presentism is commonsensical and then advance to the weightier question of what it could mean for something to exist period, or exist simpliciter.

Common Sense?

It is certainly common sense that the past is no more and the future is not yet.  These are analytic truths understood by anyone who understands English.  They are beyond the reach of reasonable controversy, stating as they do that the past and the future are not present.  But presentism is a substantive metaphysical thesis well within the realm of reasonable controversy.  It is a platitude that what no longer exists, does not now exist.  But there is nothing platitudinous about 'What no longer exists, does not exist at all, or does not exist period, or does not exist simpliciter.'  That is a theoretical  claim of metaphysics about time and existence that is neither supported nor disqualified by common sense and the Moorean data comprising it.

In the four sentences that begin his article, Rhoda has two platitudes sandwiched between two metaphysical claims.  This gives the impression that the metaphysical claims are supported by the platitudes.  My point is that the platitudes, though consistent with the metaphysical theory, give it no aid and comfort.

Compare the problem of universals:  It is a Moorean fact that my cup is blue and that I see the blueness at the cup.  But this datum neither supports nor disqualifies the metaphysical theory that blueness is a universal, nor does it either support or disqualify the competing metaphysical theory that the blueness is a particular, a trope.  Neither common sense, nor ordinary language analysis, nor phenomenology can resolve the dispute.  Dialectical considerations must be brought to bear. 

Existence Simpliciter

Be that as it may.  If we pursue the above line we will be led into metaphilosophy.  On to the central topic.  'Whatever exists, exists now' is open to the Triviality Objection:  of course, what exists (present-tense) exists now!  Enter existence simpliciter.  The following is not a tautology: 'Whatever exists simpliciter, exists now.'

The problem  is to understand exactly what existence simpliciter is.  Let's  recall that in this series of posts it is not the truth-value of presentism that concerns me, but something logically prior to that, namely, the very sense of the thesis.  Only after a thesis is identified can it be evaluated.  I am not being coy.  I really don't understand what precisely the presentist thesis is.  What's more, I have no convictions in the philosophy of time the way I do in the philosophy of existence.  No convictions, and no axes to grind.  For example, I am convinced that the Fregean doctrine of existence is mistaken, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, Quine and their latter-day torch-bearers such as van Inwagen.  I am not at all convinced that presentism is wrong.  Like I said, I am not clear as to what it states.

Alan can correct me if I am wrong, but I think what he means by 'existence simpliciter' is something like this:

ES.  X exists simpliciter =_df (Ey)(x = y).

In plain English, an item exists simpliciter if it is identical to something. 'Identical to something' is elliptical for 'identical to something or other.'  I ascribe (ES) to Alan on the basis of a comment of his to the effect that existence simpliciter is the unrestricted quantifier sense of 'exists.'   I take it that unrestricted quantifiers range over unrestricted domains, and that an absolutely unrestricted domain contains everything: past items, present items, future items, atemporal items, merely possible items . . . . Presentism could then be put as follows:

P. (x)[(Ey)(x = y) =_df x exists now].

That is,

P*. Everything is such that it is identical to something iff it exists now.

Now if the quantifiers in (P) and (P*) range over everything, including past and future items, then the theses are trivially false.  But if they range only over present items, then they are trivially true.  To avoid this difficulty, we might formulate Rhoda's presentism thusly:

P**. All and only present items instantiate the concept  being identical to something.

The idea, then, is that  we have the concept existence simpliciter and this concept is the concept being identical to something.  Accordingly the presentist is saying something nontrivial about this concept, namely, that all and only its instances are temporally present items.

Unfortunately, I am still puzzled.  Is the verb instantiate' in (P**) present-tensed?  No, that way lies Triviality.  Is it timeless?  No, there is nothing timeless on Rhoda's scheme.  Is it disjunctive: 'did instantiate or do instantiate or will instantiate'?  No, for that too is false:  it is false that all items that did or do or will instantiate the concept identical to something  are temporally present.  Socrates did instantiate the concept but he is not temporally present.   And obviously 'instantiate' in (P**) cannot be replaced by 'omnitemporally instantiate.'  That leaves a tense-neutral reading of 'instantiate' which somehow abstracts from the timeless, the present-tensed, the omnitemporal and the disjunctive use of a verb. 

I am having trouble understanding what what this tense-neutral use of 'instantiate' amounts to.  But this may only be a problem for me and not for Rhoda's theory.

Related articles

Five Time-Related Senses of 'Is'

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

The presentist aims to restrict what exists in time to what exists in time now.  Call this the presentist restriction.  But if the presentist says that only what exists now, exists, he cannot possibly mean that only what exists at the time of his utterance or thought of the presentist thesis  exists.  If it is now 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini, the presentist thesis is not that only what exists at 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini exists.  The presentist is not a solipsist of the present moment.  He is a metaphysician, not a lunatic. Nor is presentism an infinite family of time-indexed theses, but one thesis about time and existence.

The presentist restriction is not to the time that happens to be present, but to each time:  Each time t is such that whatever exists in time exists at t. Formulated so as to avoid the solipsism of the present moment, the formulation must quantify over times.  But whatever we quantify over must exist: it must be there to be quantified over.  So nonpresent times must exist.  But nonpresent times cannot exist if presentism is true and only what is present exists.

Therefore, when formulated so as to evade SPM, presentism entails its own falsity.  If true, then false.  If false, then False.  Ergo, necessarily false.

But 'surely' it cannot be that easy to refute presentism!  So I must have gone wrong somewhere.  Where exactly?

Over Sunday breakfast, Peter L. suggested that the presentist can make an exception in the case of (nonpresent) times.  But then the presentist thesis is drastically weakened.  Moreover, no presentist that I know of makes such an exception.

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Common Ground Between Presentist and Anti-Presentist?

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Defining Presentism

Five Time-Related Senses of 'Is'

Common Ground Between Presentist and Anti-Presentist?

What the presentist affirms, roughly, is that only (temporally) present items exist: there are no nonpresent existents.  The anti-presentist denies this, maintaining that there are nonpresent existents.  Now there is no genuine dispute here unless the identity of the presentist thesis is perfectly clear and the anti-present is denying that very thesis.

Following some earlier suggestions of Peter Lupu, I will now try to formulate this dispute using the concept nonpresent existent.  I will use 'NPE' to refer to this concept, a concept we may assume both the presentist and his opponents understand.  A nonpresent existent, by stipulative definition, is one that exists in time, but is either merely past or merely future.  Using NPE, presentism and anti-presentism may be defined as follows:

P. NPE is not instantiated

AP. NPE is instantiated.

The dispute, then, is about whether NPE is instantiated.  NPE is a concept both parties understand.  So it is common ground.  The dispute is not about this concept, but about whether it is instantiated.

But note that 'is' occurs in both formulations.  Does it have exactly the same sense in both (P) and (AP)?  If not, then the common ground afforded us by NPE avails us nothing.

Yesterday (see link below) I distinguished five time-related senses of 'is.'  Starting with (P), which sense of 'is' is operative in it?  We can right away exclude the 'is' of atemporality since presentism is a thesis about temporal items.  We can also exclude the 'is' of temporal presentness.  The presentist cannot be charitably construed as saying that NPE is not now instantiated, for that is trivially true. 

The 'is' of omnitemporality is not a suitable candidate either.  For if NPE is not instantiated at every time, then we have quantification over times.  But one cannot quantify over what does not exist.  So nonpresent times exist.  But if so, then NPE is instantiated, contrary to what the presentist intends.

On the disjunctively detensed reading of 'is', the presentist is saying that NPE was not instantiated or is not instantiated or will be not instantiated, and the anti-presentist is saying that the NPE was instantiated or is instantiated or will be instantiated.

Does this do the trick? At the moment I cannot see that it doesn't.  But time is the hardest of nuts to crack and my 'nutcracker' may not be up to the job . . . .

 

Related articles

Five Time-Related Senses of 'Is'

Five Time-Related Senses of 'Is'

I dedicate this post to that loveable rascal Bill Clinton who taught us just how much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is.

Credit where credit is due: Some of the inspiration for this post comes from a conversation with Peter Lupu and from an article he recommended, S. Savitt, Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective.

1.  There is first of all the 'is' of atemporality.  Assuming that there are timeless entities such as God (concrete) and the number 13 (abstract), any sentences we use to talk about them must feature tenseless verbs and copulae.  Consider the proposition expressed by the sentence, '13 is prime.'  13 is prime, but not now and not always.  If the truth were always true, it would be in time.  The truth is timeless and so is the object 13 and the property of being prime.  The same goes for '13 exists.'  It is not true now nor at every time.  It is true timelessly.  It is worth noting that the timeless is' and 'exists' do not abstract from the temporal determinations of pastness, presentness, and futurity for the simple reason that numbers and such are not in time in the first place.  So the 'is' of atemporality is not the result of a de-tensing operation whereby we abtract from the temporal determinations to lay bare the pure copula, the copula that merely 'copulates.'  The 'is' in question is tenseless from the 'git-go.'

Perhaps we should distinguish between grammatical tense and logical tense.  Every verb has a grammatical tense.  Thus the verb in 'God exists' is in the present tense. But God exists timelessly, and so 'exists' in this instance is logically without a tense.

Consider John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, I am."  Is that ungrammatical?  Yes, but logically it makes sense.

2. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the 'is' of temporal presentness.  Examples: 'Peter is smoking' and 'There are 13 donuts in the box.'  There are now 13 donuts in the box.

3. The 'is' of omnitemporality.  Savitt gives the example of 'Copper is a conductor of electricity.'  The sentence is true at every time, not just at present.  But it is not timelessly true since it is about something in time, copper.  I think the example shows that the tenseless is not the same as the timeless.  What is timelessly true is tenselessly true, but not conversely.

4. The Disjunctively Detensed 'Is.'  We can de-tense 'is' as follows: x is detensedly F just in case x was F or is  F or will be F.  We can do the same with 'exists.'  Thus, Socrates is detensedly wise iff Socrates was wise or is wise or will be wise.  De-tensing involves abstracting from temporal determinations.  A detensed copula is a pure copula: all it does is 'copulate' or link. 

The 'am' in 'I am dead' is a pure copula, and the sentence is tenselessly true, but not presently true or timelessly true or omnitemporally true.  Gott sei dank!

5. The Hypertenseless 'Is.'  God exists atemporally and thus tenselessly while Socrates exists temporally but not presently or omnitemporally and thus he too exists tenselessly.  If there is a hypertenseless sense of 'exist' it applies to both God and Socrates and abstracts from the way each exists, atemporally in the case of God, temporally in the case of Socrates.

In 'God and Socrates both exist,' the 'exist' is hypertenseless in that it is abstractly common to both the tenselessness of the 'exists' in 'God exists' and the tenselessness of the 'exists' in 'Socrates exists.' 

Now what is this hypertenseless univocal sense of 'exists' that applies to both God and Socrates?  Persumably it is the quantifier sense according to which x exists iff (Ey) x = y.  Existence in this sense is identity-with-something-or-other. Absolutely everything, whatever its mode of existence, exists in this hypertenseless sense.

Now the presentist wants to say that, necessarily, it is always the case that only present items exist.  But in what sense of 'exist'?  It cannot be the first four, for reasons given in previous posts.  So let's try the fifth sense.  Accordingly, only present items are identical-with-something-or-other. 

Does this work? 

Related articles

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

Defining Presentism

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

Is everything in time? Or are there timeless entities?  So-called abstracta are held by many to be timeless.  Among abstracta we find numbers, (abstract as opposed to concrete) states of affairs, mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sets, and Fregean (as opposed to Russellian) propositions, where a Fregean proposition is the sense of an indexical-free sentence in the indicative mood.  The following items are neither in space, nor causally active/passive, but some say that they exist in time at every time: 7, 7's being prime, {7}, 7 is prime.  If an item exists in time at every time, then it is omnitemporal.  If an item is 'outside' time, then it is timeless or eternal or, to be helpfully pleonastic in the manner of McCann, timelessly eternal.

Let us agree that a temporalist is one for whom everything is in time, while an eternalist is one for whom some things are not in time. 

On p. 55 of his Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press 2012), Hugh McCann argues that the temporalist cannot formulate his thesis without presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs, at least of the negative sort.  Here is how I see the argument. 

Part of what the temporalist says is that

1. There are no timeless states of affairs.

How is 'there are no' in (1) to be understood?  The temporalist must intend it to be taken in a way consistent with temporalism, thus:

2. There never have been, are not now, and never will be any timeless states of affairs.

Unfortunately, the eternalist will agree with the temporalist on the truth of (2).  Consider 7's being prime.  Both agree that at no time does this state of affairs exist.  The agreement is unfortunate because it shows that the bone of contention cannot be formulated in terms of (2).  The bone of contention must be formulated in terms of (1) taken tenselessly.  But then the temporalist ends up presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs.  For he presupposes that there is the timeless state of affairs, There being no timeless states of affairs.

Temporalism, when properly formulated, i.e., when formulated in a way that permits disagreement between temporalist and eternalist, refutes itself by implying its own negation.

Is this 'Mavericked-up' McCann argument a good argument or not?  Have at it, boys.

A Parallel with the Problem of Formulating Presentism

We have seen in previous posts that to avoid tautology the presentist must reach for a tenseless sense of 'exists.'  He cannot say, tautologically, that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now.  For that is not metaphysical 'news.'  It is nothing to fight over, and fight we must.  He has to say: Whatever tenselessly exists, exists now.  But then he seems to presuppose that there are times, as real as the present time, at which temporal individuals such as Socrates tenselessly exist.  The upshot is that when presentism is given a nontautological formulation, a formulation that permits disagreement beween presentist and anti-presentist, it refutes itself.  For if there are non-present times as real as the present time, then it is not the case that only present items exist. 

Addendum (10 March):  Hugh McCann Responds

On the argument from my ch. 3 about timeless states of affairs, I of course stand by it (as of this moment, at least).  But I don’t think this argument alone would suffice to show that there is a B-series.  It might be, for example, that the only timeless states of affairs that there are pertain to abstracta; things like Seven’s being prime, and so forth.  If that were so we would get no B-series, because abstracta exhibit no temporal features at all, whereas entities in a B-series share before and after relations.

BV replies:  Well, I didn't claim that McCann's argument suffices to show that there is a B-series, a series of events related by the so-called B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with.  Perhaps my use of 'eternalist' misled him.  All I meant by it above, as I stated,  is someone who holds that some entities are timeless.  I wasn't using it in the more commonly accepted sense in which it implies a commitment to the B-series. So we agree that the above argues does not suffice to show that there is a B-series.  It could be that there are timeless entities, and entities in time, but no B-series.

As for the analogous anti-presentist argument you go on to give, I subscribe to it.  But all it shows, as far as I can see, is that we have to consider talk of tenseless states of affairs legitimate.  But to show that isn’t to show very much.  It doesn’t yet follow, for example, that we have to speak of Socrates as existing tenselessly.  Socrates is not a state of affairs, and there is nothing paradoxical about saying there neither is, was, nor will be a tenseless Socrates.  The question is just whether it is true, and there I am unsure of the answer.  Furthermore, I can imagine someone claiming that when it comes to the concrete world, tenseless states of affairs—the B-series, in effect—is just a necessary fiction, something we need in order to be able to keep proper track of our memories.  I have no knockdown argument for or against this position.  I am inclined to think, however, that it is a vast oversimplification, just as I think presentism is.

BV replies: I think what McCann is getting at here is that an adequate formulation of presentism must presuppose the meaningfulness of  talk of tenseless states of affairs, but needn't presuppose that there are tenseless states of affairs involving entities in time.  If that is what he means, then my quick little argument seems unsound, and McCann shouldn't have subscribed to it.  I'll have to think about it some more.  What a miserably difficult topic this is!

Related articles

Defining Presentism

McCann, God, and the Platonic Menagerie

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism.  An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful.  Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:

P. Only the (temporally) present exists.

A. Only the actual exists.

Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology.  After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed.  It is clear that no presentist thinks his thesis is a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the the various types of anti-presentism.  There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms.  This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P).  If not present-tensed, then what?

A similar problem arises for the actualist.  One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual.  If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology.  But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean? 

We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:

DP.  Only the present existed or exists now or will exist.

That is equivalent to saying that if x existed or exists or will exists, then x presently exists.  And that is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible.  This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:

DA.  Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.

This too is false since the merely possible is not actual.  It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.

We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.'  Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that every happened or will happen is happening right now.  He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now.  The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment. 

Similarly wth the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world.  He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual necessary.  The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary.  The actualist is not a necessitarian.

There is no person like me, but I am not the only person.  There is no place like here, but here is not the only place.  There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.

In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?

To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).   

We can't say that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists.  So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists.  I will say more about tenseless existence in a later post. 

What do I mean by amodal existence?  Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:

Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds
Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world
Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds
Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds
Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world
Actual being: one that exists in the actual world
Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.

In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:

It was the case that Tom exists
It is now the case that Tom exists
It will be the case that Tom exists. 

My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.

But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty?  This is what we need to examine.  Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudoproblems.

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Defining Presentism

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

Scollay Square No Longer Exists

Caesar, the Rubicon, Tenseless Truth, Determinism, and Fatalism

Defining Presentism

I concede to London Ed that it is not clear what exactly the thesis of presentism is.  There is no point in considering objections to it until we are sure what the thesis comes to.  The rough idea is of course easy to convey: only temporally present items exist.  This is more plausible under restriction to items 'in time' where the eternal God and abstracta such as Fregean propositions are not 'in time.'  The rough idea, then, is that only present contingent concreta exist.  This implies that a wholly past contingent concretum such as Socrates does not exist.

But how are we to take 'exist' in the last two sentences?  As present-tensed? Then both sentences are trivially true.  Surely no philosopher who calls himself a presentist intends

Tautological Presentism:  Only present contingent concreta exist at present.

And of course he doesn't intend

Timeless Presentism:  Only present contingent concreta exist timelessly.

For that implies that if x is a timeless contingent concretum, then x is temporally present.

But the clear-headed 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 Presentism:  Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.

The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive if not insane.  To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955.  It is a Moorean fact that Dean existed but no longer exists.  (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.)  It is a Moorean fact that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being or nothing at all. But this plain fact is incompatible with SPM-Presentism. 

Another possibility is

Disjunctive Presentism:  Only present contingent concreta existed or exist or will exist.

Disjunctive Presentism seems objectionable because, e.g., Scollay Square existed, but does not now.

What about

Tenseless Presentism:  Only present contingent concreta tenselessly exist.

Now the problem is to explain that 'tenselessly exist' means if it does not mean 'timelessly exist' or 'did exist, does exist, or will exist.'

Ned Markosian defines presentism as the view that, "necessarily, it is always true that only present objects exist." (here, fn 1)  This is not helpful since we are not told how to read 'exist.'  The Triviality Objection threatens to kick in.  And how are we to understand, "it is always true"?  If this involves quantifying over times, then anti-presentism is let in through the back door.  If there is a manifold of equally real/existent times, then presentism cannot be true of these times. 

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Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

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. 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. 

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 doee not become ripe: it simply is unripe at certain times and is ripe at certain later times.  And when it cease to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.

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.  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 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 jusdt 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, and the sane view that the past, present, and future 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.

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Caesar Is No More: The Aporetics of Reference to the Past

Which is the Hardest of the Philosophical Subdisciplines?

Without a doubt, the philosophy of time.  The philosophy of mind is a piece of cake by comparison.  According to a story, possibly apocryphal, Peter van Inwagen was once asked why he didn't publish on time.  "Too hard," was his reply. If it is too hard for van Inwagen, it is hard.  According to Hugh McCann, "Few subjects in philosophy are as difficult, as exasperating even, as the subject of time, for few elements in our experience are so inherently enigmatic."  (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 68)

This puts me in mind of perhaps the stupidest commercial of the '80s: "Man invented time. Seiko perfected it."  Stupid but stimulating: how many fallacies can you spot?

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Clearly, a thing can exist without existing here.  The Washington Monument exists but not in my backyard.   Accordingly, 'x exists here' can be split up as follows:

1. x exists here iff (i) x exists & (ii) x is in the vicinity of the speaker.

It seems pretty obvious that existence and the indexical property of hereness  are different properties if you want to call them properties. 

A much more difficult  question is whether a thing can exist without existing now.  Is it true that:

2. x exists now iff (i) x exists & (ii) x is temporally present?

Clearly, we can prise apart the existence of a (spatially located) thing and its hereness.  Anyone who maintained that to exist = to be here we would deem either crazy or not conversant with the English language, a sort of 'local yokel' in excelsis.  But can we prise apart the existence of a thing and its temporal presentness?  Is there a real distinction between the existence of a thing and its temporal presentness?

A.  A negative answer will be returned by the presentist who maintains that only the temporally present exists.  He will maintain that what no longer exists and what does not yet exist does not now exist, and therefore does not exist at all.

Note that it ought to be is perfectly obvious to anyone who understands English that what no longer exists and what does not yet exist does not now exist.  What is not at all obvious is the part after 'therefore' in the sentence before last.  It is not at all obvious that an individual or event or time that is wholly past or wholly future does not exist at all.

B.  An affirmative answer will be returned by all those who reject presentism.  Some will reject presentism on the ground that abstracta exist, but are not in time at all, and so cannot be said to exist now. A presentist can accommodate this point by restricting his thesis:

Restricted Presentism:  Necessarily, only temporally present concreta exist.

Nevertheless, the anti-presentist will insist that there are past and perhaps also future concreta that exist but do not exist now.  Scollay Square, for example, no longer exists.  But that it not to say that it is now nothing.  After all, we  still refer to it and say true things about it.  It is true, for example, that my father visited Scollay Square while on shore leave during WW II on a break from service on destroyer escorts in the North Atlantic.  So it is true that a a sailor who no longer exists visited a place that no longer exists and was involved in events that no longer exist.  It also true that Scollay Square had been demolished by the time I arrived in Boston in 1973.  I can now argue as follows:

1. Various predicates (e.g., is remembered by some Bostonians) are true of Scollay Square.
2. Scollay Square does not exist now.
3. If x does not exist, then no predicate is true of x.
Therefore
4. Scollay Square exists. (From 1 and 3)
Therefore
5. Scollay Square  exists but is not temporally present. (From 2 and 4)
Therefore
6. Restricted Presentism is false.

I think there are three ways to attack this argument: (a) reject one or more of the premises; (b) find fault with the reasoning; (c) complain that it is not clear what Restricted Presentism amounts to.

Have at it, boys. 

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Scollay Square No Longer Exists

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Caesar Is No More: The Aporetics of Reference to the Past

Caesar Is No More: The Aporetics of Reference to the Past

Here is London Ed's most recent version of his argument in his own words except for one word I added in brackets:

1. There is no such thing as Caesar any more.

2. The predicate 'there is no such thing as -- any more' is satisfied by
Caesar.

3. If a relation obtains [between] x and y, then there is such a thing as y.

4. (From 2) the relation 'is satisfied by' obtains between the predicate '--
is not a thing any more' and Caesar.

5. (3, 4) There is such a thing as Caesar.

6. (1, 5) contradiction.

Premiss (1) is Moorean. There is no longer any such thing or person as Caesar. (Or if you dispute that for reason of immortality of Caesar, choose some mortal or perishable object). (2) is a theoretical. (3) is a logical truth, and the rest is also logic. You must choose between (1) and (2), i.e. choose between
a Moorean truth, and a dubious theoretical assumption.

(1) is indeed 'Moorean,' i.e., beyond the reach of reasonable controversy.  (2) is indeed theoretical inasmuch as it involves an optional albeit plausible parsing in the Fregean manner of the Moorean sentence.

Ed tells us that (3) is a logical truth.  I deny that it is.  A logical truth is a proposition true in virtue of its logical form alone.  'Every cat is a cat' is an example of a logical truth as are 'No cat is a non-cat' and 'Either Max is a cat or Max is not a cat.'  One can test for logical truth by negating the proposition to be tested.  If the result is a logical contradiction, then the proposition is a logical truth.  For example, if we negate 'Every cat is a cat' we get 'Some cat is not a cat.' The latter sentence is a logical contradiction, so the former sentence is a logical truth. The latter is a logical contradiction because its logical form -- Some F is not an F -- has only false substitution-instances.

Negating (3) yields 'A relation obtains between x and y, but there is no such thing as y.'  But this is not a logical contradiction in the strict and narrow sense defined above.  Suppose I am thinking about the Boston Common which, unbeknownst to me, ceases to exist while I am thinking about it.  I stand in the 'thinking about' relation to the Common during the whole period of my thinking despite the fact that at the end of the period there is no such thing as the Boston Common.  There are philosophers who hold that the intentional relation is a genuine relation and not merely relation-like as Brentano thought, and that in some cases it relates an existing thinker to a nonexisting object. 

Now there are good reasons to reject this view as false, but surely it is not false as a matter of formal logic.  If it is false, it is false as a matter of metaphysics.  A philosopher such as Reinhardt Grossmann who holds that the intentional relation is a genuine relation that sometimes relates an existent thinker to a nonexistent object is not contradicting himself. 

Since (3) is not a logical truth, one way to solve Ed's problem is by rejecting (3) and holding that there are genuine relations that relate the existent to the nonexistent.  One could hold that the relation of satisfaction is such a genuine relation: it relates the existing predicate to the nonexistent emperor: Caesar satisfies the predicate despite his nonexistence.

Note that I am not advocating this solution to the puzzle; I am dismissing Ed's dismissal of this putative solution.  I am rejecting Ed's claim that one is forced to choose between (1) and (2).  One can avoid the contradiction by denying (3), and one is not barred from doing so by logic alone.

Ed claims that (1) and (5) are logical contradictories.  But they are not.  Just look carefully at both propositions and you will see.  Ed thinks they are contradictories because he assumes that 'There is no such thing as y any more' is logically equivalent to 'There is no such thing as y.'  But to make that assumption is to to assume the substantive metaphysical thesis known in the trade as

Presentism:  Necessarily, only temporally present concrete objects exist.

Given Presentism, (1) and (5) are indeed contradictory.  This is why I said earlier  that Ed's argument cannot get off the ground without Presentism.  For suppose we reject Presentism in favor of the plausible view that both past and present concreta exist, i.e., are within the range of our unrestricted quantifiers.  Then Ed's puzzle dissolves.  For then there is such a thing as Caesar, it is just that he is past.  The relation of satisfaction connects a present item with a past item both of which exist. Or, since Ed is allergic to 'exist': both of which are such that there such things as them.

So a second way to solves Ed's puzzle is by rejecting the Presentism that he presupposes.

So I count at least three ways of solving Ed's puzzle: reject (2), reject (3), reject the tacit assumption of Presentism which is needed for (1) and (5) to be contradictory.

My inclination is to say that the puzzle is genuine, but insoluble. And this because the putative solutions sire puzzles as bad as the one we started with.  Of course, I haven't proven this.  But this is what my metaphilosophy tells me must be the case.

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.

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Substance and Accident: The Aporetics of Inherence

1.If substance S exists and accident A exists, it does not follow that A inheres in S.  An accident cannot exist without existing in some substance or other, but if A exists it does not follow that A exists in S.  If redness is an accident, it cannot exist except in some substance; but if all we know is that redness exists and that Tom exists, we cannot validly infer that Tom is red, i.e., that redness inheres in Tom.

2. So if A inheres in S, this inherence  is something in addition to the existence of S and the existence of A.  There is more to Tom's being red than Tom and redness.  We must distinguish three items: S, A, and the tie of inherence.  S and A are real (mind-independent) items.  Presumably the tie of inherence is as well.  Presumably we don't want to say that A inheres in S in virtue of a mental synthesis on our part.

3. My question: what is inherence?  What is the nature of this tie?  That the accident of a substance is tied to it, and indeed necessarily tied to it, is clear.  The nature, not the existence, of the tie is what is in question.

4. Inherence is not an external relation on pain of Bradley's regress. 

5. Inherence is not identity.  This was argued earlier.

6.  A is not a part of S.  This too was argued earlier.

7.  Is S a part of A?   For Brentano, an accident is a whole a proper part of which is the substance itself -- but there is no other proper part in addition to the substance!  Every part of the accident is either the substance or a part of the substance.  This I find bizarre.  Suppose a chocolate bar is both brown and sticky.  What distinguishes the brownness accident from the stickiness accident if both have as sole proper part the chocolate bar?  (For a very clear exposition of Brentano's theory, see R. Chisholm, "Brentano's Theory of Substance and Accident" in his Brentano and Meinong Studies.)

8.  I made a similar suggestion, namely, that S is a part of A, except that I assayed accidents as akin to facts.  This has its own difficulties.

9. Here is Dr. Novak's scholastic suggestion:

I take the connexion between S and A to be that of a receptive potency and its corresponding act. S contains an intrinsic relation of "informability" to all its possible accidents, and A contains an intrinsic relation of informing toward S. Together these two constitute an accidental whole of which they are not just parts but complementary intrinsic causes: S is its material cause and A its formal cause. They are unified in jointly intrinsically co-causing the one accidental composite.

This implies that we must distinguish among three items: the substance (Peter, say), his accidents (being hot, being sunburned, being angry, being seated etc.) and various accidental wholes each composed of the substance and one accident. 

So it seems that Novak is committed to accidental compounds such as [Socrates + seatedness] where Socrates is the material cause of the compound and seatedness the formal cause.  Moreover, the substance has the potentiality to be informed in various ways, and each accident actualizes one such potentiality.

Recall that what we are trying to understand is accidental change.  And recall that I agree with Novak that we cannot achieve a satisfactory analysis in terms of just a concrete particular, universals, and an exemplification relation.  If Peter changes in respect of F-ness, and F-ness is a universal, then of course there are two times t and t* such that Peter exemplifies F-ness at t but does not exemplify F-ness at t*.  But this is not sufficient for real accidental change in or at Peter.  For the change is not relational but intrinsic to Peter. So, whether or not we need universals, we need a category of entities to help us explain real change.  As Novak appreciates, these items must be particulars, not universals.

What we have been arguing about is the exact nature of these particulars.  I suggested earlier that they are property-exemplifications.  Novak on the basis of the above quotation seems to be suggesting that they are accidental compounds.

Suppose Socrates goes from seated to standing to seated again.  In this case of accidental change we have one substance, three accidents, and three accidental compounds for a total of seven entities.  Why three accidents instead of two?  Because the second seatedness is numerically different from the first.  (Recall Locke's principle that nothing has two beginnings of existence.)  And because the second accident is numerically distinct from the first, the first and the third accidental compound are numerically distinct.

When Socrates stands up, [Socrates + seatedness] passes out of being and [Socrates + standingness] comes into being and stays in being until Socrates sits down again.  So these accidental compounds are rather ephemeral objects, unlike Socrates.

Perhaps they help us understand change.  But they raise their own questions.  Socrates and seated-Socrates are not identical.  Presumably they are accidentally the same.  Is accidental sameness the same as contingent identity?  What are the logical properties of accidental sameness?  Is an Ockham's Razor type objection appropriately brought against the positing of accidental compounds?

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Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?

Constituent ontologists would seem to have a serious problem accounting for accidental change.  Suppose an avocado goes from unripe to ripe over a two day period. That counts as an accidental change:  one and the same substance (the avocado) alters in respect of the accidental property of being unripe.  It has become different qualitatively while remaining the same numerically.

This is a problem for constituent ontologists if C-ontologists are committed to what Michael J. Loux calls "Constituent Essentialism."  ("What is Constituent Ontology?" Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic, Ontos Verlag 2012, Novak et al. eds., p. 52) Undoubtedly, many of them are, if not all.  Constituent Essentialism  is the C-ontological analog of mereological essentialism.  We can put it like this:

Constituent Essentialism: A thing has each of its ontological parts necessarily.  This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose an ontological part without ceasing  to be same
thing.

Mereological Essentialism: A thing has each of its commonsense parts necessarily. 
This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose a commonsense part without ceasing
to be the same thing.

To illustrate, suppose an ordinary particular (OP) such as our avocado is a bundle of compresent universals.  The universals are the ontological parts of the OP as a whole.  The first of the two principles entails that ordinary particulars cannot change.  For accidental (alterational as opposed to existential) change is change in respect of properties under preservation of numerical diachronic identity.  But preservation of identity is not possible on Constituent Essentialism.  The simple  bundle-of-universals theory is incompatible with the fact of change.  But of course there are other types of C-ontology.

I agree with Loux that Constituent Essentialism is a "framework principle" (p. 52) of C-ontology.  It cannot be abandoned without abandoning C-ontology.  If an item (of whatever category) has ontological parts at all, then it is difficult to see how it could fail to have each and all of these parts essentially.   And of course the fact of accidental change and what it entails, namely, persistence of the same thing over time,  cannot be denied.  So the 'argument from change' does seem to score against primitive versions of the bundle-of-universals theory.

I don't want to discuss whether more sophisticated C-ontological theories such as Hector Castaneda's Guise Theory  escape this objection.  I want to consider whether relational ontology does any better.  I  take relational ontology to imply that no item of any category has ontological parts.  Thus R-ontology implies that no type of particular has ontological parts.  A particular is just an unrepeatable.  My cat Max is a particular and so are each of his material parts, and their material parts.  If Max's blackness is an accident of him as substance, then this accident is a particular.  The Armstrongian state of affairs of Max's being black is a particular.  Mathematical sets are particulars.  Particulars need not be concrete.  Sets are abstract particulars in one sense of 'abstract.'  Tropes are abstract particulars in another sense of 'abstract.'  If an entity is not a particular, an unrepeatable, then it is a universal, a repeatable.

My question is whether we can explain real (as opposed to 'Cambridge') accidental change without positing particulars having ontological constituents.  I will argue that we cannot, and that therefore R-ontology is untenable.

Lukas Novak presents an argument to the conclusion that the fact of accidental change requires the positing of particulars that have ontological constituents.  Here is my take on Novak's argument:

Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being knowledgeable about it. This is  an accidental change: one and the same concrete particular, Peter,  has different properties at different times. Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same item have different properties at different times. But is it a sufficient condition? Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t). Suppose that F-ness is a universal but not a constituent of Peter and that Peter is F by exemplifying F-ness.  Universals so construed are transcendent in the sense that they are not denizens of the world of space and time. They belong in a realm apart and are related, if they are related, to spatiotemporal particulars by the external relation of exemplification.

It follows on these assumptions that if Peter undergoes real accidental change that Peter goes from exemplifying the transcendent universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*. That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*. But there has to be more to the change than this. For, as Novak points out, the change is in Peter. It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal in a realm apart.  After all, transcendent universals do not undergo real change.  Any change in such a universal is 'merely Cambridge' as we say in the trade. In other words, the change in F-ness when it 'goes' from being exemplified by Peter to not being exemplified by Peter is not a real change in the universal but a merely relational change.  The real change in this situation must therefore be in or at Peter.  For a real, not merely Cambridge, change has taken place.

Thus it seems to Novak and to me that, even if there are transcendent universals and ordinary concrete particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications. (We could also call them accidents.  But we must not, pace Novak, call them tropes.)  Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*. Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent. This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is a particular. Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent. (Thus Constituent Essentialism holds for these items. ) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars. They are not bare because they have natures or essences.  Further, these property-exemplifications are abstract particulars in that they do not exhaust the whole concrete reality of Peter at a time.  Thus Peter is not merely cold at a time, but has other properties besides.

It seems that the argument shows that there have to be these abstract particulars -- we could call them accidents instead of property-exemplifications -- if we are to account for real accidental change.  But these partculars have constituents.  Peter's coldness, for example, has Peter and coldness as constituents.  It is a complex, not a simple.  (If it were a simple, there would be nothing about it to tie it necessarily to Peter.  Tropes are simples, so accidents are not tropes.)  So it seems to me that what Novak has provided us with is an argument for C-ontology, for the view that the members of at least one category of entity have ontological constituents.

Loux's argument notwithstanding, a version of C-ontology seems to be required if we are  to make sense of accidental change. 

But how are accidents such as Peter's coldness connected or tied -- to avoid the word 'related' -- to a substance such as Peter? 

First of all, an accident A of a substance S does not stand in an external relation to S -- otherwise a Bradleyan regress arises.  (Exercise for the reader: prove it.)

Second, A is not identical to S.  Peter's coldness is not identical to Peter.  For there is more to Peter than his being cold.  So what we need is a tie or connection that is less intimate than identity but more intimate than an external relation.  The part-whole tie seems to fit the bill.  A proper part of a whole is not identical to the whole, but it is not externally related to it either inasmuch as wholes depend for their identity and existence on their parts.

Can we say that Peter's accidents are ontological parts of Peter?  No.  This would put the cart before the horse.  Peter's coldness is identity- and existence-dependent on Peter.  Peter is ontologically prior to his accidents.  No whole, however, is ontologically prior to its parts:  wholes are identity and existence-dependent on their parts.  So the accidents of a substance are not ontological parts of it.  But they have ontological parts.  Strangely enough, if A is an accident of substance S, then S is an ontological part of A.  Substances are ontological parts of their accidents!  Brentano came to a view like this.

More on Brentano later.  For now, my thesis is just that the fact of real accidental change requires the positing of particulars that have ontological constituents and that, in consequence, R-ontology is to be rejected. Constituent ontology vindicatus est.

Related articles

Lukáš Novák on Common Natures

E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology

What Exactly is an Ontological Constituent?

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

Does the Notion of a Bare Particular Make Sense Only in Constituent Ontology?

Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

Against Ostrich Nominalism

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

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

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

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

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year!

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

In an earlier entry I sketched the difference between constituent ontology (C-ontology) and relational ontology (R-ontology) and outlined an argument against R-ontology.  I concluded that post with the claim that C-ontology also faces serious objections.  One of them could be called the 'argument from change.'

The Argument from Change

Suppose avocado A, which was unripe a week ago is ripe today. This is an example of alterational (as opposed to existential) change.  The avocado has become different. But it has also remained the same. It is different in respect of ripeness but it is one and the same avocado that was unripe and is now ripe.

Alterational change  is neither destruction nor duplication. The ripening of an avocado does not cause it to cease to exist. The ripening of an avocado is not the ceasing to exist of one particular (the unripe avocado) followed by the coming into existence of a numerically distinct avocado (the ripe one).

It is also 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). If my avocado is unripe at t while yours is ripe at t*, that circumstance does not constitute a change.  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.

That there is alterational change is a datum.  That it requires  that one and the same thing persist over an interval of time during which it has incompatible properties follows from elementary  'exegesis' or 'unpacking' of the datum.

The question before us is whether any C-ontology can do justice to the datum and its exegesis.

All C-ontologists are committed to what Michael J. Loux calls "Constituent Essentialism."  ("What is Constituent Ontology?" Novak et al. eds., p. 52) It is the C-ontological analog of mereological essentialism.  We can put it like this:

Constituent Essentialism: A thing has each of its ontological parts necessarily.  This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose an ontological part without ceasing  to be same thing.

Mereological Essentialism: A thing has each of its commonsense parts necessarily.  This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose a commonsense part without ceasing to be the same thing.

To illustrate, suppose an ordinary particular (OP) is a bundle of compresent universals.  The universals are the ontological parts of the OP as a whole.  The first of the two principles entails that ordinary particulars cannot change.  For (alterational) change is change in respect of properties under preservation of numerical diachronic identity.  But preservation of identity is not possible on Constituent Essentialism.  The simple  bundle-of-universals theory appears incompatible with the fact of change.

I agree with Loux that Constituent Essentialism is a "framework principle" (p. 52) of C-ontology.  It cannot be abandoned without abandoning C-ontology.  And of course the fact of change and what it entails (persistence of the same thing over time)  cannot be denied.  So the 'argument from change' does seem to score against primitive versions of the bundle-of-universals theory.

Can the Objection Be Met?

The foregoing objection can perhaps be met met by sophisticating the bundle theory and adopting a bundle-bundle theory.  Call this BBT.  Accordingly, a thing that persists over time such as an avocado is a diachronic bundle of synchronic or momentary bundles.  The theory  has two stages. 

First, there is the construction of momentary bundles from universals.  Thus my avocado at a time  is a bundle of universals. Then there is the construction of a diachronic bundle from these synchronic bundles. The momentary bundles have universals as constituents while the diachronic bundles do not have universals as constituents, but individuals.  This is because a bundle of universals at a time is an individual.  At both stages the bundling is contingent: the properties are contingently bundled to form momentary bundles and these resulting bundles are contingently bundled to form the persisting thing.

Accordingly, the unripe avocado is numerically the same as the ripe avocado in virtue of the fact that the earlier momentary bundles which have unripeness as a constituent  are ontological parts
of the same diachronic whole as the later momentary bundles which have ripeness as a constituent.  

A sophisticated bundle theory does not, therefore, claim that a persisting thing is a bundle of properties; the claim is that a persisting thing is a bundle of individuals which are themselves bundles of properties.  This disposes of the objection from change at least as formulated above. 

There are of course a number of other objections that need to be considered -- in separate posts.  But on the problem of change C-ontology looks to be in better shape than Loux makes it out to be.

I should add that I am not defending the bundle-bundle theory.  In my Existence book I take a different C-ontological tack.

Related articles

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Death and Time

Death is as certain as the passage of time -- and as real.  But how real is that?

Differences Between Wishing and Hoping

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly
If our lives could be like that.

Bob Dylan's Dream

Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object.  One cannot just wish, or just hope, in the way one can just feel miserable or elated.  If I wish, I wish for something.  The same holds for hoping. How then do the two attitudes differ?  They differ in terms of time, modality, and justification.

1.  The object of hope lies in the future, of necessity.  One cannot hope for what was or what is.  In his dream, Dylan wished to be together again with his long lost friends.  But he didn't hope to be together with them again.  Coherent: 'I wish I had never been born.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I had never been born.'  Coherent: 'I wish I was with her right now.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I was with her right now.'

Although hope is always and of necessity future-directed, wishing is not temporally restricted.  'I wish I were 30 again.' 'I wish I were in Hawaii now.'  'I wish to live to be a hundred.'   I cannot hope to be 30 again or hope to be in Hawaii now.  But I can both wish and hope to live to be a hundred.

Can I hope to be young again?  That's ambiguous.  I could hope for a medical breakthrough that would rejuvenate  a person in the sense of making him physiologically young  and I could hope to undergo such a rejuvenation.  But I cannot hope to be calendrically young again.

2. One can hope only for what one considers to be possible.  (What one considers to be possible may or may be possible.)  But one can wish for both what one considers to be the possible and what one consider to be  impossible.  I can hope for a stay of execution, but not that I should continue to exist as a live animal after being hanged.  ('Hanged' not 'hung'!)  I can hope to survive my bodily death, but only if I consider it possible that I survive my bodily death. But I can wish for what I know to be impossible such as being young again, being able to run a 2:30 marathon, visiting  Mars next year.

3. There is no sense in demanding of one who wishes to be cured of cancer that he supply his grounds or justification for so wishing.  "Are you justified in wishing to be cancer-free?"  But if he hopes to beat his cancer, then one can appropriately request the grounds of the hope.

If I both wish and hope for something I consider possible that lies in the future, then the difference between wishing and hoping rests on the fact that one can appropriately request grounds for hoping but not grounds for wishing.

I'll end with my favorite counterfactual conditional:  'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' 

Seize the Day

Horace advises that we seize the day. "Life ebbs as I speak: so seize each day, and grant the next no credit."  The trouble with this advice is that what we are told to grab is so deficient in entity as to be barely seizable.  The admonition comes almost to this: seize the unseizable, fix the flux, stay the surge, catch the wind. 

I do indeed try to seize the day, and its offerings, day by day, moment by moment.  Walking along the trail I stab my staff into the ground saying "This is it, this is your life, right here, right now, and it is good." Living in tune with this mantram, without wanting to be elsewhere or elsewhen, is obviously better than standing on tiptoes trying to make out the future or looking through memory's rear-view mirror. 

There is no full living  without presence to the present, without mindfulness to the moment.  But mindfulness is ultimately no solution since what one is minding is ultimately empty.

The passing moment is more real than the past and the future, but it is precisely passing and so, ultimately, unreal.  The problem is not that our time is short, but that we are in time at all.  The alternative, however, is present to us only as this blank sense of time's deficiency.

So, with unseeing eyes, we stand on tiptoes after all.

Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified

Earlier, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism.  An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad.  This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism.

1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false applies unrestrictedly to all declarative sentences, whatever their tense.
2. Presentism: Only what exists at present exists.
3. Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker.

Edward objects:  "First, I don't see why the three statements are logically inconsistent. Why can't the truthmaker for a future tense statement exist now, in the present?"

Objection sustained.  The triad as it stands is not logically inconsistent.

'Miss Creant will die by lethal injection in five minutes.'  Let this be our example.  It is a future-tensed contingent declarative.  By (1) it is either true or, if not true, then false.  By (3), our sample sentence has a truth-maker, an existing truth-maker obviously, if it is true.   By (2), the truth-maker exists only at present.  Edward is right: there is no inconsistency unless we add something like:

4.  If a sentence predicts a contingent event which lies wholly in the future, and the sentence is true, then the truth-maker of the sentence, if it has one,  cannot exist at any time prior to the time of the event.

(4) is extremely plausible.  Suppose it is true now that Miss Creant will die in five minutes.  The only item that could make this true is the event of her dying.  But this event does not now exist  and cannot exist at any time prior to her dying. 

So our antilogism, under Edwardian pummeling, transmogrifies into an aporetic tetrad which, he will agree, is logically inconsistent.

The solution, for Edward, is obvious: Deny the Temporally Unrestricted Truth-Maker Principle as stated in (3).  Of course, that is a solution.  But can Edward show that it must be preferred to the other three solutions?  After all, one could deny Presentism, and many distinguished philosophers do.  I would hazard the observation that the majority of the heavy-hitters in the 20th century Anglosphere were B-theorists, and thus deniers of Presentism.  Or one could deny Unrestricted LEM, or even (4).

Although I said that (4) is extremely plausible, one could conceivably deny it by maintaining that the truth-makers of future-tensed sentences are tendencies in the present.  For example, I say to wifey, "Watch it! The pot is going to boil over!"  Assuming that that's a true prediction, one might claim that it is the present tendencies of the agitated pasta-rich water that is the truth-maker. 

Please note also that I too could solve the tetrad by denying Unrestricted T-maker.  Not by rejecting T-makers tout court in the Edwardian manner, but by restricting T-makers to contingent past- and present-tensed declaratives.  I hope Edward appreciates that the above problem does not give aid and comfort to his wholesale rejection of T-makers.

One can always solve an aporetic polyad by denying one of its limbs.  Sure.  But then you face other daunting tasks.  One is to show in a compelling way that your preferred solution should be preferred by all competent practitioners.  You have to show that your solution is THE solution and not merely a solution relative to your background assumptions and cognitive values.  A school-immanent solution is no final and absolute solution.  Another task is to show that your solution can be embedded in a theory that does not itself give rise to insoluble problems.

Excluded Middle and Future-Tensed Sentences: An Aporetic Triad

Do you remember the prediction, made in 1999, that the DOW would reach 36,000 in a few years?  Since that didn't happen, I am inclined to say that Glassman and Hasset's prediction was wrong and was wrong at the time the prediction was made.  I take that to mean that the content of their prediction was false at the time the prediction was made.  Subsequent events merely made it evident that the content of the prediction was false; said events did not first bring it about that the content of the prediction have a truth-value.

And so I am not inclined to say that the content of their irrationally exuberant prediction was neither true nor false at the time of the prediction. It had a truth-value at the time of the prediction; it was simply not evident at that time what that truth-value was.  By 'the content of the prediction' I mean the proposition expressed by 'The DOW will reach 36,000 in a few years.' 

I am also inclined to say that the contents of some predictions are true at the time the predictions are made, and thus true in advance of the events predicted.  I am not inclined to say that these predictions were neither true nor false at the time they were made.  Suppose I predict some event E and E comes to pass.  You might say to me, "You were right to predict the occurrence of E."  You would not say to me, "Although the content of your prediction was neither true nor false at the time of your prediction, said content has now acquired the truth-value, true."

It is worth noting that the expression 'come true' is ambiguous.  It could mean 'come to be known to be true' or it could mean 'come to have the truth-value, true.'  I am inclined to read it the first way.  Accordingly, when a prediction 'comes true,' what that means is that the prediction which all along was true, and thus true in advance of the contingent event predicted, is now known to be true.

So far, then, I am inclined to say that the Law of Excluded Middle applies to future-tensed sentences. If we assume Bivalence (that there are exactly two truth-values), then the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM)can be formulated as follows. For any proposition p, either p is true or p is false. Now consider a future-tensed sentence that refers to some event that is neither impossible nor necessary. An example is the DOW sentence above or  'Tom will get tenure in 2014.'  Someone who assertively utters a sentence such as this makes a prediction.  What I am currently puzzling over is whether any predictions, at the time that they are made, have a truth-value, i.e., (assuming Bivalence), are either true or false.

Why should I be puzzling over this?  Well, despite the strong linguistic inclinations recorded above, there is something strange in regarding a contingent proposition about a future event as either true or false in advance of the event's occurrence or nonoccurrence.  How could a contingent proposition be true before the event occurs that alone could make it true? 

Our problem can be set forth as an antilogism or aporetic triad:

1. U-LEM:  LEM applies unrestrictedly to all declarative sentences, whatever their tense.
2. Presentism:  Only what exists at present exists.
3. Truth-Maker Principle: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker.

Each limb of the triad is plausible.  But they can't all be true.  The conjunction of any two entails the negation of the third.  Corresponding to our (inconsistent) antilogism there are three (valid) syllogisms each of which is an argument to the negation of one of the limbs from the other two limbs.

If there is no compelling reason to adopt one ofthese syllogisms over the other two, then I would say that the problem is a genuine aporia, an insoluble problem.

People don't like to admit that there are insolubilia.  That may merely reflect their dogmatism and overpowering need for doxastic security.  Man is a proud critter loathe to confess the infirmity of reason.

All is Impermanent? Impermanence and Self-Reference

I have long been fascinated by forms of philosophical refutation that exploit the overt or covert self-reference of a thesis. To warm up, consider

   1. All generalizations are false.

Since (1) is a generalization, (1) refers to itself. So if (1) is true, then (1) is false. On the other hand, if (1) is false, as it surely is, then (1) is false. Therefore, necessarily (1) is false. It follows that the negation of (1), namely, Some generalizations are true, is not just true, but necessarily true. (1) is self-refuting and its negation is self-verifying.  Some generalizations are true is an instance of itself which shows that it itself is true: one instance suffices to verify a particular generalization.

There are those who dismiss arguments like this as quick and facile. Some even call them 'sophomoric,' presumably because any intelligent and properly caffeinated sophomore can grasp them -- as if that could constitute a valid objection. I see it differently. The very simplicity of such arguments is what makes them so powerful. A simple argument with few premises and few inferential moves offers few opportunities to go wrong. Here, then, is a case where simplex sigillum veri, where simplicity is the seal of truth.  Now consider a more philosophically interesting example, one beloved by Buddhists:

   2. All is impermanent.

(2) applies to itself: if all is impermanent, then (2), or rather the propositional content thereof, is impermanent. That could mean one of two things. Either the truth-value of the proposition expressed by (2) is subject to change, or the proposition itself is subject to change, perhaps by becoming a different proposition with a different sense, or by passing out of existence altogether.  (There is also a stronger reading of 'impermanent' according to which the impermanent is not merely subject to change, but changing.)

Note also that if (2) is true, then every part of (2)'s propositional content is impermanent. Thus the property (concept) of impermanence is impermanent, and so is the copulative tie and the universal
quantifier. If the property of impermanence is impermanent, then so is the property of permanence along with the distinction between permanence and impermanence.

In short, (2), if true, undermines the very contrast that gives it a determinate sense. If true, (2) undermines the permanence/impermanence  contrast. For if all is impermanent, then so is this contrast and this distinction. This leaves us wondering what sense (2) might have and whether in the end it is not nonsense.

What I am arguing is not just that (2) refutes itself in the sense that it proves itself false, but refutes itself in the much stronger  sense of proving itself meaningless or else proving itself on the brink of collapsing into meaninglessness.

No doubt (2) is meaningful  'at first blush.' But all it takes is a few preliminary pokes and its starts collapsing in upon itself.

Michael Krausz ("Relativism and Beyond: A Tribute to Bimal Matilal" in Bilimoria and Mohanty, pp. 93-104) arrives at a similar result by a different route. He writes:

     Paradoxically, because all things are contexted, the idea of
     permanence cannot be permanent. But it does not follow that in the
     end all things are impermanent either, for impermanence too is
     contexted and it too finally drops out of any fixed constellation
     of concepts. (101)

Krausz invokes the premise,

   3. All things are contexted.

Krausz writes as if (3) is unproblematic. But surely it too 'deconstructs' itself. Just apply the same reasoning to (3) that we applied to (2). Clearly, (3) is self-referential. So (3) cannot express an invariant structure of being. It cannot be taken to mean, context-independently, that every being qua being is contexted.

Note also that if (3) is true, then every part of (3)'s propositional content is contexted: the universal quantifier, the concept thing, the  copulative tie, and the concept of being contexted are all contexted. What's more, the very contrast of the context-free and the context-bound is contexted.

In short, (3), if true, undermines the very contrast that confers upon it a determinate sense, namely, the contrast between the context-free and the context-bound. For if all is contexted, then so is this contrast and this distinction.

(3) collapses in upon itself and perishes for want of a determinate sense. And the same goes for all its parts. Copulative Being collapses into indeterminacy along with every other sense of Being: the   existential, the identitative, the veritative, the locative, the class-theoretic. Being ends up with no structure at all. If Being and Thinking are one, as Father Parmendides had it, then the collapse of
Being brings Thinking down with it.

Clearly, we are sinking into some seriously deep shit here, and it is of the worst kind: the formless kind, crap that won't own up to its own crapiness, the kind that deconstructionists, whether Continental or Asian, like to serve up. It is stuff so unstable that one cannot even say that it stinks. Do we really want to wallow in this mess?

Wouldn't it be better to admit that there is an Absolute?

Presentism

Franklin Mason tells me he is a presentist.  I would like to see if he and I understand the same thing by the term.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present -- the present time and its contents -- alone exists. The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist. Past and future items do not exist. But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists. (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and the future does not now exist else it would not be future.) If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking. So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis. For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense). It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified use of 'exist(s).' So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.' Accordingly:

P. The only items that exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis. The presentist will affirm it, the antipresentist will deny it. Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed. But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter. The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does. Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now. But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in relations to things that presently exist, one of these relations being the reference relation. The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead. But I am her son. So I stand in the son of relation to my mother. If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object. But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there? This is a problem for the presentist, is it not? But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter. For then the relation connects two existents.

A second problem for presentism is that it seems not able to accommodate the obvious distinction between actual past items and merely possible past items.  Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen are past individuals.  Their child Angie, like Schopenhauer's son Will, however, are past merely possible individuals.  But what becomes of this distinction if everything past is nonexistent?  For the presentist, what was is not.  But then what was is indistinguishable from what never was (because merely possible).

No doubt the presentists will have answers to these objections.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene: the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult in all of philosophy.

Future Individuals and Haecceities

According to a wisecrack of Schopenhauer, the medievals employed only three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass.  In keeping with this hoary if not 'asinine' tradition, I too in my capacity as humble footnoter to Plato shall employ Socrates as my example.  To point out the obvious: he stands in for any concrete individual whatsoever, animate or inanimate.

I have been arguing (drawing on the work of the late Barry Miller with whom I was privileged to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence) that before Socrates came to be there was no such property as identity-with-Socrates.  The astute Franklin Mason objects:

If there is no such thing as Socrates' identity before he came to be, it would seem that there's no such thing as his identity after he ceases to be. If we need the man Socrates if we are to speak about him, then we can't do so either before or after he exists. But clearly we can now speak of Socrates though he is long since dead. Thus we don't need the man to speak of the man, and so whatever reason we had to deny the existence of haecceities that predate the things to which they attach collapses.

Socrates came to exist in 470 B.C.  So we can say:

1. It is now the case that Socrates did exist.

From this it follows that

2. It was the case (e.g. in 470 B.C.) that Socrates does exist.

Mason seems to think that from (2) one can also validly infer

3. It was the case (e.g.. in 472 B.C.) that Socrates will exist.

But if I am right, the second inference fails.  For if I am right, before Socrates came to exist, not only was there no Socrates, there was no singular or  de re possibility of Socrates' existing.  At most there was the general possibility that someone come to have the properties that Socrates subsequently had. 

To appreciate that the inference from (2) is invalid, consider a parallel argument.  Suppose I promise Tom that I will buy him a book for his birthday.  On the morning of his birthday I spy a first-edition copy of On the Road in a book store and I buy it.  Once the purchase has been made we can say:

1*. It is now the case that a copy of OTR was selected for Tom.

From this it follows that

2*. It was the case that a copy of OTR is selected for Tom.

But until I bought the book on the morning of Tom's birthday I had no idea what I would buy.  So before I bought the book no one was entitled to say

3*. It was the case that a copy of OTR will be selected for Tom.

The most one would be entitled to say is

4. It was the case that a book will be selected for Tom.

Just as (3*) does not follow from (2*), (3) does not follow from (2).

Only present and past actual individuals are genuine individuals.  Future 'individuals,' not having yet come into existence, are not genuine individuals.

REFERENCE: Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45 (September 1991), 3-28, esp. 10-11.

Moral Objectivism, Mackie's Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change

Our old friend Vlastimil Vohanka from the Czech Republic asked me if moral objectivism is a respectable metaethical position.  It depends on what exactly moral objectivism is.  Let's first of all see if we can locate it on the metaethical map.  Then I take a quick look at Mackie's 'argument from queerness.'

Let's think about sentences like

   1. Slavery is a great moral evil.

Presumably anyone reading this blog will assent to (1) and also hold that everyone ought to assent to it.  So our question does not concern the ground-level acceptability of (1) which is here simply taken for granted.  Our concern is metaethical.

(1) is a grammatically indicative sentence that appears to predicate the property of being evil of an action-type or an institution-type.  If it puzzles you how an action-type can be evil, I say: an action-type is evil just in case actual or possible tokens (instances) of the type are evil.

But is (1) a fact-stating piece of discourse? If yes, then it has a truth-value. But note that if sentences like (1) are truth-valued, it  does not follow that some are true and others false. It might be that   they are all false, as on J. L. Mackie's Error Theory, which I won't discuss in this entry.  Now let's  introduce some terminology. 

A Common Misunderstanding of So-Called Cambridge Changes

There are philosophers who think that 'Cambridge' changes and real changes are mutually exclusive. Thus they think that if a change is Cambridge, then it is not real. This is a mistake. Real changes are a  proper subset of Cambridge changes.

Consider an example. Hillary gets wind of some tomcat behavior on the part of Bill and goes from a state of equanimity to that lamp-throwing fury the Bard spoke about. ("Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!"). Bill, on the other hand, as the object of Hillary's fury, also changes: at one time he has the property of being well thought of by Hillary, and the contradictory property at a later time. Common to both the real change (in Hillary) and the relational change (in Bill) is the following: x changes if and only if there are distinct times, t₁ and t₂, and a property P such that x  exemplifies P at t₁ and ~P at t₂, or vice versa. Change thus defined is Cambridge change. The terminology is from Peter Geach:

     The great Cambridge philosophical works published in the early
     years of this [the 20th] century, like Russell's  Principles of
     Mathematics and McTaggart's Nature of Existence, explained change
     as simply a matter of contradictory attributes' holding good of
     individuals at different times. Clearly any change logically
     implies a 'Cambridge' change, but the converse is surely not true.
     . . . (Logic Matters, University of California Press, 1980, p.
     321.)

In sum, every (alterational) change is a Cambridge change, but only some of the latter are real changes. The rest are mere Cambridge  changes. It is therefore a mistake to think that Cambridge and real   changes form mutually exclusive classes. What one could correctly say, however, is that mere Cambridge changes and real changes form mutually  exclusive classes.

But what about existential (as opposed to alterational) change, as when a thing comes into existence, or passes out of existence? Are such changes real changes in the things that pass in and out of   existence? Are they merely Cambridge changes? Or neither?

Boethius Contra Nietzsche on Time and Transition

Like Nietzsche, "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things."  (Letter to Franz Overbeck, 24 March 1887, quoted in R. Hayman,  Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Penguin, 1982, p. 304) Unlike Nietzsche, I
appreciate that the Eternal Recurrence of the Same is no solution.

The problem with time is not that it will end, but that its very mode of being is deficient. The problem is not that our time is short, but   that we are in time in the first place. For this reason, more time is no solution. Not even endlessly recurring time is any solution. Even if time were unending and I were omnitemporal, existing at every time, my life would still be strung out in moments outside of each other, with the diachronic identifications of memory and expectation no substitute for a true unity. To the moment I say, Verweile doch, du bist so schön (Goethe, Faust) but the beautiful moment will not abide, and abidance-in-memory is a sorry substitute, and a self diachronically constituted by such makeshifts is arguably no true self. Existing as we do temporally, we are never at one with ourselves: the past is no longer, the future not yet, and the present fleeting. We exist outside ourselves in temporal ec-stasis. We are strung out in temporal diaspora. The only Now we know is the nunc movens.

But we sense and can conceive a nunc stans, a standing now. This conception of a standing now, empty except for the rare and partial mystic fulfillment, is the standard relative to which the moving now is judged ontologically deficient. Time is but a moving and inadequate image of eternity.  So we of the tribe of Plato conceive of the divine life as the eternal life, not as the omnitemporal or everlasting life. Our spokesman is Boethius, inspired by Philosophia herself:

     Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite
     life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with temporal
     things. All that lives under the conditions of time moves through
     the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set in
     time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime.
     It cannot yet comprehend tomorrow; yesterday it has already lost.
     And in this life of today your life is no more than a changing,
     passing moment. And as Aristotle said of the universe, so it is of
     all that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will
     ever cease, and its life is coextensive with the infinity of time,
     yet it is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it
     apprehends and grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not
     embrace the whole simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the
     future. What we should rightly call eternal is that which grasps
     and possesses wholly and simultaneously the fullness of unending
     life, which lacks naught of the future, and has lost naught of the
     fleeting past; and such an existence must be ever present in itself
     to control and aid itself, and also must keep present with itself
     the infinity of changing time. (The Consolation of Philosophy, Book
     V; the Latin below the fold)

A Routley/Sylvan Argument for the Utter Nonexistence of Past Individuals

Many of us are inclined to say that purely past individuals (James Dean, Scollay Square, my cat Zeno, anything that existed but does not exist now), though past, yet exist.  Of course, they don't presently exist.  But why should only what presently exists, exist? Why should that which loses the temporal property of presentness fall into an abyss of nonbeing?  Surely that is not obvious. Presentism may be true, but it is not obviously true.  Nor is it a position favored by common sense as some contemporary writers seem to think.  Let me sketch a couple of anti-presentist considerations.  I will not present them rigorously and I do not claim that they are absolutely compelling.

Purely past individuals are part of the actual world inasmuch as they are not merely possible.  And what is actual exists.  So purely past individuals exist (tenselessly).  Or will you say that when Dean ceased to presently exist he underwent a transformation from an actual being to a merely possible one?  How then would you distinguish between past merely possible beings and past actual beings?  As far as I know Dean did not have any children.  Suppose that is true.  Still, he might have had a child.  In the past, that was a possibility, though it is not a possibility now.  Surely there is a difference between a past possible individual such as Dean's child and an actual past individual such as Dean.  Dean was; his child never was.

Moreover, we refer to past individuals and we say true things about them. 'James Dean died in a car crash in 1955.' 'Dean's fame is mainly posthumous.' 'Scollay Square was located in Boston.' The subject terms of these sentences not only did refer to something, they do refer to something, something that exists, though not at present.  Furthermore, whatever has properties exists. Dean has properties, ergo Dean exists. That is not to say that he presently exists, but if he didn't exist in any sense, how could he have properties?  So a case can be made for the reality or existence of past individuals.

But this morning I stumbled upon an interesting argument from Richard Routley, who later in life came to call himself Sylvan. (Presumably because of an attraction to forests and jungles and an aversion to desert landscapes.) In any case, after beginning p. 361 of  Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview 1980) with some question-begging sophistry that I won't bother to expose, he uncorks an interesting argument on the other side of the question, one that that stokes my aporetic fire:

Purely past and purely future items are, like merely possible items, not (now) determinate in all extensional respects: hence (applying the results of 1.19) they do not exist.  Compare the items Aristotle and Polonious, and remember Peirce's question as to how long before Polonious died had he had a hair cut and Russell's as to the baldness of the present king of France.  Well, is Aristotle bald now?If he is, how long has he been bald? If not, how long since he had a hair cut and how long is his hair? Since Aristotle has ceased to exist, it is false that Aristotle is now bald and false that he is not now bald . . . . Thus Aristotle is indeterminate in respect of the extensional property of (present) baldness. Hence he does not exist now; hence he does not exist.

The argument is short and snappy:

1. For any x, if x exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.
2. It is not the case that purely past individuals are  now determinate in all extensional respects.
Therefore
3. It is not the case that purely past individuals exist.

The argument is valid but why should we accept (1)?  I have no problem with the following two cognate principles which I warmly embrace:

1*. For any x, if x now exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.

1**. For any x, if x exists, then x is determinate in all extensional respects.

But I see no reason to accept the question-begging (1).  After all, Aristotle, unlike Polonious, exists, but Aristotle -- if (2) is to be believed -- is not now determinate in respect of baldness or the opposite.

Suppose, however, that we accept (1).  Why should we also accept (2)?  Presumably because it is not now the case that Aristotle is either bald or not bald. But this far from clear.  During his life, Aristotle either counted as bald or as not bald.  Suppose he counted as bald.  Then I say that Aristotle exists (tenselessly) and is (tenselessly) bald.  So he is now determinate in respect of baldness or its opposite.  He is tenselessly bald and so is now tenselessly bald.

What Routley has done in the above passage and surrounding text is merely beg the question in favor of presentism.  He has given us no non-question-begging reason to accept it.

A Defense of Presentism

An article by Ned Markosian.

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

What better topic of meditation for New Year's Eve than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year!

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

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

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

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

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

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

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

But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which 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?

Happy New Year!

 

What Is Presentism?

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (Augustine).  The same goes, in my case at least, for presentism, as Peter Lupu made clear to me Christmas night.  Don't ask me what it is, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present  -- the present time and its contents -- alone exists.  The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist.  Past and future items do not exist.  But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists.  (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and similarly with the future.)  If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking.  So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis.  For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense).  It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified  use of 'exist(s).'  So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.'  Accordingly:

P. The only items that  exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis.  The presentist will affirm it,  the antipresentist will deny it.  Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed.  But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter.  The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does.  Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now.  But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can  go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in  relations to things that presently exist.  The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead.  But I am her son.  So I stand in the son of relation to my mother.  If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object.  But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there?  This is a problem for the presentist, is it not?  But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter.  For then the relation connects two existents.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene:  the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult  in all of philosophy.

 

Under the Aspect of Temporality

What doesn't matter under the aspect of eternity may well matter under the aspect of temporality.  Which aspect  trumps which, if either trumps either, is a problem, one more to add to the list of riddles that charm and seduce the philosopher. 

Can a Bundle Theory Accommodate Change?

0.  Peter L. has been peppering me with objections to bundle theories.  This post considers the objection from change.

1. Distinguish existential change (coming into being and passing out of being) from alterational change, or alteration.  Let us think about ordinary meso-particulars such as avocados and coffee cups.  If an avocado is unripe on Monday but ripe on Friday, it has undergone alterational change: it has changed in respect of the property of being ripe.  One and the same thing has become different in respect of one or more properties. (An avocado cannot ripen without becoming softer, tastier, etc.)  Can a bundle theory make sense of an obvious instance of change such as this?  It depends on what the bundle theory (BT) amounts to.

2. At a first approximation, a bundle theorist maintains that a thing is nothing more than a complex of properties contingently related by  a bundling relation, Russellian compresence say.    'Nothing more' signals that on BT there is nothing in the thing that exemplifies the properties: there is no substratum (bare particular, thin particular) that supports and unifies them. This is not to say that on BT a thing is just its properties: it is obviously more, namely, these properties contingently bundled.  A bundle is not a mathematical set, a mereological sum, or a conjunction of its properties.  These entities exist 'automatically' given the existence of the properties.  A bundle does not. 

3.  Properties are either universals or property-instance (tropes).  For present purposes, BT is a bundle-of-universals theory.  Accordingly, my avocado is a bundle of universals.  Although a bundle is not a whole in the strict sense of classical mereology, it is a whole in an analogous sense, a sense sufficiently robust to be governed by a principle of extensionality: two bundles are the same iff they have all the same property-constituents.  It follows that the unripe avocado on Monday cannot be numerically the same as the ripe avocado on Friday.  And therein lies the rub.  For they must be the same if it is the case that an alteration in the avocado has occurred. 

So far, then, it appears that the bundle theory cannot accommodate alterational change.  Such change, however, is a plain fact of experience.  Ergo, the bundle theory in its first approximation is untenable.

4.  This, objection, however, can be easily met by sophisticating the bundle theory and adopting a bundle-bundle theory.  Call this BBT.  Accordingly, a thing that persists over time such as an avocado is a diachronic bundle of synchronic or momentary bundles.  The theory then has two stages.  First, there is the construction of momentary bundles from universals.  Then there is the construction of a diachronic bundle from these bundles. The momentary bundles have properties as constituents while the diachronic bundles do not have properties as constituents, but individuals.  At both stages the bundling is contingent: the properties are contingently bundled to form momentary bundles and these resulting bundles are contingently bundled to form the persisting thing.

Accordingly, the unripe avocado is numerically the same as the ripe avocado in virtue of the fact that the earlier momentary bundles which have unripeness as a constituent  are ontological parts of the same diachronic whole as the later momentary bundles which have ripeness as a constituent.

5. A sophisticated bundle theory does not, therefore, claim that a persisting thing is a bundle of properties; the claim is that a persisting thing is a bundle of individuals which are themselves bundles of properties.  This disposes of the objection from change at least as formulated in #3 above.

6. BBT also allows us to accommodate the intuition  that things have accidental properties.  On the proto-theory BT according to which a persisting thing is a bundle of properties, it would seem that all properties must be essential, where an essential property is one a thing has in every possible world in which it exists.    For if wholes have their parts essentially, and if bundles are wholes in this sense, and things are bundles of properties, then things have their properties essentially.  But surely our avocado is not essentially ripe or unripe but accidentally one or the other.  On BBT, however, it is a contingent fact that a momentary bundle MB1 having ripeness as a constituent is bundled with other momentary bundles.  This implies that the diachronic bundle of bundles could have existed without MB1 and without other momentary bundles having ripeness as a constituent.  It therefore seems to follow that BBT can accommodate accidental properties.

7. That is, BBT can accommodate the modal intuition that our avocado might never have been ripe.  But what about the modal intuition that, given that the avocado is ripe at t, it might not have been ripe at t?  This is a thornier question and the basis of a different objection that is is not defused by what I have said above.  And so we reserve this objection for a separate post.

Kerouac October Quotation #5

"Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom." (Visions of Cody, McGraw-Hill, 1972, p. 374)

Time and Tense: A Note on the B-Theory

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (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. 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.

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.  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 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 property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The opposite view is that of the presentist: there is a genuine 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.

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.

 

Wittgenstein on Time and Flux

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhees, trs. Hargreaves and White, Chicago 1975, p. 83:

52. It's strange that in ordinary life we are not troubled by the feeling that the phenomenon is slipping away from us, the constant flux of appearance, but only when we philosophize. This indicates that what is in question here is an idea suggested by a misapplication of our language. 

This indicates to me that Wittgenstein lacked a metaphysical sensibility. It is precisely in ordinary life, and prior to his occupation with technical metaphysics, that the metaphysician feels and is saddened by the transitoriness of things, the flux of phenomena, the passage of time. That feeling is part of what sets him on the path of technical metaphysics in the first place. It is the fundamental sense of the transience and unreality of this world that disposes him to take seriously metaphysical writings when he first encounters them. And it is the lack of this sense in G. E. Moore and in Wittgenstein which disposes them to be puzzled by the writings of metaphysicians like Bradley and McTaggart and to set out to debunk them either by defending common sense (as if the metaphysician were simply denying it) or by bringing us back to ordinary language used in ordinary ways.

Wittgenstein says that "only when we philosophize" are we troubled by the flux of phenomena. Not only is this plainly false, it suggests that there is something aberrant rather than natural about philosophizing, as if philosophy were a disease of cognition needing treatment rather than refutation. I simply deny this.  If there is a cognitive defect, it is in those who fail to perceive the relative unreality of the transient.

Philosophy arises quite naturally in people of a reflective disposition who have a sense of the relative unreality, the ontological non-ultimacy, of the world of time and change. Philosophy is not a disease, but a response to the inherent questionableness of the world and our lives in it.   In the Theaetetus, Plato speaks of wonder as the "feeling of the philosopher." This wonder is not mere puzzlement induced by linguistic confusion but a questioning elicited by the nature of things, a questioning that is a transcending of this world, a transcending that issues in attempts to put into language the essence of the world.

It is the possibility of this transcending that Wittgenstein questions. He questions it by questioning the meaningfulness of the sorts of extended uses of ordinary words that the metaphysician employs. The metaphysician takes a word like 'present' from ordinary usage and then says something extraordinary like, 'The present alone is real,' or 'Only the present experience has reality.' Wittgenstein objects to this with a sort of Contrast Argument:

We are tempted to say: only the experience of the present moment has reality. And then the first reply must be: As opposed to what? Does it imply that I didn't get up this morning? (For if so, it would be dubious.) But this is not what we mean. Does it mean that an event that I'm not remembering at this instant didn't occur? Not that either. (85)

Wittgenstein's point is that when one says that the present alone is real, one is using 'present' in an extended sense, one in which it no longer contrasts with 'past' and 'future.' He seems to think that the presentist metaphysician is saying something that conflicts with such obvious facts as that one got up in the morning. But here is where Wittgenstein's Contrast Argument becomes hard to credit. Wittgenstein's mistake is to think that when the presentist, saying that the present alone is real, implies that the past is unreal, he is implying that the past is nothing at all in a way that would render it false that we got up this morning. But of course the presentist does not deny the gross facts; what he does is reinterpret them. His point is something like this: the reality of the past is relative to, or derivative from, the (absolute) reality of the present.

Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: An Aporetic Tetrad

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, though it is, as 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 nonpresent item. 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 nonpresent. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  And if E does not exist, then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T.  If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are nonpresent, then presentism is false.

How will 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 deny (B) 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 relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a 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 relation?  What else could it be?

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

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

Ersatz Eternity

What has been, though it needn't have been, always will have been.  What time has mothered, no future time can touch.   What you were and that you were stands forever inscribed in the roster of being whether or not anyone will read the record.  You will die, but your having lived will never die.  But how paltry the ersatz eternity of time's progeny!  Time has made you and will unmake you.  In compensation, she allows your having been to rise above the reach of the flux.  Thanks a lot, bitch!  You are one mater dolorosa whose consolation is as petty as your penance is hard.

Why Are We Bothered by our Temporal but not our Spatial Limitations?

Our lives have definite limits both in space and in time. At any given time, my body occupies a vanishingly small portion of space, and if one were to plot my path over time, the resulting space-time ‘trajectory’ would pass through an exceedingly small number of spatiotemporal positions. And yet my spatial limitations do not bother me. What bothers me is that my life is approaching a temporal limit. Setting aside questions of a possible survival of bodily death, this temporal limit looms as a sort of calamity, unlike my spatial limits which I accept with equanimity. It bothers me that my life will not extend much beyond three score and ten, but it bothers me not at all that my height does not extend beyond 6' 1". I suspect that this difference in attitude, the difference between dread at coming to an end in time, and equanimity at coming to an end in space, is shared by most of us. If the difference in attitude is justified, it would seem to point to a fundamental difference between spatial and temporal limits, and thus between space and time.

To put it more sharply: A justifiable difference in attitude (dread vs. equanimity) seems to entail a fundamental difference between space and time. Contrapositively, the lack of a fundamental difference seems to entail that the difference in attitude is not justifiable.

Is Everything Always Continuously Changing in Every Respect?

Over lunch today the Buddhist claim that all is impermanent came up for discussion.   Let’s see how plausible this claim of impermanence is when interpreted to mean that everything is always continuously changing in every respect. We need to ask four 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?