Skip to main content
Log in

Why so Serious? Non-serious Presentism and the Problem of Cross-temporal Relations

  • Published:
Metaphysica

Abstract

It is a common assumption in the metaphysics of time that a commitment to presentism entails a commitment to serious presentism, the view that objects can exemplify properties or stand in relations only at times at which they exist. As a result, non-serious presentism is widely thought to be beyond the bounds for the card-carrying presentist in response to the problem of cross-temporal relations. In this paper, I challenge this general consensus by examining one common argument in favor of the thesis that presentism entails serious presentism. The argument, I claim, begs the question against non-serious defenders in failing to account for their wider metaontological views concerning non-committal quantification.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See Brogaard (2006, pp. 194–195) and Crisp (2005, pp. 5–6), respectively.

  2. See Brogaard (2006, p. 195).

  3. See Torrengo (2006, p. 1).

  4. See Crisp (2005, p. 7).

  5. For example, see Bergmann (1996), Bergmann (1999) and Markosian (2004).

  6. Markosian (2004), p. 310).

  7. See Davidson (2003), p. 87).

  8. Hinchliff defends non-serious actualism as well as non-serious presentism. I restrict my focus here to the temporal realm. I take Hinchliff as representative here in that (1) his work on non-serious presentism (1988) is, as far as I am aware, the most exhaustive on offer and (2) arguably, Hinchliff is the most oft cited proponent of a non-series reading of actualism and presentism.

  9. Hinchliff (1988, p. 86).

  10. Hinchliff (1988, p. 106).

  11. James Van Cleve’s (2006) remarks are fitting (although they pertain to Meinong’s Theory of Objects in particular): “If the real Meinong did not invest his Objects with a second mode of being, why is the impression to the contrary so widespread? There are terminological reasons that may have played a minor role, but I believe the main explanation is as follows. The conviction that things must exist in some sense if there are to be truths about them (or if they are to have properties) runs deep. It runs so deep in most of us that we tend automatically to ascribe it to others in trying to make sense of what they say. So when Meinong tells us that the golden mountain is golden, even though it does not exist, in the ordinary sense, it must nonetheless exist in some extraordinary sense. Again, when Meinong enunciates his famous paradoxical sentence—“There are objects of which it is true that there are no objects”—we naturally suppose that he intends ‘there are’ at the beginning of the sentence to express a mode of being different from that which is expressed by ‘there are’ at the end of the sentence. We take him to be saying that there are (in the distinctively Meinongian way) objects that lack the Russellian prerogative of existence. It does not occur to us that his initial quantifier may range over things that do not exist in any sense at all” (233).

  12. The same reasoning, I believe, can be applied to Michael Bergmann’s reductio against non-serious actualism and presentism in Bergmann (1999).

  13. This is my formulation of the triangle argument from Hinchliff (2010).

  14. Hinchliff (2010, p. 97).

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid., p. 98.

  17. Thus, in the terminology of Eklund (2006): p. 328), Hinchliff would qualify as a “non-commitment Meinongian” in so far as he has “a completely different view on quantification and on the semantic role of singular terms”.

  18. Here he joins the likes of Cian Dorr (2007), Jody Azzouni (2004), Thomas Hofweber (2007), Ruth Barcan Marcus (1972), and Stephen Yablo (2001), to name a few.

  19. It should be noted here that Hinchliff is clear that he takes his particular quantifiers to be objectual and not substitutional. He states, “The distinction between particular and existential quantifiers is also often accompanied by the view that particular quantifiers are substitutional quantifiers. This is not part of my view. My particular quantifiers are objectual. On my view, it is true that some things are nameless, whereas if my quantifiers were substitutional, it would not be true that some things are nameless” (1988: p. 107). For another view that objectual quantifiers can be taken to be ontologically non-committal see Azzouni (2004: 54).

  20. Hinchliff (1988, p. 107).

  21. It should be noted as well that Hinchliff (1996) is an ardent defender of the notion that one can name and refer to non-present (i.e., non-existent) objects.

  22. Hinchliff (1988, p. 106).

  23. The same holds true for universal instantiation as well but I limit by discussion here to existential generalization.

  24. Though my aim here is not to examine the merits of Hinchliff’s views concerning quantification and the revisionary logical consequences that ensue, an objection here would be that Hinchliff secures the truth of ‘Ta’ only by relying on a non-standard conception of truth. Another way of stating this worry would be to say that on Hincliff’s view, truth is not determined by reality (primarily because it can be true that ‘x is F’, where ‘x’ denotes an object that does not exist or have any other sort of being whatsoever).

  25. Hinchliff (1988, p.104).

  26. Terry Horgan (2007, p. 620) and William Lycan (1979, p. 290) taken from Graham Priest (2008).

References

  • Azzouni, Jody. 2004. Deflating Existential Consequence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bergmann, Michael. 1996. “A New Argument from Actualism to Serious Actualism”. Noûs, Vol. 30, No. 3 (September 1996): 356–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bergmann, Michael. 1999. “(Serious) Actualism and (Serious) Presentism”. Noûs 33:1 (1999): 118–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brogaard, Berit. 2006. “Tensed Relations”. Analysis 66.3 (July 2006): 194–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crisp, Thomas. 2005. “Presentism and ‘Cross-Time’ Relations”. American Philosophical Quarterly 42 (2005): 5–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Mathew. 2003. “Presentism and the Non-Present”. Philosophical Studies 113(1) (March 2003).

  • Dorr, Ciann. 2007. “There Are No Abstract Objects”. John Hawthorne, Theodore Sider and Dean Zimmerman (eds.) Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

  • Eklund, Matti. 2006. “Metaontology”. Philosophy Compass 1/3 (2006): 317–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliff, Mark. 1996. “The Puzzle of Change”. James Tomberlin (ed.). Philosophical Perspectives, 10, Metaphysics, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996: 119–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliff, Mark. 2010. “The Identity of the Past”. Joseph Keim Campbell et al. (eds), Time and Identity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010): 95–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliff, Mark. 1988. A Defense of Presentism. doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1988.

  • Hofweber, Thomas. 2007. “Innocent Statements and Their Metaphysically Loaded Counterparts”. The Philosophers’ Imprint vol. 7 no. 1 (February 2007).

  • Horgan, Terrence. 2007. “Retreat from Non-Being”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 84 (2007): 615–627.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lycan, Willam. 1979. “The Trouble with Possible Worlds”. Loux, Michael J. (ed.) The Possible and the Actual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979: 274–316

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, Ruth Barcan. 1972. "Quantification and ontology". Noûs 6 (1972): 240–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markosian, Ned. 2004. “A Defense of Presentism” in Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 47–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Priest, Graham. 2008. “The Closing of the Mind: How the Particular Quantifier Became Existentially Loaded Behind Our Backs”. The Review of Symbolic Logic 1:1 (June 2008).

  • Torrengo, Giuliano. 2006. "Tenseless cross-temporal Relations". Metaphysica, Vol. 7, No. 2: 117–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Cleve, James. 2006. “If Meinong is Wrong, is McTaggart Right?” Philosophical Topics, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring 1996): 231–254

    Google Scholar 

  • Yablo, Stephen. 2001. “Aprioricity and Existence,” in P. Boghossian and C. Peacocke (eds.) New Essays on the A Priori, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 197–228.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ross Inman.

About this article

Cite this article

Inman, R. Why so Serious? Non-serious Presentism and the Problem of Cross-temporal Relations. Int Ontology Metaphysics 13, 55–63 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0093-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0093-y

Keywords

Navigation