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.
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Notes
See Brogaard (2006, p. 195).
See Torrengo (2006, p. 1).
See Crisp (2005, p. 7).
Markosian (2004), p. 310).
See Davidson (2003), p. 87).
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.
Hinchliff (1988, p. 86).
Hinchliff (1988, p. 106).
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).
The same reasoning, I believe, can be applied to Michael Bergmann’s reductio against non-serious actualism and presentism in Bergmann (1999).
This is my formulation of the triangle argument from Hinchliff (2010).
Hinchliff (2010, p. 97).
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 98.
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”.
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).
Hinchliff (1988, p. 107).
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.
Hinchliff (1988, p. 106).
The same holds true for universal instantiation as well but I limit by discussion here to existential generalization.
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).
Hinchliff (1988, p.104).
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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
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-012-0093-y