A span-er in the works for presentism?
| Abstract | Arthur Prior states that ‘It will be/was/is that p’ is true iff ‘p’ will be/was/is true, and that is all that needs to be said about the matter. This appears to avoid any need to invoke the existence of non-present entities and accounts for tensed truths with very little ontological cost. However, as David Lewis notes, this version of presentism gives the wrong results when applied to numerically quantified tensed propositions. I show how presentism can accommodate numerical quantification by introducing a more appropriate tense operator. Further, I argue that it is implausible to think that we can have a primitive understanding of it; the correct semantics involves quantification over past and future times. I go on to show what kind of ontology can complement this semantic story, whilst remaining presentist in nature. | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesChristian Wuthrich (2012). Demarcating Presentism. In Henk de Regt, Samir Okasha & Stephan Hartmann (eds.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. Springer.
Sam Baron (2013). Presentism, Truth and Supervenience. Ratio 26 (1):3-18.
Theodore Sider (1999). Presentism and Ontological Commitment. Journal of Philosophy 96 (7):325-347.
Brian Kierland & Bradley Monton (2007). Presentism and the Objection From Being-Supervenience. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3):485-497.
Matthew Davidson (forthcoming). Presentism and Grounding Past Truths. In Roberto Ciuni, Giuliano Torrengo & Kristie Miller (eds.), New Papers on the Present: Focus on Presentism. Verlag.
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