Abstract

Diodorus' Master Argument was intended to show that whatever is possible either is or will be true. The intended conclusion does not follow from the extant premisses of the Master Argument. The Near Miss argues however, from those premisses alone, that nothing can be more than momentarily an exception to the Master Argument's intended conclusion. Strong arguments support even the most contentious of those premisses . We therefore cannot easily ignore the Near Miss. Moreover, there are various supplementary premisses that would turn the Near Miss into an argument with the full force of the Master Argument itself. Each of Diodorus' ancient rivals, since they accepted such doctrines as eternal recurrence, temporal atomism, and the "extended" present, would grant him at least one of these supplementary premisses. So too would any modern who holds that time is not circular, has no beginning, and does not branch