Presentism

Edited by David Ingram (University of York)
About this topic
Summary

Presentism is typically taken as the ‘common-sense’ account of time, and is most easily characterized as the combination of two theses. First of all, the presentist holds that only the present time exists, or conversely that no non-present times exist. Alternatively, this ontological thesis is often formulated solely in terms of present objects, i.e. as the thesis that only present objects exist or that no non-present objects exist. This makes presentism the natural foil for eternalism, which holds that past, present, and future times (or objects) are ontologically on par. Second, presentism is typically understood as an A-theoretic account of time committed to an objective, changing present. This commitment to a dynamic account of time is shared with similar A-theoretic accounts such as the growing block and moving spotlight views of time. 

Key works

Contemporary presentism can trace its roots back to the work of A.N. Prior, but the classic contemporary defense of the view is provided by Bigelow 1996. Bigelow presents a forceful statement of presentism’s common-sense motivations as well as a popular template for responding to some of presentism’s most pressing objections. Markosian 2004 provides a useful summary of objections faced by presentism and defends a number of responses. Keller 2004 is an excellent survey of one of presentism’s central philosophical problems, the truthmaking objection, and argues against a number of responses available to the presentist. Bourne 2006 provides a powerful book-length defense of presentism, while Crisp 2007 argues for a similar account. Bourne and Crisp offer what is termed an ‘ersatz’ account of presentism that represents a state of the art response to truthmaking objections to presentism. Merricks 2007 and Tallant 2009 contain interesting further discussion of presentism and the truthmaking objection. Presentism is also often taken to face a challenge from relativity. Putnam 1967 and Rietdijk 1966 represent the classic presentation of this challenge. See Monton 2001 and Wüthrich 2010 for further discussion of the relationship between presentism and contemporary physics.

Introductions

Good introductions include Crisp 2003, Miller 2013, and Ingram & Tallant 2022.

Related

Contents
422 found
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1 — 50 / 422
  1. Presentism and the Experience of Time.Mauro Dorato - 2015 - Topoi 34 (1):265-275.
    Presentists have typically argued that the Block View is incapable of explaining our experience of time. In this paper I argue that the phenomenology of our experience of time is, on the contrary, against presentism. My argument is based on a dilemma: presentists must either assume that the metaphysical present has no temporal extension, or that it is temporally extended. The former horn leads to phenomenological problems. The latter renders presentism metaphysically incoherent, unless one posits a discrete present that, however, (...)
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  2. In Defense of Temporal Passage.Steven M. Duncan - manuscript
    In this paper, I endorse and defend the Common Sense View of Time (CSVT), i.e. Presentism plus the A-theory of time, by arguing for the objective reality of temporal passage.
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  3. The Present.Steven M. Duncan - manuscript
    While the nature of the past and the future have received a lot of attention from recent analytic philosophers, the present has been somewhat neglected. I think the notion of the present is somewhat misunderstood and hope to rectify some of those misunderstandings in this essay. It is high time that this was done. Let's do it now!
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  4. Momentum and Context.Hans Halvorson - manuscript
    A sentence's meaning may depend on the state of motion of the speaker. I argue that this context-sensitivity blocks the inference from special relativity to four-dimensionalism.
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  5. The Time Flow Manifesto Chapter 4 Metaphysical Time Flow.Andrew Holster - manuscript
    In the philosophy of time, the neo-positivist is focussed above all else on sustaining the view called the static theory of time, as the very foundation of their scientific metaphysics. This is the deeply held metaphysical conviction of almost all ‘modern philosophical-scientific’ writers on time. In fact it is hardly too much to say that the entire official modern 20th Century philosophy of physics rests on the assumption that the static theory of space-time is the only concept of time we (...)
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  6. A Better A-theory.Alexander Jackson - manuscript
    I present a new kind of A-theory. On this proposal, time’s passing is a metaphysically fundamental aspect of reality. I take this to mean that there are fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. This A-theory also posits fundamental facts about the state of the universe at a given time, and about cross-temporal relationships. The proposed metaphysical package attractively articulates our pre-relativistic conception of time. I defend the proposal from a number of orthodox objections: fundamental facts (...)
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  7. Paradoxes of Time Travel to the Future.Sara Bernstein - forthcoming - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    This paper brings two fresh perspectives on Lewis’s theory of time travel. First: many key aspects and theoretical desiderata of Lewis’s theory can be captured in a framework that does not commit to eternalism about time. Second: implementing aspects of Lewisian time travel in a non-eternalist framework provides theoretical resources for a better treatment of time travel to the future. While time travel to the past has been extensively analyzed, time travel to the future has been comparatively underexplored. I make (...)
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  8. An Empirical Argument for Presentism.David Builes & Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.
    According to orthodoxy, our best physical theories strongly support Eternalism over Presentism. Our goal is to argue against this consensus, by arguing that a certain overlooked aspect of our best physical theories strongly supports Presentism over Eternalism.
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  9. Cross‐temporal grounding.Fabrice Correia & Giovanni Merlo - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    Cross-temporal grounding is a type of grounding whereby present facts about the past (for example that Caesar was alive) are explained in terms of past facts (for example that Caesar is alive) rather than in terms of other present facts. This paper lays the foundations for a theory of cross-temporal grounding. After introducing the general idea of a type of grounding connecting facts to past facts, we offer two arguments that past-directed facts require cross-temporal grounds—the ‘argument from intimacy’ and the (...)
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  10. Time, Metaphysics of.Natalja Deng - forthcoming - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks questions about the nature of reality – about what there is, and what it is like. The metaphysics of time is the part of the philosophy of time that asks questions about the nature of temporal reality. One central such question is that of whether time passes or flows, or whether it has a dynamic aspect.
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  11. The Affective and Practical Consequences of Presentism and Eternalism.Mauro Dorato - forthcoming - Argumenta.
    In the dispute between presentism and eternalism, the affective dimensions of the debate have been somewhat neglected. Contemporary philosophers of time have not tried to relate these ontological positions with two of the most discussed maxims in the history of ethics – “live in the present” vs. “look at your life under the aspect of the eternity” (sub specie aeternitatis)– that since the Hellenistic times have been regarded as strictly connected with them. Consequently, I raise the question of whether the (...)
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  12. Endurantism, presentism, and the problem of temporary intrinsics.Yanssel Garcia - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    The most common form of endurantism takes enduring objects to be wholly located at every time they occupy. Such a view is believed to give rise to a problem concerning intrinsic change. My laptop may have been shut before, but it is currently open. Yet, if we understand endurantism as above, then my laptop is in possession of two contradictory properties: the shapes of being open and shut. This problem is known as the “problem of temporary intrinsics,” and, to avoid (...)
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  13. What do VR experiments teach us about time?Andrew J. Latham & Alex Holcombe - forthcoming - Frontiers in Psychology.
    Gruber and Smith (2019) have conducted some interesting virtual reality (VR) experiments, but we think that these experiments fail to illuminate why people think that the present is special. Their experiments attempted to test a suggestion by Hartle (2005) that with VR one might construct scenarios in which people experience the same present twice. If that’s possible, then it could give us a reason to think that when we experience the present as being special, that’s not because it’s objectively so. (...)
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  14. Meaning in Life and the Nature of Time.Ned Markosian - forthcoming - In The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Many of the leading accounts of what makes a life meaningful are goal-based theories, according to which it is the pursuit of some specific goal (such as love for things that are worthy of love) that gives meaning to our lives. In this chapter I consider how these goal-based theories of meaning in life interact with the two main theories of the nature of time that have been defended in the recent metaphysics literature, namely, The Dynamic Theory of Time and (...)
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  15. Pretence Fictionalism about the Non-Present.Kristie Miller - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Presentists hold that only present things exist. But we all, presentists included, utter sentences that appear to involve quantification over non-present objects, and so we all, presentists included, seem to commit ourselves to such objects. Equally, we all, presentists included, take utterances of many past-tensed (and some future-tensed) sentences to be true. But if no past or future things exist, it’s hard to see how there can be anything that those utterances are about, which makes them true. This paper presents (...)
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  16. Commentary: Physical time within human time.Kristie Miller & Danqi Wang - forthcoming - Frontiers in Psychology.
    Gruber et al. (2022) and Buonomano and Rovelli (Forthcoming) aim to render Q18 consistent the picture of time delivered to us by physics, with the way time seems to us in experience. Their general approach is similar; they take the picture of our world given to us in physics, a picture on which there is no global “moving” present and hence no robust temporal flow, and attempt to explain why things nevertheless seem to us as they do, given that our (...)
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  17. The Passage of Time as Causal Succession of Events.Avril Styrman - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    This work introduces a causal explanation of the passage of time, and contrasts it with rival explanations. In the causal explanation, laws of physics are shown to entail that events are in causal succession, and the passage of time is defined as their causal succession. The causal explanation is coupled with phenomenology of the passage of time, and contrasted with the project of making sense of the idea that time does not pass.
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  18. Presentism without Truth-Makers.Barry Ward - forthcoming - Chronos.
    We construct a presentist semantics on which there are no truth-makers for past and future tensed statements. The semantics is not an expressivist or projectivist one, and is not susceptible to the semantical difficulties that confront such theories. We discuss how the approach handles some standard concerns with presentism.
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  19. Truthmaking.Jamin Asay - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and (...)
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  20. Presentism and representation: saying it without words.Sam Baron, Kristie Miller & Jonathan Tallant - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-33.
    The Triviality Argument against presentism maintains that we should reject presentism because there is no way to define the view that is not either trivially true or obviously false. We suggest that this style of argument over-emphasises purely linguistic means of representing a philosophical thesis. We argue that there is no reason to suppose that all philosophical theses must be linguistically representable, and thus that the failure to linguistically represent presentism is no big deal. It certainly shouldn’t lead us to (...)
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  21. Why is Presentism Intuitive?Ernesto Graziani - 2023 - Metaphysica: International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics.
    Presentism is, roughly, the ontological view that only the present exists. Among the philosophers engaged in the metaphysics of time there is wide agreement that presentism is intuitive (or commonsensical) and that its intuitiveness counts as evidence in its favour. My contribution has two purposes: first, defending the view that presentism is intuitive from some recent criticisms; second, putting forth a genealogical (or debunking) argument aimed at depriving presentism’s intuitiveness of the evidential value commonly granted to it.
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  22. Presentism, Actualism, and Fatalism.Bradley Rettler - 2023 - Metaphysics 6 (1):13-23.
    In recent papers, Philip Swenson (2016) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and divine foreknowledge, and Michael Rea (2006) has argued that presentism is incompatible with the conjunction of libertarianism and bivalence. In this paper, I respond to Swenson’s and Rea’s arguments. In each case, I develop a parody argument that seeks to show that actualism -- the view that everything is actual -- is inconsistent with the conjunction of (in the case of Rea) libertarianism (...)
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  23. Augustine on the Existence of the Past and the Future.David Anzalone - 2022 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 104 (2):290-311.
    In the eleventh book of the Confessiones Augustine puts forward several considerations about the nature of time. The received view is that he held that only the present exists, while the past and the future do not exist. This received view has recently been attacked by Paul Helm and Katherin Rogers, who have offered alternative interpretations according to which Augustine held that the present has no privileged ontological status, and that past, present and future all equally exist. The aim of (...)
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  24. Trouble on the Horizon for Presentism.Sam Baron & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2022 - Philosophers' Imprint 1.
    Surface presentism is the combination of a general relativistic physics with a presentist metaphysics. In this paper, we provide an argument against this combination based on black holes. The problem focuses on the notion of an event horizon. We argue that the present locations of event horizons are ontologically dependent on future black hole regions, and that this dependence is incompatible with presentism. We consider five responses to the problem available to the surface presentist, and argue that none succeed. Surface (...)
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  25. Fine’s Monster Objection Defanged.Damiano Costa, Alessandro Cecconi & Claudio Calosi - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):435-451.
    The Monster Objection has often been considered one of the main reasons to explore non-standard mereological views, such as hylomorphism. Still, it has been rarely discussed and then only in a cursory fashion. This paper fills this gap by offering the first thorough assessment of the objection. It argues that different metaphysical stances, such as presentism and three- and four-dimensionalism, provide different ways of undermining the objection.
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  26. Special Relativity in Superposition.Ted Dace - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (2):199-213.
    By deriving the Lorentz transformation from the absolute speed of light, Einstein demonstrated the relativistic variability of space and time, enabling him to explain length contraction and time dilation without recourse to a "luminiferous ether" or preferred frame of reference. He also showed that clocks synchronized at a distance via light signals are not synchronized in a frame of reference differing from that of the clocks. However, by mislabeling the relativity of synchrony the "relativity of simultaneity," Einstein implied that this (...)
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  27. Presentism & Passage.Paul R. Daniels - 2022 - Metaphysica 23 (2):369-384.
    According to the presentist, only the present moment exists and, as time passes, what’s present changes. However some argue that, if only one moment exists, the presentist cannot explain the passage of time. While the presentist historically appeals to surrogates—proxies which exist in the present but play the role of non-existent past times—to evade this sort of worry, the appeal to surrogates has come under renewed attack from Lisa Leininger. But hope is not lost for the presentist. I argue that (...)
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  28. The Forgetful World: A defence of presentism in light of modern physics.Patrick Dawson - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Sydney
    The aim of this thesis is to defend a presentist metaphysics. I respond to a series of objections against presentism, including some that draw on our best physics. I also explore ways in which presentism might play an active role in interpreting and constraining physical theory, beyond merely being consistent with it. -/- A unifying theme of this thesis is that I advocate for a reduction of presentism to its bare essentials. Within the proposed ontology, reality is three-dimensional. Time only (...)
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  29. In Defence of a Dynamic View of Reality.Jerzy Gołosz - 2022 - Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press.
    This collection of papers consists of mostly previously published articles which develop a scientific research program designed to defend a dynamic view of reality, which is founded on the assumption of the existence of the flow of time. The vindication makes use of a metaphysical theory of the flow of time developed by the author which is based on the notion of dynamic existence. In this book, the author analyzes different aspects of the problem of the flow of time and (...)
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  30. Presentism.David Ingram & Jonathan Tallant - 2022 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or in response (...)
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  31. Five New Arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.Ned Markosian - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):158-181.
    According to The Static Theory of Time, time is like space in various ways, and there is no such thing as the passage of time. According to The Dynamic Theory of Time, on the other hand, time is very different from space, and the passage of time is an all-too-real phenomenon. This paper first offers some suggestions about how we should understand these two theories, and then introduces five new arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.
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  32. Presentist Fragmentalism and Quantum Mechanics.Paul Merriam - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (4):1-8.
    This paper states and gives three applications of a novel ‘Presentist Fragmentalist’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a cognate paper it was explicitly shown this kind of presentism is consistent with special relativity and that it has implications for how to understand time as it relates to the Big Bang. In this paper we narrowly focus on three applications. These are surely the most important conundrums for any proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics: Schrodinger’s Cat, Bell non-locality, and the Born rule. (...)
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  33. Time and the Nature of the Atonement.Amy Seymour - 2022 - In Lara Buchak & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 10. Oxford University Press. pp. 169-233.
    Standard practice in philosophy of religion is to evaluate certain theological positions with respect to how well they comport with desirable philosophical positions and vice versa. Objections to skeptical theism generally posit that the position requires an unacceptable level of skepticism. Compatibility with the doctrine of the resurrection is used in an attempt to break ties in the debate between dualists and materialists about human persons. And so forth. In this chapter, I undertake such a discussion regarding theories of time (...)
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  34. Presentism and times as propositions.Luca Banfi & Daniel Deasy - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):725-743.
    Some Presentists—according to whom everything is present—identify instants of time with propositions of a certain kind. However, the view that times are propositions seems to be at odds with Presentism: if there are times then there are past times, and therefore things that are past; but how could there be things that are past if everything is present? In this paper, we describe the Presentist view that times are propositions ; we set out the argument that Presentism is incompatible with (...)
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  35. Ontological Pluralism about Non-Being.Sarah Bernstein - 2021 - In Sara Bernstein & Tyron Goldschmidt (eds.), Non-being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Nonexistence. Oxford University Press. pp. 1-16.
    I develop ontological pluralism about non-being, the view that there are multiple ways, kinds, or modes of non-being. I suggest that the view is both more plausible and defensible than it first seems, and that it has many useful applications across a wide variety of metaphysical and explanatory problems. After drawing out the relationship between pluralism about being and pluralism about non-being, I discuss quantificational strategies for the pluralist about non-being. I examine historical precedent for the view. Finally, I suggest (...)
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  36. Le présentisme et le problème du passé ready-made.Filipe Drapeau V. Contim - 2021 - In Claudine Tiercelin & Alexandre Declos (eds.), La Métaphysique du Temps: Perspectives Contemporaines. Paris: Collège de France.
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  37. Symmetric and asymmetric theories of time.Vincent Grandjean - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14403-14426.
    There is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional way of defining the A-theories of time. One reason is that these definitions rest on an ontological question—‘Do the future and the past exist?’—to which no non-speculative answer can be provided. Another reason is that these definitions fail to distinguish between various A-theories of time at all times and, therefore, cannot be regarded as essential to them. In the present paper, I make a fresh start in the debate, by introducing two (...)
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  38. Presentism and the Pain of the Past: A Reply to Orilia.Ernesto Graziani - 2021 - Philosophical Inquiries 9 (2):53-66.
    In a series of recent papers Francesco Orilia has presented an argument for the moral desirability of presentism. It goes, in brief, as follows: since the existence of painful events is morally undesirable, presentism, which denies that past painful events (tenselessly) exist, is morally more desirable than non-presentism, which instead affirms that past painful events (tenselessly) exist. An objection against this argument, which has already been taken into consideration by Orilia, is the ugly history objection or radical objection: what really (...)
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  39. An Inconsistency between Being and Time in Presentism.Sakineh Karimi & Mahdi Monfared - 2021 - Ontological Researches 10 (19):131-160.
    Presentists argue that only present entities exist absolutely and unrestrictedly. Presentism, which itself is a temporal analog of the modal doctrine of actualism, is an ontological idea about time and existence against theories such as eternalism, possibilism, and growing block theory. Thus, presentists deny the existence of atemporal or timeless entities and describe presentism as a version of the (A-theory), which makes a difference between present, past, and future. Also, presentists are not able to ontologically, justify the existence of some (...)
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  40. On the Possibility of Presentism with Occurrents.Marco Marabello - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):2173-2188.
    This paper defends the possibility of admitting occurrents in a presentist ontology. Two ways of doing so are proposed, the first one involves Meinongian presentism. By using the notion of non-existent object and coherently modifying some mereological principle, it is argued, the presentist can allow for occurrents. The second proposal involves ex-concrete objects. Ex-concrete objects, i.e. objects that are contingently not concrete, have been used by Linsky and Zalta, 431-458, 1994), Williamson in the modal metaphysics debate, by Orilia, 589-607, 2016) (...)
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  41. The Rates of the Passing of Time, Presentism, and the Issue of Co-Existence in Special Relativity.Andrew Newman - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 51 (3):1-19.
    By considering situations from the paradox of the twins in relativity, it is shown that time passes at different rates along different world lines, answering some well-known objections. The best explanation for the different rates is that time indeed passes. If time along a world line is something with a rate, and a variable rate, then it is difficult to see it as merely a unique, invariant, monotonic parameter without any further explanation of what it is. Although it could, conceivably, (...)
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  42. Philosophy of Time: A Contemporary Introduction.Sean Enda Power - 2021 - Routledge.
    As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. -/- Questions this book investigates include: Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be time because we cannot think (...)
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  43. The Rotten Core of Presentism.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3969-3991.
    Recently, some have attempted to reformulate debates in first-order metaphysics, particularly in the metaphysics of time and modality, for reasons due to Williamson. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the likes of Cameron, Correia and Rosenkranz, Deasy, Ingram, Tallant, Viebahn, inter alia, have initiated and responded to attempts to capture the core of presentism using a formal, logical machinery. We argue that such attempts are doomed to fail because there is no theoretical core to presentism. There (...)
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  44. The Open Future: Why Future Contingents Are All False.Patrick Todd - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This book launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. Patrick Todd argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false.
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  45. Getting Younger.Daniel Vázquez - 2021 - Rhizomata 9 (1):84-95.
    I argue that in Plato’s Parmenides 141a6–c4, things in time come to be simultaneously older and younger than themselves because a thing’s past and present selves are both real. As a result, whatever temporal relation is predicated of any of these past and present selves is true of the thing in question. Unlike other interpretations, this reading neither assumes that things in time have to replace their parts, nor that time is circular. I conclude that the passage is committed to (...)
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  46. Purely Theoretical Explanations.Giacomo Andreoletti, Jonathan Tallant & Giuliano Torrengo - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (1):133-154.
    This paper introduces a new kind of explanation that we describe as ‘purely theoretical’. We first present an example, E, of what we take to be a case of purely theoretical explanation. We then show that the explanation we have in mind does not fit neatly into any of the existing categories of explanation. We take this to give us prima facie motivation for thinking that purely theoretical explanation is a distinctive kind of explanation. We then argue that it can (...)
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  47. Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis: Volume 1: Causation, Modality, Ontology.Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.) - 2020 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    The life-long correspondence of David K. Lewis, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, reveals the development, breadth, and depth of his philosophy in its historical context. The first of this two volume collection of letters focuses on his contributions to metaphysics, arguably where he made his greatest impact.
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  48. Temporal existence and temporal location.Fabrice Correia & Sven Rosenkranz - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (7):1999-2011.
    We argue that sensitivity to the distinction between the tensed notion of being something and the tensed notion of being located at the present time serves as a good antidote to confusions in debates about time and existence, in particular in the debate about how to characterise presentism, and saves us the trouble of going through unnecessary epicycles. Both notions are frequently expressed using the tensed verb ‘to exist’, making it systematically ambiguous. It is a commendable strategy to avoid using (...)
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  49. Hard presentism.Patrick Dawson - 2020 - Synthese 198 (9):8433-8461.
    Presentists believe that only present things exist. Their theories, at first glance, seem to offer many admirable features: a simple ontology, and a meaningful, objective status for key temporal phenomena, such as the present moment and the passage of time. So intuitive is this theory that, as John Bigelow puts it, presentism was “believed by everyone...until at least the nineteenth century”. Yet, in the last 200 years presentism has been beset by criticisms from both physicists and metaphysicians. One of the (...)
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  50. Actualism, Presentism and the Grounding Objection.Nina Emery - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (1):23-43.
    Presentism is the view that only presently existing things exist. Actualism is the view that only actually existing things exist. Although these views have much in common, the position we take with respect to one of them is not usually thought to constrain the position that we may take toward the other. In this paper I argue that this standard attitude deserves further scrutiny. In particular, I argue that the considerations that motivate one common objection to presentism—the grounding objection—threaten to (...)
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