Abstract
In this paper I consider the aboutness objection against standard truth-preserving presentism (STP). According to STP: (1) past-directed propositions (propositions that seem to be about the past) like <Caesar crossed the Rubicon> , are sometimes true (2) truth supervenes on being and (3) the truth of past-directed propositions does not supervene on how things were, in the past. According to the aboutness objection (3) is implausible, given (1) and (2): for any proposition, P, P ought to be true in virtue of what P is about, and so it is upon the past that the truth of past-directed propositions ought to supervene. Although an objection along these lines has been offered previously, I press the objection in two ways. First, by providing needed support for the view that propositions ought to be true in virtue of what they are about and, second, by arguing that the two responses available to the proponent of STP fail to be compelling.
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Notes
This is not universally accepted: Tallant (2010) defends a version of presentism according to which time does not flow, because time does not exist.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this turn of phrase.
One might think that the truth of a proposition P can supervene on something that P is not about, so long as what P is about is appropriately connected to the supervenience base for its truth. This would avoid the sceptical problem and may help the proponent of STP avoid the aboutness objection. In §4, however, I argue that this is not a view that the proponent of STP can endorse.
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Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge John Bigelow, David Braddon-Mitchell, Kristie Miller, Huw Price and two anonymous referees of this journal for useful discussion and/or comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Research on this paper was funded by a John Templeton Foundation grant held by Huw Price, Alex Holcombe, Kristie Miller, and Dean Rickles, entitled: New Agendas for the Study of Time: Connecting the Disciplines.
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Baron, S. Talking About the Past. Erkenn 78, 547–560 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9434-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9434-7