Abstract
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 give rise to an analogous grounding objection to actualism. Those who are moved by grounding considerations to give up presentism should either be moved by analogous considerations to give up actualism as well or be prepared to undertake quite a bit of further work in order to defend their position.
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Notes
Note that I am not claiming here that actualism and presentism are analogous in every respect. Consider, for instance, versions of actualism that say that what is possible is determined in some important way by what actually exists at the present moment. Such historical actualist views make possibility dependent on time in a way that has no corresponding analogy in the presentist case. The point here, however, is just that there is enough similarity between actualism and presentism to require that those who endorses the latter without the former give at least some justification for their position. Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to think more about historical actualist views.
There has of course been significant discussion of the worry that the standard semantics for modal claims involves quantification over possible worlds or possible individuals, and how actualists should respond to that worry (what I call ‘the Quinean objection’ in Sect. 1)—but worries about grounding are supposed to be something over and above worries about the ontological commitments of one’s semantics. Consider the presentist who adopts a view on which tensed statements involve quantification over, e.g., dinosaurs but that quantification occurs within the scope of a primitive temporal operator, and thus is not ontologically committing. Such a presentist may have avoided worries to do with the ontological commitments of her semantics, but she still faces the grounding objection as set out in Sect. 2. It is this further objection that I claim has seen relatively little discussion in the contemporary literature on modality.
In addition to the relativity objection, another objection to presentism that the AWOPer should surely investigate further is the cross-temporal relations objection. (See for instance, Bigelow 1996; Zimmerman 1998; Sider 2001; Crisp 2003; Markosian 2004; De Clercq 2006.) In particular, those who think that at least some relations between me and my great-great-grandfather must be relations between me and some particular concrete entity—my great-great-grandfather—but think that all relations between me and my possible older sister may be understand as relations between me and some non-concrete entity, may find an opening here.
I focus here and in what follows on claims about the past rather than claims about the future, since I take it that the former case is less controversial. Note that there are presentists who deny that (1) is true as a way of avoiding the grounding objection. See Markosian (2012).
In conversation I have had some philosophers insist that it is just obvious to them that the correct logical form of (2) involves straightforward quantification, but quantification over actual things. In particular the correct logical form of (2) involves quantification over actual cows—(2) says that those things could have been purple. If you’re tempted by this line of thought, you should replace (2) here and what follows with sentence like ‘there could be squarks’, where a squark is a quark-like fundamental entity that is not any of the six types of quark that are recognized by the standard model. It is surely true that there could be squarks. But plausibly there isn’t any actually existing thing that could have been a squark. It is possible, of course, for someone to insist that ‘there could be squarks’ is not true, and thus maintain that (2) involves quantification over actual things. But in order to avoid the argument that follows, an actualist who takes this position not only needs to defend the counterintuitive results of her view with respect to what is possible, but also explain why the presentist is not permitted to make a similar sort of move (i.e. deny the truth of any claims about the past that cannot be understood as quantifying over concrete present things, even if that position has some counterintuitive results.).
This sort of move usually involves introducing primitive temporal and modal operators that are existentially opaque (i.e. that are such that existential claims made within the scope of these operators do not translate to straightforward existential commitments.).
As we will see below, this is not the only role that standard examples of modal proxies are capable of playing, but it is also worth noting that modal proxies do not plausibly play every role that merely possible entities would play. Consider Obama’s merely possible son. Presumably if there is such an entity it plays some biological role. But the actually exciting entities that are plausible candidates for being a modal proxy for Obama’s merely possible son are not plausible candidates for playing any biological role because they are abstract entities. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helping clarify this point. Note that the same point will apply, mutatis mutandis, to temporal proxies.
There is a somewhat different reading of appeals to these sorts of resources according to which what actualists, say, are doing is not appealing to actually existing entities that play certain roles that possibilia would play if such things existed, but rather claiming that possibilia do exist, they are just misleadingly named. Possibilia really are various kinds of actually existing non-concrete entities. Everything I say below is compatible with that reading (and with the corresponding reading for presentism). For more on such views see Williamson (2013), Sullivan (2012), and Emery (2017).
It is important here that the relevant notion of consistency is itself a modal notion. If the advocate of such a view restricted herself to consistency in a formal system she would be committed to a view on which there are possible worlds in which there are married bachelors. See Lewis (1986), Sider (2002), Melia (2008) and Emery (2017) for discussion.
While it is of course true that the notion of, e.g., a contemporaneous set of sentences is itself a temporal notion (a contemporaneous set of sentences is a set that were true together), this is no better and no worse than the point that the notion of a consistent set of sentences is itself a modal notion. See the previous footnote.
See, for instance, the view described in Ingram (2016).
Note that I have not claimed that for each type of temporal proxy there is a corresponding, equally plausible type of modal proxy. Consider the temporal distributional properties described in Cameron (2011). Cameron is quite explicit that he doesn’t think that there are any corresponding modal distributional properties (see 2008b). But that discrepancy between temporal proxies and modal proxies will be of no help to the AWOPer. If anything it makes the grounding objection to presentism easier to escape than the corresponding grounding objection to actualism.
Here and in what follows (e.g. in TP) ‘what exists’ is supposed to refer to not only the objects and properties that exist, but also the states of affairs that consist in those objects instantiating those properties.
Given the way I am understanding ‘in virtue of’, then, the truthmaker objection (see, e.g. Armstrong 1997; Cameron 2011) is a version of the grounding objection. Whereas the grounding objection relies on the claim that there is some sort of dependence relation between what is true and what exists, the truthmaker objection relies on the claim that there is the following specific sort of relation: for each true proposition p there is some thing that makes p true.
I would like to stay neutral at this point as to what the variable q ranges over, in part because I want to stay neutral on the question of whether the in virtue of relation is the same as the grounding relation discussed in the contemporary metaphysics literature (see, e.g. Fine 2001; Schaffer 2009; Rosen 2010; and Wilson 2014), and there is substantive debate over what the relata of the grounding relation are. I take it that however these debates are settled, the supervenience condition can be formulated in a way that is friendly to the settled view. Once one is committed to a clear domain for q, one may also need to say something more about what it takes for two worlds to differ with respect to q. My hope, however, is that the cases that motivate the argument below are clear enough for our purposes, and thus that we can postpone this task for the time being.
Notice that if the laws are deterministic and also specify for each time, whether the world exists at that time then the truncated world will not be nomologically possible. But I am happy to assume that the laws are not of that form. Such an assumption only makes the AWOPer’s position stronger.
If one thinks, for instance that TP + S is not satisfied unless the truth of (1) supervenes the instantiation of some categorical properties or relations, and that whatever else irreducible tensed properties are, they are not categorical, then one will not be satisfied by any appeal to such properties to solve the grounding objection. See Sider (2001), chapter 2. Caplan and Sanson (2010) raises some additional concerns about the use of temporal proxies in response to the grounding objection.
The relevant axiom of modal logic here is ◊p→□◊p, which is part of the standard S5 axiomatization. There are, of course, systems of modal logic that reject that axiom. But there is little harm in assuming this axiom here, since, if anything, it only makes the AWOPer’s position stronger. For further discussion of this axiom see Chandler (1976) and Salmon (1982).
As an example of someone who defends the view that the supervenience condition exhausts the sort of dependence relation that we are after in T, see Mellor (2003). Cameron (2008a) contains several forceful criticisms. More generally, the thought that metaphysical dependence—including the type of dependence at issue in T—outstrips supervenience will be familiar from, e.g. Kim (1993) and Schaffer (2009).
Here and below I assume that we should add the further conditions I have in mind to the supervenience condition. That means that the view I present is compatible with defenses of the supervenience condition found in, for instance, Lewis (1992), Bigelow (1996) or Sider (2001). One could of course also replace the supervenience condition with the further conditions that I have in mind.
The parenthetical addendum is here in order to deal with the following case: the proposition that Josh is a philosopher is true in virtue of the fact that Josh is a philosopher, but it isn’t, or isn’t obviously, about the fact that Josh is a philosopher. On the face of it, it is instead about Josh (and maybe also about philosophers). Thanks to Ned Markosian for bringing this to my attention.
MacBride (2016) discusses the plausibility of something like the aboutness condition in Sect. 1.1. But the most prominent advocate of something like the aboutness condition is Merricks (2007). Merricks argues that insofar as we accept something like T, we ought to accept the aboutness condition. It is important to note, however, that my argument does not rely on any of the particular applications of the aboutness condition that Merricks relies on. In particular it does not rely on the claim that ‘there are no hobbits’ is about the absence of hobbits as opposed to being about, say, the world as a whole. So while both Schaffer (2008) and McDaniel (2011) have put forward serious critiques of Merricks’s applications of his version of the aboutness condition, none of those critiques need make trouble for the aboutness condition itself. I say more about this below.
If you’re tempted by the thought that (2) might be about actual cows and the color purple see the suggestion in footnote 8 above.
This is the position endorsed in, for instance, Yablo 2014. On the other hand, note that if you think that it is essential to a proposition that it is about whatever it is about, then (6) will turn out not, in fact, to be about me, since (6) would not have been about me if I had not existed. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.
Thanks to Josh Schechter for suggesting that I think about these sorts of claims in more detail. Note that the advocate of the aboutness condition who agrees with Schaffer (2009) that both of the in virtue of relations I describe here are instances of a single grounding relation, and that grounding is transitive will have to think that (4) is about the non-normative features of Billy’s behavior.
A related concern is that the notion of aboutness is simply too contextual or vague to support a principle like the aboutness condition. Here, I think a comparison with notions like simplicity and explanatory power are helpful. What counts as simple and as explanatory powerful is certainly contextual and vague insofar as those notions play a role in everyday reasoning. But the hope is that underlying the everyday notion of explanation, for instance, is a clear and precise technical notion that can be used in various philosophical analyses. Similarly, we can hope for the notion of aboutness. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this point.
Perhaps the most familiar theory of aboutness is found in Lewis in his 1988. According to Lewis a statement is about some subject matter just in case the truth-value of that statement supervenes on that subject matter. Note that this theory of aboutness isn’t of any use to someone who wants to say that (2) is not about purple cows. (2) is a necessary truth—so it’s about everything. (I take it that this result—that necessary truths are about everything—is a good reason to think that Lewis’s theory is false.) According to another recent theory of aboutness due to Yablo (2014), a statement P is about some subject matter S just in case S is the reason why P is true. But I take it that insofar as the actualist can claim that the reason why (2) is true is not even in part due to the existence purple cows, the presentist can just as plausibly claim that the reason why (1) is true is not even in part due to the existence of dinosaurs.
Schaffer (2008) criticizes this claim. Schaffer also worries that aboutness judgements may vary for the same proposition if we use different sentences to express that proposition. For instance, it is natural to say that ‘John kissed Mary’ is about John and that ‘It was Mary who was kissed by John’ is about Mary. I think that what might be going on here is that although both sentences express the same proposition they also pragmatically imply further propositions and these further propositions differ between the two cases. For instance, saying ‘it was Mary who was kissed by John’ suggests, to my ear at least, that John was trying to kiss someone else. In any case I take this as a reason to be careful when drawing conclusions about particular cases, not a reason to give up on the aboutness condition entirely.
This is one of the criticisms that appears in McDaniel (2011).
In this section I have focused on worries about the aboutness condition as a necessary condition on the in virtue of relation, since it is the aboutness condition so stated that plays a potential role in the grounding objection. Of course there may also be potential counterexamples to the aboutness condition (either alone or in conjunction with the supervenience condition) insofar as it is taken to provide a sufficient condition on the in virtue of relation. Here is one that was suggested by an anonymous referee. The proposition ‘a&b’ is about b (and if a is necessarily true, the truth of ‘a&b’ supervenes on the truth of b), but it is not true in virtue of b. (Or at least it is not true in virtue of b alone and it is plausible that when the advocate of the grounding objection says “for any true proposition p, p is true in virtue of what exists”, they mean “for any true proposition p, p is true in virtue of what exists alone.” Otherwise it is not clear that the grounding objection would have any force against the presentist. What is so worrisome is the suggestion that, e.g. ‘there are dinosaurs’ is true in virtue of the what presently exists alone. It is not at all clear that there is any issue with saying that ‘there are dinosaurs is true partially in virtue of what presently exists.) So there is further work to be done in determining what conditions are sufficient for the in virtue of relation. But that work does not directly impact the discussion here, which turns on the question of what conditions are necessary for the in virtue of relation. Thanks to an anonymous referee for help on this point.
Schaffer (2009). Various adjustments may need to be made here. Perhaps we should insist only that q partially grounds p. Perhaps we should allow that q or its constituents ground p.
For instance, one obvious objection to hereism is what we might call the grounding objection to hereism—the objection that all propositions are true in virtue of what exists but not all propositions are true in virtue of what exists here. But it seems plausible, at least at first glance, that the hereist will be able to make all the same moves in response to her grounding objection as the actualist and presentism make in response to their grounding objections. So the grounding objection to hereism doesn’t give us any reason for being an actualist (or a presentist) without also being a hereist.
Many thanks to two anonymous referees, Justin Broackes, Heather Demarest, Sam Levey, Ned Markosian, Bradley Rettler, Alex Skiles, Josh Schechter, Brad Skow and audiences at the 2015 Philosophy Mountain Workshop, at Dartmouth College and at Brown University for helpful comments and discussion.
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Emery, N. Actualism, Presentism and the Grounding Objection. Erkenn 85, 23–43 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0016-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-0016-6