Abstract
Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is obviously false if read as saying that everything that has existed, exits or will exist is present. If eternalism is taken as the negation of presentism, it is also either trivially false or obviously true. In this paper, I try to respond to the triviality objection on behalf of presentism. In second section, I will examine how the argument proceeds. In third section, I will reflect on three possible ways to respond but will argue that none of them succeeds in giving a satisfactory solution. I will then try to clarify the core idea of presentism and to suggest that if we characterise presentism accurately, the problem will disappear. In fourth section, I will offer a plausible definition of presentism and will show how it can avoid the triviality objection and demonstrate why it is advantageous to accept the version of presentism I offer.
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Notes
One may raise the same question with regard to ‘is’ in (P). Mozersky (2011) considers all the possible readings of (P); we omit some of them here and assume that ‘is present’ means ‘is present now’ for the sake of simplicity. The triviality objection would not be undermined by this assumption.
The notion of timeless existence can also be defined in terms of the conjunction of tensed existence: An object exists timelessly if and only if it has existed, exists, and will exist. Arguably, mathematical objects such as numbers exist timelessly. Indeed, it is trivial that timelessly existent objects (if any) are always present. We will not consider this case in what follows.
One might then wonder why I call this argument against presentism the triviality objection. Although I think that my use of the term ‘triviality’ accords with its use in the relevant literature, I give the reason more carefully. No one would deny that (P1) is trivial and consistent with the existence of non-present entities, contrary to the spirit of presentism. If presentism can only be true in this form, it is not a substantial metaphysical thesis. Those who raise the objection say that there is no way to interpret presentism as a substantial thesis (and therefore that it is trivial) while presentists must say that what they claim is both true and substantial. The dispute is then over whether such a non-trivial reading of presentism is really possible. From this perspective, it is crucial for presentists to show that their thesis can avoid the objection that I formulate below. Henceforth, I call this particular problem the triviality objection.
There are other versions of the argument that lead us to the same conclusion. Crisp (2004a), for instance, considers the following objection against presentism:
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1.
For any x, if x has existed, exists, or will exist, x is present.
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2.
For some x, x was the Roman Empire and x is no longer present.
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3.
Therefore, presentism is false.
For the argument to stand, we have to interpret Premise (2) as implicitly saying that for some x, x has existed, x was the Roman Empire and x is no longer present. To make clear the logic that is used in this argument, I divide Premise (2) into two claims: The first claim is that for some x, x was the Roman Empire and x is not present, and the second claim is that the Roman Empire has existed. Although Crisp considers the triviality objection using a definite description rather than a name, the form of the argument is essentially the same as that which I present. As for the triviality objection that is raised in descriptive terms, see “Existentialist Presentism” section.
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1.
Note that existentialists are not descriptivists who deny the existence of singular propositions expressed by using names. Existentialists may say that a singular sentence expresses a singular proposition if the object in question exists.
In the paper, Crisp does not raise an objection to using a proper name and only considers the triviality objection formed in descriptive terms. Nonetheless, his response makes the crucial distinction between, for instance, the de re sentence that for some x, x was the Roman Empire and x is no longer present, and the de dicto sentence that it was the case that for some x, x is the Roman Empire and x will not exist at t @ (where t @ names the present moment). It is then natural to suppose that he would apply the same distinction to the present case even though he is not an existentialist. The problem with Crisp’s response will be discussed later in this section. See also Footnotes 7 and 8.
If the reader prefers a more formal argument, consider the following. Let us use the usual notations of first order logic. The existence predicate is defined in terms of the existential quantifier and the identity: x exists = df. ∃y(x = y). We also introduce the past tense operator P and the future tense operator F. Now we can restate the triviality objection as below:
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1.
∀x{(P∃y(x = y) ∨ ∃y(x = y) ∨ F∃y(x = y)) → (x is present)}.
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2*.
∃x{(x socratised) ∧ (x is not present)}.
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3*.
∀x{(x socratised) → P∃y(x = y) }.
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4.
Therefore, presentism is false.
Thus, we have an argument that refutes presentism without using a name.
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1.
This is the point where the discussion on triviality of presentism goes back to the start point because objectors may raise the same question with respect to the outermost quantifiers in (1) and (2*). See Crisp (2004b), Ludlow (2004), Meyer (2005: p. 215 and 2013a: p. 90) and Tallant (2014: p. 481).
It is clear that (3*) does not commit us to the existence of something that socratised. The version of the triviality objection that we saw in Footnote 3 assumes that for some x, x was the Roman Empire and x is no longer present. Crisp (2004a) says that presentists may reject this claim while it is an obvious truth that it was the case that there is something that is the Roman Empire and will not exist at some time. In the present case, the issue of ontological commitment to a non-present thing (e.g. something that socratised) has been discussed in (2*) already, and (3*) causes no further commitment. (3*) also makes it ineffectual to attempt to avoid such a commitment by resorting to the distinction between de re and de dicto once we accept (2*).
See Keller (2004), who critically examines the possibility of indestructible atoms.
It does not matter if eternalists reject the notion of being present simpliciter insofar as they have the notion of existing simpliciter. In the next paragraph, I will reformulate existence presentism as the thesis that identifies being present simpliciter with existing simpliciter. Eternalists could simply take such identification as the definition of being present simpliciter. The substantial claim is that to exist now is to exist simpliciter.
Meyer (2013a, 2014) rigorously criticises such spatial accounts of time and instead offers his modal account. Although he acknowledges himself to be an eternalist, I am not sure whether his modal account is genuinely eternalist but I believe that even if his account is taken as an eternalist theory, the version of presentism that I will offer later is distinguishable from Meyer’s position.
What if we accept Savitt’s (2006) tenseless notion of EXISTENCE? Accoding to Savitt, this tenseless verb (in its broad reading) is applicable to temporal as well as non-temporal entities, and it can be taken as something ‘like ordinary tensed verbs but lacking all temporal information (just as ordinary verbs lack spatial information), while compatible or consistent with the addition of temporal information’ (ibid.: p. 114). Thus, the number three can be said to EXIST, and the claims ‘Isaac Newton EXISTS in 1666’ and ‘Isaac Newton EXISTS’ are both well-formed. In response, I say that the notion of EXISTENCE is different from that of existence simpliciter that I have discussed. In particular, I deny the inference from the fact that Isaac Newton EXISTS to the fact that Isaac Newton exists simpliciter. I suspect that EXISTENCE is implicitly time-relative, and the mathematical example is somewhat misleading: It is acceptable (even in my version of presentism) to say that the number three exists just because it exists at any time (and in any possible world). If this is what Savitt intends to say, EXISTENCE would be equivalent to timeless existence that I explained in Footnote 2. It may not be his intention, however, because he thinks that numbers are non-temporal entities and therefore they exist atemporally, but in which case I say that there would be no univocal meaning of existence that covers both temporal and non-temporal entities.
After finishing the earlier draft of the present paper, I have found that Torrengo (2012) suggests a similar line of thought about what he calls “simple existence” in defence of an anti-sceptical position concerning the debate between presentist and eternalists, but my view is still significantly different from his in the following two respects. First, while Torrengo treats simple existence as a tenseless notion (because it contains no reference to a time), I would prefer to use the neutral term “absolute existence” for existence simpliciter. Presentists and eternalists disagree on what exists simpliciter, but the disagreement may be not only ontological but also ideological: It is at least questionable whether existence simpliciter should be taken as tensed or tenseless. This may seem to be just a verbal matter, but I think that my terminology is safer because it allows one to consistently use the notion of absolute existence without being committed to tenseless existence. Second, although Torrengo notices the importance of the possibility of real change for the debate between presentists and eternalists. he does not incorporate it into the definition of presentism. By contrast, the main purpose of the present paper is to cash out the disagreement between presentists and eternalists in terms of the possibility of real change in both existence and property possession. See “The Presentist Thesis” section. By and large, these two observations apply to the discussion by Noonan (2013), who tries to analyze existence simpliciter in terms of spatio(temporal) relatedness. I suspect that Nooman should confuse the order of things: While it is true to say that all that coexist simpliciter must stand in such a relation to one another, patio(temporal) relatedness should be analyzed in terms of existence simpliciter, but not vice versa.
Sider (2011) introduces the terminology of ‘saturation’: A sentence is saturated if all variables and parameters are filled in. Using this terminology, we may say that all and only saturated sentences express complete propositions.
I am unable to think of any better way of expressing my thoughts here other than by using the words ‘through time’. Of course, ‘time’ in this phrase should not invoke anything like a time as some entity. To say that a proposition undergoes changes in absolute truth-value through time is not just to say that it is true at one time and not true at another; rather, it means that the proposition that was not true is true simpliciter, or vice versa. In my view, time is not like a place in which things exist or have properties but the dimension of change.
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Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to Seahwa Kim and Jonathan Tallant for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the present paper. I also thank my audience in the workshop Philosophy of Mental Time III on September 27th, 2014, and The Second Conference on Contemporary Philosophy in East Asia on August 28th, 2014. This work was partially supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant Number 26119506.
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Sakon, T. Presentism and the Triviality Objection. Philosophia 43, 1089–1109 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9648-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9648-9