The Triviality Argument Against Presentism

Synthese 196 (8):3369-3388 (2019)
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Abstract

Presentism is typically characterised as the thesis that everything is present, and therefore there are no dinosaurs or Martian presidential inaugurations. Putting aside the vexed question of exactly what it is to be present in this context, this thesis seems quite straightforward. However, a number of authors—such as Merricks, Lombard, Meyer, Tallant and Sakon —have argued that Presentism so characterised is either trivially true or false even by Presentist lights. This is the so-called Triviality Argument against Presentism. In this paper I show that three of the four premises of the Triviality Argument are plausibly false. I conclude that Presentists have nothing to fear from the Triviality Argument.

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Daniel Deasy
University College Dublin

References found in this work

Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The unreality of time.John Ellis McTaggart - 1908 - Mind 17 (68):457-474.
Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):642-647.
The Moving Spotlight: An Essay on Time and Ontology.Ross P. Cameron - 2015 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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