Presentism, eternalism and where things are located

Synthese 197 (7):2963-2974 (2020)
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Abstract

In several recent papers, Daniel Deasy has argued that the presentism–eternalism debate is unclear and should be abandoned. According to Deasy, there is no way of spelling out the predicate ‘is present’ that leads to a satisfactory definition of presentism: on some interpretations, presentism turns out to be compatible with eternalism, on others, it is clearly false or unacceptable for other reasons. The aim of this paper is to show that this line of argument should be resisted: if the predicate ‘is present’ is spelled out in terms of where things are located, the result is a definition of presentism that is neither compatible with eternalism nor clearly false. There is thus no need to abandon the debate between presentists and eternalists.

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Author's Profile

Emanuel Viebahn
Freie Universität Berlin

Citations of this work

The Rotten Core of Presentism.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3969-3991.

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References found in this work

Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.
Elements of symbolic logic.Hans Reichenbach - 1947 - London: Dover Publications.

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