How to Understand the Debate Over Presentism and Eternalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
PRESENTISM ETERNALISM AND THE TRIVIALITY PROBLEM
It is often claimed that the debate between presentism and eternalism is merely verbal, because when we use tensed, detensed or tenseless notions of existence, there is no difference in the accepted metaphysical statements between the adherents of both views. On the contrary, it is shown in this paper that when we express their positions making use, in accordance with intentions of the presentists and the eternalists, of the tensed notion of existence (in the case of the presentists) and the detensed or tenseless notion (in the case of the eternalists), the controversy remains deep and very important for us, because both ontological claims express a different attitude to the existence of the flow of time. It is shown that not only does the proposed approach to presentism and eternalism exactly express the intentions of the adherents of both views but it also offers a better understanding of them joining together seemingly different theses maintained by the presentists and the eternalists, and explaining at the same time the dynamism of the presentists' ontology. The paper takes for granted that we should assess metaphysical theories in a similar way as we assess scientific theories, that is on the basis of their explanatory value.
Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective
The distinction between presentism and eternalism is usually sought in some formula like ‘Only presently existing things exist’ or ‘Past, present, and future events are equally real’. I argue that ambiguities in the copula prevent these slogans from distinguishing significant opposed positions. I suggest in addition that one can find a series of significant distinctions if one takes spacetime structure into account. These presentisms and eternalisms are not contradictory. They are complementary elements of a complete naturalistic philosophy of time.
Presentism and the Notion of Existence
The aim of this paper is to make presentism a dynamic view of reality by basing it on a notion of dynamic existence, that is, on a notion of existence which has a dynamic character. The paper shows that both of the notions of existence which are used in metaphysical theories of time (in presentism and eternalism) have a static character and, while such a notion is useful for eternalists, it is useless for presentists if they want to make their view able to remain in agreement with our everyday experience and self-consistent. It is demonstrated that both empirical and theoretical arguments indicate that the presentist should replace the notion of this static existence with the notion of a dynamic existence and that this maneuver allows the presentist to treat his/her existential thesis as equivalent to the thesis that time flows. Not only does this strategy allow us to express presentism in a simple, homogenous way which remains in agreement with our experience, but also permits us to solve some of the difficult problems which presentism faces, such as, for example, the objection of triviality and the question about the rate of time passage. Moreover, such an approach to presentism allows us to solve fundamental metaphysical problems concerning time such as the problem of the openness of the future and the fixity of the past, direction of causation, and relations between presentism and persistence through time by endurance.
Metametaphysics: the Ontology of Spacetime and the Presentist/Eternalist Debate
2014
The analytic metaphysics of time is characterized by some conceptual distinctions such as "tensed" vs. "tenseless" and "A-series" vs. "B-series" which leads to many opposing views being apparently substantial and metaphysical in character (see, for instance: . As in other fields of ontology, however, the debates within the philosophy of time seemingly have a common fate: at the beginning, two or more intuitively profoundly different positions are spelled out philosophically, a long-lasting debate starts, people defend their views vigorously and with highly sophisticated arguments, but after some decades the dispute reaches a stalemate. Then, the question arises whether there really is a substantial ontological distinction, or whether in fact the dispute is merely verbal, dissolvable by disambiguation of the relevant concepts. The dispute between presentists and eternalists is one paradigmatic example of this sort. 1
2014
This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of triviality and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. 1 Introduction: presentism and its motivations Presentism accords an ontologically central role to the present, at the existential expense of past and future entities. It thereby asserts, with some intuitive appeal, that there remains a fundamental difference between time and space: while we all happily concede that other spati...
Eternalism and Perspectival Realism about the ‘Now’
Foundations of Physics, 2020
Eternalism is the view that all times are equally real. The relativity of simultaneity in special relativity backs this up. There is no cosmically extended, self-existing 'now.' This leads to a tricky problem. What makes statements about the present true? I shall approach the problem along the lines of perspectival realism and argue that the choice of the perspective does. To corroborate this point, the Lorentz transformations of special relativity are compared to the structurally similar equations of the Doppler effect. The 'now' is perspectivally real in the same way as a particular electromagnetic spectrum frequency. I also argue that the ontology of time licensed by perspectival realism is more credible in this context than its current alternative, the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity.
The paper consists of two parts. The first critically analyses Meyer's [2005] version of the triviality objection to presentism (according to which, presentism is either trivial or untenable), and tries to show that his argument is untenable because contrary to what he claimed he did not take into account the entire possible spectrum of interpretations of the presentist's thesis. In the second, positive part of the paper, it is shown that a leading form of tensed theory of time postulates the same ontology as presentism and that it avoids the triviality problem which means that it can be used to generate an alternative formulation of presentism which is no longer vulnerable to the triviality objection.
Philosophia Naturalis, 2012
The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By "logical equivalence" I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast doubts on the fact that the debate between presentism and eternalism is about "what there is". In this respect, I will conclude that also the debate about persistence in time has no ontological consequences, in the sense that there is no real ontological disagreement between the two allegedly opposite positions: as in the case of the presentism/eternalism debate, one can be both a perdurantist and an endurantist, depending on which linguistic framework is preferred. The main claim that I want to defend in this paper is that the there are logical equivalences between eternalism and perdurantism on the one hand and presentism and endurantism on the other. By "logical equivalence" I mean that one position is entailed and entails the other. As a consequence of this equivalence, it becomes important to inquire into the question whether the dispute between endurantists and perdurantists is authentic, given that Savitt (2006) Dolev (2006) and Dorato (2006) have cast doubts on the fact that the debate between presentism and eternalism is about "what there is". In this respect, I will conclude that also the debate about persistence in time has no ontological consequences, in the sense that there is no real ontological disagreement between the two allegedly opposite positions: as 1 My thanks to Florian Fischer, Cord Friebe, Thomas Müller and Thorben Petersen for their valuable comments and criticism concerning a previous version of this paper. All remaining errors are my responsibility.