The moving spotlight theory of time (MST) is the thesis that past, present, and future things equally exist, but present things are fundamentally special, and what is present keeps changing. Present things are like being shined by a spotlight, and the spotlight keeps moving. There are various ways of spelling out what it is to be present and what makes present things so special. For example, for a thing to be present is to have an age (Cameron's MST), to have multiple temporary fundamental properties (Williamsonian MST), or to be part of what super-is the case (Skow's MST-supertense), etc.
A-theoretic presentness is commonly regarded as non-solipsist and non-relative.The non-solipsism of a non-relative, A-theoretic presentness requires at least two space-like separated things to be present simpliciter together -this co-presentness further implies the global, non-relative, non-conventional simultaneity of them. Yet, this implication clashes with the general view that there is no global, non-relative, non-conventional simultaneity in Minkowski space-time. In order to resolve this conflict, this paper explores the possibility that the non-solipsism of a non-relative, A-theoretic presentness does not require at least two space-like separated things to be present simpliciter together. This can be done by holding exclusive disjunctivismthat mutually space-like separated things are present simpliciter exclusively disjunctively, and each one of them gets to be present simpliciter in a non-successive way (just like mutually time-like related things are present simpliciter exclusively disjunctively, and each one of them gets to be present simpliciter, but in a successive way).
In their 2020 paper ‘Unfreezing the spotlight’, Correia and Rosenkranz argue that the spotlight theory – the mix of the view that, always, everything always exists and the view that there is a metaphysically robust property of presentness for times – is sufficient for temporal passage, and that the fact ‘that this robust property of presentness attaches to different times as time goes by … is unnecessary’. In this paper, I shall reveal that Correia and Rosenkranz’s spotlight theory is a moving spotlight theory in disguise.
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