Defining Existence Presentism

Two Fundamentally Different Perspectives on Time

“…38 Another, more proximate reason for Bourne to proceed as he does is the famous truthmaker argument against presentism: if only present things exist, then what 'makes true' statements like ''There were dinosaurs'' and ''I admire Aristotle's wit''? This argument, and similar ones, are presently widely discussed-see, e.g., Prior (1968a), De Clerq (2006, Fiocco (2007), Caplan and Sanson (2011), Baia (2012, Baron (2012Baron ( , 2013, Torrengo (2013Torrengo ( , 2014, Asay and Baron (2014);Tallant (2014). Merricks (2007, esp.…”

The triviality argument against presentism

“…(2) The sentence 'Everything that exists is present' must be read as expressing either the proposition that everything that exists now is present or the proposition that everything that did, does now, or will exist is present 9 Something like this argument is endorsed by Merricks (1995), Lombard (1999), Stoneham (2009), Meyer (2012, Tallant (2014) and Sakon (2015). I have also seen the argument endorsed by philosophers in other contexts.…”

“…However, given Tensed Verbs, the natural language (English) verb 'to exist' in the sentence 'Everything that exists is present' must be either past, present, or future tensed-in which case, the standard definition must be read as expressing one of the following propositions: 12 (P1) Everything that exists now is present (P2) Everything that did, does now, or will exist is present But why should Presentists accept Tensed Verbs? Neither Ludlow (2004), Stoneham (2009), Meyer (2012, Tallant (2014) nor Sakon (2015) cites any evidence in its support. 13 However, there is some compelling linguistic evidence against the thesis.…”

“…Trivialists such as Stoneham (2009), Meyer (2012, Tallant (2014) and Sakon (2015) seem to base their acceptance of premise (2) on the thesis that Ludlow (2004, p. 30) calls 'Very Serious Tensism', and that I shall call Tensed Verbs:…”

Presentism Remains

“…I demonstrate that their arguments fail. I then move on to a view, proposed and defended by Merricks (2007), Tallant (2014) and Zimmerman (1996), and show that it has the wherewithal to meet the challenges raised by Williamson (2013) who, as noted above, raises genuine concerns about our capacity to define presentism. In the final section(s) of the paper, I consider a revised interpretation of the Deasy/ Williamson approach that sees them presenting a broader challenge about the kinds of question we should put front and centre in our metaphysics of time.…”