Suppose at 8 am, I promised you to call you before noon, and then I didn’t, even though I have no excuse. That’s an evil. When did this evil happen?
If time is continuous, there is no good candidate for the time of this evil. For the omission of calling happened before noon, so noon or later are not when the evil happened. But at any time before noon today, it wasn’t yet true that the promise was unfulfilled, since, if time is continuous, there was always a little bit more time (though, granted, once that time got short enough, it would have taken a miracle to call).
If time is discrete, there is exactly one somewhat plausible candidate for the time of the evil: the very last moment of time time before noon, call it t12−. It was then that the promise became unfulfilled, and yet that time was itself a time at which the promise was being broken. But even so, even though t12− is a somewhat plausible candidate for the time of the evil, it’s not really a great candidate. For the omission didn’t just happen at the very end of the interval of times. It happened throughout the interval.
It seems that the right way to temporally locate the evil is to say that it happened on the time interval between 8 and 12. But note that this is interval-valued temporal location is intuitively different from the case of a headache that one might have from 10 to 11. For we can think of the whole evil of the headache as a sum of evils that are located at shorter intervals or even moments. But it seems the promise-breaking isn’t a sum of evils located at shorter intervals or moments, because the only shorter interval or moment that contains a relevant evil is an interval or moment that contains t12− (and even that only if time is discrete). Rather, the promise-breaking is essentially spread over the interval from 8 to 12.
This provides a counterexample to the combination of presentism with a privation theory of evil. For on a privation theory of evil, each evil is constituted by a privation—a lack of something that should be there. But on presentism, things can only exist at specific times, and likewise privations can only be found at specific times. But the evil of promise-breaking is not at a time.
Well there are ways I think that a presentist can respond.
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify the nature of a promise, if at the moment of saying the words or symbols that signify a promise, you don't really mean those words or symbols. There is no promise made but only the appearance of one, the evil lies in the deception of making one think they are being promised something. The point is just tangential
On to the case at hand where you genuinely promised someone but then later changed your mind.
I think that a promise to call at 8:00 am can only be broken at 8:00 am and the way it's broken at 8:00 am is by omission which also happens at 8:00 am.
I think over here you confused omission and "intent/desire to omit" prior to the omission. So the omission only occurs at 8:00 am.
Yes, this is easy to handle if one promised to call at a specific time. But the problem in my post is with a range of times.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's quite plausible to say the evil exists at 12! There are no broken promises on the interval [8,12), but there is a broken promise at 12. So, why not locate the evil there?
ReplyDeleteBut I have no relevant obligations at 12, and so no obligation is broken at 12.
ReplyDeleteYes, but 12 is still the moment that the promise becomes unfulfilled. Is the unfulfilled promise not sufficient for locating the evil at 12?
ReplyDeleteAre you assuming an open future? On a closed future view, it is true at every time that the promise does not get fulfilled.
ReplyDeleteEven on an open future view, the promise is unfulfilled at all times after 12.
Here's another problem with locating the evil at 12. Imagine that time ends just before 12, so there literally is no 12. Is there then no evil? Surely there is!
For the omission of calling happened before noon
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the relevant moral obligation is fulfilled when the condition "If it's noon, then you have already gotten me on the phone" obtains. Therefore, if noon itself happened, the omission of calling also happened at noon.
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ReplyDeletedoesn't the evil only becomes evil on reception by the other party? that is, it is evil only when the other party becomes aware of it. to that end, the evil occurs after 12. to me it seems that up to that point it is 'potential' and not yet actual.
ReplyDeleteit seems to me that not calling is not an act of evil on the part of the potential caller against him/herself but it is an evil against the other party.
or, it's entirely possible i've not considered all the possibilities