The fleetingness of being

Imagine it’s the last moment of time. What’s next for you? Nothing! It’s a terrifying time, but it’s one that’s hard to describe well. Phrases like “You’re about to perish” don’t fit it logically, because they imply that you will perish, but at the last moment of time there is no “will”. You need awkward wide-scope negations like: “It is not the case that you will continue to exist.”

But I think the philosophical puzzles go beyond the choice of words.

Thing about a world where time begins and ends with t₁, where there is only one moment. That’s a world with no flux or flow or dynamism or change. It seems, then, that that’s a world where essentially temporal attitudes, like fear of ceasing to exist, are inappropriate. It doesn’t, it seems, to be a world where it’s right for you to feel the terror of facing nothingness. Indeed, it doesn’t seem like anything in this world is fleeting or lasting.

But the difference between the only-one-moment and last-moment scenarios is just with regard to the past. Now in the last-moment scenario you would have a reasonable (pace Epicurus) terror of impending nonexistence and a vivid feeling of the fleetingness of existence.

But taking away the past, and hence moving to the only-on-moment scenario, shouldn’t change any of that! It doesn’t make your existence last any longer. It makes you no more eternal. We have to be able to say that somehow in the only-one-moment world our existence would be tenuous and fleeting (indeed, it seems, maximally so).

This pulls us to a very deep conclusion here:

1. The phenomenon of fleetingness does not require the flow of time.

For in the only-one-moment world we have fleetingness but no flow.

So if we are to look at what grounds the fleetingness of our existence, it seems we must look away from the distinctive resources of the A-theory of time, and towards the B-theory.

One obvious thing to say is that there is an incompleteness to our existence when restricted to any finite compass. Eighty years is not enough for the kind of being we are, and a moment is much less. This is something an eternalist can say, whether or not they accept the A-theory or the B-theory of time. Though it’s not quite so clear that a presentist or Growing Blocker can say it, since on their views our future life is not a part of reality anyway, no matter whether it is finite or infinite.

But perhaps there is a resource available for the A-theorist, even the presentist. Instead of thinking that it is the present moment that is present, we can suppose that what is present is an interval between two succeeding times in a discrete account of time. If so, then neither the only-one-moment and last-moment scenarios work. Instead, one has only-one-interval and last-interval scenarios. And these are not so problematic. Even if there is only one interval of time, that’s enough for change and flow—things move from one state to another over an interval. The impending doom has to do with the fact that the later end of the present interval borders nothingness. And over that interval, we can say (if we have a flowy theory of time) that we are flowing—but not for long!

Of course, there are technical issues with the suggestion that what is present is an interval between two successive times. If there is flow during that interval, it sees can always ask: “How long before the interval is finished?” But any clear answer to that subdivides the interval and places us at a moment within it. So we must refuse to countenance any answer beyond: “I am flowing from t_n to t_n + 1.” (We might then say: We’re between 0 and t_n + 1 − t_n units of time before the next interval begins.)

I started thinking about an A-theory on which what is present is an interval just as an exercise in wacky theories of time. I am now thinking that perhaps this is the best version of presentism.