tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post8853678938732825085..comments2024-03-27T20:37:09.185-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: AntipresentismAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-36945965155700390872014-11-14T07:37:33.890-06:002014-11-14T07:37:33.890-06:00I'm not sure I understand. For something to be...I'm not sure I understand. For something to be "past and future" non-indexically, presupposes a present. And, if it <i>is</i> indexical, then just anything which persists for more than an instant of time is "present", because it exists in the past and future of some particular point, no?Michael Gonzalezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05279261871735286117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-26488794432871067872014-11-11T16:13:11.070-06:002014-11-11T16:13:11.070-06:00You can be an A-theorist and an antipresentist in ...You can be an A-theorist and an antipresentist in my sense. You may then say: no time is ever present (except in a stipulative sense, where we stipulate an interval to be present iff it's both past and future), but we have objective change with respect to what is future and what is past. So if the "block" theory is supposed to exclude the A-theory, that's a difference.<br /><br />Second, some versions of B-theory suppose instants, of which one is always present (but in a relational way, presumably relative to itself). The antipresentism is incompatible with those versions of B-theory.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-48215797203126316752014-10-31T14:39:56.977-05:002014-10-31T14:39:56.977-05:00Having blabbed on about all that, I wonder about y...Having blabbed on about all that, I wonder about your second attempt at antipresentism: How different is it from normal block theory? In a block spacetime worldview, is there really any "present" (other than purely indexically, relative to some specific event)? It seems to me that "earlier than" and "later than" are all there is in a block-style theory, and so the present doesn't really exist in any meaningful sense anyway.<br /><br />I guess what I'm asking is, "how is your second attempt at antipresentism any different from standard block theory"?Michael Gonzalezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05279261871735286117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-88488508227231054592014-10-31T14:37:09.868-05:002014-10-31T14:37:09.868-05:00Well, you had to know I'd show up to share in ...Well, you had to know I'd show up to share in the fun!<br /><br />First off, I think that Augustine and Zeno should not have worried about how long the "present" is. The point of presentism seems to me to be that the world exists in a <b>constant</b> state of change or "becoming". When you try to "slice up" moments, that is a purely artificial activity, and moreover you can never get thin enough to see the point at which there are singular intervals, since the "becoming" or "changing" is <i>constant</i> or <i>continuous</i>. I know that's probably not the only presentist view, but I think such a view coheres better with common sense, pre-theoretical views that people naturally have (and that language naturally bears out in how it treats tensed statements). And I think it easily avoids the problems you typically mention (including the ones you mention here) which are predicated on some exact boundary that delineates the present, instead of just thinking of the world in constant flux.<br /><br />On the point of constant change, it seems to me that physical spacetime does undergo dynamic change (at least, if General Relativity is to be believed). And, just as you rightly identified your original "antipresentist" model (which had only future and past, and a tiny gap in the middle where the "present" would be) as a sort of A-theory with genuine temporal becoming; in the same way, I would identify any worldview that takes seriously the dynamic activity of physical spacetime as an A-theory also. To maintain a block view of the contortions of spacetime, you'd have to have a second dimension of time, along which the contortions of the first dimension of time are statically in place.<br /><br />Anyway, that's a bit off-topic. I just meant to show an analogous problem to your first attempt at antipresentism: namely that temporal becoming seems to be a real feature of such worldviews, and therefore those worldviews are A-theoretical.Michael Gonzalezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05279261871735286117noreply@blogger.com