Alexander Pruss's Blog

Consider this thesis, which both Augustine and Aquinas would accept: Value supervenes on being (VSB): How valuable reality is is determine...

On the growing block theory of time, if God is in time, God grows. God doesn’t grow. So, God is not time or the growing block theory is n...

A number of people have told me that they have the intuition that a four-dimensional picture of reality like that in the B-theory undercuts ...

Here’s a curious argument against Growing Block. Other things being equal, it is better to receive goods earlier in life and to receive bads...

If we accept growing block or eternalism as our theory of temporal reality, we have to make a distinction between existing simpliciter (i.e...

The three major theories of temporal reality are presentism (reality includes only the present), growing block (reality includes the present...

The dynamics of reality over time vary between theories of time. On growing block, at each moment a new present slice is added to reality. O...

It is bad that tomorrow someone will be in intense pain. On eternalism, we can easily explain this: tomorrow’s pain is just as real as today...

For this post, suppose that an A-theory of time is true, so there is an absolute present. If we think of possible worlds as fully encoding h...

There is a delight in competing athletically with one’s child: if they win, it feels good, and if one wins, it feels good, too. (The hedonic...

It appears that the presentist (and maybe even growing blocker) may not be able to accept either the privation theory of evil, which says th...

It is important for Christian life that one unite one’s daily sacrifices with Christ’s sufferings on the cross. Uniting one’s sufferings w...

Truth supervenes on being is the thesis that if two worlds have the same entities, they are otherwise the same. I just realized something th...

All grace received is given through Christ’s work of salvation. Christ’s work of salvation happened in the first centuries AD and BC. One...

Supposing the growing block theory of time is correct and you have a choice between two options. You suffer 60 minutes of pain from 10:30 p...

Philosophers sometimes use thought experiments concerning the asymmetry of attitudes towards future and past events as arguments for a metap...

I find it hard to see why on presentism or growing block theory it’s a bad thing that I will suffer, given that the suffering is unreal. Per...

This argument is valid: Some human mental events are fundamental. No human mental event happens in an instant. If presentism is true, ev...

Suppose I could get into a time machine and instantly travel forward by a hundred years. Then over the next hundred (external) years I don’t...

Could there be times that are never present? At first sight, this seems a contradiction: surely, each time t is present at itself. Given th...