Abstracts

Mark Balaguer, “Presentism Without Time, Without Temporal Passage, and Without the A-Theory”

I will argue that presentists should reject the existence of (i) time, and (ii) times (including the present time), and (iii) a metaphysically real phenomenon of temporal passage, and (iv) metaphysically substantive A-facts—where, roughly speaking, an A-fact is a fact involving some time or event being past, or present, or future.  In particular, I’ll argue that (a) eternalists are right about what these four things would be, if they existed—e.g., time, if it existed, would be a 4th dimension in physical reality, and times would be temporal slices of a 4-dimensional block, and so on. And I’ll argue that (b) if presentists try to save the existence of these things—i.e., (i)-(iv) above—then their view will be incompatible with physicalism.

Rebecca Chan, “Enduring Emotions and the (Im)Possibility of Forgiveness ”

A loved one dies, and we grieve. This grief fits the loss suffered (i*). Time passes and the reason for grief, i.e., the absence of the loved one, endures (ii*). Yet, grief subsides, and this appears fitting (iii*). Indeed, one who continues to grieve as intensely as they did when the death occurs might be clinically diagnosed. This generates a puzzle about the temporality of grief—and the rest of our reactive attitudes: “how could the diminution of grief not be wrong, if [the] reason for grief persists?” (Marusic 2022).

There are three general strategies for escaping this puzzle, one corresponding to each of (i*), (ii*), and (iii*): (i) deny that the reactive attitudes have fittingness conditions, (ii) posit that reasons fade over time, or (iii) hold that our reactive attitudes ought to endure eternally since the reasons underlying them do, too. This paper argues for (iii). Specifically, it leverages an analogy between attitudes and beliefs to argue against (i) and (ii) while providing an error theory that makes (iii) more palatable. Finally, the paper discusses implications of this resolution for forgiveness.

Alison Fernandes, “Two Projects on the Direction of Time”

There is a deep ambiguity within the project of accounting for the direction of time. One project is an explanatory one that centres on whether we need an intrinsic asymmetry to explain temporal asymmetries or whether time has at best a ‘reduced direction’—a direction that metaphysically depends on the arrangement or orientation of other things, typically these same temporal asymmetries. But there is a second project, one that is not obviously tied to explanation or metaphysical dependence. This project centres on whether we should commit to a primitive direction of time because we should expect some kind of match between the features of fundamental laws and the fundamental geometry within which the laws operate (Arntzenius 2004; Arntzenius and Greaves 2009; North 2008).

In this paper, I distinguish these projects and assess their relation. Prima facie, these projects are distinct. Many of those committed to conclusions in the first are agnostic about the second. However, there are two subtle ways in which these projects are related. First, assessing the need for an intrinsic direction of time in the second project requires considering the possibility of a reduced direction of time in the first project. Arguably a reduced direction of time can explain the roles required of an intrinsic direction of time in the second project, such as allowing one to state time-reversal asymmetric laws. Second, rejecting an intrinsic direction of time in both projects puts the reductionist in an unusual position with respect to naturalism. It turns out that, no matter what form of dynamics and boundary conditions we accept, neither time nor space could have privileged positions or directions. If so, our reasons for rejecting (or accepting the possibility of) an intrinsic direction of time do not depend on the form of our physical theories but on much deeper considerations concerning what we want physical theories to do.

David Friedell, “Easy Arguments about Time Machines and Oracles”

Horwich’s argument for the conclusion that time travel is unlikely can be extended to show that oracles (or infallible predictors) are unlikely to exist. These are interesting metaphysical results, but the epistemology is just as interesting. The arguments rely primarily on basic facts about human psychology and about how easy it is to do certain things that would count as changing the past or defying an oracle. No sophisticated physics or engineering required. In this way, Horwich-style reasoning seems too easy and is epistemically strange. Horwich-style reasoning, however, is not uniquely strange, as comparisons to Bostrom’s Simulation-Argument and Hempel’s Raven Paradox reveal.

Gabrielle Kerbel, “Self-Undermining Assumptions in the Relativity Objection to Presentism”

Presentism, the view that only present objects exist, has been criticized for being in conflict with the theory of special relativity. So the argument goes: special relativity theory has proven that there are pairs of events for which there is no fact of the matter about whether they are simultaneous, which leads to absurd consequences for the presentist, who must then accept that there are events for which there's no fact of the matter about their existence. This argument has compelled a number of philosophers to endorse eternalism, the view that all past, present, and future objects exist. But as noted by Sklar (1981) and Markosian (2004), special relativity theory presupposes a great deal of philosophical content.

Taking this observation as a starting point, I outline the standard Minkowski interpretation of relativity and a competing neo-Lorentzian interpretation, noting that only the former causes trouble for the presentist. I then investigate the background assumptions that appear to motivate the Minkowski interpretation, and argue that some of these principles will be self-undermining for the eternalist: these are principles that the eternalist assumes for the purposes of the relativity objection, but violates elsewhere in their theorizing. I aim to show that the eternalist cannot endorse the relativity objection without taking care to understand and motivate the philosophical assumptions they're utilizing along the way.

Hannah Kim, “How Fictional Events can be Past, Present, or Future”

I argue that fictional time can be tensed. McTaggart (1927) argues that “time only belongs to the existent [i.e. actual]” and Le Poidevin (1988) and Currie (1992) argue that fictional events can only form B-relations. However, going beyond paradigmatic examples of fiction shows us that some fictions, like self-involving interactive fictions, allow audience members to access the fictional timeline, thereby allowing us to attribute A-properties to times and events. I argue that our linguistic practice and phenomenology support taking the possibility of a fictional A-series seriously. I also show that attempts to paraphrase tensed statements, offer tenseless truth conditions, or explain away the perception of flow are unsuccessful given how we come to attribute A-properties to fictional time. Acknowledging the possibility of a fictional A-series provides significant upshots for the nature of fiction, time, and the aesthetics of tense.

Hugo Ferreira Luzio, “Is the Growing Block Theory Undermined by the Epistemic Objection?”

According to the Growing Block Theory (GBT), the past and the present are equally real, but the future is not. The present is the last moment in time: when a moment is present, no other moment succeeds it. It is the edge of reality (Broad 1927, Tooley 1997, Correia & Rosenkranz 2013, 2018). We believe that we are in the present. If there are past persons, however, they too may believe that they are in the present. We want to say that they are wrong. However, we seem to be in no better epistemic position than them: for all we know, we may be in the past, believing falsely that we are in the present. As such, the GBT does not provide a way for us to know that we are in the present. This is the Epistemic Objection to the GBT (Braddon-Mitchell 2004). In this paper, I discuss the two main solutions that Growing Blockers have developed to deal with the Epistemic Objection, namely: Peter Forrest’s (2004) ‘dead past’ solution and Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz’s (2013, 2018) ‘taking tense seriously’ solution. I argue that both solutions fail to offer a robust explanation of the reality of the past in the GBT, even if Correia and Rosenkranz’s solution is overall preferable. I conclude by exploring the prospects for an ‘indexical solution’ to the Epistemic Objection.

Robert Michels, “Dynamic Essence”

It is almost a truism that essential properties are necessarily, and therefore also always, had by their bearers. Yet this truism was challenged by the Munich School phenomenologist Moritz Geiger in 1920. Geiger argued that certain entities have dynamic essences, essences which reflect a temporal evolution which the objects that have them undergo, where this evolution implies changes in their essential properties. Geiger's argument appears to pose a challenge for contemporary essentialists who exclusively work with what he calls 'platonic' essences. In this talk, I introduce Geiger's view, formulate the challenge to contemporary essentialism and discuss a number of different responses to it.

Jill North, “Perspicuous Representation in Physics”

There are in general many different ways of representing something, as different mathematical devices can be used to represent the same space, different languages can be used to express the same content, different mathematical formalisms can be used to state the same physical theory.  How we represent something, moreover—which representational device to use—seems to be entirely under our stipulative control, constrained only by pragmatic factors as to which will be most useful for us, given the aims we happen to have.

There are also in general more or less good ways of representing something.  Philosophers of physics and science have generally thought that the goodness of a representation is likewise solely a matter of pragmatic considerations.  Against this, I argue that when it comes to physics, there is an objective, non-pragmatic sense in which one representation can be better, or more perspicuous, than another.  The result is that there is a physically significant, non-pragmatic sense in which representations differing only in their level of perspicuity, including different formulations of a physical theory, are not equivalent.

Amy Seymour, “What's the Problem with Personites?”

According to four-dimensionalism, objects persist in virtue of having temporal parts. But my life could have been shorter than it actually is. So, a subset of my temporal parts—a personite—would have composed a person in some other possible world. Olson (2010) and Johnston (2016a, 2016b) think the existence of such beings entails moral disaster. Kaiserman (2019) argues that Johnston’s personite problem only applies to perdurantists. I argue that Kaiserman’s escape is technical at best—stage theorists still face the moral concerns which motivate the problem. To the extent stage theorists can escape the motivating concerns, perdurantists can, too. Thus, personite-like problems persist for all four-dimensionalists or none of them. But the four-dimensionalist is not without ethical response: I offer ways four-dimensionalists can diffuse the problem. Given a commitment to ‘ought implies can’, personites pose no obvious moral threat to mere mortals.

Ted Sider, “Accept No Substitutes: Against Best-System Theories Without Naturalness”

According to the best-system theory, a law of nature is nothing more than a certain kind of pattern in what actually happens. Out of all the possible "systems'' (sets of sentences), there is one that does a better job than all of the others in summarizing a lot of what actually happens in a simple way; the sentences in this best system, according to the best-system theory, are the laws of nature. David Lewis's version of this idea appealed to a distinction between natural and non-natural properties. But various people have objected that this opens up an epistemic gap between science and metaphysics, and have gone on to propose versions of the best-system theory that do not appeal to naturalness. I defend Lewis's version of the best-system theory against the objection, and discuss various problems confronting naturalness-free versions.

Stephan Torre, “Future-Directed Counterfactuals, Practical Reasoning, and the Open Future”

One stark difference between the past and the future lies in our ability to shape the future in a way in which we are unable to shape the past. What must the content of our future-directed beliefs be for them to play the appropriate role in our practical reasoning? If we think about belief in terms of agents representing the world, we cannot lose sight of the fact that agents are part of, and shape, the same world they represent. One way to come to believe that someone will read Camus’ The Stranger aloud this afternoon is by now deciding to read Camus’ The Stranger aloud this afternoon. My beliefs about the future depend on what I now decide to do in a way in which my beliefs about the past do not. I argue that belief in future-directed counterfactuals play a central role in our practical reasoning and in how we conceptualize the actual future. The asymmetry in our belief content about the past versus the future fits well with an account of the open future in terms of counterfactual dependence.