I’m rather attracted to presentism, the view that the present is coextensive with the real. The past is no more; the future is not yet; whatever exists simpliciter exists now.
Presentism is one of several views that affirms an A-theory of time (roughly, the A-theory says that temporal becoming is real, and not merely apparent). One of presentism’s advantages over other A-theory variants is that it nicely avoids McTaggart’s Paradox. Presentism’s main advantage over B-theories of time (roughly, the B-theory says that temporal becoming is merely apparent, not real) is that it squares much more closely with common sense.
But presentism is not without its problems. One apparent difficulty is called the truthmaker objection. Since presentism denies that past facts exist, the presentist needs to find something else to ground truths about the past, and it’s by no mean obvious what that could be. I think this difficultly can be answered and have proposed a solution here. The solution trades on the idea that the past leaves causal traces in the present. Given that these traces satisfy certain contraints that I spell out, they can serve as truthmakers for truths about the past.
But this brings us to another difficulty, one that I am just beginning to think about and am not yet sure how to answer. It is expressed rather well by Robin Le Poidevin (a B-theorist) in his book Travels in Four Dimensions:
Consider the statement ‘The past leaves causal traces on the present.’ What, according to the presentist, makes this statement true? Well, present fact, presumably, since that is the only kind of fact available. But what purely present fact could make true a statement about the causal relations between different times? We can make sense of a past event leaving its causal traces on the present (last night’s wild party has left a number of traces around my sitting-room, for instance: the smashed wineglass, the shoe-marks on the piano, the underwear draped over the sofa), but can we make sense of the causal relation between that event and the present traces itself leaving its traces on the present? The idea is a distinctly odd one. Any statement about the relation between different times (or between the events that occurred at those times) requires us to stand, in thought at least, outside those times and view them as of equal status. There cannot be a relation if one of the things the relation is supposed to relate is just not part of reality. It looks, then, as if the presentist is not entitled to assume the only mechanism that can explain, in terms of present fact, how statements about the past can be true. (p. 139)
Here’s the problem in a nutshell: To meet the truthmaker problem, the presentist needs to appeal to causal traces left by the past on the present. But this looks to be positing a real causal relation between past events and the present. A real relation, however, obtains only if all of its relata obtain. Hence, past events can be causally related to present events only if past events really exist. But presentism denies that past events exist (only the present is real), so it seems like the presentist cannot answer the truthmaker objection after all.
Is this a decisive objection against presentism? Well, I’m not convinced, for reasons explained below. Anyway, off the top of my head I can think of a few possible lines of response.
- Deny that causation is a relation, despite appearances to the contrary.
- Deny that all real relations are existence entailing. Ordinary relations imply the existence of their relata but some relations, among them (some) causal relations, don’t.
- Deny that causal relations are relations between events, but rather relations between some other category of thing – perhaps “states of affairs” or “substances”.
- Deny that causal relations are relations between event tokens, but rather relations between event types. Hence, causal relations hold between abstract objects.
These may not be the only options, but none of these looks particularly attractive. 1, 2, and 4 are extremely counter-intuitive. 3 is more plausible, but it runs counter to long-entrenched views in philosophy that analyze causation in terms of events and, furthermore, its not quite clear that shifting categories from events to something else still won’t commit the presentist to some kind of past existents.
Perhaps there’s a fifth option: Deny that the truthmaker for “the past leaves causal traces on the present” requires positing real causal relations between past and present events. How so? Well, if we think of time like a presentist does, then what is real now (the present) is already pregnant with powers and propensities that will usher forth in a new reality, replacing the old one. Imagine that one of these powers is global in extent, fully reflexive, and at each new moment gives rise to a new state that retains a complete snapshot of the previous moment – kind of like a universal video recorder that, as reflexive, also records its own recording (and records its own recording of its own recording, etc.). If this is coherent, then maybe my proposed solution to the truthmaker objection (linked above) can also be pressed into service here.
I’ve argued that a presentist ought to be a theist, because the best (if not the only) way to solve the truthmaker objection is to ground truths about the past in God’s memories. Given that God exists noncontingently, experiences time, and is omniscient, then God retains a perfect and complete memory of each successive moment of time. As omniscient, God’s perspective fully reflexive and transparent such that in knowing P God knows that he knows P and knows that he knows that he knows P, etc., without the addition of any new facts. Hence, the truthmaker for “It was the case that P” is just God’s remembering that P, and the truthmaker for “God remembers that P” is again just God’s remembering that P. (Note: It is an established principle that one truthmaker can ground multiple truths.)
Is this a solution to Le Poidevin’s challenge? I am inclined to think so. It does, however, suggest a way of thinking about causation that may be peculiar, namely, as the exfoliation of internal propensities through the exercise of some kind of ‘active power’ (to use Thomas Reid’s phrase). I’ll have to reflect more on that in a succeeding post.
Alan: Here’s the problem in a nutshell: To meet the truthmaker problem, the presentist needs to appeal to causal traces left by the past on the present. But this looks to be positing a real causal relation between past events and the present. A real relation, however, obtains only if all of its relata obtain. Hence, past events can be causally related to present events only if past events really exist.
Tom: Isn’t Crisp doing something on cross-temporal relations? He did “Presentism and Cross-Time Relations,” in American Philosophical Quarterly, but isn’t he publishing something more?
What about dipping into endurantism? I’m not an expert, but what about distinguishing between two kinds of causality? You could posit a proper/direct sort of causality as ‘the effect of t1 upon its immediate successor t2′. The temporal transition from t1 and t2 is the point of genuine ‘becoming’. But t2 then has its own directly causal relationship on t3, and t3 on t4, and so forth. So in effect what grounds the truth of God’s memories of past events (viz., events removed from the present by two or more temporal sequences, like t5 and t3 or t2 or t1, etc., but NOT t5 and t4 which sustain a direct relation that constitutes the nexus, the point, of genuine becoming which is the present) are not the events themselves, but rather only the immediately preceding event, which was itself caused by its immediately preceding event, and so forth, causes one’s memories to be what they are.
So causal relations between temporal locations not directly ‘touching’ would be a second sort of causality, an indirect causality. Is “George Washington Belt is my grandfather” true? Well, yes. Does this truth require the present existence of my grandfather? No. Why not? Because the causality in question is not direct/proper causality. More technically, George Belt did NOT ‘cause’ me to be. He isn’t the grounds of the truth “George Belt is my grandfather.” George caused David Belt to be. David Belt caused me to be. And I am. Consider the passing of the baton in a relay race. The causality involved in the passing of the baton between runners 1 and 2 is of a different kind than that involved in the passing of the baton between runners 1 and 4. We say runner 1 passed the baton to runner 4, and we grant the truth of this propositionally as well. But getting into the metaphysics of it reveals at least two distinct kinds of causal relation and distinguishes truth-grounds at t3 as ’caused by’ only t2 realities. And where t2 and t3 meet IS the present.
So what causes God’s memory of Socrates at t7 is not the Socrates who lived at t2. He’s not around at t7 to ‘cause’ anything. Rather, it’s the enduring nature of God’s own memory of Socrates at t6 that is the ‘cause’ of God’s memory of Socrates at t7, and so forth. I’m not sure how directly related this explanation is to endurantism, but I think it’s akin to it, no?
My thoughts,
Tom
Related to the comment I made to your previous post, does your suggested response to Le Poidevin commit us to the view that God is temporal? Is there a way to make sense of this in light of the God-as-timelessly-eternal position?
Good stuff, Tom and David. Thanks for the feedback.
Tom: I’m gonna try to get a hold of Crisp’s paper. I know he’s still working on the issue with another paper to come. Perhaps I can get a draft from him. Anyway, I think endurantism’s on the right track and I like the distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ causality. It helps. So does the baton-passing analogy. I’ll make a short blog post incorporating those thoughts into some additional ones of my own.
David: Good question. I doubt that presentism is compatible with a timelessly eternal view of God. In a Philosophia Christi back in 2000, Garrett DeWeese argued that a timelessly eternal God requires a B-theory of time. I am inclined to agree with that conclusion. One of the issues is this: If the A-theory of time is true (of which presentism is a variant), then there is such a thing as an objective ‘NOW’ that applies to different states of affairs at different times. Given that this is an objective fact, it seems that an omniscient God would have to know it. But then to know what state obtains ‘NOW’ God’s state of knowledge would have to change. Hence, God could not be timelessly eternal. Richard Gale develops this ‘omniscience-immutability’ argument at great length in his 1993 book On the Nature and Existence of God.
I struggle with this, as you know. It seems like putting something in an incoherent way in order to invent an incoherent solution. You start with the supposed problem that “presentism denies that past facts exist”. But presumably presentists don’t deny that Columbus sailed to America? You say this forces presentists to to find something else to “ground” truths about the past, without explaining what “grounding” is. Do you mean, on what grounds do we assert that Columbus sailed to America? Then you solve this by saying that the past leaves “causal traces” in the present. But why should these causal traces serve as “truthmakers” in the sense you want? For the existence of the causal trace is expressed by a proposition of the form “X exists” (perhaps X is a document of some kind, or a shipwreck or whatever). But what grounds that proposition (sentence) is the fact that X exists. Whereas what grounds “Columbus sailed to America”, in the sense you want, is surely something else.
Hi Ocham,
Right, presentists wouldn’t deny that Columbus sailed to America, but since they deny that past facts exist, that past event no longer remains to be a truthmaker (that’s what I mean by “grounding”) for that proposition. The only plausible candidates available to the presentist to serve as truthmakers for truths about the past are presently existing traces of past events. But, as you point out, what grounds the truth of “Columbus sailed to America” cannot merely be, say, some document’s existing. One problem with this is that the document could have been the result of many different past causal chains, hence it is insufficient to make true “Columbus sailed to America” as opposed to a proposition about some other possible causal antecent. That’s one of the reasons why I argue that the presentist ought to appeal to God’s memories as truthmakers. Since God, as omniscient, wouldn’t remember Columbus’s sailing to America in any possible world in which that event didn’t happen, it suffices to “discriminate” the actual past from all other possible pasts. There’s a bit more to it, but that’s the gist of things as I see it.
This ‘truthmaker’ is completely obscure (as I’ve said before). If you must have a truthmaker, why not suppose it once existed, but now it doesn’t? Thus “there are dinosaurs” was once true, because it once had a truthmaker. Now it doesn’t, so it isn’t.
What about past tense sentences, you say? Easy. If “p” is a past tense sentence, and it once had a truthmaker, then p.
Hi Ocham,
I’m not sure what exactly you think is obscure or why. In general, a truthmaker T for proposition p is some parcel or aspect of reality that necessitates and thereby grounds p’s truth. The sort of necessitation in view is not logical but metaphysical. For example, what makes “some dogs exist” true is, say, the existence of Fido. Any dog will do, but there must actually be a dog for that proposition to be true.
You ask “If you must have a truthmaker, why not suppose it once existed, but now doesn’t?” Well, given the idea that truth supervenes on being, the absence of a truthmaker or other supervenience base for a proposition means that it is not true. Hence, as you point out, “there are dinosaurs” was true when dinosaurs existed but is no longer true.
I’m afraid, though, that your proposal for past-tense sentences is incomplete. “There were dinosaurs” is now true. What makes it true now? You suggest the fact that it once had a truthmaker. OK, but what is that fact? What parcel or aspect of present reality constitutes Dinosaurs having existed? Unless you have some metaphysical account of past-tense facts to offer, it seems like you’re just giving a verbal solution to a metaphysical problem.
Here’s a further problem: If the truthmaker for “Dinosaurs existed” is the fact that it once had a truthmaker, then what it the truthmaker for “”Dinosaurs existed” once had a truthmaker”? That too is a truth about the past, but if we apply your suggestion we immediately generate an infinite regress of truthmakers.
I’m afraid I still find this completely obscure.
> a truthmaker T for proposition p is some parcel or aspect of reality that necessitates and thereby grounds p’s truth
What is a ‘parcel of reality’? What does it mean to ‘necessitate’ the truth of something? E.g. the fact that the sun is in the centre of the solar system necessitates that the earth does not fly off into space in a straight line. So is the fact of the sun being there, the truthmaker of ‘the earth rotates’. How in other words do you distinguish a truthmaker from an underlying cause?
> The sort of necessitation in view is not logical but metaphysical.
I have no idea what this means.
> For example, what makes “some dogs exist” true is, say, the existence of Fido.
What makes “some dogs exist” true is the fact that some dogs do, indeed, exist. How does that help us?
> there must actually be a dog for that proposition to be true
Yes, some dog must exist. To the extent that “there must actually be a dog” is synonymous with “some dog must exist”, how does this help us? To the extent that it is not synonymous, in what sense is one a truthmaker for the other?
> I’m afraid, though, that your proposal for past-tense sentences is incomplete. “There were dinosaurs” is now true. What makes it true now?
What makes it true is that it is a fact that there were dinosaurs. It is not, of course, a fact that there are dinosaurs now.
> You suggest the fact that it once had a truthmaker. OK, but what is that fact?
> What parcel or aspect of present reality constitutes Dinosaurs having existed?
There is no such fact. Quite obviously so. It is not a fact that there are dinosaurs.
> Unless you have some metaphysical account of past-tense facts to offer, it seems like you’re just giving a verbal solution to a metaphysical problem.
You haven’t persuaded me there is any problem except a verbal one. I think it is the present tense of the first occurrence of the verb to be in “it IS a fact that there WERE dinosaurs” which is leading to this confusion. But “it IS a fact that there WERE dinosaurs” is just a circuitous and paraphrastic way of expressing what is more suitably expressed by “there WERE dinosaurs”. Persuade me otherwise. Any such argument will at some point have to bring in the assumption that the IS in “it IS a fact that there WERE dinosaurs” signifies some “parcel or aspect of present reality”. But that is entirely question-begging. The supposed problem, for you, is explaining the supposed existence of some “parcel or aspect of present reality” that makes past tense sentences true. But this supposed existence is an unwarranted assumption on your part. You are looking for a non-existent solution to a non-existent problem. Persuade me, from first principles, that there is a problem at all!
> Here’s a further problem […] if we apply your suggestion we immediately generate an infinite regress of truthmakers.
This is a well-known problem for any correspondence theory of truth. What makes p true? Answer, the fact that p ‘corresponds’ with reality. But that is a fact, too. What makes that a fact? What makes the sentence ‘p corresponds with reality true’?
Sorry to bang on at length in this possibly strident style, but I really think there is a fundamental piece of nonsense at the very beginning of it all.
Ocham, you seriously need to read the literature on truthmakers and on presentism.
A ‘parcel of reality’ should be sufficiently clear. Your left hand, my cell phone, the sun, etc. are parcels of reality. Pegagus and the thirty dancing leprechauns in my office are not.
On truthmaker necessitation, read D. M. Armstrong’s Truth and Truthmakers, chap. 2. It’s neither a logical nor a physical relation, but a metaphysical one. It’s not a logical relation because the terms of such relations have to be propositions and truthmakers are not propositions. It’s not a physical relation because such relations are metaphysically contingent, not necessary.
As for “some dogs exist”, I think you misunderstand me because your conflating truthmakers with truth conditions. A truth condition of “some dogs exist” is the truth of “there exists a dog”, but the latter is not a truthmaker. Its truthmaker is not a proposition or statement or any other abstract or linguistic object but a concrete particular dog (Fido, Lassie, etc.).
One final note, to understand discussions about truthmakers you need to distinguish ‘facts that’ from ‘facts of’. The former phrase takes a proposition or statement as its object. ‘Facts that’ are useful for referring to truth conditions. ‘Fact of’, however, takes a state of affairs as it object (e.g., the fact of Sally’s being sick). It is facts in that sense of the term that refer to truthmakers.
Alan: A truth condition of “some dogs exist” is the truth of “there exists a dog”, but the latter is not a truthmaker. Its truthmaker is not a proposition or statement or any other abstract or linguistic object but a concrete particular dog (Fido, Lassie, etc.).
Tom: I follow this. And if this is the standard way of discussing truthmakers then I can work with it. But…
a) It makes the ‘truth conditions’ of a proposition another proposition. As you say, the truth condition of the proposition “some dogs exist” is the truth of “there exists a dog.” But “there exists a dog” is itself a proposition. And one might ask what ITS truth condition is, another proposition? It would have to be. What of the truth conditions of THAT proposition then? And so forth. It looks to me that “some dogs exist” and “there exists a dog” are simply synonymous propositions, that’s all. So what need is there to posit further propositions as a proposition’s truth conditions? I still don’t see the necessity of it. If you have a proposition, you have (a) that proposition and (b) the reality that proposition corresponds to, and that’s it. I can only see TWO items in the equation. But you’re suggesting THREE—a proposition, a proposition’s truth ‘conditions’, and a proposition’s truth ‘maker’. I don’t see how the ‘conditions’ as you describe them aren’t identical to the proposition itself.
b) As I started getting into this, upon hearing the terms “truth condition” and “truth maker” my assumption was that these are synonymous. The word “condition” certainly seems to be ‘state of affairs’ language and so sofas. And of course truth makers are actual sofas. I just don’t get the need for a proposition as ‘truth conditions’ that is distinct from a proposition itself AND that proposition’s truth-maker(s).
If we toss truth ‘conditions’ as a distinct player and just go with (a) propositions and (b) those parcels of reality to which propositions correspond or not, what will we NOT be able to do or say which in your view we need to be able to do or say?
Tom
You’re saying, burden is not upon you to show the notion of a truthmaker is not incoherent, but upon me to read the relevant authoritative sources. Let me do that, though my investigation so far suggest these sources (which include Peter Simons and Barry Smith) are not authoritative in the sense that they are uncontroversial and agreed upon by all hands and on all sides. Meanwhile, here’s another thought. Presumably we both agree on this:
“There are dinosaurs” was true because there was something that made it true.
The problem is this:
“There were dinosaurs” is true because there is something that makes it true.
This is because the ‘is’ in ‘is true’ is present tense. So we can’t say that there WAS something (past tense) that MAKES it true (present tense), because anything that acts (present tense) must exist (present tense). So there must exist something (a parcel of reality if you like) that makes the sentence true now.
My view here is that this exposes the fundamental incoherence of the idea of ‘truthmakers’. But let me think further on that. Meanwhile, what is your view on the ‘something’ in each of the sentences? Is the ‘something’ that made (past tense) “There are dinosaurs” true (once), the same as the ‘something’ that makes (present tense) “There were dinosaurs” true (now)?
> It’s not a logical relation because the terms of such relations have to be propositions and truthmakers are not propositions.
It depends whether ‘the greenness of grass exists’ is merely a paraphrasis of ‘grass is green’. If it is, then it would be a logical relation.
Ocham,
To answer your question, I don’t think that the ‘something’ that made (past tense) “there are dinosaurs” true in the past must be the same ‘something’ thing that makes (present tense) “there were dinosaurs” true now.
In general, truthmaking is a many-many relation between (parcels of) the world and propositions. One proposition can have many truthmakers and one truthmaker can make true many propositions. Thus, “some dogs exist” is made true by the existence of my in-laws’ dog Barkley, and it is also made true by my mom’s dog Sugar Bear, and by countless other dogs besides. Each of those dogs individually is a truthmaker for “some dogs exist”. So there are countlessly many truthmakers for that proposition. Conversely, the fact of my cat Tiffany’s being on the bed makes true many distinct propositions: “some cats exist”, “some beds exist”, “some cat is on a bed”, and so forth.
Now, “there are dinosaurs” and “there were dinosaurs” are distinct propositions. Theoretically, they could be made true by the same truthmaker, but there’s no reason why that has to be the case. For “there are dinosaurs” to be true we presumably need to have a real, live dinosaur. But for “there were dinosaurs” to be true all we need is some parcel of reality that is sufficient to guarantee that dinosaurs have existed, and that, I submit, need not be a past fact (Ted the T-Rex’s being alive in 70 million BC) but may be a presently existing trace of such past facts. Not any present trace will do, however, as I argue in my paper “Presentism, Truthmakers, and God”. But I do think that some adequate traces exist, namely, God’s memories.
Tom,
Good questions. I’ve got to think on them a bit before formulating a reply. (Also, I’m about to run out the door!) I’ll get back to you soon.
Have just realised that this is an old post, but I will comment anyway.
Having not read all the other comments, have you considered, as does William Lane Craig, Sarah Waterlow's account of causation? According to Waterlow, there is a temporally overlap between a cause and its effect as 'the event we call cause begins before that which we call effect, and then continues up to and during the time during which the effect itself continues' (Waterlow [Broadie] (1974) p. 381).
Since the presentist denies the existence of the past, it is obvious why he would find such an account of causation attractive as there is no need to allow for any causes to exist strictly in the past.
Just a thought,
Sara
Hi JB,
No, I haven't explicitly considered Broadie's account. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Her account reminds me of a version of presentism discussed by Barry Dainton in his book “Time and Space” which he calls “overlap presentism”. The basic idea is that the “present” consists of two or more temporal instants, or perhaps a short interval, and that the passage of time is an overlapping series of such “presents”.