Talking About the Past

Erkenntnis 78 (3):547-560 (2013)
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Abstract

In this paper I consider the aboutness objection against standard truth-preserving presentism (STP). According to STP: (1) past-directed propositions (propositions that seem to be about the past) like , are sometimes true (2) truth supervenes on being and (3) the truth of past-directed propositions does not supervene on how things were, in the past. According to the aboutness objection (3) is implausible, given (1) and (2): for any proposition, P, P ought to be true in virtue of what P is about, and so it is upon the past that the truth of past-directed propositions ought to supervene. Although an objection along these lines has been offered previously, I press the objection in two ways. First, by providing needed support for the view that propositions ought to be true in virtue of what they are about and, second, by arguing that the two responses available to the proponent of STP fail to be compelling

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Sam Baron
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

Nefarious Presentism.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 65 (260):355-371.
The Growing Block’s past problems.Graeme A. Forbes - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 173 (3):699-709.
Moderate presentism.Francesco Orilia - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (3):589-607.
Much ado about aboutness.Sam Baron, Reginald Mary Chua, Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (3).
A Defence of Lucretian Presentism.Jonathan Tallant & David Ingram - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (4):675-690.

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References found in this work

Truth and truthmakers.D. M. Armstrong - 2004 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Truth and ontology.Trenton Merricks - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
A Defense of Presentism.Ned Markosian - 2004 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 1:47-82.
A Future for Presentism.Craig Bourne - 2006 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.

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