There's no time like the present

Analysis 66 (2):130–135 (2006)
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Abstract

No-futurists ('growing block theorists') hold that that the past and the present are real, but that the future is not. The present moment is therefore privileged: it is the last moment of time. Craig Bourne (2002) and David Braddon-Mitchell (2004) have argued that this position is unmotivated, since the privilege of presentness comes apart from the indexicality of 'this moment'. I respond that no-futurists should treat 'x is real-as-of y' as a nonsymmetric relation. Then different moments are real-as-of different times. This reunites privilege with indexicality, but entails that no-futurists must believe in ineliminably tensed facts.

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Tim Button
University College London

Citations of this work

Nothing to Come: A Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time.Fabrice Correia & Sven Rosenkranz - 2018 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer Verlag. Edited by Sven Rosenkranz.
Presentism, eternalism, and the growing block.Kristie Miller - 2013 - In Adrian Bardon & Heather Dyke (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 345-364.
String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity and Eternalism.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10:17.
Defining Existence Presentism.Jonathan Charles Tallant - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (3):479-501.

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References found in this work

Time, Tense, and Causation.Michael Tooley - 1997 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
How do we know it is now now?David Braddon-Mitchell - 2004 - Analysis 64 (3):199–203.
When am I? A tense time for some tense theorists?Craig Bourne - 2002 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (3):359 – 371.

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