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Title
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Tensed truth, temporal particularity, and the fixity of the past
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Author
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Abstract
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| Our ordinary conception of time has it that there are temporal particulars: not only do people do things, but there are particular doings by people; not only are we born, but the birth of each one of us was a particular event, and each of us will have our own particular death. Temporal particulars in this sense are individuated, fundamentally, by their temporal locations or relations, rather than by their intrinsic or qualitative characteristics. In this respect they are unrepeatable, not just de facto, but as a matter of their very nature. However, there is a tradition in philosophy that seriously downplays this aspect of our thinking about time. According to this tradition, the fundamental unit of temporal representation is tensed truth; the notion of an unrepeatable particular, individuated by its temporal location, is at best an abstraction from a complex of tensed truths. The aims of this paper are, first, to argue that the representation of temporal particulars is deeply implicated in our ordinary conception of the past as fixed and unalterable; and, secondly, to argue that the theorist of tensed truth is able to provide only a pale imitation of this aspect of our thinking. I will then reflect on the consequences of this for debates about the metaphysics of tense. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Synthese : an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science. - Dordrecht, 1936, currens
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Publication
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Dordrecht
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2024
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ISSN
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0039-7857
[print]
1573-0964
[online]
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DOI
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10.1007/S11229-023-04470-2
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Volume/pages
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203
:1
(2024)
, p. 1-20
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Article Reference
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21
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ISI
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001136068800004
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
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