On Characterizing the Presentism/Eternalism and Actualism/Possibilism Debates

Cameron, Ross P.

doi:10.1111/phib.12083

Cited by 31 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…It is thus unsurprising that it has been criticised by both eternalists, such as Cameron (2016), and presentists, such as Tallant (2017). The aim of this paper is to point to a response to Deasy's argument that has so far gone unnoticed: in dismissing a plausible interpretation of 'is present' and claiming that it is compatible with eternalism, Deasy relies on a mistaken assumption about how eternalists should treat tense.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Presentism, eternalism and where things are located

Viebahn

2018

Synthese

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In several recent papers, Daniel Deasy has argued that the presentism-eternalism debate is unclear and should be abandoned. According to Deasy, there is no way of spelling out the predicate 'is present' that leads to a satisfactory definition of presentism: on some interpretations, presentism turns out to be compatible with eternalism, on others, it is clearly false or unacceptable for other reasons. The aim of this paper is to show that this line of argument should be resisted: if the predicate 'is present' is spelled out in terms of where things are located, the result is a definition of presentism that is neither compatible with eternalism nor clearly false.There is thus no need to abandon the debate between presentists and eternalists. This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in Synthese.2

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Presentism, eternalism and where things are located

Viebahn

2018

Synthese

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“…Call this view Reformism . In ‘On characterising the presentism/eternalism and actualism/possibilism debates’ (), Ross Cameron makes the case for (what I shall call) Conservatism , the view that the traditional debates are both substantive and distinct from the Temporaryism–Permanentism and Contingentism–Necessitism debates. Cameron's case for Conservatism has two key elements: first, an argument that there are important differences between theories of time/modality that are best explained by appeal to the traditional Presentism–Eternalism/Actualism–Possibilism distinction; and second, a positive proposal concerning the content of the theses of Presentism and Actualism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising Theories of Time and Modality

Deasy

2019

Philosophical Books

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“…I do not explicitly consider that argument here, but some of the discussion in what follows is relevant. 10 Eternalists include B-theorists such as Sider (2001) and Skow (2015) and Moving Spotlighters such as Deasy (2015) and Cameron (2016). 11 There is a further response to the argument that I do not consider here, due to Cameron (2016).…”

Section: Tense and Trivialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given this view, they can argue that although Xanthippe is now something, she has changed in all sorts of important ways-in particular, she no longer has mass or a spatial location. And if they follow Cameron (2016) We have seen that Presentists who reject either TBC or Transientism can resist premise (4) of the Triviality Argument, on the grounds that e.g. Xanthippe's being present is in fact consistent with Presentism.…”

Section: Again Sakon's (P2) Is Equivalent To Our (P2)mentioning

confidence: 99%