[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

contradiction, so that differently tensed statements will be true in each
conjunct. This difference in tense does represent the flow of time.
(Craig 2000a: 205; emphasis added)
The appeal to truth predicates does not avoid the need to specify the
grounds of truth. The fact that differently tensed statements will be true in
each conjunct cannot adequately reflect the passage of time unless we have
some account of the direction of becoming. More specifically, if NT  Np & PT
 Fp & FT  Pp then we want to know, given that the past and the future do not
exist, what is the difference between PT  Fp & FT  Pp ? What is the basis, in
the metaphysics of presentism, for p being first future and then present and
then past rather than the other way around? To answer that question we need
some model upon which to understand temporal becoming.
Craig s explication of temporal becoming begins with an appeal to the
serious actualist s conception of possible worlds as states of affairs that exist as
abstract objects but are not instantiated. He then claims that  tensed possible
worlds which did, do, or will obtain are tensed actual worlds (Craig 2000a: 209;
emphasis added). Of course, the appeal to tensed possible worlds which did,
do, or will obtain can hardly provide a metaphysical explanation of what the
tenses stand for in propositions reflecting temporal becoming. Leaving that
difficulty aside for the moment, Craig (2000a: 209) continues by saying that
 the tensed actual world at t, is the world which obtains when t s being present
200 L. Nathan Oaklander
obtains, or more simply, when t is present , but when does t s being present
obtain? Judging from his comments it appears that t s being present obtains
before t* s being present obtains (for any later t*), since Craig maintains that
 [t]ensed actual worlds constitute the tensed history of the actual world ±, for
they are respectively comprised of all states of affairs entailed by ± and each
successive t s being present (Craig 2000a: 209; emphasis added). Thus Craig s
view is that there are possible worlds that exist whether they are instantiated
or not, and as time flows possible worlds obtain or become actual by being
successively instantiated. That the appeal to succession is integral to Craig s
account of becoming is evident from other passages as well.
For Craig, temporal becoming is modelled on the different members of the
A-series coming into existence successively, as successive times become present.
He says,  the doctrine of objective becoming, & could be graphically displayed
as the successive actualization of the history of the actual world. It is this model of
a successively instantiated, rather than tenselessly existing, actual world that
precludes the existence of a  totality of facts  (Craig 2000a: 207; emphasis
added). The appeal to succession implies the existence of temporal relations,
and the appeal to possible worlds that did or will obtain implies the existence
of past- and future-tense facts. Craig s prima facie commitment to B-relations
and primitive past- and future-tense facts renders his version of  presentism
subject to McTaggart s paradox unless he can provide an ontological reduction
of temporal relations and past- and future-tense facts to what is presently
real. Thus, we are led once again to the question: What then, on a presentist
metaphysics, are temporal relations, and what are the past- and future-tense
facts that are the truthmakers of past- and future-tense statements?
Craig does attempt to answer these questions, and in so doing he diverges
in many ways from temporal solipsism,  an idiosyncratic doctrine associated
with the views of A. N. Prior and not logically connected with the A-Theory of
time (Craig 2000a: 214). One of the main ways in which Craig deviates from
Prior s version of presentism is in his holding that there are past- and future-
tense facts that are the truthmakers for past- and future-tense statements. I
will let Craig speak for himself:
On the presentist semantics given here, a future-tense statement is true
iff there exists some tensed actual world at t in which the present-tense
version of the statement is true, where t has not elapsed by the present moment.
A past-tense statement is true iff there exists some tensed actual world
at t in which the present-tense version of the statement is true, where t
has elapsed by the present moment. Those are the truth-conditions of past- and
future-tense statements; but they are not what make the statements true.
Ultimately what makes the statements true is that reality was or will be as
the statements describe; when the time comes, for example, a sea battle
is going on, and therefore the statement made the day before,  There will
be a sea battle tomorrow, was true. There are tensed facts corresponding
Presentism: a critique 201
to what tensed statements assert, but past- and future-tense facts exist
because of the present-tense facts that did or will exist.
(Craig 2000a: 213 14; emphasis added)
For Craig there are past- and future-tense facts, but they exist because
purely present-tense facts, for example a battle is being fought at Waterloo, did or
will obtain. Alternatively, a fact is a future-tense fact if the time t at which it
is present has not elapsed by the present moment (that is, t is later than the present
moment), and a fact is a past-tense fact if the time t at which it is present has
elapsed by the present moment (that is, t is earlier than the present moment). Thus,
Craig s account either presupposes the existence of irreducibly past- and
future-tense facts, or it assumes the existence of B-relations, or it leaves the
tenses unanalysed and so is guilty of the  lack of ontology objection he and
others have raised against Prior and his followers.
Look at it this way. On the one hand, Craig wants there to presently exist
truthmakers for past- and future-tense statements. If a statement is true now
then it must be true in virtue of some fact that exists now. On the other hand,
he does not want to countenance past and future existents. He attempts
to avoid the contradiction that a conjunction of those two views entails by
claiming that past- and future-tense facts exist at present, but they are not
ultimate. However, his attempt to show that past- and future-tense facts are
not ultimate is either unsuccessful or it succeeds only at a cost of reintroducing
a B-theoretic ontology that he sought to avoid, thus undermining presentism
and making his A-theory susceptible to McTaggart s paradox.
We can begin to see why this is so by noting that Craig claims that, if
a past-tense statement is now true, then there is a present-tense fact that
did obtain or there is a present-tense fact that exists at a time t that has
elapsed by the present time. What, then, is involved in t s having elapsed by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]