Presentism And Absence Causation: An Exercise In Mimicry

Abstract

If presentism is true, then no wholly non-present events exist. If absence orthodoxy is true, then no absences exist. I discuss a well-known causal argument against presentism, and develop a very similar argument against absence orthodoxy. I argue that solutions to the argument against absence orthodoxy can be adopted by the presentist as solutions to the argument against presentism. The upshot is that if the argument against absence orthodoxy fails, then so does the argument against presentism.

Notes

¹For further discussion of the causal argument against presentism, see Adams [1986], Bigelow [1996], Bourne [2006: 109–10], Crisp [2005], De Clercq [2006], Markosian [2004], Rea [2003], Sider [1999], and Zimmerman [1997].

²Some actualists include Adams [1974], Bergmann [1999], Plantinga [1974], and van Inwagen [1986].

³Some presentists include Bergmann [1999], Bigelow [1996], Bourne [2006], Crisp [2003; 2004; 2005], Hinchliff [1996], Markosian [2004], Merricks [1999; 2007], and Zimmerman [1998].

⁴Thanks to an anonymous referee, not only for suggesting this helpful sentence, but also for urging further clarity in my conception of causally-relevant events.

⁵Some theories of events that would work well with this characterization include those of Davidson [1967; 1970] and Kim [1976], among others. Some that would not work include those theories that hold that events can be given a ‘fact-like’ reading understood—in the manner of Menzies [2003]—as property-instances involving either positive or negative properties.

⁶Some representatives of absence orthodoxy include Armstrong [2001], Beebee [2004], Fair [1979], Lewis [2000; 2004], and Mellor [2004]. I am less sure about Dowe [2000: ch. 6; 2001], who draws an ontological distinction between positive events and negative events (absences), but does not clearly say what this distinction amounts to.

⁷Dowe [2000: Ch. 6; 2001] and Fair [1979] offer somewhat similar treatments.

⁸Bourne [2006: 109–10] argues that presentists should reject the idea that causation is a cross-temporal relation, though he is not motivated by concerns having to do with absence causation.

⁹My thanks to an anonymous referee for forcefully bringing to my attention the objection I discuss in this section.

¹⁰These remarks apply equally to the discussion in §4. In that context, it might be wondered how the presentist can say that the proposition that Rain occurred is true. My response is that the presentist has as much justification for saying this as Beebee does for saying that the proposition that I failed to eat is true. That is, just as the presentist acknowledges no wholly past event upon which the truth of the proposition that Rain occurred supervenes, so Beebee acknowledges no absence upon which the truth of the proposition that I failed to eat supervenes. Any suspicion about how the presentist and Beebee can make such claims turns on the question of whether or not truth supervenes on being.

¹¹I am indebted to Paul Humphreys and Charlie Tanksley for comments on an earlier draft of this paper; to two anonymous referees from the Australasian Journal of Philosophy for generous (and timely) critical remarks; and, above all, to Trenton Merricks for invaluable feedback.