For and Against Presentism

In our study of time, we compare four leading theories: Presentism, Eternalism, Growing Block Theory, and Branching Tree Theory. We aim to show in a future post that a metaphysics of time anchored in the work of Thomas Aquinas is superior. First up is Presentism.

In Favor of Presentism. A-theorists describe the passage of time dynamically using tensed quantities. The present occupies a privileged position in which events are fully real. The past recedes. The future is yet to come. This common-sense interpretation captures human experience of the flow of time.[1] We dread going to the dentist, endure the appointment, and feel relief when it is over.[2] Aristotle viewed time as a measurement of change referenced to the now of the present. The present provides a relational link between past and future. For A-theory, the future is not predetermined, but open. Presentists believe only the present is real.[3] Only objects in the present exist. Objects endure in the present. For example, Presentists argue that dinosaurs do not exist. Instead—“once there were dinosaurs.”[4] Dinosaurs only existed in their present, which is now past.

Against Presentism. B-theorist Hugh Mellor[5] argues that McTaggart is right to reject the reality of the A-series, but he goes too far in rejecting time itself. It is the tensed (past, present, and future) view that is mistaken. A change in time is like a change in place. An object is first in one place and then in another, so it is also first in one time and then in another. The position of the object on the static timeline changes, it is not a moving now. Mellor believes much of the problem associated with the description of time resides in language. He believes that the “sole function of tensed facts is to make tensed sentences and judgements true.” If the token “E is past” occurs later than “E,” then it is true. Tensed facts are not necessary, because tenseless B-series descriptions are possible.

Anti-tensists further pose the challenge of measuring the rate of time’s passage.[6] Time cannot measure itself. If time is measured with “meta-time,” then this produces an infinite regress. How does one measure meta-time? Therefore, time is fixed; it does not flow.

Furthermore, many eastern cultures believe time is cyclical, proceeding from birth to death to reincarnation. They object to the western premise of a linear description of time (An, 2022).[7]

A-theory (and Presentism) is incomplete. The theory does not describe the origin of time, the structure of time, the purpose of time, or the end of time. Without addressing even the flow of time, Presentists only provide a solution for two-legged men. Yet, the Greeks understood that man walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and on three legs in the evening.[8]

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