Mark Balaguer Anti-Metaphysicalism, Necessity, and Temporal Ontology
Mark Balaguer Anti-Metaphysicalism, Necessity, and Temporal Ontology
Mark Balaguer Anti-Metaphysicalism, Necessity, and Temporal Ontology
Phenomenological Research
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
doi: 10.1111/phpr.12129
© 2014 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC
This paper argues for a certain kind of anti-metaphysicalism about the temporal ontology
debate, i.e., the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and
future objects. Three different kinds of anti-metaphysicalism are defined—namely, non-
factualism, physical-empiricism, and trivialism. The paper argues for the disjunction of
these three views. It is then argued that trivialism is false, so that either non-factualism or
physical-empiricism is true. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of whether we
should endorse non-factualism or physical-empiricism. An initial reason is provided for
thinking that non-factualism might be true, but in the end, the paper leaves this question
open. The paper also argues against a certain kind of necessitarianism about the temporal
ontology debate; but this isn’t an extra job—the falsity of this necessitarian view falls out
of the other arguments as a sort of corollary.
1. Introduction
I will do three things in this paper. My main goal is to argue for a certain
sort of anti-metaphysicalism about the temporal-ontology debate, i.e., the
debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of past and
future objects. There are numerous views of this debate that might reason-
ably be called anti-metaphysical. Here are three of them:
1
I would like to thank the following people for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this
paper: Talia Bettcher, Ross Cameron, Matti Eklund, Eli Hirsch, Robert Jones, Uriah Krie-
gel, David Pitt, Josh Rasmussen, Mike Raven, Shel Smith, Wai-hung Wong, and Steve
Yablo. Also, versions of this paper were presented at the University of Leeds, the Cen-
tral European University, Chico State, and Cal State, L.A. I would like to thank the mem-
bers of those audiences for their comments and questions.
In this paper, I will argue for the disjunction of these three views.
(Scholarly aside: I don’t know of anyone who has endorsed non-factual-
ism, but I have endorsed views of this kind in connection with other
metaphysical debates (e.g., I argue for a non-factualist view of the abstract-
object debate in my (1998), and I argue for a non-factualist view of the
composition debate in my (MSa)). I also don’t know of anyone who has
endorsed trivialism, but Hestevold and Carter discuss a view of this kind in
their (2002); also, trivialist views have been endorsed in connection with
other metaphysical debates by, e.g., Carnap (1950), Putnam (1994), Hirsch
(2002), and Thomasson (2007). Finally, while I don’t know of anyone who
has come out and endorsed physical-empiricism, I suspect that certain eter-
nalists would find it attractive. In particular, I think Quine (1950) and Put-
nam (1967) would probably endorse something like this view, and I
wouldn’t be surprised if Sider (2001) would as well, especially given his
extreme deflationism about modality (2011).)
The second thing I’ll do in this paper is discuss which of the above three
views we should endorse. In particular, I’ll quickly argue against trivialism,
and I’ll say a few words about whether we should endorse non-factualism
or physical-empiricism. I will indicate what this question turns on, and I
will offer an initial reason for thinking that non-factualism might be true,
but I won’t try to settle the matter in this paper.
Finally, my third aim in this paper is to argue against a certain kind of
necessitarianism about the temporal-ontology debate. But this won’t be an
extra job because the falsity of necessitarianism will follow from my other
arguments.
In section 2, I’ll take care of some preliminaries (I’ll characterize present-
ism and eternalism, define necessitarian and contingentist versions of these
views, and say a bit more about trivialism). In sections 3-5, I’ll argue for
my disjunctive version of anti-metaphysicalism. Finally, in section 6, I’ll
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argue very quickly against trivialism, and I’ll discuss the question of
whether we should adopt non-factualism or physical-empiricism.
2. Preliminaries
Let me make a few points about this definition. First, to say that a world is
an NH-world is not to say anything about whether presentism or eternalism
is true in that world. So the talk here of physical objects “existing at multi-
ple times” has to be read in a way that’s neutral between presentism and
eternalism. For instance, on the lingo I’m employing here, regardless of
whether presentism or eternalism is true, we can say that the actual world
is a world in which physical objects exist at different times—because, e.g.,
I exist now and Sputnik existed in 1957. And, more generally, we can say
that the actual world is (obviously) an NH-world—again, regardless of
whether presentism or eternalism is true. Another point worth making here
is that in order for a world to count as an NH-world, it doesn’t need to have
multiple objects existing at different times. Imagine, for instance, a world
that lasts for only ten seconds and that consists of nothing but David Lewis
hovering in empty space for five seconds and then bending his arm and
then hovering for another five seconds. I would count this as an NH-world,
and I assume that eternalists would say that eternalism could be true in such
a world (it could be true because at, say, the 5-second mark of a world like
this, it could be the case that past and future time slices of Lewis exist in a
tenseless, eternalistic way). So a world doesn’t have to be that normal to
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count as an NH-world. In fact, the only worlds that aren’t NH-worlds are
worlds that are seriously abnormal in terms of their histories—e.g., worlds
in which there are no progressions of events, or in which there are no phys-
ical objects.
(The notion of an NH-world is, of course, not perfectly precise. But it’s
precise enough for our purposes here; it simply won’t matter in what fol-
lows if there’s some fuzziness about whether certain very strange possible
worlds count as NH-worlds.)
In any event, given the notion of an NH-world, we can define necessitar-
ian eternalism as the view that eternalism is true in all NH-worlds (includ-
ing the actual world); and we can define contingentist eternalism as the
view that (a) eternalism is true in the actual world, but (b) it isn’t true in all
NH-worlds (i.e., there are some presentistic NH-worlds).
Finally, given what I’m going to argue in section 4, we need to take note
of a certain fact about necessitarian eternalism, namely, that it entails that
sentences like the following are necessary:
It’s important to note that when necessitarian eternalists say that (if-Dino-
saur) is necessary, what they mean is that it’s metaphysically necessary.
Now, usually, when philosophers say that a sentence is metaphysically nec-
essary, what they mean is that it’s true in all possible worlds. But in the
present case, we should read necessitarian eternalists as saying something a
bit stronger than this, namely, that (if-Dinosaur) is true at every moment in
every possible world.2
2
I’m assuming here—to make things easy—that there are such things as possible worlds;
I think this assumption can be discharged, but I won’t bother with this here.
But this sentence is utterly trivial. To see why, consider the following sen-
tence:
Read at face value, the logical form of this sentence is ($x)Dx. But that’s
not it’s deep logical form. What (Dinosaur) is saying is that dinosaurs exist
tenselessly, and given this, we should take (Dinosaur) to be synonymous
with the following: ‘Either dinosaurs used to exist, or they will exist, or
they do exist at the present time.’ But given this, (E) is trivially true. Indeed,
it’s analytic. And given this, it follows that eternalism is trivially true.
(P) If dinosaurs don’t exist at the present time, then dinosaurs don’t exist.
But this sentence is utterly trivial. To see why, notice that to say that some-
thing exists is to say that it exists now. Thus, the sentence (Dinosaur) is just
synonymous with ‘Dinosaurs exist at the present time.’ But given this, (P) is
entirely trivial. Indeed, it’s analytic. And given this, it follows that presentism
is trivially true.
You could also be a trivialist without taking sides by claiming that the debate
can be settled by figuring out what sentences like (Dinosaur) mean. In particu-
lar, you could say that if (Dinosaur) is synonymous with ‘Dinosaurs exist at
the present time’, then presentism is true, and if it’s synonymous with ‘Dino-
saurs did exist or do exist or will exist’, then eternalism is true.
I don’t think any of these trivialist views are tenable, and in section 6.1
I’ll say why. But for now, I want to move on.
3. The Argument
I’m now ready to formulate my argument for anti-metaphysicalism about
the temporal-ontology debate. In outline, the argument proceeds as follows:
(1) If non-factualism and trivialism (about the temporal ontology
debate) are both false, then contingentism is true.
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(4) Either non-factualism or trivialism or physical-empiricism is true.
Both of the inferences in this argument are clearly valid, so I just need to
argue for (1) and (2). I will do this in the next two sections.
Once again, this argument is valid. Moreover, the only really controversial
premise here is (1b). (1c) is entirely trivial—if non-factualism is false, then
factualism is true, and so it follows that either necessitarianism or contingen-
tism is true. And (1a) is pretty obvious as well. If non-factualism is false, then
the temporal-ontology debate is a factual debate. Now, if trivialism were true,
then this debate wouldn’t be a substantive debate; but if trivialism is false—
and this is built into the antecedent of (1a)—then the temporal-ontology debate
is a substantive debate, and it’s presumably a substantive ontological debate,
i.e., a debate about whether objects of a certain kind (namely, past and future
objects) really exist. Thus, it seems to me that (1a) is pretty obviously true.
If this is right, then I just need to argue for premise (1b). I will do this
as follows: in section 4.2, I’ll argue that if the temporal-ontology debate is
a substantive ontological debate, then necessitarian eternalism is untenable;
and then in section 4.3, I’ll argue very quickly that a similar argument can
be used to undermine necessitarian presentism. But before I do any of this,
I want to argue for a background point.3
3
Most metaphysicians are necessitarians about the various debates they’re engaged in, so
in arguing against the necessitarian view of the temporal-ontology debate, I will be argu-
ing against a pretty orthodox view. But it’s not as if I’m alone here. For instance, the
necessitarian view of the abstract-object debate has been rejected by, e.g., Field (1989)
and myself (1998); and the necessitarian view of the composition debate has been
rejected by, e.g., Cameron (2007) and Miller (2010).
One might try to argue for (I) by claiming that nominalism is epistemically
possible and that, given this, necessitarian platonists need to explain why
it’s not also metaphysically possible. But I’m not wild about this way of
arguing for (I). I’d rather do it by pointing out that nominalism seems easily
conceivable to us. In other words, prima facie, it seems easy to imagine
worlds where there are no abstract objects—where, say, there’s just a pile
of physical stuff. Now, of course, just because something seems conceivable
doesn’t mean it’s genuinely possible (indeed, it doesn’t even mean it’s
genuinely conceivable), but it seems fair to say that if something seems
easily conceivable to us, then this gives us at least a defeasible prima facie
reason to think it’s possible. Thus, since nominalism seems easily conceiv-
able, it seems to me that we couldn’t rationally endorse necessitarian plato-
nism—couldn’t rationally claim that nominalism isn’t a genuine
metaphysical possibility—unless we had some argument for this. If we have
no reason to think that nominalism isn’t genuinely possible, then it would
just be irrational to endorse necessitarian platonism. And this is why neces-
sitarian platonists need to provide some way of motivating or explaining the
alleged impossibility of nominalism.
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Now, I suppose you might try to resist (I) by claiming it’s just a brute
fact that there aren’t any nominalistic worlds. But this is pretty hard to
believe. Modal facts just don’t work that way. Imagine someone claiming
it’s a brute fact that there are no worlds without donkeys—that the donkey-
less worlds we think we can imagine just aren’t there. This would seem
insane to us, and if someone asked us to justify this attitude, all I think we
could do is throw up our hands and say that this just isn’t how things work
with modal facts. There can’t just be an unexplained hole in the space of
possibilities. And this is exactly what I want to say about the suggestion
that it’s a brute fact that there are no nominalistic worlds; if nominalism
isn’t a genuine possibility, there has to be some reason for this. Thus, if
platonists don’t have any story to tell about why there aren’t any nominalis-
tic worlds, then since we seem to be able to easily conceive of such worlds,
the idea that there aren’t such worlds seems as bizarre and unmotivated as
the idea that there aren’t any donkeyless worlds.
Let’s move on now to thesis (II), i.e., to the claim that platonists don’t
have any way of motivating or explaining the alleged impossibility of
nominalism. One thing that platonists might say here is that the reason
their view is metaphysically necessary is that it’s conceptually necessary,
or analytic. But this is extremely implausible; on the standard way of
thinking, existence claims can’t be analytic because we can’t define objects
into being, i.e., because it can’t be true solely in virtue of meaning that
some object really exists. Now, to this you might respond that there are
numerous a priori arguments for platonism in the literature and that if any
of these arguments are traceable to claims about our concepts, then we
would have reason to think that platonism is conceptually true. But the
fact that platonism is a straightforward existence claim gives us reason in
advance to think that no such argument could be sound—again, because it
can’t be true solely in virtue of meaning that some object really exists.
(Here is perhaps a more gentle way of making this point: There can’t be
any non-trivial analytic existence claims. There may be sentences with a
surface form of ‘There are some Fs’ that are analytic; but if there are, then
they are in some sense trivial; they wouldn’t be genuine existence
claims—i.e., they wouldn’t be saying that objects of some kind really exist
in the world—again, because no such sentence could be true solely in vir-
tue of meaning.)
Now, of course, there are arguments for necessitarian platonism that
don’t involve the idea that platonism is analytic, and if any of these argu-
ments are cogent, then necessitarian platonists would have the required
motivation for their view. But I don’t think any of these arguments are
cogent, and I think the reason they’re not cogent is that none of them
can reasonably be seen as giving us an explanation of why nominalistic
worlds aren’t genuinely possible. Now, I obviously can’t argue for this
For any possible world w, there’s a sentence of the form ‘There are n don-
keys’ that’s true at w. But from this it follows that there’s a sentence of the
form ‘The number of donkeys is n’ that’s true at w. But from this it follows
that there’s a sentence of the form ‘The number n exists’ that’s true at w.
4
Notice that I haven’t committed here to the claim that nominalism is a genuine possibil-
ity. It seems to me that the debate over abstract objects might be factually empty, and if
it is, then neither platonism nor nominalism is genuinely possible. Thus, I’m claiming
here only that platonists can’t explain why nominalism isn’t a genuine possibility. I think
that non-factualists might be able to do this.
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4.2. Against Necessitarian Eternalism
Even if everything I just argued is true, it doesn’t undermine necessitarian
eternalism because that view doesn’t say that any existence claims are nec-
essary. But as we saw in section 2.2, it does entail the necessity of certain
conditional existence claims—i.e., claims of the form, ‘A > ($x)Fx’. In par-
ticular, necessitarian eternalism entails that sentences like the following are
necessarily true:
This argument is valid, so I just need to argue for (A) and (B). I will start
with (B).
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claim; it’s a conditional existence claim. And I want to start by pointing out
that there are lots of conditional existence claims that are necessary. Con-
sider, e.g., the following two sentences:
It’s pretty obvious that these sentences are necessary, and it’s equally obvi-
ous that we can explain why they’re necessary. We can do this by saying
something like the following:
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Dinosaurs are essentially concrete objects—i.e., they’re essentially spatio-
temporal objects—and spatiotemporal objects are essentially 4-dimen-
sional. Therefore, if dinosaurs exist at all, then they’re 4-dimensional.
But this argument is flawed in the same way that the last one was. It relies
crucially on the claim that ordinary physical objects—i.e., concrete, spatio-
temporal objects like dinosaurs—are essentially 4-dimensional. But why
should we believe this? I’m happy to grant (for the sake of argument) that
if there are any eternalistic worlds with dinosaurs, then the dinosaurs in
those worlds are essentially 4-dimensional. But if there are any presentistic
worlds with dinosaurs, then the dinosaurs in those worlds are obviously not
essentially 4-dimensional. So to get the result that all dinosaurs are essen-
tially 4-dimensional, we would need to have some reason to believe that
there aren’t any presentistic worlds containing dinosaurs. But, again, that’s
precisely what’s at issue here.
Third and finally, necessitarian eternalists might try to claim that the
necessity of sentences like (if-Dinosaur) is analogous to the necessity of
mathematical sentences like
(Prime) 3 is prime.
I think that anti-platonist views like this are implausible—I think it’s fairly
easy to argue that the right semantic theory for mathematical sentences is
the platonistic one5—but in the present context, this doesn’t matter. For if
the necessity of (Prime) boils down to the necessity of (if-Prime), then this
is completely unhelpful to necessitarian eternalists; for (if-Prime) is neces-
sary for essentially the same reason that (if-Bachelor) is—in a nutshell,
because it’s analytic—and as we’ve seen, (if-Dinosaur) isn’t necessary for
5
Of course, it doesn’t follow that I think that platonism is true, because the platonist
semantics is also consistent with fictionalism, the view that our mathematical theories
aren’t true because (a) they’re supposed to be about abstract objects, and (b) there are no
such things as abstract objects.
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of motivating or explaining the idea that there are no worlds where the rel-
evant objects do exist, i.e., no worlds where eternalism is true.
I can’t develop this argument here, but it’s deeply analogous to the argu-
ment in (A)-(C). Indeed, the argument for (B*) is more or less identical to
the argument for (B). The argument for (A*) isn’t literally identical to the
argument for (A), but it’s deeply similar. In a nutshell, the argument would
proceed by undermining the various ways in which one might try to explain
the alleged impossibility of eternalistic worlds. For instance, I would argue
that we can’t say that past and future objects are impossible for anything
like the reasons that married bachelors and non-H2O water are impossible;
and I would respond to the idea that presentism is true in all NH-worlds
because NH-worlds involve change, and (as Hinchliff (1996) has argued)
change requires presentism. But, again, I can’t run through the details of
this argument here.
If I’m right that (C*) can be motivated in essentially the same way that (C)
can, then when we put these two claims together, we get the following result:
Now, I suppose you might respond to this by pointing out that it’s possible
to construct cases where A and B are both implausible but A-or-B is not
implausible. In other words, you might worry that even if necessitarian pres-
entism and necessitarian eternalism are both implausible, it doesn’t follow
that necessitarianism is implausible. But I think it can be argued that this
worry is misplaced, that arguments of the kind I’ve been giving against
necessitarian presentism and necessitarian eternalism do undermine necessi-
tarianism. Taken together, what these arguments suggest is that if the tem-
poral-ontology debate is a substantive ontological debate, then there should
be two different possibilities here; it should be that the relevant objects (i.e.,
past and future objects) could either exist or not exist; and so it should be
that contingentism is true.
But if (C**) is true, then this gives us an argument for premise (1b),
which just says that if the temporal-ontology debate is a substantive onto-
logical debate, then necessitarianism is false. Moreover, if we combine this
(Physical) If presentism and eternalism don’t pick out two different physi-
cal possibilities—or two different ways that the physical world could be—
then they don’t pick out two different possibilities at all.
I’ll argue for this in a moment, but first, let me quickly note that when I
speak here of “physical possibilities,” I’m not speaking of things that are
physically possible (where something is physically possible iff it’s consistent
with the laws of nature, or something like that). Rather, I’m speaking of
physical states of affairs that are metaphysically possible. To appreciate the
difference between these two things, consider the following two possibilities:
(i) I weigh 10,000 pounds, and I’m still alive.
(ii) 3 is prime.
It may be that (i) is physically impossible (i.e., that it’s inconsistent with
the laws of nature), but whatever we say about this, it’s clear that (i) is a
physical possibility in the sense that I have in mind because it’s a physical
state of affairs that’s metaphysically possible. (ii), on the other hand, is
obviously physically possible in the sense that it’s not inconsistent with the
laws of nature, but it’s not a physical possibility in the sense that I have in
mind for the simple reason that the state of affairs of 3 being prime isn’t a
physical state of affairs at all.
Let me argue now for (Physical). The first point to note here is that pres-
entism and eternalism are competing theories of the nature of the physical
world. Eternalists say that the physical world is 4-dimensional, whereas
presentists say that it’s 3-dimensional; and eternalists say that past and
future objects really exist as parts of physical reality (in past and future
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regions of the 4-dimensional manifold), whereas presentists say there are no
such things. This already suggests that (Physical) is true, but we can really
drive this point home by taking note of what we would have to say if we
rejected (Physical). We would have to say that there are two different possi-
ble worlds—call them PW and EW—such that (a) PW and EW are physi-
cally identical, and (b) presentism is true in PW and eternalism is true in
EW. This seems crazy to me. What could the difference between PW and
EW possibly amount to? Given that PW and EW are physically identical,
what could it even mean to say that reality is 3-dimensional in PW and
4-dimensional in EW? This just seems incoherent. In other words, it seems
to be an analytic truth that if reality is 3-dimensional in PW and 4-dimen-
sional in EW (i.e., if past and future objects exist in EW but not PW), then
there’s a physical difference between the two worlds. But if this is right,
then (Physical) is true.
(I suppose you might think that there are certain kinds of abstract objects
that can be thought of as past and future objects. E.g., you might think
there’s an abstract object that corresponds exactly to Socrates. But no such
object would really be Socrates; moreover, it wouldn’t count as a past
object, for it wouldn’t exist in a past region of a 4-dimensional spacetime
manifold. And finally, the belief in such objects couldn’t rightly be called
eternalism; it would be a kind of platonism. At best, you could think of this
view as a kind of ersatz eternalism, and you could think of the objects in
question as ersatz past objects. When I say that the debate between presen-
tists and eternalists is a debate about the nature of the physical world, I’m
not talking about this ersatz view; I’m talking about the view that the physi-
cal world is a 4-dimensional manifold and that objects like Socrates—the
original Socrates—exist in past regions of this manifold. Given this, I think
that (Physical) is more or less obvious.)
In any event, given that (Physical) is true, we can now argue for premise
(2), i.e., for the claim that if contingentism is true, then physical-empiricism
is true. If contingentism is true, then the question of whether presentism or
eternalism is true is a contingent question about the nature of the physical
world. In this scenario, there would be two different ways that the physical
world could be, and the question would be whether the actual world has the
one nature of the other. But given this, it’s hard to see how this question
could be answered by means of an a priori philosophical argument. Presum-
ably, it could be answered only empirically. If there are two different ways
that the physical world could be here—if it could either have or not have a
fourth dimension—then in order to figure out whether it actually does have a
fourth dimension, we would need to perform some test to see whether the
extra objects really exist, i.e., whether there really are past and future objects
and events that exist along a fourth dimension. Now, we might not know
how to settle this question empirically—indeed, it may be that we could
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The cross-time-relation argument proceeds from the intuitive truth of (H) to
the conclusion that Hume must exist (because this is required for the truth
of (H)) and, hence, that eternalism must be true. Now, I actually doubt that
this argument is a priori because I think (H) is an empirical claim, but the
more important point here is that we can argue just as easily from the intui-
tive truth of (V) to the conclusion that Veruca exists and, hence, that Alpha
Centauri has planets. Let’s call this the cross-planet argument.
The cross-planet argument is obviously a bad argument. The problem is
that if the truth of (V) really requires the existence of Veruca, then before
we could have good reason to believe that (V) is literally true, we would
need to have reason to believe that Veruca exists. In fact, this argument
just seems silly—we can’t argue for a substantive claim of astronomy by
analyzing some folk sentence that seems intuitively true. This isn’t even
the right kind of argument to use. But it seems to me that the very same
points can be made about the cross-time-relation argument: First of all, if
the truth of (H) really requires the existence of Hume, then before we
could have good reason to believe (H), we would need to have reason to
believe that Hume exists. Second, it seems bizarre and wrongheaded to try
to motivate a substantive theory about the structure of physical reality by
analyzing some folk sentence that seems intuitively true to us. As before,
it seems that this isn’t even the right kind of argument to use. What’s
needed, it seems, is an empirical reason for thinking that past and future
objects are really there.
Now, of course, this is just an example—there are other philosophical
arguments for presentism and eternalism in the literature, and to really jus-
tify my position, I would need to say what’s wrong with all of them. But,
again, I think we have good reason to think that if contingentism is true,
then a priori arguments just won’t work, and if this is right, then we have
good reason to think that there must be something wrong with the various a
priori arguments in the literature.
(By the way, I’m not claiming that all contingent questions are physi-
cal-empirical questions. You might think that the abstract-object question
is a contingent question (because you might think that platonism and
nominalism are both possible), but it wouldn’t follow from this that it
was a physical-empirical question. All I’m saying is that if the temporal-
ontology question is a contingent question, then it’s a physical-empirical
question. And, again, the reason is that it’s about the nature of the physi-
cal world.)
At any rate, we now have an argument for premise (2), i.e., for the claim
that if contingentism is true, then physical-empiricism is true. And if we
combine this with the above argument for (1), we arrive at the anti-meta-
physical conclusion that either non-factualism, physical-empiricism, or trivi-
alism is true.
At any rate, this is what eternalists are trying to say, and it’s what they think
they’re saying. Of course, they could be confused about what they mean by
their own words, but that seems pretty hard to believe. Likewise, when pres-
entists like Markosian are engaged in arguing for presentism and they say
that (Dinosaur) is false, it seems that they’re doing more than just making
the trivial zoological point that dinosaurs don’t exist in the 21st Century. It
seems that they’re also saying that it’s not the case that dinosaurs exist in a
past or future region of a 4-dimensional spatiotemporal block. In other
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words, they seem to be saying that (O-Dinosaur) is false. At any rate, this is
what they’re trying to say, and it’s what they think they’re saying.
Given all this, the first point I want to make against trivialist views of
the temporal-ontology debate is that they involve implausible interpretations
of the assertions of presentists and eternalists. When presentists and eternal-
ists are engaged in the temporal-ontology debate and they utter sentences
like (Dinosaur), or the negations of these sentences, they don’t seem to be
speaking a P-language or an E-language; on the contrary, they seem to be
speaking an O-language, where an O-language is a language in which
(Dinosaur) is essentially equivalent to (O-Dinosaur). But if these people are
speaking an O-language, then their assertions and denials of sentences like
(Dinosaur) aren’t trivial claims of zoology; on the contrary, they’re contro-
versial ontological claims about whether physical reality has a 4th dimen-
sion. And if this is true, then it would seem that trivialism is false.
You might object here by claiming that O-languages are hopelessly con-
fused, or imprecise, or some such thing; for you might think that talk of
dinosaurs existing in a past region of a 4-dimensional spatiotemporal block
is confused, or imprecise, or factually empty, or whatever. I’m actually par-
tial to this idea, but it doesn’t undermine the argument I’m giving here
against trivialism. For even if O-languages are confused (or imprecise or
whatever), it doesn’t follow that serious metaphysicians who are engaged in
the temporal-ontology debate aren’t speaking an O-language; for it could be
that their language is confused (or imprecise or whatever). (I’ll say more
about this possibility in section 6.2; we’ll see there that if the language of
presentists and eternalists is imprecise in a certain way—if sentences assert-
ing the truth of eternalism (or presentism) are so imprecise that they lack
truth conditions—then this gives us reason to endorse non-factualism.)
The second point I want to make against trivialist views of the temporal-
ontology debate is that (a) they’re based on analyses of the meanings of cer-
tain sentences, and (b) nothing metaphysically interesting follows from such
analyses—in particular, nothing follows about whether physical reality is
3-dimensional or 4-dimensional. Suppose, for instance, that trivialist eternal-
ists are right that the sentence (Dinosaur) is synonymous with ‘Dinosaurs
did exist, or do exist, or will exist’. If this were right, then (Dinosaur)
would be obviously true. But it wouldn’t follow that eternalism is obviously
true; indeed, it wouldn’t even follow that eternalism is true, because it
wouldn’t follow that reality is a 4-dimensional block in which past and
future objects really exist. Likewise, if trivialist presentists were right that
(Dinosaur) is synonymous with ‘Dinosaurs exist at the present time’, then
(Dinosaur) would be obviously false; but it wouldn’t follow that presentism
is true, because it wouldn’t follow that reality isn’t a 4-dimensional block.
So I don’t think that trivialist views of the temporal-ontology debate are
plausible. The semantic theories that these views are based on seem false, and
(#) We don’t have a genuine physical picture of the two different possibili-
ties here; i.e., we don’t have a picture of the physical difference between
presentist worlds and eternalist worlds.
6
For other arguments against views of this kind, see, e.g., Sider (2006), Eklund (2008),
and Bennett (2009).
24 MARK BALAGUER
As a first step toward arriving at an argument for this claim, let’s imagine that
there are two different possible worlds, P-world and E-world, that have the
following two traits: first, P-world and E-world are historically identical (i.e.,
they have the same history, or the same progression of events); and second,
P-world is an evolving 3-dimensional block, so that at any moment in P-world
only present objects exist, whereas E-world is a 4-dimensional block, and all
of the various objects and events from the whole history of the word exist in
different temporal regions of that block. Question: Do we understand what
the difference between P-world and E-world really amounts to? It might seem
that we do. For we can say that unlike P-world, E-world is a 4-dimensional
block, and so on. But it’s not clear what this means. What does it mean to say
that dinosaurs exist in an eternalistic way, or that the Battle of Hastings is hap-
pening in an eternalistic way? No one thinks that the Battle of Hastings is
happening in 2014. And we all think that it did happen in 1066. Eternalists
want to say (in 2014) that 1066 exists in an eternalistic way; but again, it’s
not clear what this really means. It’s not clear what the physical world needs
to be like in order for it to be the case that 1066 exists in an eternalistic way.
One way to get at my worry here is to ask what presentists and eternalists
are really disagreeing about. They agree that (a) the Battle of Hastings
occurred in 1066, and (b) it’s not occurring right now, in 2014. So if their
dispute is factual, then they must be disagreeing about whether some further
fact obtains. Eternalists say that this further fact does obtain, and presentists
say that it doesn’t. But I don’t know what the alleged further fact is supposed
to be. It’s not just that I don’t know how to verify whether this fact obtains;
it’s that I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. I don’t know what worldly
condition is being specified such that if it obtains, then eternalism is true, and
if it doesn’t, then presentism is true. All we really have here are words; we’re
told, for instance, that in order for eternalism to be true, it needs to be the
case that “reality is a 4-dimensional block” and that “dinosaurs exist in an
eternalistic way.” But I don’t know what this amounts to. I don’t know what
the world needs to be like in order to count as a world in which physical real-
ity is 4-dimensional. I know what it means to say that dinosaurs used to
exist, but I don’t know what’s needed for it to also be the case—i.e., for
there to be a further fact that makes it the case—that dinosaurs exist in a past
region of spacetime. And I don’t think anyone else does either.
(By the way, I’m not suggesting here that we can’t construct mathemati-
cal models of presentist worlds and eternalist worlds. Indeed, I think it’s
obvious that we can; we can construct one model in which the physical
world is 3-dimensional and another in which it’s 4-dimensional. But the
problem is that we don’t know whether these two models pick out two dif-
ferent physical possibilities.)
So all of this leads me to think that (#) is true: we don’t have a genuine
physical picture of the two different possibilities here, i.e., of presentist
26 MARK BALAGUER
conditions, then they don’t have truth values, and if this is right, then non-
factualism is true, i.e., there’s no fact of the matter whether presentism or
eternalism is true.
So, again, if (2-possibilities) is false, then we should endorse non-factual-
ism. Moreover, it’s entirely obvious that if (2-possibilities) is true, then con-
tingentism is true, and as we’ve already seen, if contingentism is true, then
physical-empiricism is true. Thus, it seems to me that our question here—
the question of whether we should endorse physical-empiricism or non-
factualism—boils down to the question of whether (2-possibilities) is true;
i.e., it boils down to whether presentists and eternalists have succeeded in
picking out two different physical possibilities, or two different ways that
the physical world could be. I won’t take a stand here on this question, but,
again, given (#)—given that we don’t have a physical picture of the two
different possibilities—we ought to take non-factualism very seriously. On
the other hand, it certainly doesn’t follow from our inability to picture the
two possibilities that they don’t exist. After all, we can’t picture two differ-
ent physical possibilities in connection with sentences like ‘Electron e is in
a superposition state with respect to spin in direction d’, but it doesn’t fol-
low from this that there aren’t two different physical possibilities here.
In the end, I’m not sure how to decide whether (2-possibilities) is true,
but it seems to me that this is at least partially a question for physicists.
I say “partially” because it’s not really an empirical question. But insofar as
the question is whether presentism and eternalism pick out distinct physical
possibilities, it seems that if nothing else, the question should be answered
in consultation with physicists.
References
Balaguer, M. (1998) Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
(MSa) “Why The Debate Over Composition is Factually Empty (Or
Why There’s No Fact of the Matter Whether Anything Exists).”
(MSb) “How to Make Presentism Consistent with Special Relativity.”
Bennett, K. (2009) “Composition, Colocation, and Metaontology,” in D.
Chalmers, D. Manley, and R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 38–76.
Cameron, R. (2007) “The Contingency of Composition,” Philosophical
Studies 136: 99–121.
Carnap, R. (1950) “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology,” Revue
Internationale de Philosophie 4: 20–40.
Eklund, M. (2008) “The Picture of Reality as an Amorphous Lump,” in T.
Sider, J. Hawthorne, and D. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates
in Metaphysics, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 382–96.
28 MARK BALAGUER