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27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / f. Eternalism

[all times exist together, without division into parts]

8 ideas
Eternity coexists with passing time, as the centre of a circle coexists with its circumference [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: The centre of a circle is directly opposite any designated point on the circumference. In this way, whatever is in any part of time coexists with what is eternal as being present to it even though past or future with respect to another part of time.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles [1268], I.66), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 2 c
     A reaction: A nice example of a really cool analogy which almost gets you to accept something which is actually completely incomprehensible.
Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real [Dummett]
     Full Idea: Maybe both the past and the future are real, determined by our current temporal perspective. Past is then events capable of having a causal influence upon events near us, and future is events we can affect, but from which we receive no information.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5)
     A reaction: This is the Four-Dimensional view, which is opposed to Presentism. Might immediate unease is that it gives encouragement to fortune-tellers, whom I have always dismissed with 'You can't see the future, because it doesn't exist'.
The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider]
     Full Idea: The spotlight theorist accepts the block universe, but also something in addition: a joint-carving monadic property of presentness, which is possessed by just one moment of time, and which 'moves', to be possessed by later and later times.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9)
     A reaction: This seems better than the merely detached eternalist view, which seems to ignore the key phenomenon. I just can't comprehend any theory which makes the future as real as the past.
Eternalism says all times are equally real, and future and past objects and properties are real [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Eternalism says all times are equally real. Objects existing at past times and objects existing at future times are just as real as objects existing at the present. Properties had at past and future times are as much properties as those at the present.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Goodbye Growing Block [2006], 1)
     A reaction: He adds that the present is therefore 'subjective', resulting from one's perspective. Why would eternalists reject their subjective experiences of time, unless they reject all their other subjective experiences as well?
'Eternalism' is the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities [Crisp,TM]
     Full Idea: I use the term Eternalism for the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities. (It is sometimes used for the view that all propositions have their truth-value eternally - it is always true or never true).
     From: Thomas M. Crisp (Presentism [2003], Intro n.1)
     A reaction: 'Eternalism' strikes me as an excellent word for the former meaning, so I shall promote that, and quietly forget the second one. The idea that the future exists has always stuck in my craw, and the belief that Napoleon still exists strikes me as a weird.
The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron]
     Full Idea: What seems so wrong about the 'moving spotlight' theory is that here one time is privileged, but all the times are on a par ontologically.
     From: Ross P. Cameron (On the Source of Necessity [2010], 4)
     A reaction: The whole thing is baffling, but this looks like a good point. All our intuitions make presentism (there's only the present) look like a better theory than the moving spotlight (that the present is just 'special').
If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter]
     Full Idea: Any defender of the symmetry of time will have to provide some explanation of the obstinate appearance that the future is very different from the past.
     From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.8)
     A reaction: Presumably you have to say that it is all there, but only one end of the time spectrum is revealed to us, namely the past. But how do we get this uniquely lopsided view? Being an ominiscient god is more obvious than being a lopsided human.
The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller]
     Full Idea: The standard block universe theory combines EntityEverywhenism with the B-theory of time.
     From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.4)
     A reaction: This is also known as 'eternalism'. These authors emphasise that there is an ontological commitment to the objects of past and future in eternalism, as well as the B-series view of the moments of time.