Tom: Craig is a weirdo! He affirms the B-theory of time and LFW.

Alan: Actually, Craig is a staunch defender of the A-theory of time and of presentism, which we would agree with. But he doesn't see that presentism coupled with correspondence requires that anything that is true must be so in virtue of something that presently obtains. In terms of ontology he's a presentist, but in terms of semantics he interprets the correspondence theory of truth in a manner fit for an eternalist (B-theorist, four-dimensionalist).

Tom: Everything is “will” or “will not” for Craig. In that sense he’s adopts a SFV semantics. But he believes about the ontological status of the future all the things any open theist believes about the future. So Alan must be classifying Craig as a SFV proponent because Craig describes the future entirely in terms of “will” and “will not.”

Alan: Yeah, that's how I see it. Molinism is a kind of halfway house between theological determinism and open theism. It is an inherently unstable position, I believe, which maintains its status by playing a subtle semantic/ontological shell game. In terms of how I define the OFV/SFV distinction, Craig qualifies as SFV b/c he does think that the future is logically (but not ontologically--go figure!) set and therefore cannot be changed.

JET: Our beef with Craig is the w/r/t the incompatibility thesis. Craig thinks that contingency is compatible with the SFV because (I've said this before) . . . he has a different notion of "contingency" than we do.

Alan: You're right, JET, that the debate between us and Craig centers on the incompatibility thesis. We affirm it, he denies it--for him "will" and "might not" are compatible. I'm not quite sure what you mean by a different notion of "contingency", though. Perhaps you can unpack that idea a bit. Seems to me the issue is not that he has a different notion of contingency that us--we would all agree, I think, that the contingent and the necessary are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive categories. In my view the problem is his understanding of "will" and "will not". For Craig, "will" is completely neutral with respect to either necessity or contingency. We, on the other hand, think that when used in its proper or strict sense "will" implies necessity.

Tom: Since Molinists really DO try to ride the fence (affirming that God determines all that happens by picking a specific world from all the possible worlds to create), they do and don't fit both SFV and OFV. Let's NOT try to fit Molinists in!

Alan: Dialectically speaking, I don't know how we can avoid fitting Molinists in somewhere. Their position constitutes the most developed and (seemingly) plausible mediating position between theological determinism and open theism. Accordingly, we have to engage with Molinism if we hope to persuade people that it is untenable. And if we hope to move people in the direction of open theism, then we have to find some way of situating open theism and Molinism in relation to what each affirms and denies. One could, I suppose, define the SFV/OFV distinction in a way that would have Molinists falling on the OFV side, but I think that would be less dialectically useful because we want to highlight the differences between our positions.

Tom: Hey Alan, how do you think Craig will react to our classifying him as a proponent of the SFV?

Alan: Given how I've defined the SFV/OFV distinction, I think he will agree that Molinism is SFV. When I presented a short version of this paper at the EPS conference last November there were a number of Molinists present and none of them raised any objections to the SFV/OFV distinction or to the classification of Molinism as SFV.

Regards,

Alan

HB: As Alan points out, the problem is that many past events leave no trace in the present at all. Suppose a kid in Egypt wrote his name in the sand 3,000 years ago. It seems unlikely that if that happened, the present would be any different to what it is if it didn't. Yet we can still speak of the event happening or not happening.

Tom: Well, I think his scribbling his name in the sand 3,000 years ago did ‘shape’ reality and did leave its own unique imprint in present reality, even if the only discernible imprint is “God’s memories.” I’d have difficulty providing an atheistic account of the truth value of past-tense statements (as an adherent of ‘correspondence’ and ‘bivalence’!). But if an omniscient God is factored in, then there can never be an actual state of affairs that does NOT leave some lasting imprint (if not in the physical order, then in God’s knowledge/memories).

HB: Very bold! [Alan’s comment on God’s memories] This move reminds me of one of Berkeley's answers to the question of, if "to be is to be perceived", then what happens when nobody is perceiving something? Does it cease to exist? No, said Berkeley, because God keeps on perceiving it. The trouble I have with this kind of answer is that it just seems counter-intuitive to ground the truth value of past statements in God's memory. Surely whether something happened or not is an objective function of whether it really truly, happened or not!

Tom: I hope this is the case as well, and the closest we can get to this is an event’s “having happened.” Much hunch is you’ll agree that it’s equally intuitive to assume that events which leave no physical evidence (grave sites, existing people, books authored) do not for that reason alone disappear from history so that it becomes truth that they never happened.

It just may be that an argument can be mustered for believing there are no events that do not leave some real imprint, some trail, including Adam’s sneezing, a boy scribbling in the Egyptian sand, and single glass of ocean water removed from the ocean. These do leave real imprints in the physical structure of the universe if only at a quantum level that's entirely out of reach for us today. Every atom touches SOME other atom which touches SOME other atom which touches SOME other atom, and so on. Adam could not have sneezed without causing such a trail. So even if there was no omniscient God remember things infallibly, one could argue that the world really was uniquely affected by Adam's 347 total sneezes as opposed to a total number of 743 sneezes. Demonstrating that different today is an impossible feet, which is precisely why we know there IS a truth value to the proposition "Adam sneezed 347 times during his life." Even though we cannot know this truth value, we know the proposition IS either true or false.

HB: The fact that God remembers everything sort of provides a useful escape mechanism, but it doesn't seem to me to be entirely satisfying.

Tom: A theist either agree or disagrees that God has infallible membories. If he does, then it can’t be an escape mechanism to say such divine knowledge factors into this argument as well (though I do think there are real imprints left in the shape of present reality by insignificant past events). Divine knowledge will seem like an escape mechanism for atheists for answering this question, but so does our whole belief in God appear to atheists.

HB: Suppose, hypothetically, that God chose not to continue to remember an event X which occurred: would it then become the case that the statement "X occurred" now is false, although it was true up until God decided to forget it? There seems to be something wrong here.

Tom: There is. The first is the assumption that an omniscient God can, logically speaking, forget past events. The second regards the supposed “false” statement? What would ground THAT proposition. Just because God forgot, why would the proposition become false? One would think it would become neither true nor false if the only grounds of its truth value were removed from the equation.

HB: But I don't have any better solution. Sorry! I went to a conference late last year called "The origins of temporal experience", and there were a few presentists there. They didn't seem to have a good answer either. But there were some who occupied an intermediate position between presentism and eternalism, who held that the present *and the past* exist, but the future does not. That was dubbed "the growing saussage" view of reality, because of graphs people were drawing!

Tom: I like bacon myself.

Peace,

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/2/2005 7:54:09 AM (GMT-6)

Tom,

I’m sorry to keep jumping in, HB. You originally posed your question to Alan. I just love this stuff!

HB: Yeah, I guess it's possible. But even if you somehow could prove that everything in the past leaves some imprint, would that just be a contingent fact about the world as it is, or would you be claiming that necessarily everything in the past leaves some imprint, i.e. that in all possible worlds everything in the past leaves an imprint in all subsequent states of affairs?

Tom: I’d sure like to claim that every event necessarily makes SOME impact to the world, necessarily contributes, in the flow of history, what it uniquely is to what becomes the unique history of our world. Of course, the history of our world is ‘logically’ contingent (it could have been different) though ‘historically’ necessary (it can’t now be other than it is).

HB: Therein lies the problem [about God’s memories]! Surely whether something happened or not is just a fact for which the truth value cannot be altered, even by God forgetting something? If the cat is sitting on the mat, then the truth value of "the cat is sitting on the mat" is true. There is no way that God can make it false. As long as the cat is sitting on the mat, there is absolutely nothing God can do to make "the cat is sitting on the mat" false. So why should the truth value of past statements be alterable by God? It just is too counter-intuitive. Surely if God forgot that the thing in question happened, the truth would be "the thing in question happened but God forgot about it", not "the thing in question no longer happened". If it happened, it happened, and that's that!

Tom: True. I was only commenting on the view that God’s memories alone account for the truth-value of past-tense props. I tend to think that there is something outside of God’s own memories that accounts for the truth value of such props.

HB: OK, so let me play the Devil's advocate and put forward the case for the alternative solution for open theists: that both the present AND the past exist, but the future does not. In other words, this theory is identical to presentism so far as the future is concerned. The future is open, with mights and might nots as well as will and will nots. But it differs from presentism with regard to the past. According to this theory, one of the leading advocates of which is Prof. Peter Forrest (whom I heard at the conference I went to), the truth of past-tensed statements is a function of the fact that they directly correspond to past states of affairs, which continue to exist. Their truth is not dependent on present states of affairs. In this regard, then, past-tensed statements are different to future-tensed statements.

Tom: “Past states of affairs which continue to exist” sounds very much like what Alan and I are arguing, like standard presentism. In what sense do past events “continue to exist”? It’s not now true, is it, that my grandmother is giving birth to my father, is it? Obviously not. So if past events DO continue to exist, they exist NOW in some other sense, and that’s presentism. But why say they exist now (by virtue of their ‘continuing to exist’) and then deny that anything presently grounds the truth-value of past-tense props? Why cannot they be grounded in that which DOES continue to exist/obtain?

But if the past does exist (in this view Forrest proposes) then all the better for open theism. We have more than one good way to account for ourselves!

HB: Thirdly, there is the causal problem. According to standard versions of causation, past events cause present events. But it seems hard to imagine how something that does not exist could affect anything that does exist. If past events are to continue to exercise causal efficacy on the present, then surely they must have reality.

Tom: In claiming the past does not exist, Presentists don’t, I don’t think, mean to cut all causal links between the two. The past DOES cause things today. We know past events can and do cause things now. Somebody reads a history book and becomes a Communist. Somebody reads the Gospel and becomes a Christian. The Jews cross the Red Sea and the story gets recorded. We read about it and believe. Sure, the past can influence the present, but that doesn’t mean the past exists/obtains in the same sense the present does, or that they are both on the same metaphysical footing.

Somebody murders my wife. A year later when reflecting on the event I plot and murder that person. Presentists don’t deny that my wife’s murder “caused” me to take action a year later, but this causation can be accounted for without supposing that the past exists/obtains in the sense that my wife (her actual self) is in a continually obtaining state of being murdered, that her pain and suffering are unending, so that the present tense propositon "My wife is now being murdered" is ALSO true, which is what would be the case if the past DID exist on equal footing with the present. For a brief moment—where past meets future—the present, and the present alone, DOES exist/obtain in this “actual” way, a way past events cannot be said to exist/obtain. But the past is part of what shapes, or determines, what ends up happening at each present moment. What would obtain today, assuming this horrible analogy I came up with, is the state of affairs “My wife’s having been murdered.” It is THIS sense in which I’d agree with Forrest that “past events continue to exist today,” but presentism affirms this. I can't think of any other sense in which past events can be said to "continue to exist."

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/3/2005 1:26:57 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 2/4/2005 8:48:02 AM (GMT-6)

Albert! You sneaky Australian you.

Albert: No, but it is now true that your grandmother gave birth to your father, and why is that statement true? Perhaps because your grandmother giving birth to your father is something which still is in some sense, though it exists in the past.

Tom: That sounds precisely like what a presentist would say about the manner in which the past contributes to determining what the present is.

Albert: If I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying essentially the same thing as Alan…

Tom: Yeah, but since I keep saying it first, I think he seems to be saying essentially the same thing as I am. Ha ha. I’ve found agreeing with Alan is a safe thing to do. When I disagree with Alan head on I usually spend a week in bed recovering. But I’ve actually managed to change his mind on a very few things, so it was worth getting beaten up for it.

Alan: …that past causes do not operate "at a distance" but only through a continuous chain of causation up to the present. So A at t=x causes B at t=x+1 causes C at t=x+2 causes D at t=x+3. There are no gaps, and it is impossible for A at t=x to causally influence D at t=x+3 unless there are the intervening states of affairs in a continuous chain of causation.

Tom: More or less. I can’t think of an example that would prove otherwise. The only example I can think of that comes close would be something like reading the handwritten letters of somebody not alive today and having their words “cause” some change of mind in me. There’s temporal distance and causation. But unfortunately there’s physical continuity (the physical nature of the preservation involved in keeping the letters or recordings, etc.). The original letters survive to the present and that’s where I read them. But this is really just a long link of causation, the letters being physically preserved over time for others to read. This boils down to presentism.

Albert: In other words, if a past-tensed statement concerns an event that occurred at t=T-3, where t=T is the present time, then that statement is true if and only if when t was T-3, the state of affairs in question obtained.

Tom: Well, one more thing. The “if and only if” condition has to obtain at t=T, the present moment, for the past-tense proposition to be true at the moment it’s uttered. It now has to be true that when t was T-3 the state of affairs in question, say state of affairs A, obtained. But that involves the state of affairs A’s having obtained obtaining presently.

Albert: That seems to me to be the natural understanding of how a past-tensed statement gets its truth value. There is no need to refer to God's memory or present states of affairs or whatever. Of course, if we are faced with the epistemological problem of how do we know the thing in question occurred, then we might need to refer to God's memory or present states of affairs. But that doesn't mean that is how the truth value of the statement is determined.

Tom: I see your point. You’re suggesting that even IF A’s having obtained is a present state of affairs, it’s STILL the case that something grounds THIS state of affairs, something is responsible for bring it into existence. And if we follow the chain of causation back we get to the event A itself, that which grounds the chain of causation that beings at T-3 and the state of affairs A’s having obtained obtaining at T=present. I tend to agree that the event A itself, obtaining at T-3, is primary in that it grounds the chain of causation that brings about the state of affairs A’s having obtained at T=present.

Alan, can this be unpacked better (from the presentist’s point of view)? I think the pastNESS, that THATness, of a past event, the primary grounding event (for all subsequent “…having obtained” states of affairs) is what Albert is driving at. If the event itself grounds the rest, then why should presentists stop with the presently obtaining A’s having obtained in saying what at T grounds the past-tense “A obtained at T-3”? Isn’t there obviously something deeper (older) that grounds A’s having obtained? My response would be, where would one stop? In a sense, then, God’s choice to create at all is the GROUNDING event for the truth value of ALL propositions expressing logically contingent states of affairs (past, present, and future). So presentism (in my view) doesn’t deny that past events ground the chain of causation that brings about the presently obtaining states of affairs that ground past-tense props. It’s just that once the very REAL nature of these presently obtaining states of affairs is recognized, and the fact that the chain can, if one wishes, be followed back to God’s choice to create, it makes senses to ground past-tense props in those states of affairs presently obtaining (but which, yes, obtained because the event posited obtained at all—and because God decided to create at all). The past isn’t ignored or thought NOT to be responsible for present states of affairs, it’s just that the states of affairs they give rise to are very real presently obtaining states of affairs.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/4/2005 3:57:55 PM (GMT-6)

Albert: There's where I think the problem lies. A past event occurred because it obtained in the past, not now. Now has nothing to do with it.

Tom: Now has everything to do with the “past”-tense proposition. It’s THIS proposition, spoken now, that we’re attempting to “ground.”

Albert: Let me put it this way. If the truth value of past-tensed statements is grounded in present states of affairs, then an alteration in present states of affairs could change the truth value of past-tensed statements, i.e., change the past. But I think it is logically impossible to change the past, no matter what you do to the present.

Tom: I think it’s equally logically impossible to change what is now obtaining with respect to past-tense propositions. In a sense, the presently obtaining state of affairs we’re posting obtains BECAUSE of an unchanging past. So there’s nothing one can do in the present to change THIS presently obtaining state of affairs. In other words, some of the present cannot be changed or affected in this way. More precisely, whatever the present is in view of the past cannot be changed. We can’t even change the future in this respect. The future is determined in so far as every presently true past-tense proposition positing historical events “will” be true in the future. And this portion of the future is as impossible to change as is the past. So I’m agreeing with you in a sense. We need to do more work to explain the relation between the past and that which grounds past-tense props. A’s having obtained is a presently obtaining state of affairs, but even this state of affairs is itself grounded in the past event itself (that is, it obtains only because A obtained). Alan is suggesting that A’s having obtained presently obtaining is enough to ground the proposition “A obtained.” You want to emphasize that there’s something else that grounds, or is responsible for, the state of affairs A’s having obtained, so why not claim that that which is responsible for the state of affairs A’s having obtained is what grounds the past-tense “A obtained”?

 
Alllaaaaaan!

Tom

Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 2/6/2005 7:11:26 AM (GMT-6)

Oh what the heck! Let me muddy the waters some more.

Herb: A proposition does not exist and is "timeless", although it may (and usually does) refer to or point to a state of affairs at a particular time. I think you're confusing the statement of the proposition, which is spoken now, with the proposition itself. Let me quote from Alan's article, where he rightly distinguishes statements from propositions: First, by a ‘statement’ we mean a declarative sentence, one used to declare, state, affirm, claim, or assert that something is the case. Like all sentences, a statement is a linguistic entity composed of signs, such as markings, sounds, or gestures. It is a semiotic vehicle for conveying an assertion. Second, by a ‘proposition’ we mean an assertoric unit of meaning. In asserting that something is the case a statement expresses a proposition. The proposition expressed is the meaning of the statement.

Tom: Fine, I don’t have a problem with this. I wasn’t being so exact. Still, “assertoric units of meanings” are only examinable by us through the statements that express them, and truth values attach to the statements, not the units of meaning standing alone without the statements. So OK, the proposition is the meaning of a statement asserting some claim.

Herb: A statement will exist at a given point in time. However, the "assertoric unit of meaning" is not something which exists as such at all.

Tom: Alan is equating “propositions” with “assertoric units of meaning.” I’m fine with this. But if “assertoric units of meaning” don’t exist, then neither can what they are logically equivalent to (viz., propositions) exist. So all I’m hearing you say is “meaning doesn’t exist,” which if true would make our having this conversation impossible. If you mean propositional “meaning” doesn’t exist apart from the statements employed to express those propositions, then fine.

Herb: Anyway, to get back to the point, ‘now’ has nothing to do with the truth value of past-tensed propositions. The proposition refers to a state of affairs at some past time. It is whether that state of affairs obtained or not at the past time in question that gives the proposition its truth value. The fact that we are making the statement now, does not mean that now has anything to do with its truth-value. I can't see that you've presented any actual argument to that effect, anyway.

Tom: To just say that “now has nothing to do with the truth value of past-tense propositions” is to assume the point of debate. Your claim in effect just dismisses presentism, which claims that ‘now’ does have something to do with propositional truth-grounds. My point is that past-tense propositions can’t exist or be asserted apart from some “now” subsequent to the past moment in time to which the statement refers. “Now” provides the necessary context in which propositions of all tenses are asserted at all and from which the whole question of ‘grounding’ arises. So “now” does seem to have a good deal to do with propositions (their assertion and meaning). It’s past-tense propositions you’re asking about, and the notion of asserting a past-tense propositions only makes sense from the present point of view, i.e., “now.”

Humphrey: Tom said “I think it’s equally logically impossible to change what is now obtaining with respect to past-tense propositions.” Maybe (although that seems to put some strong restrictions on God's omnipotence - couldn't he just change the present in some way to erase or alter the impact of the past?

Tom: I don’t see what restriction this places on omnipotence. To say God “changes the present” is to say he makes it true that what is now obtaining is not in fact now obtaining, which is self-contradictory.

Humphrey: But let's take as given your assertion that its logically impossible to change what is now obtaining with respect to the past.

Tom: All I’m saying is that God cannot act in the present to change what defines THAT present moment. It “is” what it is. By the time God acts in response to the present moment, the moment is gone.

Humphrey: Is that enough to ground past-tensed statements? I think it is epistemologically. That is, if the past is irreversably imprinted on the present, then we could always determine the truth of past-tensed statements by examining the present. But I don't think that's the same thing as the grounds for a truth-value. Let me expand a bit.   Suppose that there is a logically necessary link between a Martian taking a bath, and a green light going on in my room. Whenever the Martian takes a bath, the green light goes on in my room, and there is no possibility of things being otherwise, for some inscrutable reason. Now since I don't live on Mars, and have no access to information from there, I have no way of knowing directly if the Martian (let's call him Marvin) is taking a bath or not. However, if I have figured out the necessary link between Marvin's bath and my green light, then I could be certain, absolutely certain, if the green light was on, that Marvin was taking a bath. In other words, I could always evaluate the truth value of the statement "Marvin is taking a bath" by looking at the green light to see whether or not it was on.

Does that mean, though, that the truth value of the statement "Marvin is taking a bath" is grounded in whether the green light is on or not? I think not. The truth-value of the statement is grounded in what it corresponds to: Marvin taking a bath. The green light has absolutely nothing to do with the grounding of the truth-value for the statement, even though it can infallibly tell us whether the statement is true or false.

Tom: Besides the fact that your example concerns presently obtaining states of affairs (“Marvin IS taking a bath”), I perfectly understand you. This is my interest in presentism also. And while there is surely work that presentists have to do here, it seems just as sure that the answer is not found in supposing the past really does exist somewhere apart from both its impact in shaping the present (including God’s memories). This is the problem. If you want to say the past really exists somewhere as the grounds of past-tense statements presently spoken AND that this past, these grounds, exists absolutely apart from the present state of reality (which you do when you claim “now” has nothing to do with past-tense propositions and isn’t the grounds of past-tense propositions), then where or when would you suggest the past exists (remember, “exists” is a present tense verb)? In the past? How’s that tell us what grounds (“grounds” the present-tense verb) the truth of past-tense propositions spoken presently? We’re asking what “grounds” (present tense verb) past-tense propositions, not what “grounded” (past-tense verb) past-tense propositions. We can’t take “now” out of the equation.

Humphrey: In other words, just proving that if X is true then Y is necessarily true, does not establish that Y being true is the grounds for X being true.

Tom: You stated this all in present-tense verbs, so I can’t figure out how this works out with respect to the past and present. So just to clarify: X = a past state of affairs. Y = some present state of affairs Y obtains if and only if X first obtains. Right? And we’re saying that “If and only if Y now obtains then X obtained” is true.

I don’t see a problem here, Albert. This doesn’t mean Y grounds the present tense “X is now obtaining” spoken when X is was obtaining. Y can’t do possibly do that. Just the opposite, X responsible for Y’s obtaining at all. Presentism doesn’t deny this. It only means Y grounds claims about X made when and only when Y obtains, not when X obtains.

OK, Alan. Take it away. Repair the damage!

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/7/2005 8:45:59 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 2/7/2005 9:07:00 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/7/2005 9:16:06 AM (GMT-6)