Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- When Time Gets Off Track
- Burbury's Last Case: The Mystery of the Entropic Arrow
- Zeno's Arrow and the Significance of the Present
- Presentism, Ontology and Temporal Experience
- A Presentist's Refutation of Mellor's McTaggart
- Time and Degrees of Existence: A Theory of ‘Degree Presentism’
- McTaggart and the Truth about Time
- On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of Passage
- Time Travel and Modern Physics
- Freedom from the Inside Out
- On Stages, Worms and Relativity
- On Becoming, Cosmic Time and Rotating Universes
- How Relativity Contradicts Presentism
- Can Physics Coherently Deny the Reality of Time?
- Rememberances, Mementos, and Time-Capsules
Presentism, Ontology and Temporal Experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- When Time Gets Off Track
- Burbury's Last Case: The Mystery of the Entropic Arrow
- Zeno's Arrow and the Significance of the Present
- Presentism, Ontology and Temporal Experience
- A Presentist's Refutation of Mellor's McTaggart
- Time and Degrees of Existence: A Theory of ‘Degree Presentism’
- McTaggart and the Truth about Time
- On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of Passage
- Time Travel and Modern Physics
- Freedom from the Inside Out
- On Stages, Worms and Relativity
- On Becoming, Cosmic Time and Rotating Universes
- How Relativity Contradicts Presentism
- Can Physics Coherently Deny the Reality of Time?
- Rememberances, Mementos, and Time-Capsules
Summary
In a recent article, ‘Tensed Time and Our Differential Experience of the Past and Future,’ William Lane Craig (1999a) attempts to resuscitate A. N. Prior's (1959) ‘Thank Goodness’ argument against the B-theory by combining it with Plantinga's (1983) views about basic beliefs. In essence Craig's view is that since there is a universal experience and belief in the objectivity of tense and the reality of becoming, (that he identifies with ‘the presentist metaphysic’) ‘this belief constitutes an intrinsic defeater-defeater which overwhelms the objections brought against it.’ (1999a, 519) An intrinsic defeater-defeater is a belief that enjoys such warrant for us that it simply overwhelms the defeaters brought against it without specifically rebutting or undercutting them. Thus, Craig claims that an effete philosophical argument like McTaggart's paradox is nothing more than ‘an engaging and recalcitrant brain teaser whose conclusion nobody really takes seriously.’ (1999a, 532) It is difficult to reconcile this statement with Craig's own writings elsewhere. For Craig has vigorously argued in at least two other articles that ‘hybrid A-B theorists like McCall, Schlesinger, and Smith [who give ontological status to both A-properties and B-relations] are in deep trouble’ (1998, 127) since they are all effectively refuted by McTaggart's Paradox (cf. Craig 1997). It is not Craig's inconsistency regarding the significance of McTaggart conundrum that I want to draw attention to, however. Rather I wish to raise a different issue.
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- Time, Reality and Experience , pp. 73 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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