Heather Dyke

“Tense” is an ambiguous term. It refers to a grammatical feature of natural languages, and also to a disputed metaphysical feature of temporal reality. The chapter examines both the linguistic and the metaphysical issue, and considers the relation between them. Then, it presents and evaluates some linguistic, metaphysical and evolutionary arguments that the inference from language to metaphysics is not justified. The metaphysical debate is concerned with whether or not tense exists in reality. The linguistic issues are interesting, and worthy of study in their own right, but care should be taken not to run them together with the metaphysical issues. Finally, the chapter explores the importance of tensed belief and notion of ‘taking tense seriously’, which has been much discussed in the philosophical literature, and the importance of tensed beliefs to agency and successful timely action.

This is the introduction chapter of A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, which tackles the historical development of the philosophy of time. This volume brings together experts in the various branches of the philosophy of time from around the world. Part I of this volume features essays on the philosophy of time from the pre‐Socratic period through the twentieth century. Parts II and III reflect, respectively, on the physics and metaphysics of time, and on the study of the experience of time. Together, Parts II and III address the fundamental question of contemporary time studies: distinguishing between time as it is in itself, and time as humans perceive and experience it; between the scientific and manifest images of time.

Correia and Rosenkranz (C&R) defend their Growing Block theory of time by appealing to the importance of the notion of taking tense seriously. I argue that this phrase is ambiguous, having both a linguistic and a metaphysical interpretation, but neither interpretation will give C&R what they need. On its linguistic interpretation it fails to have the metaphysical significance required to establish the truth of their theory. On its metaphysical interpretation it consists of nothing more than an assertion of their view, or at best, an acknowledgement of its merely possible truth. Finally, I consider C&R’s response to the epistemic objection to their view, according to which, if the Growing Block theory is true, we cannot know that we are located at the objective present moment. The epistemic objection thus undermines the motivation for holding the Growing Block view in the first place. C&R argue that the objection founders because it fails to take tense seriously enough. I argue that taking tense seriously cannot save their view from the epistemic objection.

Metaphysics seeks an account of fundamental reality as it is independent of any observer or point of view. As such, one problem it faces is that any such account is necessarily created by some observer from some point of view. Does this mean that metaphysics is thereby inherently impossible? Or inherently incomplete? I argue that it is possible and it can aim at completeness, but it must acknowledge the contributions made by the human perspective on reality, human cognition, and features of the conceptual and linguistic representations in which it is couched. The idea that we can discover metaphysical insights by investigating concepts and language has had a remarkably tenacious grip on the field of metaphysics. I offer a diagnosis of how this grip took hold and an argument that it should be loosened. I also propose a means of pursuing metaphysical investigation that does not rely on an enquiry into language and that can yield fruitful results.

In “Taking Taniwha seriously,” Justine Kingsbury proposes a way for taniwha pūrākau—traditional narratives about taniwha—to be taken seriously by non-Māori, which is one step towards respecting te ao Māori—the Māori world view. Taniwha are powerful water creatures who act deliberately to protect and sometimes punish humans. So characterised, there is an obvious obstacle to those who wish to respect te ao Māori but who are sceptical about the existence of supernatural entities. Kingsbury proposes a way to take taniwha discourse seriously, but not literally. I agree that her view is realist, and that it overcomes the obstacle noted above. I argue in this paper that her approach ought to be considered an instance of what I call neutral realism, and that when we characterise it this way, we can see precisely how it enables the sort of intercultural respect that she seeks.

Philosophical thinking about time is characterised by tensions between competing conceptions. Different sources of evidence yield different conclusions about it. Common sense suggests there is an objective present, and that time is dynamic. Science recognises neither feature. This Element examines McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time, which epitomises this tension, showing how it gave rise to the A-theory/B-theory debate. Each theory is in tension with either ordinary or scientific thinking, so must accommodate the competing conception. Reconciling the A-theory with science does not look promising. Prospects look better for the B-theory's attempt to accommodate ordinary thinking about time.

According to a thesis I call the linguistic assumption, the structure of language is a guide to the fundamental nature of reality. It is deployed in the metaphysical debate over the nature of time. In that debate, it is more radical than the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and should be rejected. A weak interpretation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis makes the empirical claim that speakers of different languages experience, perceive, or think about aspects of the world differently. I survey recent experimental evidence that supports this hypothesis which, I argue, gives us further reason to reject the linguistic assumption.

It is widely, if not universally, assumed by philosophers that it is impossible to justify the reliability of memory without recourse to the use of memory. This so-called “epistemic circularity” is supposed to infect all attempts to justify memory as a source of knowledge in a noncircular way. In this paper, we argue that advances in cognitive science radically upheave the traditional, folk-psychological conception of memory which epistemologists have hitherto been subjecting to analysis. With an updated view of the nature of the diverse systems typically falling under the umbrella term “memory”, it can be shown that the epistemic circularity associated with the justification of memory no longer rears its ugly head. We show that it is possible to give a noncircular justification of memory. In so doing, we believe that we have solved a perennial problem in epistemology.

Questions about truth and questions about reality are intimately connected. One can ask whether numbers exist by asking "Are there numbers?" But one can also ask what arguably amounts to the same question by asking "Is the sentence 'There are numbers' true?" Such semantic ascent implies that reality can be investigated by investigating our true sentences. This line of thought was dominant in twentieth century philosophy, but is now beginning to be called into question. In_ From Truth to Reality_, Heather Dyke brings together some of the foremost metaphysicians to examine approaches to truth, reality, and the connections between the two. This collection features new and previously unpublished material by JC Beall, Mark Colyvan, Michael Devitt, John Heil, Frank Jackson, Fred Kroon, D. H. Mellor, Luca Moretti, Alan Musgrave, Robert Nola, J. J. C. Smart, Paul Snowdon, and Daniel Stoljar.

We divide analytic metaphysics into naturalistic and non-naturalistic metaphysics. The latter we define as any philosophical theory that makes some ontological (as opposed to conceptual) claim, where that ontological claim has no observable consequences. We discuss further features of non-naturalistic metaphysics, including its methodology of appealing to intuition, and we explain the way in which we take it to be discontinuous with science. We outline and criticize Ladyman and Ross's 2007 epistemic argument against non-naturalistic metaphysics. We then present our own argument against it. We set out various ways in which intellectual endeavours can be of value, and we argue that, in so far as it claims to be an ontological enterprise, non-naturalistic metaphysics cannot be justified according to the same standards as science or naturalistic metaphysics. The lack of observable consequences explains why non-naturalistic metaphysics has, in general, failed to make progress, beyond increasing the standards of clarity and precision in expressing its theories. We end with a series of objections and replies

The debate about the reality of tense descends from an argument of McTaggart's,whichwas designed to prove the unreality of time.The argument has two constituent theses: firstly that time is intrinsically tensed, and secondly, that the notion of tense is inherently self-contradictory. If both of these theses are true, it follows that time does not exist. The debate that has emerged from this argument centres around the truth or falsity of each of these theses. A-theorists accept the first and reject the second thesis, drawing the conclusion that, since there is no contradiction in the notion of tense, time exists and is intrinsically tensed. B-theorists accept the second and reject the first thesis, concluding that the notion of tense is inherently self-contradictory, but since time is not intrinsically tensed, time exists and is tenseless. I think the argument against tense is sound, but time is not intrinsically tensed, so time exists and is tenseless. However, this argument, which has come to be known as McTaggart's paradox, is obscure, which has tended to blunt its force. In this paper I recast McTaggart's paradox in my own terms. The notion of tense has two components: an observer-independent distinction between past, present and future, and a flow of time. Totake tense seriously is to suppose that these two features of tense are also features of time. I argue that they are inherently incompatible with each other, generating a contradiction at the heart of the notion of tense, thus proving that tense is unreal. The contradiction arises no matter how one construes the notion of tense, and I illustrate this by revealing essentially the same contradiction in a number of different accounts of tensed time.

A common approach in the Philosophy of Time, particularly in enquiry into the metaphysical nature of time, has been to examine various aspects of the nature of human temporal experience, and ask what, if anything, can be discerned from this about the nature of time itself. Many human traits have explanations that reside in facts about our evolutionary history. We ask whether features of human temporal experience might admit of such evolutionary explanations. We then consider the implications of any proposed evolutionary explanations for the veridicality of these experiences, and for the truth-value of folk beliefs about time that are based on them.

It sometimes happens that advances in one area of philosophy can be applied to a quite different area of philosophy, and that the result is an unexpected significant advance. I think that this is true of the philosophy of time and meta-ethics. Developments in the philosophy of time have led to a new understanding of the relation between semantics and metaphysics. Applying these insights to the field of meta-ethics, I will argue, can suggest a new position with respect to moral discourse and moral reality. This new position retains the advantages of theories like moral realism and naturalism, yet is immune to many of their difficulties.

In response to a recent challenge that the New B-theory of Time argues invalidly from the claim that tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions to the conclusion that temporal reality is tenseless, I argue that while early B-theorists may have relied on some such inference, New B-theorists do not. Giving tenseless truth conditions for tensed sentences is not intended to prove that temporal reality is tenseless. Rather, it is intended to undermine the A-theorist’s move from claims about the irreducibility of tensed language to the conclusion that temporal reality must be tensed. I then examine how A-theorists have used facts about language in attempting to establish their conclusions about the nature of temporal reality. I take the recent work of William Lane Craig and argue that he implicitly and illicitly moves from facts about temporal language to his conclusion that temporal reality is tensed.