•  31
    Meta-fictionalism about the non-present
    Synthese 202 (5): 1-13. 2023.
    Presentists deny that past or future things exist. Some presentists also deny that there are any underlying truths about the past or future. While this seems to conflict with our everyday tensed discourse, presentists might avoid conflict by adopting a theory of hermeneutic fictionalism about the non-present. Under such a theory, everyday utterances of non-present-tensed sentences are taken to engage with a fiction, rather than expressing truths about the past or future. In this paper I defend a…Read more
  •  511
    The aim of this thesis is to defend a presentist metaphysics. I respond to a series of objections against presentism, including some that draw on our best physics. I also explore ways in which presentism might play an active role in interpreting and constraining physical theory, beyond merely being consistent with it. A unifying theme of this thesis is that I advocate for a reduction of presentism to its bare essentials. Within the proposed ontology, reality is three-dimensional. Time only exist…Read more
  •  148
    Hard presentism
    Synthese 198 (9): 8433-8461. 2020.
    Presentists believe that only present things exist. Their theories, at first glance, seem to offer many admirable features: a simple ontology, and a meaningful, objective status for key temporal phenomena, such as the present moment and the passage of time. So intuitive is this theory that, as John Bigelow puts it, presentism was “believed by everyone...until at least the nineteenth century”. Yet, in the last 200 years presentism has been beset by criticisms from both physicists and metaphysicia…Read more