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Conclusion
8.1 Summary of the Argument for Presentism
In Chapter 7 I argued that metaphysical time is primitive, absolute, all-embracing and is the only time series, all other time concepts being reductively definable in terms of nontemporal n-adic properties or in terms of these properties and the primitive temporal properties of metaphysical time. If these arguments are sound, then they justify one of the theses of presentism, namely, that presentness inheres in events absolutely, not relatively to a reference frame (or mind).
The theory of presentism for which I have been arguing in this book may be summarized in one sentence as the thesis that "all states of affairs are of the form presentness-inheres-in-such-and-such," where "inheres-in-such-and-such" is under- stood in a broad sense so that this form includes such states of affairs as
- Presentness inheres in John's walking.
- Presentness inheres in the pastness of Plato's thinking.
- Presentness inheres and will always inhere in the simultaneity of an event E on Earth and an event E' in the Andromeda galaxy.
- Presentness inheres, and always has inhered, and always will inhere in the equality of two to one plus one.
The summary presentist thesis that "all states of affairs are of the form presentness-inheres-in-such-and-such" entails the specific theses for which I have argued in both parts of this book:
This summary thesis entails that the tensed theory of time is true, for states of affairs are of this form only if A-sentences ascribe A-properties to events and only if some tokens of these sentences are true. Furthermore, the presentist thesis en- tails that the "no-property tensed theory of time" of Prior and others is false, since if there is no property of presentness, then no state of affairs is of the form presentness-inheres-in-such-and-such. The presentist thesis entails, additionally, that McTaggart's paradox does not provide a sound argument that there is a vicious infinite regress involving the inherence of presentness in events or moments.
The presentist thesis also entails that all so-called tenseless sentences, such as
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B-sentences, natural law sentences, and analytic sentences are in fact multiply tensed, that is, are synonymous with sentences that contain more than one tensed copulae, such that the so-called tenseless ..is" is synonymous with expressions such as ..is and will always be" or ..always was, is, and always will be." This is tantamount to the claim that all so-called "tenseless sentences" have presentness for a logical subject; for by virtue of having a multiply tensed copulae, these sentences refer to presentness and ascribe it a property of a form such as inheres and always will inhere in such-and-such. This entails, in turn, that all the states of affairs that correspond to true tokens of these "tenseless sentences" have the form presentness-inheres-in-such-and-such (understood in the aforementioned broad sense).
The thesis that all states of affairs have the form presentness-inheres-in-such- and-such (and do not have the form presentness-inheres-in-such-and-such-relatively-to-a-reference-frame) also entails that presentness inheres in events absolutely and therefore that the STR is not a true theory of the nature of time.
If presentism is true, then there is a uniform structure to reality in the sense that each state of affairs consists of presentness as possessing a property of the form inhering-in-such-and-such. In this sense, all of reality is unified in presentness. This suggests a sense in which presentness is the most distinctive and preeminent property, namely, that it is the only property that is a metaphysical subject of every state of affairs. Indeed, in this sense, it is the preeminent object or existent in general; for it is the only concrete or abstract object that is the metaphysical subject of every state of affairs. By virtue of being the "preeminent object" in some sense, the property of presentness occupies in presentism a status analogous to that occupied by the property of unity ("the One") in Neoplatonism, although of course there are obvious differences (e.g., all of reality does not "emanate" from presentness). Accordingly, we may say with truth-albeit metaphorically-that presentism is the glorification of presentness, in the sense that it entails that all of reality is a circle whose center is presentness and whose radii are properties of the form inheres-in- such-and-such.
8.2 Ethical Implications of the Argument for Presentism: The Presentist Attitude
It is one thing to understand the argument that reality is unified in presentness, but it is another to affectively experience this unification. The affective experience may be called the presentist attitude; this is an experience wherein the person's psychological unity mirrors the unity of reality. The affective experience of the unity of reality is one of the human excellences, along with aesthetic appreciation, the attainment of scientific knowledge, the attainment of philosophical knowledge and the like. According to perfectionist ethics, the promotion of these excellences is the most important ethical goal of human life and according to other ethics, their promotion is one of the ethical goals of human life. The human excellence of understanding the argument for presentism is an excellence pertaining to the attainment of philosophical knowledge, but there is a different human excellence that pertains to the affective experience of the unity of reality and this latter excellence pertains to the presentist
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attitude. The affective experience of the unity of reality is of distinct value in its own right and compares in kind with Plato's vision of goodness itself, Plotinus's vision of the property of oneness, Spinoza's intellectual love of Nature, Heidegger's dread of the Being of beings, and Munitz's awe of Existence. The discovery of these valuable experiences is not the province of ethics but of metaphysics, since the discovery requires a metaphysical investigation that determines which experience is the true experience of the fundamental structure of reality. The implication of the argument for presentism is that the value accruing to the experience of the basic structure of reality is a value possessed by the presentist attitude rather than by some other attitude. The presentist attitude is the supervenience base upon which this value supervenes. The nature of the present attitude will be analyzed in detail in the following pages.
The presentist attitude involves a type of speaker's reference or, more generally (to cover cases of listening, writing or mentally tokening a sentence), language-user's reference. Language-user's reference is a triadic relation of the form "P refers to x via t," where P is a person, x the concrete or abstract object referred to, and t some token of a phrase, word or morpheme. The token t stands in the relation of semantic reference to the object x, but the relation in which the person stands to x is a psychological or mental relation, the relation of intentional reference; the person is conscious of x, whereas the token is not. But since the intentional references we are discussing are language-using references, the intentional references are to the object x as the semantic referent of the token t. Thus, if Alice refers to presentness when she utters "John is running," she intentionally refers to presentness as the semantic referent of her utterance-token of the grammatically present tensed form of the copula "is." The intentional reference to presentness is a universal language-user's reference in that every linguistic act includes a reference to presentness. A linguistic act involves tokening a sentence (orally, inscriptionally or mentally) and experiencing a propositional attitude to the proposition expressed by the sentence-token. Just as every sentence-token has presentness for a logical subject, so every linguistic act includes an intentional reference to presentness. Other language-user's references are merely local reference-acts; for example, the reference to John or running is local in that this intentional reference is a part of some but not all linguistic acts. Alice locally refers to John as the semantic referent of "John" and running as the semantic referent of "running."
In addition to language-user's references, there are language-user's predications. Alice does not simply mentally refer to a series of objects; she mentally predicates running of John and presentness of John's running. Mental predication or "language-user's predication" parallels semantic predication (the semantic relation of conveying that parts of the proposition are propositionally E or C related), just as mental reference parallels semantic reference.
Our normal linguistic acts are not presentist attitudes. A presentist attitude is an attitude to presentness as inhering in all of the infinite number of beings that there are. The one infinite presence comes to explicit appearance in this attitude. A presence is an inherence of presentness in some being and the infinite presence is the inherence of presentness in the infinity of beings that there are. In a presentist attitude I attentionally refer to presentness and predicate of it the property of inher-
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ing in the infinity of beings. Our normal linguistic acts are not presentist attitudes if only for the reason that they are not attitudes to presentness and are not attentional references to presentness. This is reflected in the normal syntactical form of sentences. Usually, a concrete proper name or definite description is the grammatical subject of our sentences, as in “John is attacking me.” The grammatical subject has the pragmatic or psychological property of directing attention upon its referent, in such a way that its referent becomes the accusative of our affective attitudes (what we have an attitude to). We refer to presentness only as a part of our predicative awareness, our awareness of the semantic content expressed by the grammatical predicate ('.is attacking me"), such that we do not have an attitude to presentness, but rather grasp presentness only as a part of the complex property, presently attacking me, that we predicate of the accusative of our attitude and take as the reason for our attitude to this accusative.
The first step in realizing the presentist attitude must accordingly be a reversal of one's normal attitude. Instead of experiencing an attitude to a first order substance or event, we shift our attention to presentness and experience an attitude to the presentness of the substances or events, or to the presentness of their pastness or futurity. This reversal involves relegating the first order substance or event to a part of that of which I have a predicative awareness. The person or tree or storm no longer appears as the accusative of my attitude but appears adjectivally, as a part of a property I predicate of presentness and take as a reason for my attitude to presentness. The first order existent to which I had been experiencing an attitude now appears as a part of a second order existent, a part of a property of the form inheres in B, where .'B" stands for a being in the present tensed sense ("a being" in the present tensed sense refers to something in which presentness inheres). I now grasp the sky only as part of the property inhering in the blueness of the sky, which is a property of presentness and thus a second order property.
Attitude reversal can be further characterized in intuitively evocative terms if we indicate that it involves letting go of the physical and personal things or events upon which we are normally focused and letting our attention swing onto no-thing, the void of presentness. My attention comes to rest on the very persisting of things, their being present and remaining present. I grasp their pure “being-there-at-all-ness,” that is, their being present rather than their being past or future or never being at all. But this way of putting it is somewhat misleading since I do not grasp the void of presentness as adjectival upon things but things as adjectival upon the void. The “being-there-at-all-ness” is the metaphysical subject that possesses inhering in the valleys below and inhering in the blue sky above .
Presentist sentences can be used to achieve this attitude reversal. Shifting my attention from one part of a proposition to another part is realized by means of taking the latter part as the referent of the grammatical subject of some sentence that expresses the proposition. I choose to express the proposition I am grasping by "Presentness inheres in the blueness of the sky" rather than by “The sky is blue.” The presentist structure of the proposition is now made syntactically explicit, and this in turn serves to render the presentist structure of the proposition, and of the corresponding state of affairs, explicitly apparent to me.
Attitude reversal involves a shift in my emotional attitude. Affective or emotion-
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al attitudes are attitudes to something because of something, where the latter some- thing is the reason for the attitude. For example, I admire Jane because of her artistic accomplishments. Emotional attitudes correlate to language-user's reference and predication in that the emotional attitude is to the attentional language-user's referent because of the property that the language-user attentionally predicates of this referent. If I gaze out the window of the plane in a normal emotive frame of mind, I may experience an enchantment with the moon because of its brightness. But if I reverse my attitude by mentally tokening “Presentness inheres in the brightness of the moon” my emotional “aboutness” will shift from the moon to presentness. I will be enchanted with presentness because it inheres in the brightness of the moon. I am now appreciating the universal metaphysical subject, presentness, rather than one of the many local metaphysical subjects. This involves not just a change in the “aboutness” of the emotion but also in its quality; it changes from an ordinary enchantment to a sublime enchantment. Sublimity is a simple and indefinable generic feeling-quality in the experience of which I feel elevated above of the ordinariness of day to day first order living (absorption in this or that or this other first order existent) to the loftier plane of contemplation of the universal subject. If I am now appreciating first order reality at all, it is from the point of view of its transcendent unity, the unity of first order existents that transcends and encompasses them (transcends them because it is a higher order existent and encompasses them because it inheres in them).
The sublime modification of my feeling-quality is accompanied by a detachment from the existent(s) I had been appreciating. A different example illustrates this most instructively. Suppose a family member or person close to me N dies and I feel grief. I am grieving for N because he or she has passed away. But I wish to experience at tent ion ally the universal reference-act and to experience it as it is related to this instance. I elicit this experience by mentally tokening “Presentness inheres in the pastness of N.” I am no longer feeling grief about N but about presentness because of its inherence in N's pastness. I am now appreciating present- ness rather than N and this detaches the “aboutness” of my emotion from N and attaches it to presentness. My grief changes to become a sublime sorrow about the universal subject, a sorrow that it no longer inheres in N. This detachment can be realized for any ordinary emotion I am experiencing, so that it is possible for all my emotions to be experienced as about one and the same metaphysical subject. As long as I realize this detachment, nothing in the ordinary world will move me since I am attached only to the universal metaphysical subject. Psychologically, it may be said that my emotional life becomes unified around presentness rather than parceled out among the many local metaphysical subjects. My emotions are now one and all responses to presentness in respect of its inherence in beings, rather than responses to these variegated beings themselves in respect of their properties.
But attentionally and sublimely referring to presentness is not sufficient to realize a presentist attitude. A presentist attitude is one in which the infinite presence comes to explicit appearance. The infinite presence is presentness's inherence in the infinite number of beings that there are. If we use “being” in a present tensed sense to refer to something in which presentness inheres, we may say that every item is either a being or a part of a being. Since John is present, John is a being and
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since Dante is a part of something in which presentness inheres, the state the pastness of Dante. Dante is a part of a being. Accordingly, if I take presentness as the accusative of my affective attitude and take inhering in every being as the reason for my affective attitude to presentness, I am experiencing a presentist attitude.
Any linguistic act consists of both mental reference-acts and predicative-acts. All the reference-acts that are not references to presentness are references to the being, or to a part of the being, which belongs to the property inheres in B that helps to make up the corresponding state of affairs (if the relevant proposition is true). Consider now the conjunction of all states of affairs. Since presentness is the metaphysical subject of each of these states of affairs, the conjunction of all the states of affairs is the super-state of affairs consisting of presentness as inhering in BI and B2 and B3, ... and so on for every being in which presentness inheres. This property has absolutely infinite conjuncts, where “absolutely infinite” is used in Cantor's sense to mean that for any transfinite cardinal number N, the number of conjuncts is more N. This absolutely infinite property of presentness is the super-property. Since presentness inheres in some new being at each new instant, present- ness possesses a new super-property at each new instant.
At any time t, whatever can be referred to at that time is either presentness, the super-property presentness than possesses, or some part of this super-property. This experience of the infinite presence is a knowing of the unity of reality, that every state of affairs is unified in presentness in that every state of affairs is a state of one and the same existent, presentness. By knowing that presentness possesses a super- property, I am knowing that every state of affairs is a state of presentness, that is, that every state of affairs is of the form, presentness-as-inhering-in-B.
Since my propositional attitudes are temporally extended rather than instantaneous, my presentist experience is expressed by a sentence that reflects this extension, namely,
(I) Presentness successively possesses different super-properties.
But experiencing a propositional attitude to the proposition expressed by (1) is not all there is to the presentist attitude. If I merely grasp the proposition expressed by (1), I single out presentness but conceive merely generally the absolute infinity of beings in which presentness inheres. A more explicit experience of the infinite presence and the unity of reality is achieved if I single out as many beings as I possibly can. This is achieved in the maximally expanded mental state. This re- quires I do not merely cognize all states of affairs but single out as many as it is possible for me to single out and conceive generally all the rest. The distinction between singling out and generally conceiving all states of affairs is exemplified by the distinction between comprehending that presentness inheres in John and in Alice. who both are standing in the room and comprehending that presentness inheres in whomever is standing in the room; in the former comprehension I single out John and Alice but in the latter comprehension I conceive them generally. The more states of affairs I single out rather than conceive generally the more expanded my awareness, since I am aware of more of the details of reality. There are many ways to single out states of affairs, but the way in which the largest number of states
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of affairs can be singled out in a single act of comprehension is through outer and inner perception, where I perceptually grasp the states of affairs constitutive of my surroundings and of my current psychological state. This perceptual singling out is maximalized if I grasp my complete indexical location, the location that corre- sponds to a use of "I am here now" or, in presentist language, “Presentness inheres in my being here and now.” Tokening this presentist sentence is instrumental in my becoming aware of presentness as inhering in myself and my experiences (bodily feelings, affective sensations, mental images, acts of awareness, etc.). In connection with this awareness I also become aware in external perception of presentness as inhering in my physical surroundings, my spatiallocation-the here that encompasses everything within my perceptual horizon, perhaps just my room or perhaps an entire mountain range that unfolds before my eyes. Now refers to the moment of time that is present and I become aware of presentness as inhering in this moment. The complex property ( ) inhering in my being here and now that is possessed by presentness is a conjunct of the super-property, the conjunct that constitutes my complete indexical location. This conjunct as possessed by presentness is a state of affairs, such that this state of affairs is itself a conjunct of the super-state of affairs, the super-state of affairs being the conjunction of all states of affairs.
The maximal expansion of my awareness involves a general conception of all other states of affairs, but a conception that is as specific as possible. This is achieved by conceiving all other states of affairs in the respects in which they are similar to the indexical states of affairs I single out. Corresponding to my singling out of myself as something in which presentness inheres, I am aware of presentness as inhering in everyone else besides myself, where “everyone else” is used in a broad sense to refer to other humans and to all other animals and, indeed, to everything that has experiences of some sort, regardless of the level of dimness or primitiveness. If some current speculations by physicists are correct that there are an infinite number of other intelligent organisms in the universe on an infinite number of other planets, then “everyone else” includes them in its scope as well. If there are disembodied persons, then they too are included in the extension of "everyone else." I expand my awareness not only to include presentness's inherence in every- one else but also in everywhere else besides here, or all other spatial locations. This not only includes all other spatial locations spatially connected to this one but the spaces in all other spatially disconnected universes, if there are any. This involves a grasp of presentness as inhering in whatever occupies these spatial positions as well. Third, I become aware of presentness inhering in the pastness or futurity of every other time besides the present one and the pastness or futurity of whatever occupies these times.
Mentally tokening certain presentist sentences is instrumental in building up to this maximally expanded awareness. The first stage is to token "presentness inheres in myself, here and now" and attentionally realize an attitude to presentness as inhering in my complete indexical location. From here I go on to token "presentness also inheres in everyone else, everywhere else and in the pastness or futurity of all other times and their occupants," which enlarges my awareness in such a way that I achieve a general attentional awareness of all beings that lie beyond my indexical location. Given the maximal expansion of my awareness induced by these sentence-
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tokenings, I may then token "presentness is successively possessing different super-properties" in a way that expresses the maximally explicit experience of the unity of reality. This latter sentence may be tokened in a way that does not express this maximally explicit experience and for this reason the prior tokenings are required to ensure the maximally explicit experience is the one expressed. The sentence in question may be used to express a purely general attitude to super-states of affairs, an attitude that does not single out any states of affairs, and this use of the sentence does not express the maximally explicit experience. But if I have a built up a maximally expanded awareness by virtue of tokening the above-mentioned three sentences, then "presentness is successively possessing different super-properties" can be used to express this awareness.
The maximal expansion of my awareness results in a specific alteration in the quality of my sensuous feelings in addition to their general alteration to a sublime quality. The sublime quality appears when I focus on presentness rather than on this or that first order being, but when I expand my awareness to take into account all of the absolutely infinite number of beings, there is a further modification to my feelings. My emotions are now about presentness in respect to its successive possession of different super-properties, such that what now matters to me is not this state of affairs or that one but all of them equally. Normally what matters to me are certain things or events or their relation to me ("I like this," "That bodes ill for me," etc.) but now my experience of what matters is cosmically present-centric. I experience a total detachment from any selected or highlighted aspect of reality that might ordinarily be distinguished as "being more significant to me now than the other aspects of reality" and experience a total attachment to presentness in respect to its possession of cosmical properties (i.e. , super-properties). I lose each being and regain them all in the absolutely infinite, the super-state of affairs, which alone matters. I experience a cosmical feeling-quality, which is a sub-type of the generic sublime feeling-quality.
My cosmical attitude de presenti may be identified with the vision of the unity of the infinitely extended reality. There is only one super-subject (a subject that possesses super-properties) and everything else is a proper or improper part of the super-subject's super-properties. The whole plane of reality appears in its aspect as a succession of vast absolutely infinite adjectives of presentness.
In the presentist experience I become transfigured. It may be said metaphorically that "my mind becomes one with presentness." In literal terms, this means that my conscious experience is such that it would coincide with an omniscient consciousness possessed by presentness if presentness were conscious. If presentness were conscious of everything in which it inhered, it would be related by the relation of consciousness to everything to which it is non-relationally tied by the property-tie of inherence. This "coincidence in extension" of consciousness and inherence would in fact obtain if I were identical with presentness, if my conscious acts were performed by presentness itself. If this were the case, presentness would be conscious of itself (which would also be my self) as inhering in all beings. To experience this metaphorical "oneness with presentness," my attitude must change from being ego-centric to present-centric, such that I now relate (in the ''as if" mode) my consciousness to presentness rather than to myself (considered as distinct from
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presentness). The point or purpose of this present-centric "transfiguration" of con- sciousness is to attain maximal self-transcendence, to be able to view all of reality from the perspective of presentness rather than from my perspective, and to thereby achieve the greatest possible self-detachment and attachment to presentness in respect to its inherence in every being. This allows my psychological unity to mirror to the maximal extent the unity of reality. In this respect, I realize one of the human excellences, the excellence of an affective appreciation of the unity of reality as a whole.
This transfiguration of consciousness is most accurately described by saying that I come to see reality from a merger of my perspective with the hypothetical perspective of presentness, since I still experience reality from my maximal indexical location. I grasp presentness as inhering in my surroundings and in each of the absolutely infinite number of beings that are beyond my surroundings. This involves a singling out awareness of my sensory field and a general awareness of the beings that are not sensorily apparent to me. A maximally omniscient consciousness that would be possessed by presentness would coincide exactly with my specific aware- ness of my sensory field but would also coincide exactly with each other sentient organism's awareness of its sensory field and would in addition include a specific awareness of each other being. Just as presentness inheres in every sensory field, just as this field is apparent to the pertinent organism, so presentness would be conscious of every sensory field, just as this field is apparent to the organism. My consciousness coincides exactly only with the consciousness that presentness would possess of my sensory field, and coincides only generally with the consciousness that presentness would have of every other field and every other being.
By virtue of this self-transcendence, I become psychologically free of the problems, solutions and concerns of my ego and its normal ego-centric attitude, wherein it ascribes its consciousness of reality to itself alone (and not to presentness). When transfigured, I am, hypothetically, presentness and not (merely) this mortal and limited being. Transfigured, I am free, above the clouds, as the untrammeled consciousness possessed by the universal metaphysical subject.