A-theorists and B-theorists debate whether the “Now” is metaphysically distinguished from other time slices. Analogously, one may ask whether the “I” is metaphysically distinguished from other perspectives. Few philosophers would answer the second question in the affirmative. An exception is Caspar Hare, who has devoted two papers and a book to arguing for such a positive answer. In this paper, I argue that those who answer the first question in the affirmative—A-theorists— should also answer the second question in the affirmative. This is because key arguments in favor of the A-theory are more effective as arguments in favor of the resulting combined position, and key arguments against the A-theory are ineffective against the combined position.
In a series of unconventional but lucid works, Caspar Hare has laid out and defended a theory of egocentric presentism (or, in his more recent work, perspectival realism), in which a distinguished individual’s experiences are present in a way that the experiences of others are not (2007, 2009, 2010). Closely related ideas appear in the writings of others. One example is Valberg’s notion of the “personal horizon,” especially considering his discussion of “the truth in solipsism” and his insistence that “my” horizon is really “the” (preeminent) horizon (2007). Merlo’s “subjectivist view of the mental” is arguably even more closely related; he argues that “one’s own mental states are metaphysically privileged vis-à-vis the mental states of others” and discusses in detail the relationship of his view to Hare’s (2016). As another example, in a review of “The Character of Consciousness” (Chalmers 2010), Hellie (2013) argues that this work fails to do justice to the embedded point of view aspect of consciousness. He illustrates this with what he calls a “vertiginous question”: why, of all subjects, is this subject (the one corresponding to the human being Benj Hellie) the one whose experiences are “live”? In other work (2019), I explore whether the “liveness” of one particular perspective is a further fact—a fact that does not follow logically from the physical facts of the world—by considering the analogy to looking in on a simulated world through a virtual reality headset: besides the computer code that determines the physics of the simulated world, there must be additional code that determines which simulated agent’s perspective to show on the headset.
In any case, Hare’s exposition of these ideas is clearest for the
present purpose, so I will focus on it. In an effort, possibly with
limited success, to avoid misrepresenting his position, as well as to
clarify the relation to other work, let me introduce my own terminology.
Let us refer to the theory that states that there is a metaphysically
(rather than merely epistemically) distinguished1
I (or Self2) as the
Others have commented on the idea of a metaphysically distinguished I—or, similarly but not equivalently,4 a metaphysically distinguished Here—in the context of the philosophy of time. (While the differences between a metaphysically distinguished I and a metaphysically distinguished Here will not matter for some of the arguments presented in this paper, it is useful to note that, in the context where a distinguished I is combined with a distinguished Now, the combination of these two immediately implies a distinguished Here as well—namely, the location of the distinguished individual at the distinguished time.5) However, they have usually dismissed it rather quickly, in order to move on with the case of a metaphysically distinguished Now (whether or not they support the latter). For example, Zimmerman (2005, 422) writes:
An egocentric analogue of actualism (‘personalism’, to steal and abuse a term) is very hard to imagine. Perhaps there is some kind of not-merely-epistemological solipsism that would qualify. In any case, only the maniacally egocentric could be this sort of personalist.
Further back, Williams (1951, 458) writes:
Perhaps there exists an intellectualistic solipsist who grants the propriety of conceiving a temporal stretch of events, to wit, his own whole inner biography, while denying that the spatial scheme is a literal truth about anything. Most of the disparagers of the manifold, however, are of opposite bias. Often ready enough to take literally the spatial extension of the world, they dispute the codicil which rounds it out in the dimension of time.
Fine (2005a, 285) treats the case of first-personal realism in detail, but advocates for adopting a nonstandard variety of realism, either taking reality to be relative to a standpoint, or (his preferred option) considering it to be fragmented.6 He notes:
It has seemed evident that, of all the possible worlds, the actual world is privileged; it is the standpoint of reality, as it were, and the facts that constitute reality are those that obtain in this world. On the other hand, if we ask, in the first-personal case whether we should be a nonstandard realist (given that we are going to be first-personal realists in the first place), then the answer to most philosophers has seemed to be a clear ‘yes’. It has seemed metaphysically preposterous that, of all the people there are, I am somehow privileged - that my standpoint is the standpoint of reality and that no one else can properly be regarded as a source of first-personal facts. The case of time is perplexing in a way that these other cases are not.
I believe that there is value in exploring the
Indeed, a key point is that, just as there are multiple versions of
the A-theory, there are also multiple versions of the
After presenting, for the sake of illustration, some versions of the
Overall, my main objective is to argue that the
1 Some Versions of the -Theory
The A-theory counts among its supporters presentists,
moving-spotlight theorists, and growing-block theorists. Can we conceive
of similar distinctions among
Personalized Presentism. This is the most natural way to adapt
presentism into an
Personalized Moving Spotlight. As in the classical moving-spotlight theory, a spotlight moves over the four-dimensional block universe, except now this spotlight shines on a single individual (or that individual’s experience) at a single point in time. For the personalized moving spotlight, it is less obvious how it moves (more on this below).
Personalized Growing Block. In the classical growing block theory, time slices are added to the block that contain all the events in the universe at that point in time. In the personalized growing block theory, only those parts of spacetime are added that are experienced by a distinguished individual (and, perhaps, their past light cones).
Every one of these versions of the
Single Individual Overall. The I-Now moves along with a single individual throughout his or her lifetime. It is never associated with any other individual.
Changing Individual (
Rapidly
Changing Individual.
The I-Now can jump from one individual to another even before the
former’s demise, and then jump back to the previous individual as well.
We can consider the same subvariants as for
It is admittedly odd to propose all these different versions of the
Moreover, in earlier work on theories resembling the
Isn’t it amazing and weird that for millions of years, generation after generation of sentient creatures came into being and died, came into being and died, and all the while there was this absence, and then one creature, CJH, unexceptional in all physical and psychological respects, came into being, and POW! Suddenly there were present things!
Later on, Hare (2009, 83) considers a type of reincarnation:
Is it necessary that only one person ever have present experiences? Again, the natural thing is to say no. Egocentric presentism gives me conceptual resources to imagine being one sentient creature, and then, later, being another sentient creature. So (recall Nagel’s “fantasy of reincarnation without memory”) I can imagine that, after a lifetime of oblivious egg consumption, I die a happy philosopher, then find myself in a cage eighteen inches tall by twelve inches wide, my beak clipped to its base. This need not involve imagining that CJH dies a happy philosopher and then becomes a battery chicken. It may only involve imagining that after CJH’s death there are again present experiences, and they are the experiences of a battery chicken. Once again this is a real, real nasty, metaphysical possibility.
So “the one with present experiences” is a definite description that may be satisfied by different things at different times. Like all such descriptions, it behaves as a temporally nonrigid referring term.
Similarly, Valberg (2013, 366) writes:
We can, however, give sense to the possibility that a human being other than JV in the past was “me,” or that a human being other JV [sic] might be “me” in the future. That is, it makes sense experientially (as a way things might be or develop from within my experience) that, in the past, a human being other than JV occupied the position at the center of my horizon, or that a human being other than JV will occupy this position in the future.
Again, the main point here is to make clear how many possibilities
the
2 Revisiting Arguments in Favor of the A-theory
In this section, I will revisit some well-known arguments in favor of
the A-theory. Subsection 2.1 concerns the
argument from presence simpliciter and subsection 2.2 concerns the argument from the
appropriateness of sentiments such as those expressed by “Thank goodness
that’s over!” In both cases, the argument will be shown to support the
2.1 Presence Simpliciter
Arguably the most basic argument in favor of the A-theory is that of “the presence of experience.” Many have made such an argument; a good exposition of one is given by Balashov (2005). The argument is that my current experience of writing this paper is present (or occurs14) in a way that my going through security at the airport yesterday is not present. This is not to be taken as a relative statement; everyone will agree that the writing experience at 5:50pm on March 18, 2019 is present at 5:50pm on March 18, 2019 in a way that the airport security experience at 8:15am on March 17, 2019 is not present at 5:50pm on March 18, 2019. Rather, the writing experience seems present in an absolute sense that does not require the boldface phrases, and this is referred to as presence simpliciter.
I argue that, if we are to entertain such a notion, for it to be at all palatable, it must be personalized, for the following reason. Just as my earlier airport security experience is not present simpliciter, neither is David’s experience of eating breakfast in Australia present simpliciter, even if this event happens to take place at the same time.15 Let me first attempt to explain what I mean by this, and then argue for it. In order to clarify what I mean, it is tempting to write that David’s breakfast experience is not present simpliciter to me. But to do so would undermine the argument, in the exact same way that it would undermine the purely temporal version of the argument to say that my airport security experience is not present simpliciter right now. In the latter sentence, “simpliciter” is clearly at odds with the indexical “right now.” The exact same is true about the juxtaposition of “simpliciter” and “to me.” If an experience takes place simpliciter, then to capture this we should not add any relativizing indexical phrases.
Moreover, it seems that only an experience can be present simpliciter in this way.16 For example, it is not at all clear to me what it would mean for a chair to itself be present simpliciter. My experience of a chair—visual, tactile, and the result of significant cognitive processing—can be present simpliciter. Such an experience is the kind of thing that can have the “liveness” that past and future experiences do not, and that others’ experiences do not. But I cannot imagine what it would mean for the chair to itself be “live” in this way. If we are willing to be a bit loose with our language, in most cases it will not cause confusion to, as a shorthand, say that the chair is present simpliciter when we really mean to refer to my experience of the chair. But if we are being strict, the experience is not the chair itself. Moreover, it seems that an experience can only be had by a single person17 at a single time,18 and it does not seem that two distinct experiences, corresponding to different individuals and/or times, can be co-present simpliciter in this way. So, if anything, the argument would suggest the existence of a metaphysically distinguished (I, Now) pair.
Is this argument equivocating between “presence” in the temporal sense and “presence” in the experiential sense? Indeed both meanings of the word seem to play a role, and I believe that this is revealing rather than misleading. Insofar as the current moment in time has a “liveness” that other moments do not, it has it only through my own experience; the same moment elsewhere, even if experienced by someone else, lacks this liveness just as a past moment here, even if experienced by me, lacks it. In this way, the two meanings of the word are inextricably linked. Hare (2009, 100) similarly argues that it is in fact advantageous that the word “present” has multiple readings.
It is also important here not to be misled by how we use language. The sentence “David is eating breakfast” is, in a sense, simpler than “I went through airport security yesterday morning.” Both sentences explictly refer to their subject (“David” and “I”), but only the latter needs to explicitly refer to when the event took place (“yesterday morning”) in order to place it in time. So the first sentence has a type of simplicity that the second one lacks; we could add “now” to the former, but it is not needed. On the other hand, dropping “I” from the second sentence leaves it grammatically mangled. From this asymmetry between “I” and “now” one might be tempted to conclude that the word “simpliciter” more naturally corresponds to what is happening now—since the word “now” is usually not needed for sentences concerning the present—than it would correspond to what is happening to me—since a word such as “I” or “me” is usually needed for a sentence concerning the first person.
However, I would argue that the significance of this asymmetry is not metaphysical, but rather entirely linguistic. So many of our spoken sentences concern the present that, pragmatically, it would be inefficient to require adding a word like “now” to all these sentences. On the other hand, usually a conversation concerns multiple actors, so it is important to make it clear who is the subject in each sentence. To see that this is the driving force behind the asymmetry, consider a different context: my planner. In my planner, I write entries such as “attend faculty meeting at noon.” It would be an inefficient use of my time to add “I” (or “I will”) to the beginning of the sentence, because I would have to do so for almost every entry in my planner! In contrast, naturally, each of my planner entries must have a time associated with it; after all, if the event were happening right now, I would not have to add an entry to my planner. So, in the context of my planner, the roles that subject and time play in the pragmatic issue at hand are reversed: the former is generally implicit but the latter is not.19 This appears to confirm that the asymmetry is due to pragmatic reasons.
2.2 The Appropriateness of Wanting Things to (not) be Past
Another well-known argument (Prior 1959; Zimmerman
2008) in favor of the A-theory (and presentism in particular)
concerns the appropriateness of statements such as “Thank goodness
that’s over!” Here, “that” might refer to something like a headache the
speaker was experiencing. It is often argued that the B-theory does not
provide the resources to capture the full significance of this
statement. Prior argues that the meaning of such a statement is not that
it is good that the headache takes place at a point in spacetime earlier
than the point at which the statement is uttered; in his words, “Why
should anyone thank goodness for that?” Instead, what the statement is
getting at is that the headache is simply over, and the
A-theory provides the resources to capture this. But one might similarly
argue in favor of the
Let us explore this in a bit more depth. Suppose all headaches last exactly one or two days with no ill effects afterwards, and consider the following two statements:
Here, we imagine caring a great deal about John and preferring him
not to suffer. Under the
Yet, one may have an intuition that indeed,
To make all this concrete, suppose that John has decided to go on a two-month retreat in a faraway country. He will not communicate until he gets back. Halfway into his retreat, I realize that around this time of year, he always gets a headache, which may last one or two days. I care for him and so I hope that it is just a one-day headache this time. But I will not find out until he comes back and tells me. Imagining this scenario, I do not find myself concerned specifically about whether his headache happens to be taking place right now, or not.20
Hence, given that the scenario is set up appropriately, I remain
unconvinced that there is any significant difference between
Indeed, both Suhler and Callender (2012) and Green and Sullivan (2015) report on an experimental study by
Caruso et al. (2008) in which subjects were asked what
would be fair compensation for a particular task. The study found that
when subjects were asked to imagine themselves doing the task in the
future, they felt that they should be compensated significantly more
than when they imagined themselves doing the task in the past; but this
effect disappeared when they were asked to imagine someone else
doing it. Suhler and Callender (2012) take this to invalidate the “Thank
goodness that’s over” argument, and Greene and Sullivan (2015) argue for complete temporal
neutrality in making decisions. (The argument for temporal neutrality is
worked out in detail in Sullivan (2018). Hurka (1993, 61) argues that temporal
neutrality is appropriate for certain non-hedonic goods, but is
convinced that it is not for avoiding pain, by the example from Parfit
(1984, 165)
that we would prefer a more painful operation in the past to a less
painful one in the future.) The analysis above suggests that while
indeed, the results of the Caruso et al. (2008) study cast doubt on whether the
“Thank goodness that’s over” argument effectively supports the
3 Revisiting Arguments Against the A-theory
In this section, I will revisit some well-known arguments against the
A-theory. Subsection 3.1 concerns the
argument from special relativity, subsection 3.2 concerns the argument that the
direction of time may be a local matter, subsection 3.3 concerns the argument that asks for the rate
at which time passes, and subsection 3.4
concerns the argument from time travel and Gödelian universes. In all
cases, the
3.1 Special Relativity
Einstein’s theory of relativity has often been invoked to criticize
the A-theory. Unlike in a Newtonian universe, in the special theory of
relativity, simultaneity is not absolute; rather, whether two events are
simultaneous depends on the reference frame. But if there is no absolute
simultaneity, then how can there be an absolute Now? Special relativity
can also be used to cast doubt on specific arguments in favor of the
A-theory—or at least, the
Some (e.g., Markosian
2004) have argued that, in fact, a philosophically austere
version of the theory of relativity could explain the empirical evidence
without implying that there is no absolute simultaneity. The relation of
absolute simultaneity could be added on top of the theory of relativity.
For example, one might suppose that there exists a distinguished frame
of reference that determines which events are absolutely simultaneous.
Positing such a distinguished frame seems a rather awkward and inelegant
addition to the theory, one that is rather contrary to the spirit of the
theory of relativity and perhaps more in line with older theories of a
stationary aether. But, Zimmerman (2008) has argued that such an addition
to the physical theory is no different in kind from the addition of a
distinguished Now in the first place. That may be so, but it is a
further addition, and it seems that, for the sake of parsimony, each
addition should at least count against the resulting theory. The analogy
is also imperfect. It can at least be argued that we know when the Now
is; in contrast, it is not clear whether and how we could ever know what
the distinguished frame of reference is. Zimmerman (2011)
discusses and responds to all these concerns in far more detail than I
can do here, and argues well that they are not fatal to the
In any case, the above arguments only concern the
3.2 The Direction of Time
For any version of the
In contrast, the putative existence of persons living in parts of
spacetime with a reversed entropy gradient, living their lives backwards
in time (from our perspective), poses no problem for the
Taking this to an extreme, we may even imagine a machine that
transports you to another region of space where the entropy gradient is
reversed relative to ours, and that transforms you into a Doppelgänger
there. You will, in some sense, continue your life there uninterrupted,
except moving in the opposite temporal direction. Of course being
transported to another region of space is likely to be a bit shocking;
but, if such scenarios are possible at all, there seems to be no reason
to believe that your experiences will be any different than they would
have been if instead you had been transported to a region of space that
happens to have the same entropy gradient (and not been transformed into
a Doppelgänger). Accommodating this intuition is easy under the
3.3 The Rate of Time’s Passage
Opponents of the A-theory (or
In the
If we allow ourselves to speculate, a computational27 theory might be used to unify these two examples: consider a person’s “clock speed”—the number of mental operations, according to some suitable definition, per (Earth surface) second—and take this to determine the rate at which the I-Now moves. Specifically, let us define a supersecond so that there is always exactly one mental operation per supersecond. Then, the number of (Earth surface) seconds per supersecond—which is just the reciprocal of the clock speed defined above—will vary in the different scenarios above, in a way that conforms with our intuitions. Focusing on Earth surface seconds per supersecond (regardless of the location of the person) simultaneously addresses both the relativistic and the experiential components of the scenarios, and also allows us to handle mixed cases, such as a space station inhabitant who is under anesthesia. In such a case, the number of mental operations per Earth surface second can be written as the number of mental operations per space station second, multiplied by the number of space station seconds per Earth surface second, thereby separating out the experiential and relativistic components, respectively. This shows that these two components are compatible. Per the theory of relativity, there is nothing special about Earth surface seconds, as opposed to space station seconds or Mars surface seconds; they are just different ways to measure external time.
Supertime, so defined, perhaps more naturally corresponds to our sense of passage, leaving regular time (as tracked by clocks) in the more modest role of a dimension through which we happen to pass, as noted earlier. That is, this notion of supertime would allow us to give metaphysical meaning to the idea of time passing more or less quickly from a subjective viewpoint. Of course, this view may conflict with other intuitions that we have developed. In our ordinary experience of time, relativistic issues do not come into play, and our waking experience of how fast time passes is usually fairly stable. Given this, we tend to conceive of time as objective, and treat any variance in how we perceive its passage as a mere error in estimation. For the current purpose, I believe such intuitions are misleading. The following two examples are intended to illustrate that it is in fact quite natural to assign primary importance to the notion of supertime as defined here. In each of them, we will imagine a choice between two alternatives that result in you having different amounts of time but equal amounts of supertime left in your life. I argue that you should be (close to) indifferent between the options in both scenarios.
Example 1. It is the year 2400, and you are part of a group of people on a lifelong space voyage. The group is about to split up into two subgroups that will take separate spacecraft. It is common knowledge that the two subgroups will never communicate again, either with each other or with the people left on Earth. You get to choose in which subgroup you will be. They are indistinguishable, except the two spacecraft will move to orbits around different massive bodies, with different relativistic time dilations. If you choose to be on spacecraft 1, your life will therefore be shorter in Earth time than it would be on spacecraft 2. As a result, your first reaction may be that you would prefer to be on spacecraft 2. But, I argue, upon closer inspection there is little reason for this. This is because, to make up for the shorter amount of Earth time in your life on spacecraft 1, correspondingly more events will happen per unit of Earth time on spacecraft 1. You would experience entirely similar lives on the two spacecraft, with equally many interesting events taking place on both. If it were possible to communicate from Earth to the spacecraft, you might prefer being on spacecraft 2 because (for example) more papers, books, and movies would be produced on Earth and sent to spacecraft 2 for your consumption during your life. But we have assumed that such communication is impossible. As far as I can see, there does not seem to be any compelling reason to have a preference about on which spacecraft you continue your voyage.
Example 2. It is again the year 2400, but this time we will
stay on the surface of the Earth. After a long and happy life, you have
regrettably contracted an incurable disease that, if left untreated,
will kill you almost immediately. Unfortunately, the only possible
treatments will put you in a type of comatose state until your death.
You will, however, have wonderful dreams in this state. Due to secrecy
issues, your friends and family will never be made aware of your
predicament. There is no chance at all that any new treatment will
become available during the remainder of your life. You have a choice
between medications
In summary, to the extent that the question about the rate at which
the Now moves poses a problem for the
3.4 Time Travel and Gödelian Universes
A final criticism of the (
But if personal time bears little similarity to external time then “personal time” is merely an invented quantity, and is misleadingly named at that. That I will view a dinosaur in my personal future amounts merely to the fact that I once viewed a dinosaur, and moreover that this is caused by my entry into a time machine. Since this fact bears little resemblance to the facts that constitute a normal person’s genuine future, I could not enter the time machine with anticipation and excitement at the thought of seeing a dinosaur, for it is not true that I am about to see a dinosaur, nor is the truth much like being about to see a dinosaur. If anything, I should feel fear at the thought of being annihilated by a device misleadingly called a “time machine”. The device causes it to be the case that I once viewed a dinosaur, but does not make it the case in any real sense that I will view dinosaurs.
Perhaps there is a way out of this conclusion for the
Closely related to the issue of time travel is that of Gödelian
universes that cannot be given a global temporal ordering. The
theoretical possibility of such universes perhaps poses a problem for
some versions of the
But it is easy to find an escape from Dieks’ argument. The fact that the two versions of the person are (roughly) at the same point in spacetime does not imply that the spotlight shines on them simultaneously in the supertime sense. That is, the “same” spotlight might earlier (in supertime) light up the younger version only (i.e., that version’s experience at that point) and later (in supertime) the older version only. Hence, there is no need to introduce additional spotlights when the meeting point is reached. This illustrates one advantage of associating the spotlight with person-stages (I-Now) rather than with small regions of spacetime (Here-Now): even though the younger and the older version are both in (roughly) the same location at the same time, they correspond to different person-stages. This requires, of course, that in this type of scenario we associate the I-Now with a person-stage (where a younger and an older version of the same person at the same time are still considered separate person-stages), rather than with a pair of a person and a time, which in this case might pick out both person-stages. This interpretation of the I-Now in any case aligns better with the other arguments presented in this paper. For example, it seems hard to imagine the (simultaneous) presence simpliciter of the combination of both person-stages. Also, the older person-stage may think, looking at the younger person-stage, “Thank goodness I am no longer that immature!” The idea that the spotlight was previously (in the supertime sense) associated with the younger person-stage and now with the older person-stage seems to capture the significance of this statement well. Finally (and more speculatively), if we imagine the brain of the older stage to have slowed down and no longer to be processing at the rate of his younger self, associating the I-Now with person-stages would allow us to say that the I-Now moves at a different rate with respect to external time when associated with each of these two person-stages.
4 Conclusion
Upon inspection, key criticisms of the A-theory are only effective as
criticisms of the
Vincent Conitzer
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1899-7884
Duke University
conitzer@cs.duke.edu
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to anonymous referees who provided especially thorough and helpful comments, which significantly improved the paper.
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