Growing block
I've been working on this paper on and off for the last year or so, and I think I want to say something about what I'll post here in the paper.
Here's an argument against growing block (the view that the past and present exist, but the future does not):
(1) If growing block is true, then we don't know that we're present.
(2) We do know that we're present.
(3) Therefore, growing block is not true.
Support for (1): According to (the targeted version of) growing block, nothing about a moment changes when the moment goes from being present to being past. It merely gains a relation of precedence to some future slices. (This is C.D. Broad's view, roughly.) So, imagine some past person, like Caesar, at some past moment in his life, t. Imagine that at t, Caesar thought something like "Here I am in the present moment." According to the growing blocker, it is true (now) that [Caesar is thinking "Here I am in the present moment" at t]. When t was the present moment, or on the growing edge of the block, Caesar thought something true. But now t is in the past. So, Caesar thinks something false. Upshot: why should we think we're in any better position? How do we know that 2008 isn't sometime thousands of years in the past? It seems like the growing blocker has to say that we don't. For a more detailed version of this argument, see Merricks, "Good-bye Growing Block", which is in one of the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics volumes.
Here's a reply to that argument given by Peter Forrest:
Forrest denies (1) from the argument above. He claims that life and consciousness can only occur on the growing edge of reality, or the present moment. So, since we know we're alive and conscious, we know we're in the present moment.
I have one argument against this "dead past" hypothesis, but I won't go into it here.
Forrest talks about life and consciousness being "by-products of the causal frisson between being and non-being", so that they can only occur on the growing edge.
If Forrest can make this work, I think it may be a way for him to get out of my argument that I mentioned above. But, I have two problems with it.
A. It sounds spooky, and I don't like it.
B. It seems weird that he can talk about causal frisson between being and non-being. What sorts of causal relationships can things which do not exist enter into?
I know the presentist has something to say about this with regard to past objects (to get out of the cross-time relations objections to presentism).
Finally, the point of this post: does anyone know of any literature that may be good for me to look at with regards to (B)? I suppose the presentist stuff about cross-time relations would be good, but is there anything...better?
Here's an argument against growing block (the view that the past and present exist, but the future does not):
(1) If growing block is true, then we don't know that we're present.
(2) We do know that we're present.
(3) Therefore, growing block is not true.
Support for (1): According to (the targeted version of) growing block, nothing about a moment changes when the moment goes from being present to being past. It merely gains a relation of precedence to some future slices. (This is C.D. Broad's view, roughly.) So, imagine some past person, like Caesar, at some past moment in his life, t. Imagine that at t, Caesar thought something like "Here I am in the present moment." According to the growing blocker, it is true (now) that [Caesar is thinking "Here I am in the present moment" at t]. When t was the present moment, or on the growing edge of the block, Caesar thought something true. But now t is in the past. So, Caesar thinks something false. Upshot: why should we think we're in any better position? How do we know that 2008 isn't sometime thousands of years in the past? It seems like the growing blocker has to say that we don't. For a more detailed version of this argument, see Merricks, "Good-bye Growing Block", which is in one of the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics volumes.
Here's a reply to that argument given by Peter Forrest:
Forrest denies (1) from the argument above. He claims that life and consciousness can only occur on the growing edge of reality, or the present moment. So, since we know we're alive and conscious, we know we're in the present moment.
I have one argument against this "dead past" hypothesis, but I won't go into it here.
Forrest talks about life and consciousness being "by-products of the causal frisson between being and non-being", so that they can only occur on the growing edge.
If Forrest can make this work, I think it may be a way for him to get out of my argument that I mentioned above. But, I have two problems with it.
A. It sounds spooky, and I don't like it.
B. It seems weird that he can talk about causal frisson between being and non-being. What sorts of causal relationships can things which do not exist enter into?
I know the presentist has something to say about this with regard to past objects (to get out of the cross-time relations objections to presentism).
Finally, the point of this post: does anyone know of any literature that may be good for me to look at with regards to (B)? I suppose the presentist stuff about cross-time relations would be good, but is there anything...better?
Posted by Justin Snedegar on
06.23.2008 at 4:26pm
There was a thread about this in Analysis a couple of years ago involving David Braddon-Mitchell, Peter Forrest, and Chris Heathwood (me). I can at least point you to my paper. Forrest has a reply to Braddon-Mitchell and later to me.
Regarding (B) in particular, you might take a look at David Lewis' "Void and Object."
Good luck with the blog!
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I read all the papers in that Analysis thread when I was working on this paper - in fact, this paper was meant as sort of an addition to that thread. At the end I try to take on Button's defense of growing block.
Thanks for the pointer to the Lewis paper; I'll be sure to check it out.
I worked last year on this topic, and I published an article with a new (I think) argument against no-futurism and hybrid theories in general. This article is in french, but I am thinking about translating it in english. It deals with change in contextual-statements truth values.
Another thing. You wrote : "This response, I think, is not satisfying. The Merricks-style objection is powerful because, if we believe in growing block, we want Lincoln's utterance of ``this moment is present'' to be false and we want our utterance of ''this moment is present'' to be true. Button must say that both our utterance and Lincoln's utterance are true."
I think that Button would say that Lincoln's utterance was true and is now false. So the truth of Lincoln's contextual-statement changed, it is not only the proposition's truth value that changed. It is the flaw I use to attack hybrid theories. According to me Tim Button cannot espace this one.
You have my mail if you want to discuss this point, and if you read french I can send you my paper.
Sincerely yours,
Baptiste Le Bihan, University of Rennes 1 (France)