Abstract
The grounding objection to presentism rests on two premises: (i) every true proposition P has a truthmaker T, and (ii) some claims about the future and past are obviously true. However, if the future and past do not exist, there can be no truthmakers for future and past tensed expressions. Presentists tend not to challenge the premises of the objection. Instead they argue that the present contains all the truthmakers we need. Presentists should challenge the premises instead. First, finding truthmakers in the present only results in the postulation of implausible and/or ethereal entities that ultimately fail to solve the grounding objection. Second, no manifestly absurd consequences follow from accepting the lack of truth-values for tensed expressions. Third, the grounding objection does not just require the assumption that for every truth there is a truthmaker, but also that for every truthmaker there is a truth. I show how one can deny the latter without denying the former.
Highlights
IntroductionThe grounding objection (see, e.g. Crisp 2007; Kierland 2013) is one of the main objections to presentism, the view that only the present exists; the future does not exist yet, and the past no longer
The grounding objection is one of the main objections to presentism, the view that only the present exists; the future does not exist yet, and the past no longer
The objection takes its departure from two premises, (i) that every true proposition P has a truthmaker T, and (ii) that some of our claims about the future and past are obviously true
Summary
The grounding objection (see, e.g. Crisp 2007; Kierland 2013) is one of the main objections to presentism, the view that only the present exists; the future does not exist yet, and the past no longer. In this paper I will treat the objection as if it only concerns past tensed expressions. It isn’t as widely accepted that future tensed expressions must have a truth-value. Presentists tend not to challenge the two assumptions on which the objection is based. Instead they argue that by denying the past they are not denying the existence of truthmakers for tensed expressions; the truthmakers only appear to be in the past, but really are in the present (for instance, Prior 1962; Bigelow 1996; Craig 2000; Cameron 2015). I will not challenge the view that for every truth there is a truthmaker, but illustrate that the grounding objection requires in addition what really is a separate claim but often believed to be a corollary of the former, notably that for every truthmaker there is a truth
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