Temporal Relations

   Who thinks that ersatz B-relations provide an adequate solution to the so-called "problem of relations?" 

Comments

[Ernani Magalhaes]

Not me!

I assume you're talking about the problem inter-temporal relations pose for presentists.

Even if ersatz B-relations handled the apparent earlier/later relation of items in the temporal series, you'd have to do something to make them handle other relations that appear to obtain between non-contemporary objects. And if you have an ersatz relation, you better have some terms for it. The terms are probably going to be something otherwordly like false propositions or non-obtaining states of affairs, which, it seems to me (a presentist) are pretty much as bad as past objects.

[D. Ian Spencer]

It's hard to know how this would work for all cross-temporal relations.

Let's say the presentist view in question is one according to which we have ersatz times - some special kinds of maximal consistent abstract propositions, say. We can then also have various relations between these propositions, including ersatz B-relations that put them into a "temporal ordering".
It is plausible that present things or the present time bear multiple relations to things or times other than what is present. Among these relations are causal relations. The question then is how ersatz B-relations could possibly help us here. It's still completely mysterious how present concrete reality could apparently have causal relations with the past or future if there is none - that is, unless we either posit ersatz causal relations (but what the heck would those even be, and could they really do the work well enough?) or else real causal relations between members of the ersatz time series and other things. Putting the former aside, consider the latter option now.
If, on the one hand, the ersatz times causally effect concrete things or vice versa, then it's mysterious how abstract objects could causally effect concrete things or in turn be so effected. If, on the other hand, causal relations are only between members of the ersatz time series, we not only have the problem still of understanding how ersatz times could have any causal powers at all but we have the added oddity that concrete reality - the present time - is involved in no causal relations at all and is bereft of anything like causal powers.
So in sum, it's hard to see how this sort of strategy could be pulled off - causal relations are just one instance of the sort of things it would have to deal with.

[Ernani]

Suppose the ersatz series could handle the earlier/later relation. That is, you could understand earlier/later relations in terms of relations among the members of the ersatz series. Then you could handle causation by being a Humean about it. If what is involved in A causing B is just A being spatio-temporally contiguous with B - significantly, prior to it - plus some generalities of the same sort, then causation is really just earlier/than plus.

Of course, I don't have any reason at all to think that you can "handle" earlier/later in terms of the ersatz series, but I still like the conditional.

In any case, I don't really think causation poses a special problem for presentists. The problem is just genuine, i.e., external relations. It seems plausible to treat internal relations as just reducible to the "relata's" monadic states (plus perhaps a real relation among their properties, which, we may hope to understand as timeless or omnitemporal). And certainly causation seems like an external relation. But there is a fairly good list of other candidates, the most significant of which in my book is certainly earlier/later.

Actually, I kind of like the idea of defining earlier/later in terms of the A-Series. A is earlier than B =df. A is present and B is past, or... Not to say it'll be easy. Back in the good old days A-theorists tried this out pretty hard, of course.

[David Taylor]

Assuming we're talking about Bourne's view here, I guess that if you grant all of the ontology that he helps himself to, then, yeah, it solves the problem of temporal relations, but at the cost of accepting an incredibly implausible ontology.

To say that there are abstract entities which can serve as ersatz times doesn't seem to me a problem for the presentist (assuming we define the view in such a way that one can be a presentist and still have "atemporal" entities), but to posit that there are relations between these abstract entities that just happen to correspond to (or maybe are supposed to be determinitive of in some way?) the order in which events happen just seems to me completely unmotivated independently of solving the problem.

However, since I agree with Bourne that "reductive presentism" seems pretty much hopeless, it kind of strikes me that ersatzer presentism may be the most plausible form.

[Nathan Oaklander]

Thanks for your comment, especially,
"that there are relations between these abstract entities...."
That's what particular bugs me about this gambit: How can there be temporal relations between non-temporal terms?

[Ernani Magalhaes]

What's the Bourne reference?