opposed to a mere seeming?^26 A related concern is that memory provides us with
knowledge by acquaintance rather than knowledge by description of past things.^27
But how can we be acquainted with that which in no way exists? If the past is literally
nothing, it is hard to see how these questions can be answered.
I follow here Edith Stein (2009: 11), who notes that,“Past being and future being
are not simply nonbeing. This implies more than that past and future have cognitive
being in remembrance and expectation.”
Memories are“traces”of the past, but they aren’t the only kind of currently
existing effect of past events. Perhaps we can appeal to these other traces in order
to give the past some sort of reality. This view is suggested by Bosanquet (1897: 229),
who claims that the position of the common person once it has been clarified of
certain confusions is that
past and future... exist, so to speak, indirectly.... The present tense alone, implying a certain
duration, would predicate existence in the full sense. It would be quite agreed that past and
future make a difference to the present. But they would be held to exist only in and through this
difference, and would be realities only, in the case of the past, as effects, and in the case of the
future, as anticipations.
A view of this sort is also defended byŁukasiewicz (1967), who holds that past truths
are made true by present truths and the laws of nature, but if the laws of nature are
indeterministic, then many of the propositions about the past that we take to be true
are not in fact true.
I doubt both that this is the“purified view”of the common person and that this
view is correct.^28 Suppose there are island universes, that is, spatially and causally
isolated parts of reality, and suppose that we live in one of them. Suppose that
moments from now one of these island universes will cease to be, leaving no trace
at all of its ever having been, leaving nofinal effects on what remain. It would
nonetheless be true that it existed, that it had various features, etc. The view gestured
at by Bosanquet and defended byŁukasiewicz seems untenable.^29
Intuitiondemandsthatthepastmusthavesomesortofreality.Pastentities
must enjoy some real mode of being. This intuition is what makes the so-called
truth-maker argumentagainst presentism so compelling. Let us now discuss this
argument.
There are contingent truths about the past. For example, it is true that World War
I was horrific. But what in the worldmakesit true? The eternalist, who believes in
past, present, and future objects in all their glory and awfulness, has an easy answer:
since World War I is in her ontology, she can say that World War I’s being horrificis
(^26) See Sprigge (1992), Keller (2004), and Markosian (2004b) for discussion.
(^27) See Russell (1915) and Cockburn (1997: 54–7) for discussion.
(^28) In fairness to Bosanquet, this is not his considered view about time.
(^29) Sprigge (1992: 3) also presents an argument along these lines.