This monograph provides a comprehensive defense of the Growing Block Theory of time, addressing key objections and linking it to a broader theory consistent with relativistic spacetime. It includes detailed axiomatizations and a novel spacetime logic, making it essential for researchers in the philosophy of time and temporal logic.
As Time Goes By offers an overview of different versions of tense realism, or A-theories of time, critically assesses those that have found supporters in the extant literature, and finally explicates and defends a hitherto neglected A-theory of time that combines many of the virtues that the B-theory claims for itself, while avoiding many of the vices that afflict more standard A-theories. Proceeding from certain general assumptions about time and its structure, the authors first provide an exhaustive classification of mutually exclusive realist views of tense in terms of precise criteria. They then critically review the more familiar of these views, such as presentism and relativism, in the light of desiderata any A-theory should satisfy, before showing how their favourite A-theory can satisfy all of these desiderata and how it escapes the McTaggartian trilemma recently expounded by Kit Fine. In the last part, the authors devise a systematic metaphysics for that view, give a reduction of times, and of the temporal order, in its terms, and provide a full semantics, statable exclusively in tensed terms, for both tensed and untensed language. The book closes by addressing and defusing the challenge that the authors’ favourite A-theory is a B-theory in disguise.
This work in analytic metaphysics aims to clarify the notion of existential dependence, a key concept since Aristotle. It critically examines existing analyses of this notion, ultimately rejecting them in favor of a new account. The first chapter introduces essential concepts such as existence, necessity, quantification, and essence. Chapters 2 and 4 focus on "simple" existential dependence, where one object cannot exist without another. Three contemporary philosophical accounts of this dependence are presented and refuted, leading to a new "foundational" account that defines simple dependence through the relation of ‘grounding,’ discussed in chapter 3. Chapters 5 and 6 explore various relations related to simple dependence, including generic dependence, temporal dependence, and supervenience, highlighting the superiority of foundationalist accounts framed in terms of grounding. These chapters also apply the foundational conception to characterize substances and differentiate between Aristotelian and Platonician views of universals. The work concludes with a technical appendix featuring a sound and complete system for the logic of essence based on possible world semantics. The author, a professor of analytic philosophy at the University of Geneva, has a PhD in Philosophy and research interests spanning metaphysics, philosophical logic, and the philosophy of mind.