Correia&Rosenkranz EternalFactsAgeingUniverse

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Eternal Facts in an Ageing Universe It is natural to think of temporal reality as being one and not many, while the relativist idea that to each time there corresponds a distinct reality would seem to fly into the face of common sense. It is equally natural to think of temporal reality as comprising a history of changes in that mutually inconsistent tensed statements are true at different times. It has been argued that the combination of these natural thoughts poses a threat to realism about tense according to which tensed facts serve as truth-makers for such statements. Here we argue that the claimed incompatibility is only apparent and that there is a hitherto neglected realism about tense that succeeds in reconciling both thoughts with the existence of tensed truth-makers. According to this non-standard view, there are tensed facts that stay numerically the same and yet undergo qualitative changes as times goes by. One naturally thinks of temporal reality as involving a history of changes in the more or less precise sense that, at different times, different tensed statements are true of it that cannot all be true of it at any one time. We may put this by saying that temporal reality is naturally viewed as being variegated over time. That temporal reality is nonetheless one and not many is an equally natural thought to have, and the contravening conception that views it as a mere collection of different successive realities even tends to strike one as repugnant. Just as there is not one reality where you are and another one where we are, there does not seem to be a succession of distinct realities corresponding to different times, including, say, pre-war reality and post-war reality. Talking this way may be a vivid means of conveying sociocultural, political or economical differences between epochs. But when it comes to metaphysics, one tends to see these different epochs as parts of a single reality. If we take reality to be the totality of facts it is constituted by, then we can express this second thought by saying that constitution is absolute and not time-relative. We may, if we wish, still deploy a time-relative notion of constitution, but any such relativisa tion will ultimately be otiose: if a fact constitutes rea lity at one time, it a fortiori constitutes reality at any other time. However natural these thoughts are, they are not uncontroversial. Thus, those presentists who regard a tensed statement as being true at a time only if it is made true by some fact at 1

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Correia&Rosenkranz EternalFactsAgeingUniverse