Fighting The Zombie PDF

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 8
Karen Bennett and Dean W. Zimmerman

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199682904 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-14 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682904.001.0001
Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

David Braddon-Mitchell
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682904.003.0010
Abstract and Keywords

This paper presents two ways in which one might try to evade the epistemic objection to growing block models of time. These are offered, inter alia, as interpretations of suggestions by Correia and Rosencranz in this volume. I argue that the first attempt fails to avoid the epistemic objection because even if there are no times at which me might take ourselves to be at which are not now, there are plenty of locations we could take ourselves to be at which are not on the bleeding edge of reality. The second objection splits into two; on one reading it fail to evade the objection, on the second it loses what is distinctive about the growing block and is otherwise implausible.
Keywords: Time, Presentism, Growing Block, Spacetime, Tense, Metaphysics, Correia, Rozencranz, Braddon-Mitchell, Tooley, Broad, Block Universe
Correia and Rosenkranz (in this volume) offer a suggestive attempt to raise the growing block model of time from the grave. The thought is something like this: the opponents of the block use an epistemic argument that mistakenly deploys an untensed notion of existence. The epistemic argument assumes, they say, that if the block ends at, say, 2015, one can go back mentally to 2013 and note that the benighted authors writing at that time think that they are in the present but are mistaken. But this is not so, they argue: for at every time it is the final slice of the block. At 2015, to think of 2013 is to think of the time when 2013 was the last slice of the block. Before attempting to put a stake through the lumbering zombie of the growing block theory (henceforth usually GBT), Ill clear up a couple of things
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which might be misunderstandings about my argument against it (BraddonMitchell 2004).
1. Some Preliminary Clarifications

First, Correia and Rosenkranz (henceforth C&R) characterize my view as an attempt to show that GBT is incoherent. That would be a tall order, and I dont in fact attempt it. Instead the thought was that the model, while coherent, divorces the indexical conception of nowNowindexfrom the objective one given by the metaphysics of the model, namely, the fact of being located on the last sliceNowls. This leaves us open to the unwelcome likelihood that, Nowindex, it is not Nowls. This is an undesirable outcome in my view, reason enough to reject GBT; reason beyond the mere surprisingness of the view. (p.352) I think it undermines the motivation for holding it in the first place. But it is nevertheless far from rendering it incoherent. Committed growing blockers sometimes accept the argument but embrace it as demonstrating surprising evidence of our epistemic limitations, even if none have yet done so in print. If the best metaphysical model of time tells us that we cant be sure that we are in the present, and in fact are very likely to be in the past, then so be it, runs the thought. However that view, while perhaps coherent, is pretty unpalatable, hence perhaps the reluctance to swallow it publicly. A second misunderstanding: C&R say that I adopt an untensed notion of existence simpliciter in characterizing GBT. But this is also not right. While there are entirely untensed ways of characterizing GBT2 they are not really in the spirit of GBT. Instead I think of it as a hybrid. The way I think of GBT is as an A-series, and what exists at each A-time is a block universe. What exists at every moment of true time or A-time is that block. At later times these blocks are larger. At every A-time the present is, according to the theory, the last slice. But equally at every A-time there is a volume of world-slices which are at least quasi-B-related, and most of the slices are in the past at that A-time. Quasi-B-relatedness is an ordering imposed by the geometry of a spacetime; although it is a geometrical relation, one constraint on quasi-Brelatedness should be that it puts the slices of spacetime in the same order in which they were, successively, present. The idea is just that world-slices are ordered, but it is left open whether there is a privileged direction, and it is left equally open whether the ordering is genuinely temporal. In my original paper I simply called this B-relatedness. I did so in part because,
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on some views about time to which I am sympathetic, all it takes to be genuinely B-related is to be quasi-B-related. Going into the back-block is not going back in A-time. But it's the existence of the back-block at every A-time which is what gives rise to the epistemic challenge. For whatever objective A-time it is, if the back-block exists at that time, then there are agents in the back-block mistaken about what time is truly now. Of course for (p.353) the GBT so construed there is a difference at every spatiotemporal location between the true timethe slice which is the present, and which marks where the A-series has got up to, and which is given by the last slice in a B-series at that A-timeand where that spatiotemporal location is to be found within what exists simpliciter (within what EXISTS, in C&A's terminology and henceforth) at that A-time. Finally, one desideratum for a GBT: it would count as a real advantage if objective nowness could be reductively explained in terms of which slice is the final slice of being. If the location of nowness and the cutting edge of the block were merely correlated, then much of the motivation for having a growing block view in the first place would be undermined.
2. The First Stake

What I take to be the misunderstanding of my objection provides the nub of one reply to C&R. So to make this reply Ill first state how one might take C&R's own view about what's wrong with the epistemic argument. The epistemic argument requires that from the standpoint of a given moment, you can look back on an earlier moment and see that, at that moment, being extends beyond it. So from our current perspective we can look back at the time at which Prior was writing The Syntax of Time Distinctions and see that at that moment in time he would think that he was in the present but be mistaken, and in fact be in the past. But, C&R say, this is a mistake, because it is part of the most charitable formulation of GBT that at every moment in time that moment is on the edge of being. At every moment, and a fortiori at all the moments when Prior wrote, the past exists but not the future. This they say is guaranteed by the tensed notion of existence that they work with. It seems to me that I can accept all of that, with some terminological clarification, while leaving the sting of the epistemic argument unchanged.
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Consider the sense in which existence, and moments, are tensed on my reading of the GBT. There is an A-series, which is of course fully tensed. Call positions in the A-series moments for maximum (p.354) consistency with C&A's terminology. At every moment in the A-series, the spatiotemporal hyperplane3 that is the latest in the block is objectively now. So existence is entirely tensed. If I look back in the A-series to the time when Prior was writing, I find a block which terminates at the hyperplane where he writes, and so at that time he is in the present. What exists at each moment is a block with a different last hyperplane from any distinct moment. That last hyperplane is what grounds the facts about what is true at the present, and the back-block which exists at that moment grounds truths about the past at that moment. So far, perhaps, no disagreement with C&R. But C&R say something else. When we are quantifying over times, we only ever quantify over moments. But I can accept that too. The time 1900 is that moment in time when a certain hyperplanethe 1900 onewas last. The hyperplane in the block which exists as at 1900 which makes true the claim that at 1900 certain things were true in 1800, is not a moment in the relevant sense and thus not a time; it's a location in the back-block of the moment 1900. We can, if they exist, quantify over the hyperplanes in the back-block which exists at any time. When quantifying over times, however, I quantify over momentswhen I talk of 1900 as a time Im talking about the last hyperplane of the 1900 block. So it's always now, in the sense that at every location in the block that moment is present, since the present moment is the last slice of the block. But this still allows us to formulate the epistemic argument. For although I cannot quantify over a moment or a time when that time is not on the edge of being, I can quantify over hyperplanes which arent the last hyperplane at that time. So now I can talk about the hyperplane in which Prior is writing, a hyperplane which exists in spacetime (understood as a physical notion) located in one spatiotemporal direction (i.e. in the direction of one of the quasi-B-relations, (p.355) equally understood as a physical notion, and not as going back in time). I could equally have said here that we are talking about slices that are earlier in the B-series which exists at that point in the A-series. But that would, because of the associations of slices earlier and later in the B-series with times, make it sound as though the hyperplanes are times. However, nothing
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hangs on calling them times. I am allowing that the tensed part of the theory exhausts times. The physical hypothesis about the existence of a back-block at every time can be neutrally described as a hypothesis about the existence of hyperplanes in physical spacetime that are merely quasi-B-related to one another and to the present slice. Assuming that consciousness supervenes on physical structures in spacetime, there's something back there (I think it's Prior, but that isnt germane) who thinks he's Prior, and who thinks that the present is the hyperplane which is part of what he calls 1954 and in which he is located. He's wrong about that. He's not located in the past in the A-theoretic sense he's located in that part of the back-block of 2013. Now this formulation has certain advantages. It allows it to be the case that, at every moment, being the last slice plays a role in marking or constituting (take your pick) the present. It has the advantage of taking on a standard interpretation of part of the scientific story about what exists at any time: a partial block universe account. And it does indeed have the feature that C&R say my reading doesnt have. It's genuinely dynamicthe universe grows as we move forward in the A-seriesas time passes. But all this is at the price of there being two ways to gloss ordinary talk about past moments. Strictly past moments (when the block was smaller), and parts of the universe in the backwards direction in the back-block which are not in the true past (in the A-series), but just distant parts of the blocks that exist at each time.4 This is in part why it remains vulnerable to the epistemological argument. So the idea behind the epistemological objection I am pressing is that the indexical use of now does not pick out a moment or a time, but rather a location in spacetime construed as a physical entity. (p.356) Thus using moment or time in the A-theoretic way, the issue is not that this moment is not now but rather that this location in spacetime is likely not at the present. If you think this is an objectionable use of the expression now because that should be tensed, Im happy to replace it with here in spacetime. The slogan for the objection would then become how do we know that here in spacetime the events are present. This would, I trust, just be a terminological variant of what I said in my original paper, where I was using moment to mean something like a hyperplane in spacetime and objective present to mean the last such moment, but one which makes it plain that my view can obey the constraints that C&R offer, while leaving the epistemological objection alive.
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3. A Second Stab
This first formulation of the GBT has benefits, and is consistent with C&R's stipulations. The way it accepts a fully tensed version of the growing block is that there are in effect different blocks of varying size at each A-time, but the locations in the back-block are not A-times. If the objective A-time is, say, 2013, then the back-block contains many locations spatiotemporally connected to 2013 which are not themselves A-times. At what one might call the 2010 location, the true time is not 2010, it is 2013. The real 2010 was when 2010 was the last slice. It's a different A-time, which has associated with it a smaller back-block. What some growing blockers might not like about this view (though perhaps that just is an inevitable result of accommodating blocks and growing) is that if, for expositional reasons, we allow ourselves to consider a God's-eye perspective from outside time, intrinsic duplicates of times5 will appear over and again. First, as the last slice of a blockwhen they are the time as it wereand again embedded as locations in the back-block of later times. My second stab (which will matter only for those who prefer the second view which is so stabbedif you think the view criticized in the first stab is the best understanding of the growing block, then (p.357) you can stop now without loss) removes this feature. It has genuinely temporal, not merely physical, relations between the locations in the blocks. The 2010 location in the back-block of 2013 is the time which is 2010. It is unqualifiedly identical to the location which is on the bleeding edge of 2010. If you could move from the 2013 location of the block at 2013 to the (at 2013) existing 2010 you would arrive when it was 2010, and your place of origin (2013) would not exist. So, on this interpretation of GBT, what exists simpliciter (what EXISTS) is not utterly unqualified. EXISTENCE is not confined to what exists in a time it's about what exists in every time; however, EXISTENCE is relativized to different times, because at different times, different other times EXIST. At 2013, 2010 EXISTS; but at 2010, 2013 does not. Ill call a version of the growing block that has these features the purely tensed growing block (PTGB) since it features no untensed quasi-B-relations. Understanding things this way perhaps makes it easier to reply to my epistemic objection, but doesnt come without its own costs. Here's the plan: first Ill explain why it might fare better against the objection. Then Ill briefly
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argue that, for all this, my objection still works. Then I will make two remarks about unattractive features of PTGB independently of whether the objection alone is fatal to it. So let's consider Julius Caesar again. It's now 2013. It's true that Julius Caesar EXISTS2013 even though he does not exist in 2013. Does he falsely believe that he is in the present? No, because the content and truth of beliefs should be assessed at the location of the beliefs themselves. At 60 bc, 2013 doesnt exist. So the fact that 2013 does not EXIST60 bc is what is relevant to assessing the content of Caesar's belief that he is present. His belief that he is present is true just if he is in a time-slice (60 bc) such that, at that timeslice, no later ones EXIST60 bc. Thus it looks like the epistemic worry is defeated. For there is no Julius Caesar in the past who mistakenly thinks that he is in the present. For at the time in which he exists he is right to think that he is in the present. Im not convinced that this does evade the worry. This is because it's not clear how to justify the principle of content attribution on which the evasion depends. From the perspective of 2013, there are things I can say about 60 bc that are indexed to 2013. That is, after (p.358) all, how I get to say that Caesar exists: he EXISTS2013. Saying that the content of his beliefs and so forth have to be evaluated at his location is equivalent to saying that what's relevant is what he BELIEVES60 bc; specifically that he BELIEVES60 bc that he is PRESENT60 bc. It's the fact that he does BELIEVE60 BC that he is PRESENT60 bc, and that that is true, which is what appears to defuse the problem. But Im allowed to say that he EXISTS2013 in 60 bc. So why cant I ask whether he BELIEVES2013 that he is PRESENT2013 in 60 bc? That would be a false belief. To deny that, at 2013, Caesar BELIEVES2013 anything would be to treat existence very differently from other attributions when we look back at the past: at 2013 Caesar EXISTS2013 in 60 bc, but Caesar does not BELIEVE2013 that he is PRESENT20136 at 2013, and this starts to look close to various solutions that Ive argued against elsewheresolutions that make the past very different from the present, in that the contents of beliefs are different, or the past is populated by philosophical zombies.7 I think this likely settles the matter. But if you are not persuaded, there are a couple of independent strikes against PTGP that might make it not worth adopting. The first is that it seems hard to say how this view differs from presentism with a fixed past and open future. EXISTSt amounts to
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existence in t or earlier than t. It's certainly isomorphic to a presentist account according to which there is an important notion of what is fixed at tthat which exists or did exist. So the relativized notion of EXISTENCEt behaves very much like the presentist's notion of what is fixed (about existence) at t. What distinguishes my version of the GBT from presentism is the genuine existence, from the perspective of each time, of multiple hyperplanes that timelessly and tenselessly exist in the way that presentists cant countenance. How does PTGB differ from presentism? There is an incantation we can chant. According to PTGB it's now the case that Julius Caesar and indeed 60 bc exist in the most unrestricted sense of quantification. So Julius Caesar EXISTS. According to presentism, on the (p.359) other hand, 60 bc does not exist in the most unrestricted sense of quantification. The worry which often arises in disputes like this is that there is quantifier variance at work. How do we know that it's the same quantifier being used in both statements? As Ive intimated, the presentist certainly accepts that 60 bc did exist. And given that the PTGB behaves in a way remarkably like presentism with respect to what it says about past times, there is even more reason than usual to doubt that there is a real distinctionreason to doubt that what PTGB means when it says, 60 bc EXISTS2013, and at it there are no slices past 60 bc, and what presentism means when it says, The facts about what existed at 60 bc are fixed, and when it did exist there were no times after it, are the same. It boils down to difficult issues about fixing the meaning of the quantifier in such a way as to be sure that each theorist means the same thing when they say unrestrictedly quantify. Of course this issue bedevils more than just the growing block. Some think (Meyer forthcoming) that the distinction between presentism and other views is hard to make out for these kinds of reasons. But the striking isomorphisms between PTGB and presentism make them a very likely candidate for such treatment if anything ever was. The final independent (and to my mind greatest) worry for PTGB is simply the oddity of the relativization that it requires. The relativization produces a kind of asymmetry of existence. Let's suppose that it is now 2013, and the past we are talking about is 59 bc (time to move a little further along in Caesar's biography). Let's now introduce some events at these times: the crossing of the Rubicon (at 59 bc) and the publication of Prior's Wellington Address (at 1954). Henceforth Ill call them Publication and Crossing. Now at Publication
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it's true that amongst what other events EXIST2013 is Crossing. But at Crossingfrom its perspective, so to speakit's the case that Publication does not EXIST60 BC. Unlike the growing block of the first stab, where there is no asymmetry of existence (at Publication, Crossing exists, but at the backblock Crossing that exists, Publication exists too), there is a real asymmetry. It can be the case that if B exists at A, A need not exist at B. Now if this is equivalent to the thought that at Publication it's true that Crossing existed (but not that it EXISTS), but that when it did, Publication had not yet come into existence, it's fine and there isnt the relevant asymmetry. But here's the dilemma: either PTGB is so (p.360) equivalent, in which case it is not distinct from presentism, or it is somehow distinct from presentism but committed to asymmetries of existence between different parts of being. It's possible for things to exist from the perspective of one part of being 2013although, from the perspective of some of those existing things, 2013 does not exist. Of course the idea that there might be two such events such that at one of them they both exist, but at the other only one of them does can be made technically coherent with the appropriate handling of accessibility relations in a logic. But understanding the metaphysics so described is another matter. Those asymmetries of existence are not just odd. They take out the block from the growing blockwe have gone far from the idea of trying to add dynamism to a block universe. It's a strange volume of spacetime that has locations at which other locations exist, but at those locations the first location doesnt! The thought would be that there is at each A-time a block universe of different sizes, where each of these whole blocks exists only from the perspective of its last slice. It's true of the blocks that exist at every A-time that from the perspective of almost all of its parts the entire block doesnt exist. That's a strange mereology indeed: strange enough to suggest that this is not a view which really has block universes in it at all.
4. Conclusion
Two stabs, and I think the growing block can return to its grave. The interpretation that I gave of the growing block in my first stab preserves the point of a growing block account, and also possesses the features C&R take to be crucial for an adequate account of it. Ive made it more explicit that on this interpretation of GBT existence simpliciterEXISTENCEis wholly dynamic, tensed, and A-theoretic. Nevertheless the epistemic objection still survives.
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Another understanding of GBTthe one I call PTGBmight at first look as though it fares better against the epistemic objection. But on closer inspection this is not at all clear. And there is a final worry: the view countenances a strange asymmetry of existence, one which can be removed only by understanding it in a way which may not make it distinct from presentism. University of Sydney
(p.361)
References
Bibliography references: Braddon-Mitchell, David (2004) How Do We Know it is Now Now?, Analysis 64: 199203. Meyer, Ulrich (forthcoming) The Triviality of Presentism. In Roberto Ciuni, Kristie Miller, and Giuliano Torrengo (eds), New Papers on the PresentFocus on Presentism. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.
Notes:
(1) Im greatly indebted to a series of comments on earlier drafts of this paper from Dean Zimmerman. (2) For example, as a series of increasingly larger worlds all of which exist, and which are ordered externally by the B-relations of the last slices, and internally by the B-relations amongst them. (3) I set aside considerations that are nevertheless important: talk of the last hyperplane implies objective facts about simultaneity that are additions to physics. Some might think that the growing block actually helps, because the fact that being has an edge might be used to define that hyperplane of simultaneity. But of course that edge is only a boundary, and being has other boundaries, so perhaps the GBT may still require extra resources to stipulate what the right simultaneity relations are. (4) I leave out here considerations of whether the early components of the block are identical in successive larger blocks. (5) I leave it open here if they are identicali.e. if they are the same thing persisting over time, but losing certain temporal properties. In second stab I foreclose that openness.
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(6) A related worry is that if we are allowed to index presentness in this way, it will become a triviality that one is presentt at t, and the view will be in danger of looking like a more cumbersome way of expressing the indexical view of presentness. (7) This last way of putting things was suggested by Dean Zimmerman, who charitably expressed it as a reading of an earlier draft of this reply.
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Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 8

Karen Bennett and Dean W. Zimmerman

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

Abstract and Keywords

which might be misunderstandings about my argument against it (BraddonMitchell 2004).

1. Some Preliminary Clarifications

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

2. The First Stake

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

Fighting the Zombie of the Growing Salami1

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