Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

I discuss the problem of the grounding of past truths for presentism, by focusing on the so-called cheater solution: the idea that the presentist is not required to provide past truths with a grounding, but can use all expressive resources of the tensed language to provide an explanation of what makes truths about the past true. I argue that cheating does not have the theoretical advantages that it is purported to have. In particular, cheater presentism does not have the resources to withstand the sceptic's tenet that the distinction between presentism and eternalism is spurious; this version of presentism (though not presentism in general) turns out to be indistinguishable from eternalism.