Westphal, Jonathan - The Retrenchability of 'The Present'

02/20/2009

Analysis, Vol 62 No 1 2002

This paper tries to undo the common problem of 'the present' as having no substance, no extension. St Agustine is quoted as framing the problem: the past just happened, the future is yet to happen. Anytime you look at a divisible section of time, some part is the future, some the past-- the present has no length. Author argues this is a fallacy of composition; Augustine insists that the whole of a unit of time must also be within one of its container units, e.g. the whole of 2001 must be within May 2001. Author argues this is an 'absurd' requirement, using a spatial analogy of 'here' in place of 'the present'. Yet the permissibility of using such a counter-example is disputed by GEL Owen, who defended the asymmetry of space to time for himself and Aristotle, on the argument that time past is irretreiveably closed while 'over there' and 'over here' is open, alterable. Author replies first by pointing out that he does not need to level symmerty between space and time for his analogy to be plausible. Secondly, author argues that 'the present' sometimes can count as a year, sometimes a month, depending on the context of use-- much like 'here'. Lastly, author points out that 'the present' is 'logically incomplete', requiring a determinant like 'day', 'epoch', 'election-cycle'. One curious problem might be that this doesn't seem to be the same with 'the future'.