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Presentism, the view that only the present exists, was a much neglected position in the philosophy of time for a number of years. Recently, however, it has been enjoying a renaissance among philosophers. A Future for Presentism is meant as a timely contribution to this fast growing and exciting debate. After discussing rival positions in the philosophy of time, in Part I Craig Bourne shows how presentism is the only viable alternative to the tenseless theory of time. He then develops a distinctive version of presentism that avoids the mistakes of the past, and which sets up the framework for solving problems traditionally associated with the position, such as what makes past-tensed statements true, how to give the proper semantics for statements about the future, how to deal with transtemporal relations, how we can meaningfully talk about past individuals, and how causation can be accommodated. Part I concludes with a discussion of the direction of time and causation, the decision-theoretic problem known as 'Newcomb's problem', and the possibility of time travel and causal loops. In Part II Bourne focuses on the problems for presentism raised by relativity theory. He begins with by giving a self-contained exposition of the concepts of special relativity that are important for understanding the later discussion of its philosophical implications. The last two chapters explore the philosophical implications of certain cosmological models that arise from general relativity, namely the expanding models, which seem to represent our universe, and Gödel's infamous model, which allows us to take a journey into our future and arrive in our past. The necessary physics is explained with the aid of diagrams, throughout.
Thisness Presentism outlines and defends a novel version of presentism, the view that only present entities exist and what is present really changes, a view of time that captures a real and objective difference between what is past, present, and future, and which offers a model of reality that is dynamic and mutable, rather than static and immutable. The book advances a new defence of presentism by developing a novel ontology of thisness, combining insights about the nature of essence, the metaphysics of propositions, and the relationship between true propositions and the elements of reality that make them true, alongside insights about time itself. It shows how, by accepting an ontology of thisness, presentists can respond to a number of pressing challenges to presentism, including claims that presentism cannot account for true propositions about the past, and that it is inconsistent with the reality of temporal passage and the openness of the future. This is one of the only book-length defences of presentism. It will be of interest to students and scholars working on the debate about presentism in the philosophy of time, as well as those interested in the metaphysics of propositions and truth-making, more generally.
Fran�ois Hartog explores crucial moments of change in societyÕs Òregimes of historicityÓ or its way of relating to the past, present, and future. Inspired by Arendt, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, Hartog analyzes a broad range of texts, positioning the The Odyssey as a work on the threshold of a historical consciousness and then contrasting it against an investigation of the anthropologist Marshall SahlinsÕs concept of Òheroic history.Ó He tracks changing perspectives on time in Ch‰teaubriandÕs Historical Essay and Travels in America, and sets them alongside other writings from the French Revolution. He revisits the insight of the French Annals School and situates Pierre NoraÕs Realms of Memory within a history of heritage and our contemporary presentism. Our presentist present is by no means uniform or clear-cut, and it is experienced very differently depending on oneÕs position in society. There are flows and acceleration, but also what the sociologist Robert Castel calls the Òstatus of casual workers,Ó whose present is languishing before their very eyes and who have no past except in a complicated way (especially in the case of immigrants, exiles, and migrants) and no real future (since the temporality of plans and projects is denied them). Presentism is therefore experienced as either emancipation or enclosure, in some cases with ever greater speed and mobility and in others by living from hand to mouth in a stagnating present. Hartog also accounts for the fact that the future is perceived as a threat and not a promise. We live in a time of catastrophe, one he feels we have brought upon ourselves.
Presentism: Essential Readings contains writings--classic and contemporary--that acquaint the reader with different versions of presentism, standard philosophical and scientific objections to presentism, and their attempted solutions. Detailed introductions to each part of the book make the discussions accessible to students and those unfamiliar with this fascinating and controversial philosophy.
Presentism is the view that only the present exists. Eternalism, by contrast, is the view that present, past and future objects and times exist. Philosophers have been divided for centuries regarding whether reality is an ever changing present consisting of objects and events coming into and out of existence, or whether reality is composed of all that did, does, and will exist. On the one hand, presentism and the associated dynamical view of time look closer to common sense and to the way we ordinarily think and talk about past and future objects; on the other hand, there are aspects of common sense talk that are more easily accommodated by eternalism, and, arguably, eternalism is a better fit with contemporary science. In the last two decades in analytic philosophy both positions have been defended and the literature flourishes with arguments for and against each of them, along with a huge family of alternative proposals.
Dada is often celebrated for its strategies of shock and opposition, but in Dada Presentism, Maria Stavrinaki provides a new picture of Dada art and writings as a lucid reflection on history and the role of art within it. The original (Berlin-based) Dadaists' acute historical consciousness and their modern experience of time, she contends, anticipated the formulations of major historians such as Reinhart Koselleck and, more recently, François Hartog. The book explores Dada temporalities and concepts of history in works of art, artistic discourse, and in the photographs of the Berlin Dada movement. These photographs—including the famous one of the First International Dada Fair—are presented not as simple, transparent documents, but as formal deployments conforming to a very concrete theory of history. This approach allows Stavrinaki to link Dada to more contemporary artistic movements and practices interested in history and the archive. At the same time, she investigates what seems to be a real oxymoron of the movement: its simultaneous claim to the ephemeral and its compulsive writing of its own history. In this way, Dada Presentism also interrogates the limits between history and fiction.
People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.
In The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are all False, Patrick Todd launches a sustained defense of a radical interpretation of the doctrine of the open future. He argues that all claims about undetermined aspects of the future are simply false. Todd argues that this theory is metaphysically more parsimonius than its rivals, and that objections to its logical and practical coherence are much overblown. Todd shows how proponents of this view can maintain classical logic, and argues that the view has substantial advantages over Ockhamist, supervaluationist, and relativist alternatives. Todd draws inspiration from theories of ''neg-raising'' in linguistics, from debates about omniscience within the philosophy of religion, and defends a crucial comparison between his account of future contingents and certain more familiar theories of counterfactuals. Further, Todd defends his theory of the open future from the charges that it cannot make sense of our practices of betting, makes our credences regarding future contingents unintelligible, and is at odds with proper norms of assertion. In the end, in Todd's classical open future, we have a compelling new solution to the longstanding problem of future contingents.
Is time out of joint? For the past two centuries, the dominant Western time regime has been future-oriented and based on the linear, progressive and homogeneous concept of time. Over the last few decades, there has been a shift towards a new, present-oriented regime or 'presentism', made up of multiple and percolating temporalities. Rethinking Historical Time engages with this change of paradigm, providing a timely overview of cutting-edge interdisciplinary approaches to this new temporal condition. Marek Tamm and Laurent Olivier have brought together an international team of scholars working in history, anthropology, archaeology, geography, philosophy, literature and visual studies to rethink the epistemological consequences of presentism for the study of past and to discuss critically the traditional assumptions that underpin research on historical time. Beginning with an analysis of presentism, the contributors move on to explore in historical and critical terms the idea of multiple temporalities, before presenting a series of case studies on the variability of different forms of time in contemporary material culture.