Ropes and Presentism

If how this seems is how things are, then a strict kind of presentism is false. This is any kind of presentism — the only serious kind, in my view — in which there is a single moment which is present, and this moment is the only one in which reality lies. What is outside that single moment is past or future, and so unreal.

However, if appearances are to be believed, what we see here is real and at more than one time. it does not matter how we think about these times — which is past? which is future? which is present? (relatively dull questions to a tenseless eternalist such as myself) — they are all as real as each other (and indeed what is at all of them seem equally present).

All that matters here is this: what is at those times is real. This is because: We can see things at those times — the rope being at the different places. If what we see must be real, then what is at those times must be real. And so more than one time is real.

That’s all there is to it.

….. If you hold that what we see is in the world (and not just our mind, or our head).

….. If you hold that what we see is real.

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