Against detensers

Helena Eilstein

pp. 93-125

in: Helena Eilstein (ed), A collection of Polish works on philosophical problems of time and spacetime, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

The T/P dispute, between transientism and permanentism, concerns the objectivity of the concept of becoming. By detensers I mean those permanentists who try to make their point by semantical analysis of "temporal language'. I criticize that type of argumentation as well as some other arguments leveled by either party. If the dispute might be at least hypothetically resolved, that would have to be by means of analyzing the basic theories of contemporary science. It turns out, however, against that background that permanentism is irrefutable even in case it is false. The commitment to transientism is cognitively unwarranted although it is the attitude we tend to assume in practical life.