Presentism is, most simply put, the belief that only the present exists, and that past and future states of affairs do not exist. A.N. Prior lays out his understanding of presentism clearly and succinctly in The Notion of the Present. One interesting challenge to this position, which I will refer to as the Argument from History, posits an apparent inconsistency in Prior's presentist view. This paper will contend, however, that the Argument from History against presentism rests upon a fundamental misconception of Prior's position, and that Prior's version of presentism emerges from the historical argument essentially unscathed.
Prior's view of the present parallels the notion he holds of that which is real. To Prior, to view the real world as “just a region of some larger universe which contains other regions as well” is deeply flawed. He points out that to speak of mythical entities existing in mythology, or of unreal entities existing in some non-real world, is not to speak literally. Instead, it is simply to make use of an unfortunately common metaphorical mode of communication which regrettably refers to some region that does not exist. Conversely, to speak of some real entity existing in the real world, is simply to state that this entity exists; no prefix, such as "in the real world", is necessary to add any additional meaning to the statement. The redundancy of such a prefix is, to Prior, a clear indicator of the actual existence of the entity in question.
Prior believes prefixes such as "in the present" to be just as redundant as prefixes like "in the real world". To state that I am nineteen years old in the present is nothing more than to state that I am nineteen years old. Conversely, Prior sees the prefixes that are necessary to talk of the past as an indicator that this event does not exist. To say that it has been (and no longer is) the case that I was three years old clearly implies that I am not three years old. Further, to Prior, this implies that my being three years old does not exist at all. To Prior, and to any presentist, there is no realm of reality in which one could find a three-year-old person who will grow up to be the author of this essay. It clearly does not exist in the present, which is, to Prior, the same as saying that it simply does not exist.
However, Prior's argument for the existence of only the present is not based purely upon such tenuous linguistic grounds. Prior has noticed something “special about the present” which makes its reality obvious and evident when compared with the unreality of past and future events. He is, however, infuriatingly vague concerning what exactly this means, and devotes little attention to this aspect of his belief in presentism. Perhaps Prior's clear and unreserved belief in the obvious truth of presentism led to this succinctness of his exposition. To some degree at least, this extraordinary brevity may account for the wide array of criticism that one can find against Prior's position. Unfortunately, Prior's death two years after The Notion of the Present was published eliminates any possibility of his elaborating upon his position.
Prior has thus been unable to respond to a most interesting argument against his position, the Argument from History. This argument seeks to expose Prior's presentist views as simply ridiculous and self-contradictory. First, it establishes that Prior is not an historical skeptic, and that he believes that true statements can be made about history despite his belief that the events themselves do not exist. The distinctive aspect of Prior's discussion of history is that he believes talk of the past to be grounded in its significance to the present, and not in the event itself (which does not exist). This is why Prior insists that the literal meaning of “Withrow's lecture is past” is actually “[it is true today that] it has been the case that Withrow is lecturing.” Though Prior interprets talk about the past in a way foreign to the common speaker, he plainly does not consider history to be a discipline void of truth.
The second aspect of the Argument from History is its appeal to the truth-maker principle, which holds that, for every true proposition, there must be some existing entity that suffices for its truth. If we accept the truth-maker principle, and we combine this with Prior's insistence that the past does not exist, it becomes clear that in order to make truthful statements about the past, we must find some existing entity in the present to suffice for its truth. This reasoning leads to a version of presentism popularly known as verificationism, which proposes that historical truth is hinged directly upon evidence. In this form of presentism, the truth in the statement “I was three years old” lies in photo albums, my birth certificate and lack of death certificate, my enrollment papers for preschool, my mother's insistence that I was an intolerably cute individual, and perhaps even some early memories of my own, but not intrinsically in any event of my three-year-oldness, which, to the presentist, does not exist.
