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Verbal·Expression of Ideas·Rhetorical Synthesis

hard

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Philosophers espousing presentism (the view that only present things exist) must contend with the truth-maker objection (TO).
• TO: If past things don’t exist, what makes true statements about the past (e.g., “dinosaurs existed”) true?
• 1996: Presentist philosopher John Bigelow proposed “Lucretianism.”
• Lucretianism posits that the statement is made true by the world’s acceptance of the past-tensed property of “having contained dinosaurs.”
• 2006: Presentist philosopher Craig Bourne proposed “ersatz presentism.”
• Ersatz presentism posits that the statement is made true by an abstract (“ersatz”) time that exists outside temporal time and represents how things were in the past.

The student wants to distinguish Bourne’s proposed theory from Bigelow’s. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

A

The presentist approaches of Bigelow (1996) and Bourne (2006) differ in whether they consider truths about the past—the statement “dinosaurs existed,” for example—to be made true by anything at all.

B

Following Bigelow’s 1996 proposal, Bourne accepted the existence of past-tensed properties to solve the truth-maker problem with one caveat: a form of “ersatz” time that exists outside temporal time.

C

In contending with the truth-maker objection, ersatz presentism diverges from Lucretianism’s use of past-tensed properties by positing an “ersatz” time-outside-time capable of representing past things.

D

In 2006, Bourne proposed ersatz presentism, disagreeing with Bigelow’s earlier hypothesis that only present things exist.