¹ Charles Hartshorne is among those who trace this feature of time to a kind of Absolute Becoming, in The Divine Relativity, pp. 96-97, for example, though he does not there use the phrase ‘Absolute Becoming’.

² Variant of these theses were held by C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, IV, 3172; Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas, p. 27; Mayo, Bernard, ‘In The Open Future’, Mind 71 (1962)Google Scholar, and C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought, p. 77, to mention only a few examples. Peirce and Broad attribute the non-designatability of future individuals to the first kind of Absolute Becoming distinguished below. See Richard Gale's discussion of these issues in chapter 9 of his book, The Language of Time.

³ I say ‘at least’ because Adolf Grünbaum, for example, has developed still another fifth notion of Temporal Becoming, which will be mentioned below.

⁴ I have argued against them in ‘Is the Future Partly Unreal?’, Review of Metaphysics 21 (1968)Google Scholar, and ‘The Truth about Tomorrow's Sea Fight’, Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969). The Empty Future Theory was embraced and defended by C. D. Broad in Scientific Thought. Variants of the Part-Empty Theory have been defended by Charles Harthorne in The Divine Relativity and “The Meaning of‘Is Going to Be’”, Mind 74 (1965) 46-58; Taylor, Richard in ‘The Problem of Future Contingencies’, Philosophical Review 66(1957) 1-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lukasiewicz, Jan, ‘Philosophische Bemerkungen zu mehrwertigen Systemen des Aüssagen-kalkuls’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie 23 (1930) Classe III, 51-77Google Scholar; and many others. Hartshorne's version of the theory retains the principle of bivalence for future-tense statements by construing them as asserting or denying of putative future particulars that they are causally determined by present-cum-past.

⁵ If one identifies Absolute Becoming with the directly experienced durational character of our experience, then one can argue against its mind-independent reality, as Adolf Grünbaum does in ‘The Meaning of Time’, in Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Time (ed. by E. Freeman and W. Sellars). Alternatively, one could identify Absolute Becoming with a kind of extension which physical things are supposed to have, which is irreducible to spatial extension, non-emergent, and characterizes world-lines with timelike relativistic intervals between their points. One can then ask whether or not there is such a thing as this Absolute Becoming, and if there is, how is it related to the experience durational character of our perceptions. Whatever approach one takes, it is a further question whether the objective or the experienced durational character just discussed is what is expressed by temporal indexical expressions and their nominalizations, such as ‘Nowness’. See note 7 for further treatment of this point.

⁶ We could say that temporal extension, or duration, is the kind which has an elapsive character, or involves passage or Absolute Becoming. But this is like saying that yellow is the kind of color which is yellowish. However, this analogy might be resisted on the ground that only yellow is yellowish, whereas unextended point-events as well as extended ones undergo Absolute Becoming. So the latter is a genuine specific difference differentiating duration from spatial extension. Since this dispute involves fine points not relevant to the present study, such as the ontic status of point-events, it will not be pursued any further here.

⁷ Though they are compatible, it is important to see that they are distinct. More precisely, we must distinguish (i) the putative irreducibly indexical properties such as presentness and futurity, which are expressed by indexical predicates; (ii) the directly experienced durational character of which we are at least implicitly aware in all ordinary states of consciousness; and (iii) the irreducible elapsive or durational character which many think is involved in the temporal extension of physical entities.

In ‘The Meaning of Time’ and elsewhere Adolf Grünbaum argues powerfully against the objective reality of what he calls ‘becoming’. But I am not always clear about which target Grünbaum is attacking, and I think that the reason is that he does not explicitly distinguish (i) and (ii) above. His final conclusion is that ‘becoming’ is mind-dependent, but not totally unreal or fictional. But what is this becoming?

On the one hand it does involve temporal indexical properties, since Griinbaurn says, “… I shall center my account of becoming on the status of the present or now as an attribute of events which is encountered in perceptual awareness” (ibid., p. 195; italics Grünbaum's). This makes it look as though we are dealing with (i) above, the indexical properties. The next sentence reads, “Granted that becoming is a prominent feature of our perceptual awareness, I ask: must becoming therefore also be a feature of the order of physical events independently of our awareness of them, as the commonsense view supposes it to be?” (ibid., p. 1 96; italics Grünbaum's). All that should be granted is that (ii) above, directly experienced duration, is a feature of our perceptual awareness. It is not obvious that irreducibly indexical properties are a direct feature of our awareness. It might be held, although it is not obvious, that indexical properties of type (i) above, since they are temporal, can be instantiated only if properties of type (ii) are instantiated. But if this is so, it is not the indexical character of the type (i) properties which is relevant to the question of whether they are instantiated independently of minds, for the issue here concerns the relation between type (ii) nonindexical properties and type (iii) non-indexical properties. So all of the arguments concerned with the mind-dependence of temporal indexical properties are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the elapsive character of our experience is a feature of physical entities independently of our awareness of them. This last question is the one which is analogous to the standard philosophical problem concerning the objectivity or minddependence of such secondary qualities as color. The question of the status of temporal indexicals is rather different. Provided that the indexical properties are so relativized to reference frames, to jibe with Relativity, the two most promising position are (a) the one which accords them both mind-dependent and mind-independent instances, and (b) the one which denies that there are any irreducibly indexical properties instantiated either in or out of the mind. I think that Grünbaum would embrace position (b). But I am not entirely sure, because his account has an additional subtlety. He says that “… an account of becoming which provides answers to these questions is not an analysis of what the common-sense man actually means when he says that a physical event belongs to the present, past, or future; instead, such an account sets forth how these ascriptions ought to be constructed within the framework of a theory which would supplant the scientifically untutored view of common sense” (ibid., p. 196; italics Grünbaum's). The analysis which he actually offers for the property of nowness makes it mind-dependent, but as so analysed it is genuinely instantiated. It is somewhat analogous to colors as construed by those who confine them to mental phenomena. But that property is not what the common man actually means by his temporal indexicals. It is rather all that he has a right to mean if he means to be right. Presumably, given what he actually means, all of his nowness-attributions, and futurity and pastness-attributions as well, would be regarded by Grünbaum as literally false.

⁸ I here follow Richard Gale's convention of italicizing tenseless verbs.

⁹ The Language of Time, pp. 213-216. For further argument on this issue see Gale's “‘Here’ and ‘Now’”, and James Garson's ‘Here and Now’, both in The Monist 53 (1969).

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 214.

¹¹ Idem.

¹² Gale in The Language of Time has a first-rate presentation and critique of both kinds of translation attempts. It was to my great surprise that after being initially convinced of his claim that both kinds of translations fail, I came around to the view that the first kind can succeed.

¹³ See Gale's book for a demonstration of the failure of other ways of making the second move.

¹⁴ Ronald de Sousa and Calvin Normore made this suggestion.

¹⁵ One might try to cling to the principle that what is expressed by ‘here-and-now’ is as mind-dependent as what is expressed by ‘token’, on the grounds that the ‘here-and-now’ contains an implicit reference to a token. This means that ‘the here-and-now token’ would be rendered ‘the token produced simultaneously and in the same place as this token’. But that, alas, just means ‘the token produced simultaneously and in the same place as the here-and-now token’. Further unpacking of these Chinese boxes is pointless, for inside each we find staring up at us a phrase which was to be eliminated, such as ‘this token’ or its equivalent ‘the here-and-now token’. So it has at no stage of the unpacking been shown that the meaning contribution which ‘here-and-now’ brings to the phrase ‘the here-and-now token’ can be cashed in terms of talk about tokens, or any mind-dependent entities for that matter.

¹⁶ This proviso is essential. An analysis may be successful even if the analysandum contains a reference to an entity which no proper part of the analysans refers to even implicitly, as long as the entity in question is a logical construction. Otherwise one could not maintain that statements about the average American could be reductively analysed in terms of statements referring only to concrete dated Americans. But ‘Event E is occurring now’, if it refers to any statement token, refers to one with five words, whereas the suggested analysans refers to no five-worded token. And neither of these tokens is a logical construction (or, at least, neither is a logical construction in a sense in which the other is not, so they are on the same logical level). This fact defeats the analysis.

¹⁷ American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971).

¹⁸ My thanks to Daniel Goldstick for making this point in conversation.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 212; italics Grünbaum's.

²⁰ J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, p. 135; quoted by Grünbaum, ibid., p. 218.

²¹ Ibid., p. 218.