A Temporal Metaphysics for Affective Attitudes Kyle John Jamie Buckle-Hodgson Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science March 2020 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given when reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Kyle John Jamie Buckle-Hodgson to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Acknowledgements Many thanks indeed to my supervisors, Robin Le Poidevin and Helen Steward. Particular praise has to be given for the rigour and comprehensiveness of their supervisions, for which I was extremely lucky to have both present for the vast majority (a fact most envied by other students!). Further thanks too, of course, for their insights, remarks, suggestions, and boundless patience throughout the course of this thesis. Enormous gratitude is due to my wife, Keshet, for her extraordinary tolerance, kindness, warmth, and support over the last few years. She has given tremendously and with excellent humour for every second of it, an achievement that is testament to her grace and generosity. This work is dedicated to her. Thanks, too, to my children Liberty and Robin. If you decide to have a go at metaphysics, you might want to stick to defending a more orthodox theory. Finally, thanks to the rest of my family, with special mentions to my mother for the quality and volume of the food she sent to keep my spirits up, and my grandparents for instilling appetites gastronomic and intellectual. This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/ L503848/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. Abstract This thesis endeavours to achieve two things: first, it exposits a version of presentism, the doctrine that only present concrete entities exist, that is enriched with haecceities, the non- qualitative, essential properties of entities that characterise their essences. I argue that haecceity presentism provides strong responses to problematics traditionally faced by presentism (providing ontology for singular propositions, truthmaking, and cross-temporal relations and causation) without violating any of presentism’s strictures. I also distinguish my version of haecceity presentism from other versions, and argue my version is the strongest. Second, I deploy haecceities to mount novel lines of attack on critical elements of the B- theory: eternalism, perdurance, and stage theory. These attacks say that each of these tenseless theories of time and persistence cannot adequately rationalise and vindicate the importance of emotions in our lives, and how they contribute to crucially important projects such as rehabilitation. Further, these tenseless theories generate critical problems with some of our moral practices, such as blame, as well as generating radically alienating consequences for it. Consequently, tenseless theorists should either acknowledge the importance of emotions and reject their theories, or be honest and transparent in accepting that they cannot rationalise or vindicate emotions. CONTENTS Introduction - 1 PART I – THE PROSPECTS FOR HAECCEITY PRESENTISM - 3 Summary - 3 Chapter 1 – The Theory of Haecceity Presentism - 5 " 1.1– Sketching Haecceity Presentism - 5 !1.2 – Getting Clearer on Haecceities - 5 !1.3 – Haecceities: Past, Present, but Not Future - 6 !1.4 – Existing Without Instantiation - 7 Chapter 2 – Singular Propositions - 11 2.1 - Singular Propositions and the Haecceity Presentist Solution - 11 2.2 – Asymmetry - 12 2.3 - Is Haecceity Presentism Actually Presentism? - 13 2.4 - Back to Singular Propositions: Do Haecceities Really Do the Job? - 14 Chapter 3 – Truthmaking - 18 3.1 - Truthmaking and the Haecceity Presentist Solution - 18 3.2 - Haecceities and Tensed Properties: Diverging from Ingram - 19 3.3 - ‘Aboutness’: Diverging from Ingram - 22 3.4 – Explanatory Priority - 24 3.5 – Rejecting the Disjunctive Approach - 25 Chapter 4 – Cross-Temporal Relations - 27 4.1 - Cross-Temporal Relations and the Haecceity Presentist Solution - 27 4.2 - Rival Presentist Accounts of Cross-Temporal Relations: Lucretianism - 29 4.3 - Explanatory Priority Once More - 31 Chapter 5 – Causation - 33 5.1 – Counterfactuals - 33 5.2 - Asymmetry and Transitivity - 34 5.3 - Construing Causation as Counterfactual Dependence - 35 Appendix – The Charge of Cheating - 37 A. Haecceities Are Contrived - 38 B. Haecceities Are Hypothetical - 39 PART II – AFFECTIVE ATTITUDES, MORALITY, AND TENSELESSNESS - 42 Summary - 42 Chapter 6 – Grief: Eternalism, Perdurance, and Stage Theory - 43 6.1 - Motivating the Haecceity Presentist Account of Grief - 43 6.2 - First Prong: That Eternalism Cannot Vindicate and Rationalise Grief - 46 6.3 - Second Prong: That Perdurance and Stage Theory Cannot Vindicate and Rationalise Grief – Rejecting Non-Presentist Endurance - 52 6.4 - Second Prong: That Perdurance and Stage Theory Cannot Vindicate and Rationalise Grief – Rationalising Grief for Perdurantists and Stage Theorists - 54 Chapter 7 – The Moral Dimension of Perdurance and Stage Theory - 59 7.1 - Perdurance and Stage Theory: No Candidates for Responsibility - 59 7.2 - Perdurance and Stage Theory: Actions Take Time - 65 7.3 What If Temporal Parts and Person Stages Could Perform and Be Responsible for Actions? - 66 Chapter 8 – Chronal Horror - 68 8.1 - From Modal Realism to Chronal Horrors - 68 8.2 - Chronal Horrors, Mere Counterparts, and Occurrence - 69 8.3 - Should We Care Less? - 72 Chapter 9 – Hope - 76 9.1 - Hope: Does It Require an Open Future? - 76 9.2 - Becoming: The Relationship Between Hope, Change, and Tense - 79 9.3 - Satisfaction Conditions – 82 Conclusion – 88 Bibliography - 90 1 INTRODUCTION My thesis consists of two thematic halves. The first half is devoted to the exposition, defence and demonstration of the philosophical utility of a particular version of presentism. Presentism is the thesis that only present concrete entities exist. Unless we qualify or modify this basic thesis, however, familiar problems creep in: for example, how can singular reference to past concrete entities occur if there are no such entities? I argue that by enriching the classic presentist ontology of present concrete objects with haecceities, such problems can be answered. This is because haecceities can function as surrogates for past entities without violating presentism’s strict ontological constraints. A haecceity, within the context of this version of presentism, is a non-qualitative, uniquely instantiated property of an entity that characterises its essence: the being Bertrand Russell unique to Bertrand Russell. My haecceity presentism shares its foundation and motivation with the thisness presentism of David Ingram, though it differs in certain fundamental respects. Why defend haecceity presentism? In short, and recalling the title of this thesis, I think it provides a compelling temporal metaphysics of affective attitudes: in other words, I think haecceity presentism allows us to justify and vindicate, in a very deep sense, various critical strands of our emotional experiences – such as grief, regret, and hope – by connecting them to something metaphysically robust rather than ‘merely’ psychological. The first half begins with a chapter concerning technical matters about the nature of a haecceity, and includes arguments for two aspects of a haecceity’s nature that may seem controversial: that there are haecceities of past and present but not future entities, and that they can exist uninstantiated. I go on to deploy haecceity presentism to see how it fares against traditional presentist problematics: singular reference, truthmaking, and cross-temporal relations. I also argue that haecceity presentists should understand causation as counterfactual dependence, as this understanding sits very well with their ontology. Throughout, I consider and argue against objections about the suitability of haecceities for such work, and offer significant differences between my haecceity presentism and David Ingram’s in the section on truthmaking. I also argue that my version of haecceity presentism avoids some problems that Ingram’s faces, so it is stronger. The second half is concerned with our emotions, our relationship to ourselves and our prior immoral or imprudent actions, and some ethical dilemmas generated by believing in past concrete entities, or those parts of ourselves which have temporal extent in the past. I argue that for our emotions to enjoy the deep vindication we take them to have, for them to be rational and intelligible, we must deny the existence of the past and invoke haecceities which survive the demise of the past entities that they characterise. The emotional attitudes I am mainly concerned with are: grief, repentance and rehabilitation, horror, and hope. First, I argue against the intelligibility of grieving a deceased entity when the entity itself is still real with respect to all times. I consider, next, what a metaphysic of temporal parts or person stages might mean for our conception of action and responsibility, certain elements of our moral practice and attributions (such as blame), and how repentance and rehabilitation could occur when our prior immoral