Aristotelians ought to be presentists

Aristotelians ought to be presentists

Edward Feser

Now, suppose God creates a physical universe with only a single thing in it, an unripe green banana.  Suppose that he does so in such a way that its natural tendencies are miraculously suspended.  For example, it does not begin to ripen.  It is changeable, but its potentialities are not actualized, so that there is in fact no change.

For this reason, there is also no passage of time in this imagined world.  Hence there are no past or future events.  Is there a present?  Surely there is, because since this is a material world, we are not talking about eternity and we are not talking about aeviternity.  We are talking about the third alternative, a temporal world.  It’s just a world in which time has been suspended – precisely because change has been suspended – rather than being altogether atemporal.  It’s now in this world, even if what is now never becomes past.  It is for that reason a presentist world, since the present exists and past and future do not.

Now suppose instead that change is not suspended and the banana begins to ripen.  It goes from green to yellow.  What that means is that it has lost its greenness and gained yellowness, and that in turn boils down to its no longer being merely potentially yellow but instead actually yellow, and its no longer being actually green.  And if the process continues until the banana rots, the banana will eventually actualize its potential to be brown.  In this case we have the passage of time.