Aristotelian Presentism

Time is often treated by analogy with space and considered to be another dimension alongside the three spatial dimensions. I refer to this conception as the “spatialization of time.” This paper aims to offer a version of presentism that avoids such spatialization. Presentism is typically characterized as the thesis that everything is present, and it has given rise to numerous objections. I primarily address the challenges concerning change and persistence raised by Leininger and Tallant, respectively. These critics seem to presuppose that change involves a thing’s having different states at various times, and persistence requires its continuous existence across those times. To counter these presuppositions, I first reconsider what the presentist thesis amounts to and then integrate it with the Aristotelian claim that time is the number of motion or change. By scrutinizing this claim, I develop a dynamic model that quantifies the duration of change and persistence but does not regard times as temporal locations. Ultimately, I argue that things can exist and possess properties without being located at a specific time, thereby providing a robust defense of presentism against its spatializing alternatives.