Times as Maximal Propositions

Bill begins a recent piece,
1. Here are three temporal platitudes: The wholly past is no longer present; the wholly future is not yet present; the present alone is present. Here are three closely related controversial metaphysical theses: the wholly past is no longer; the wholly future is not yet; the present alone is. The second trio is one version of presentism. I grant that presentism is appealing, though it would be a mistake to take it to be common sense or immediate fallout from common sense. The platitudes are Moorean; deny them on pain of being an idiot. Not so with the heavy-duty metaphysical theses about time and existence advanced by the presentist. We can reasonably ask what they mean and whether they are true.

2. Now even presentists will admit that the past was not a mere nothing. Last Sunday's hike had some sort of reality that cries out for accommodation. After all it is now true that I hiked eight hours on Sunday. Even if there are no truth-makers, there still must have been something that the true past-tensed sentence is about. Here I distinguish between two principles, Truth-Maker and Veritas Sequitur Esse.

3. We should also keep in mind that past times and events did not have the status of the merely possible. When Sunday's hike was over it did not change its modal status from actual to merely possible. It remained an actual event, albeit a past actual event. Soren Kierkegaard WAS engaged to Regine Olsen, but he was never married to her. Intuitively, the engagement belonged to the sphere of the actual whereas the marriage belonged to the sphere of the merely possible, not that it is possible now. Neither event was a mere nothing. Furthermore, the engagement had, intuitively, 'more reality' than the marriage. What was was more real than what might have been. Historians attempt to determine what the actual facts were. They are constrained by the reality of [the evidence of] the past, whence it follows that past had some sort of reality. Historians are neither fiction writers nor students of mere possibilia.

4. I take it to be a Moorean datum that past events and times were not nothing and also were not merely possible. Hence a theory of time that cannot accommodate these data is worthless. How can the presentist accommodate them? He has to do it in a manner consistent with his claim that past and future items do not exist at all, that only temporally present items exist. 
Well, not quite.  If you compare the above with Bill's original you will see that I have taken the liberty of changing Bill's present tense usages into past tense and underlined them.   Is the presentist required to do anything at all? 

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