An Exchange on the Reality of the Past

I have been reviewing pieces from Bill's Time and Change category.  One post from 2020 was in reply to a comment of mine on an earlier piece.

Morning Bill,

I sometimes think our disagreement is about how certain terms are to be used. Compare these claims,

1. The past is in some sense 'there.' Deny that and you are saying that the past is nothing, in which case historians have no object of study.

2. The past was in some sense 'there.' Deny that and you are saying that the past was nothing, in which case historians have no object of study.

I think of 'the past' in this context as collectively referring to multiple things and events. 'The wholly past' denotes a subset of the past. There is also in these sentences an implicit universal quantification over these sets. So I test the truth of these assertions by choosing randomly an element, usually Julius Caesar, making a textual substitution, and asking how comfortable I am with the modified assertions.

1'. JC is in some sense 'there.' Deny that and you are saying that JC is nothing, in which case historians (of JC) have no object of study.

2'. JC was in some sense 'there.' Deny that and you are saying that JC was nothing, in which case historians (of JC) have no object of study.

I find I'm perfectly happy with (2'). Not so with (1'). 'JC' names a thing in time so tenseless 'is' is inapplicable. I have only present tensed 'is'. My presentism says that JC in no sense is 'there'. It follows that JC is nothing, but in my view it doesn't follow from that that historians of JC have no object of study. The problem I have is that I find (2) so innocuously the right thing to say that I'm constantly surprised that you always opt for formulation (1). Is that Problemverlust?

Bill replied:

David B,

Good comment; clear and clarifying. When I speak of the wholly (purely, merely) past, I mean past temporal items that do not overlap the present. A storm that is only half over is then not wholly past, although phases of it are wholly past. A storm is a process. I don't consider myself a process, although this is a debatable point. But I clearly have a past. But I am not wholly past, leastways, not yet. I think we agree on this use of terms.

The difference between (1) and (2) goes to the heart of the matter. You plump for (2) and (2'). JC WAS in some sense 'there.' That suffices for him to be an object of historical study. You can even drop the 'some sense' business and flatly state that JC did exist and that this suffices, etc.

My objection/question is that if JC DID exist, but is now nothing, how can HE now be an object of study? When we investigate JC, the objects of investigation are not causal traces in the present. These traces are pointers to the object of study. We can learn about a burglar from his footprints, but the latter are not what interest us except as a means to identifying the burglar.

>> 'JC' names a thing in time so tenseless 'is' is inapplicable. <<

This is a telescoped or enthymematic argument. I accept the premise, but I think the conclusion is false. Why can't something in time tenselessly exist? 'Tenselessly exist' does not mean 'timelessly exist.' If there are items outside of time, then they tenselessly exist. But it is arguable that an item can be temporal and yet exist tenselessly.

This is one of the crucial issues that needs to be taken up in later posts.

There the exchange ended, attention no doubt moving on to one of those later posts.  But I'd like to answer Bill's question:  if JC DID exist, but is now nothing, how can HE now be an object of study?  My answer is to say that we can study something without getting acquainted with it.  The historian  will look at documents, artifacts, etc, and try to construct an account that is consistent with these vestiges of the past and also with the accounts of JC's times constructed by other historians looking at other sources.  This is not so different from studying an object of the present with which we are not acquainted.  We acquaint ourselves instead with writings, photos, etc, and thus build an understanding of the thing, independent of its continuing to exist.  Perhaps we are back with the recurring problem of reference to the non-existent.