Amphithéâtre Maurice Halbwachs, Site Marcelin Berthelot
Open to all
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Abstract

According to presentism, only what is present exists. According to moderate presentism, only present events exists, which rules out past and future events, but leaves room, in some sense, for past and future times and objects. Building on my previous publications on moderate presentism, I shall consider what I take to be the main motivations for presentism and show how these can also be used in favor of moderate presentism. I shall also more precisely specify moderate presentism and carefully distinguish it from other positions in the metaphysics of time, with which it could be or actually was confused. Finally, I shall consider some traditional objections to presentism, as well as some new ones such as those recently put forward by Tooley and Leininger, and show how moderate presentism can address them.

Francesco Orilia

Francesco Orilia

Francesco Orilia has studied at the University of Palermo (M.A. in philosophy, 1979) and at Indiana University (Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1986). Since 1997 he teaches at the University of Macerata, where he chaired the philosophy teaching program in 2010-2013 and was rector's delegate for research and research evaluation from 2011 to 2016. Previously he was a researcher in the Olivetti lab in Pisa and has taught at the University of Cagliari. He has also had visiting teaching positions in Bloomington (1986), Paris IV (2005), Iowa City (2006), Cambridge (2008), Blaise Pascal at Clermont Ferrand (2013), Lugano (2019).

His main research interests are in analytic ontology and the philosophy of language, time, mind and logic. He has published several monographs, including Singular Reference. A Descriptivist Approach (Springer, 2010) and many articles in international journals such as dialectica, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Philosophical Studies, Synthese. He is now leading a research group for a 3-years project on The scientific image and the manifest image funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research.

Speaker(s)

Francesco Orilia

University of Macerata