AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Presentism is often seen as the simplest most intuitive ontology of time, yet direct comparisons between presentism and eternalism based on simplicity are limited. Philosophical consensus holds that presentism is quantitatively parsimonious but qualitatively identical to eternalism. Presentists also risk introducing qualitative and scientific/structural extravagance in addressing standard objections.

This paper defends presentism on all fronts – quantitative, qualitative, and structural. I, first, examine arguments extolling quantitative parsimony as incidentally virtuous but not inherently virtuous. I propose, instead, a ‘Principle of Sufficient Explanation,’ where inclusion of any explanans must be justified, undermining the traditional quantitative-qualitative asymmetry.

I, then, argue accepting qualitative equivalence between presentism and eternalism concedes the latter’s truth. Instead, presentists should assert that non-present objects are fundamentally different from present ones by undermining space-time analogies and accusing eternalists of inexcuably gerrymandering qualitative categories. Furthermore, I bypass any extravagance introduced by presentist solutions to semantic objections, defending a novel justification of ‘ontological cheating’ grounding truth not in being but in what statements are 'about'.

Finally, I address objections from special relativity, arguing that any structural bloat introduced by presentism in this regard is either subject to uncertain future empirical investigation, justified metaphysically, or simply a descriptive theoretical artefact.