The Moving Spotlight An Essay on Time and Ontology

Ross P. Cameron argues that the flow of time is a genuine feature of reality. He suggests that the best version of the A-Theory is a version of the Moving Spotlight view, according to which past and future beings are real, but there is nonetheless an objectively privileged present. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory should be viewed as having more in common with Presentism (the view that reality is limited to the present) than with the B-Theory (the view that time is just another dimension like space through which things are spread out). The Moving Spotlight view, on this picture, agrees with Presentism that everything is the way it is now, it simply thinks that non-present beings are amongst the things that are now some way. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory provides the best account of truthmakers for claims about what was or will be the case, and he defends the view against a number of objections, including McTaggart's argument that the A-Theory is inconsistent, and the charge that if the A-Theory is true but presentism false then we could not know that we are present. The Moving Spotlight defends an account of the open future--that what will happen is, as yet, undetermined--and argues that this is a better account than that available to the Growing Block theory.

Ross P. Cameron, University of Virginia

Ross P. Cameron obtained his PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2006, worked at the University of Leeds from then until 2014, and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He works on many areas in metaphysics, and has published numerous articles on topics such as the nature of time and possibility, the relation between a whole and its parts, truthmaking, properties, the ontological status of musical works and fictional characters, and whether the world has a fundamental level.