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Apart from the support allegedly lent to the B-Theory of time by SR, there are few arguments of a positive nature in support of the B-Theory. In his oftreprinted defense of the mind-dependence of temporal becoming,¹ Adolf Grünbaum briefly exposits three such arguments. According to Grünbaum's analysis, what qualifies a physical event at a time t as occurring now is that some mind-possessing organism M experiences the event at t in such a way that at t M is conceptually aware that his having the experience of the event is simultaneous with an awareness of the fact that he has that experience at all.² For example, in order for a gunshot at t to qualify as occurring now, M must be judgmentally aware at t (i) that he hears a gunshot and (ii) that that awareness of his hearing the gunshot is simultaneous with his hearing the gunshot. Note that M's awareness of (i) involves a present-tense belief, for otherwise any event of which M ever has an experience could qualify as now. But since tense is an expression of what is the case in relation to the present or now, Grünbaum's characterization of nowness is circular. In a revised version of his article, he freely admits this; the nowness of an event E is made to depend on someone's knowing at t that he is experiencing (present tense) E, which is tantamount to someone's judging at t, "I am experiencing E now."³ But Grünbaum insists that his characterization of nowness is non-viciously circular because he is not attempting to define "now" in such a way as to eliminate nowness in favor of tenseless temporal attributes or relations but rather is merely articulating the mind-dependence of nowness. He is, in effect, saying that in order for a physical event at t to qualify as occurring now, it must at t be consciously experienced as occurring now by some person.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3473-8_6

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