According to eternalism, what is the ontological status of Julius Caesar and a person born next century?
ACaesar is real (he existed), next century's person is not yet real (they don't yet exist)
BNeither is real because they are not present — only present entities are real
CBoth are equally real: they are located at different temporal addresses in the four-dimensional block
DCaesar is more real because we have evidence he existed; the future person is merely possible
Eternalism holds that all times are equally real — past, present, and future. Just as distant spatial locations are no less real than nearby ones, past and future temporal locations are no less real than the present. Caesar is not a 'ghostly remnant' who has ceased to exist; he is a genuine entity located at temporal coordinates in the first century BCE. A future person likewise already exists at a later temporal address. The sense that only the present is real — presentism — is what eternalism directly rejects.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
An eternalist is asked to explain why we experience time as 'flowing' from past to future, given that the block universe is static. Which response is most consistent with eternalism?
AThe block universe does flow — eternalism just holds that all times flow equally, not that they're stationary
BEternalism cannot explain temporal experience and must be rejected on those grounds
CThe sense of flow is a feature of our psychology — memory, anticipation, and causal asymmetry — not of time itself
DEternal times flow past us sequentially, like frames of a film, but all the frames exist simultaneously
On the eternalist picture, the block is genuinely static — no time is 'becoming' or 'passing.' The phenomenology of flow must therefore be explained without appealing to any objective becoming in the world. The standard eternalist move is to locate flow in psychology: we remember past states, anticipate future ones, and experience causes before effects, so our cognitive perspective produces the sense of moving through time. Whether this explanation adequately captures experience is contested — it's one of the live challenges to eternalism — but it is the position consistent with the view.
Question 3 True / False
According to eternalism, the present moment is objectively special — it is the moment where 'becoming' actually occurs and reality is most fully actualized.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is exactly what eternalism denies. The word 'now' is indexical — like 'here,' it picks out different times depending on who is using it and when. Just as no spatial location is objectively 'here' in an absolute sense, no temporal location is objectively 'now.' Every moment in the block is equally real; none is the site of special becoming or actualization. The view that the present IS special — that the future is genuinely open and unreal while the past is settled — belongs to presentism and growing block theories, not eternalism.
Question 4 True / False
On the eternalist view, tensed sentences like 'the war is over' are implicitly indexed to a time rather than describing an absolute, time-independent fact.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
Eternalism handles tensed language through temporal indexing. 'The war is over' doesn't describe an absolute present state of affairs; it is true relative to times after the war ended and false relative to times during the war. This parallels how 'the café is nearby' is true from some spatial positions and false from others — location is relative to a perspective. In tense logic, eternalism corresponds to a framework where all times are equally real domains and tensed operators (P, F) are quantifiers over times, not indicators of metaphysical priority.
Question 5 Short Answer
What is the 'block universe' and how does it differ from presentism's picture of time?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: The block universe is the eternalist picture of reality as a four-dimensional structure in which all times — past, present, and future — exist equally and simultaneously. Just as a three-dimensional object has spatial extension in all directions, the block universe has temporal extension across all moments. Nothing pops into or out of existence as time passes; 'passage' is just our moving perspective within the block. Presentism, by contrast, holds that only the present moment is real: the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist. On presentism, reality is a thin temporal slice that changes as new presents come into being; on eternalism, the whole four-dimensional structure simply is.
The block universe metaphor comes from thinking of spacetime diagrams in special relativity, where time is treated as a fourth dimension on the same footing as space. Eternalism generalizes this: if the diagram represents reality, all points on it are equally real. The main philosophical challenge to this picture is explaining temporal experience — if everything is static, why does time feel like it moves? — which is why the phenomenology of passage is the central debate in the metaphysics of time.