Volume 10, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2007
Michelle Beer
Pages 69-71
On the Individual Essences of Moments of Time
In “Can the New Tenseless Theory of Time be Saved by Individual Essences?” Smith objects to the co-reporting theory on the grounds
that, since it grants that every time “now” is tokened it expresses a unique individual essence of that time which can be apprehended only at that time, the co-reporting theory is consistent with an A-theory of time that holds that each moment of time acquires its own particular property of presentness. I argue that Smith’s conclusion does not follow, since moments of time have world-indexed properties which, though distinct from the individual essences ascribed to them by the use of “now,” are expressible by the use of
date-expressions.