Tense and Change

Abstract

‘Times change and we change with them’: an undisputed truth, but one whose real import depends upon the view one takes of the nature of time. According to Tensed theory its import is that times change their temporal locations by being first future, then present, then past, and that this change of times is what enables there to be change in the objects located within them. In contrast, places do not change their spatial locations. They can, it is true, be here in one place and there in another, but then whether they are here or there is purely a relational matter: it just depends on where we and they are located with respect to each other. This, for the Tensed theorist, is what distinguishes time from space.