Abstract
How can a metaphysics of abstract entities be built upon a metaphysics of time? In this paper, I address the question of how to accommodate abstract entities in a presentist world. I consider both the traditional metaontological approach of unrestricted fundamental quantification and then ontological pluralism. I argue that under the former we need to impose two constraints in the characterization of presentism in order to avoid undesired commitments to abstract entities: we have to characterize presentism as a thesis only about the concrete, and we also need to avoid the widely held distinction between tensed and tenseless senses of existence. Under ontological pluralism, instead, I argue that we can naturally accommodate any view of abstract objects in a presentist world.
Acknowledgements
For their helpful comments, I thank Eduardo García, Carl Hoefer, John Horden, Ricardo Mena, Miguel Ángel Sebastián, and Alessandro Torza. This work was supported by the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México through a fellowship from the postdoctoral Fellowship program DGAPA-UNAM.
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