Are actuality and presentness perfectly analogous? David Lewis would say Yes, since both are the by-products of the linguistic phenomenon of indexicality. Non-actual and non-present things and events are as much part of the reality as the actual present. We’ll just call this view ‘Lewisian’.
There’s two kinds of A Theorists who could agree with the strictness of the analogy. First, there are those who combine Actualist semantics for the quantifier with a Presentist semantics. On this view, our widest domain of quantification includes only things that are both actual and present. As far as I know, all Presentists are Actualists, so we could just label this view “Presentism,” with a harmless ambiguity.
Second, there are those who combine inegalitarian Modal Realism with inegalitarian Eternalism. The inegalitarianism about time makes this view an A Theory. On this view, our widest domain of quantification includes past and future things, as well as merely possible things, with both the actual and the present constituting a privileged, absolute status. I’ll call this the “Inegalitarian” view. A close variation on the Inegalitarian view is a version of the Growing Block picture, in which we privilege both the past and the present over the future. Storrs McCall’s Falling Branches picture is another variation on this theme, privileging the past, present, and possible future over events that were possibly future in the past.
For whom does the analogy break down? First, there are Actualist B Theorists. On this view, our widest domain of quantification includes past and future things but no non-actual things. The temporal adverbs are indexical, but actuality is not. However, neither presentness nor actuality pick out a property that some things have and others do not. Absolutely nothing lacks actuality, and nothing possesses a supposed property of presentness. This is quite a popular view, despite rejecting the time/modality analogy, so I’ll just call it the ‘Popular view’.
Second, there are A Theorists who are Actualists and Eternalists. They are inegalitarians about time but not about actuality. They don’t have to treat actuality as a special status, since absolutely everything is actual. I can’t think of a good name for this, and I’m not sure who has embraced it, but I think that it would encompass many A Theorists who are not Presentists. I’ll just call it the ‘Mixed A view’, since it combines a form of egalitarianism with inegalitarianism while embracing the A Theory.
Third, there are B Theorists who are possibilists and inegalitarians about actuality. They are also egalitarians about time and presentness (as are all B Theorists). I’ll call this the ‘Mixed B view’.
I don’t know of anyone who has suggested combining Presentist semantics with Possibilist semantics. It would be a weird view in which reality including non-actual things, but only non-actual things that exist at the present moment.
| Presentist semantics | Eternalist semantics | |
| Actualist semantics | Presentism (A) | Popular (B), Mixed (A) |
| Possibilist semantics | X | Lewis (B), Mixed (B), Inegalitarian (A) |
| Egal about both | Inegal. about actuality only | Inegal. about presentness only | Inegal. about both | |
| Actualist | Popular (B) | X | Mixed A | X |
| Possibilist | Lewis (B) | Mixed B | X | Inegalitarian (A) |
So, there are at least three kinds of A Theorists, and three kinds of B Theorists. Where can and should Aristotelians land on this grid? Lewis’s view seems clearly unavailable to the Aristotelian. Aristotelians have to insist on a real distinction between actuality and potentiality, with an ontological priority to the former. I’ve argued that the Aristotelians must be possibilists in semantics, if they are to take potentiality seriously. If that’s right, the Aristotelian has just two options: the Mixed B theory, and the Inegalitarian A theory. On both views, we’ll need something like acts of existence to mark the enhanced status of actual things and events.
The Analytic Thomist 