Berit Brogaard, “Transient Truths: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Propositions” (Oxford UP, 2012)
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What is the central claim of Brogaard’s temporalism versus traditional eternalism?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel in the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor of the University of Iowa and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise of Vanderbilt. In our bimonthly podcasts we interview philosophers about their new books across a wide variety of philosophical topics and areas. Today's interview is with Britt Brogard, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Missouri at Saint Louis. We'll be talking about her new book, Transient Truths, an essay in the metaphysics of propositions, which is just out from Oxford University Press. Propositions are key players in philosophy of language and mind. Roughly speaking, they are abstract repositories of meaning and truth.
More specifically, they are the semantic values of truth of valuable sentences, they are the objects of belief, desire, and other propositional attitudes, they are what we agree and disagree about in conversation, and they are what is communicated in successful discourse. By philosophical tradition, propositions have their truth values eternally, that is, they always include a reference to a time as a component, and if true, they are always true. Proposition expressed in English by the sentence it is raining in Malta is more completely expressed by something like it is raining in Malta at noon local time on may fourth, twenty thirteen. This standard view is called eternalism. In her notebook, Brogard calls this traditional view into question.
Bogart defends temporalism, the claim that some propositions do not have their truth values eternally, they lack a timestamp, so to speak. In her book she argues that eternalists cannot adequately explain how we retain beliefs over time, how we modify beliefs, and how we agree and disagree within the time span of an ordinary conversation. And she also presents a new argument for tempor temporalism from the phenomenology of conscious mental states. Grows lucid and engaging discussion will be a milestone in debates about the nature of time and our experience of time as expressed in natural language. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Brit? Hello, hi, welcome to new books in philosophy. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks. Um, so we'll be talking about your new book, Transient Truths, um an essay in the metaphysics of propositions. Um so before we get into the uh the details of the book, um maybe you can give us a little bit of background about um how you became interested in the topic and and maybe how you got to philosophy to begin with, um, and then how you how you came to write this p book in particular.
Yeah, so uh after I um entered um the department in the States University uh of Buffalo
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central claim of Brogaard’s temporalism versus traditional eternalism?
0:00–8:42
2
How does Brogaard explain the problem of belief‑retention over time?
8:42–16:46
3
Why does Brogaard argue that the brain lacks a built‑in timestamp for stored information?
16:46–23:56
4
What is the phenomenological argument for temporalism based on conscious experience?
23:56–31:17
5
How does the debate over tense operators challenge the eternalist view?
31:17–38:26
6
What is the quantifier view of English tense and how does it differ from operator accounts?
38:26–45:36
7
How does Brogaard relate temporalism to broader metaphysical debates (tensism, presentism, etc.)?
45:36–52:47
8
What future projects does Brogaard outline for extending the discussion of perception and tense?
52:47–1:01:58
Speakers
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