If Robust Realism is incompatible with four-dimensionalism in any case, the question might arise whether a presentist cosmopsychism is in any way tenable. This would trade the foregoing experience of the entirety of four-dimensional space-time for a phenomenal
manifold embodying the present state of the universe. There would be nothing specious about the present state of the universe as constituted by such a phenomenal manifold. The term ‘present’, in this case, refers not to a point-like moment on a dimensional continuum, but rather, to whatever is in fact present in reality. The present state of the universe admits of genuine dynamism. The present is changing, but this is real change, not things differing at different points on an immutable continuum change. The universe constituting phenomenal manifold is both the appearance and embodiment of primitive phenomenal modes of mutation not subject to further analysis, be that in terms of distinct ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ components, or anything else. The modes of mutation themselves are present. Obviously, to experience the entire present state of the universe is not to experience what you or I experience and nothing else, so the Argument from Finitude is not seen off by this possibility. Our own experiences cannot exist within such a universe. But a presentist adaption of the foregoing Humean view might be thought worthy of consideration. Such a view, once again, would have it that in all instances of particular state types within the phenomenally constituted universal present, property instances constituting those state types appear in altogether different state types in
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phenomenal manifolds constituting subjectivities like ours.112 Again, there would presumably be a strong type-type correspondence pertaining between the initial state types and the
different state types their constitutive components feature in.
I have no decisive argument against such a view qua metaphysical possibility. At the same time, I don’t think there’s much to recommend it. The robust realist wishing to retain as much of the naturalist picture as possible will likely object to the notion of a presentist universe simply because of the authority of contemporary physics which arguably supplants a neatly delineated space and time, separately treated, with a space-time manifold in which the two are inextricably constitutively linked. Any view characterising the universe as stuff merely distributed in space undergoing primitive non-dimensional change is likely to strike such a robust realist as intolerably unscientific. This is something of an inversion of an old problem. Russell (1954 p. 384) long ago pointed out that relativistic physics presented a problem for the Cartesian view that experiences, while completely non-spatial, were nonetheless in time. Geoffrey Lee (2007 p. 341) thinks Russell makes “a strong case for thinking that mental events occur in time and space”. He writes, “The only way to avoid this argument would be to claim that they are neither in space nor in time, but that is an extreme position – for example, it would make the problem of mental and physical interaction particularly intractable” (Lee 2007 p. 30). An extreme position this might be, but it is one the robust realist wishing to retain four-dimensional realism regarding the physical world seems forced to accept. The question of how intractable a problem it presents with respect to the problem of mental and physical interactions will be addressed shortly, but it is worth noting that in Foster we have already encountered a phenomenal realist who works under the assumption that experiences are primitively situated in neither time nor space. The more naturalistically
112 The relevant state types can, and, plausibly, in many cases would, be phenomenal states of mutation, the
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inclined robust realist will likely wish to explore such avenues first, in hope that it might be possible to retain Robust Realism and scientific scruples of this kind.
A second problem for the view is that it seemingly does away with any kind of relationship between the spatiality of our experiences and that of physical space by virtue of which the former might be said to bear a representational relationship to the latter. Jackson’s
identification of the phenomenal dimensions possessed by object appearances in our visual field with those of the real objects they represent is implausible, but we surely want the two to stand in some kind of essential relation. Were our experiences occupants of a four
dimensional space-time manifold, more sense might be made of the idea of space and time serving as the causal basis for our spatial experiences, the manifold constituting the
appropriate kinds of correlations and intermediate pathways between our spatial and temporal experiences and the spatial and temporal properties of constitutively prior events. In contrast, the view currently under consideration has it that the present of our phenomenal manifolds is the very same present experienced by the universe-wide sesmet. There are no constitutively prior events, or causal pathways, on this view. What is present is all there is. I leave this view unrefuted in any strong sense, but don’t think this fact alone will earn it many adherents.