All times are now: black holes and presentism

Abstract

Presentism is the metaphysical doctrine that whatever exists, exists in thepresent. The compatibility of presentism with the theories of special and general relativity has been much debated in recent years. It has been argued that at least some versions of presentism are compatible with time-orientable models of general relativity. In this paper we confront the thesis of presentism with relativistic physics, in the strong gravitational limit where black holes are formed.We conclude that the presentist position is at odds with the existence of black holes and other compact objects in the universe. A revision of the presentism thesis is necessary, if it is intended to be consistent with the current scientific view of the universe.