Smith On Times And Tokens

In this essay I respond to Quentin Smith’s charge that ‘the date-analysis version of the tenseless theory of time cannot give adequate accounts of the truth conditions of the statements made by tensed sentence-tokens’ (Smith 1999, 236). His argument is based on an analysis of certain counterfactual situations that is at odds with the date-analysis account of language and hence succeeds only in begging the question against that theory. To anticipate: his argument fails if one allows that temporal indexicals such as ‘now’ rigidly designate their time of utterance, something the date-analyst can happily admit whether she adheres to an absolute or relational metaphysics of time.