Abstract

The mind-dependence of the distinction between past, present and future (the tensed determinations) is a main tener of the so-called tenseless view of time. Given the widely agreed-upon untranslatability of tensed sentences into tenseless sentences, and the fact that tensed beliefs have a causal role in explaining timely actions, it is important to ask what view of the mind is compatible with attributing to mental events both a causal role and a form of "becoming" which is denied to the physical world. It is argued that these two desiderata are incompatible and that tenseless theorist of time advocating both must face a dilemma. They either have to accept eliminationism - thereby declaring that our experience of the passage of time is illusory and cannot be explained in tenseless terms - or they must attribute a causal role to our tensed beliefs, by regarding them as supervenient on physical (neurophysiological) states of the brain. By taking the first horn, tenseless theorists cannot explain how the alleged illusion of passage arises. By taking the second horn, neurophysiological states can be taken as instantiating genuine tensed properties, against the thesis that the latter are purely mental.