How Thick is Now? The Prospects of Thick Presentism

Abstract In this paper, I will argue against thick presentism, a particular type of presentism according to which the present has a temporal duration. I will first review some of the arguments that have been given for this view. Following this, I will briefly recapitulate two of the most elaborate accounts of thick presentism by H. Scott Hestevold and Sam Baron. The two views agree that temporally extended presents overlap as time progresses, but they disagree on the question of whether the temporally extended present contains a temporal order of irreducible times within them. In total, there are four kinds of possible kinds of views on thick presentism, distinguished by whether the thick presents are overlapping as time progresses, and whether they contain an ordering of irreducible times. We will see that none of the four possible views, neither the two existing ones nor the two possible alternatives, are tenable.