Growing Argument

Overview and Context

The Growing Argument is a contemporary argument in the metaphysics of time that appeals to the idea that reality itself grows as time passes. It is often deployed to support presentism—the view that only present entities exist—or the closely related growing block theory, which holds that the past and present exist but the future does not yet exist.

These views contrast with eternalism, according to which past, present, and future entities are all equally real, and temporal differences are merely relational (earlier-than, later-than). The Growing Argument seeks to show that such a tenseless, “block universe” picture cannot adequately capture what many regard as a fundamental feature of temporal reality: the coming-into-being of new events and facts.

The argument does not have a single canonical formulation or a single universally agreed originator; rather, it describes a family of related lines of reasoning, developed and refined in late 20th- and early 21st-century discussions of tense and temporal ontology.

Formulation of the Growing Argument

Although different authors articulate it in different ways, the core structure of the Growing Argument may be reconstructed roughly as follows:

1. Reality appears to grow.
   At one time, there was no such event as your reading this sentence; at a later time, that event exists. New events, objects, and facts seem to come into existence as time passes.

2. Growth requires an ontological difference.
   If the world genuinely grows, then there must be an increase not merely in what is true at different times, but in what exists. To say that reality grows is to say that being itself is added.

3. Eternalism lacks genuine growth.
   On eternalism, all times and their contents exist equally. What changes is only which time is “now” (if that notion is admitted at all). From the God’s‑eye perspective of the four‑dimensional block, there is no increase in being; the entire spacetime manifold is fixed.

4. A-theoretic views accommodate growth.
   Presentism and the growing block theory can interpret the passage of time as an increase in what exists: new presents (and, on the growing block view, new segments of the past) literally come into being, while the future does not yet exist.

Conclusion:
Therefore, theories that posit a tensed, dynamic ontology—especially presentism and the growing block theory—provide a better metaphysical account of the apparent growth of reality than eternalism does.

Some authors put the point in explicitly explanatory terms: if we take our commonsense talk of “things coming into existence” at face value, we seem driven toward an ontology on which the world is not a static four‑dimensional totality, but something that is being built up as time passes.

Motivations and Intuitions

The Growing Argument draws on several influential intuitions:

1. The phenomenology of passage
   Many experience time as flowing or passing, where the future is open, the present is vivid, and the past is fixed. The idea that reality grows as we move from future to present to past attempts to take this phenomenology seriously at the metaphysical level.

2. The intuition of becoming
   Ordinary language often speaks of events “coming into being” or facts “becoming true.” Proponents argue that these are not mere manner-of-speaking, but point to a substantive metaphysical asymmetry between past, present, and future. On this view, temporal reality is not just ordered; it is generated.

3. Open future and indeterminacy
   Some defenders connect the Growing Argument with an open future picture: if the future is genuinely not yet fixed, this is naturally explained by denying the existence of future events. As time passes, reality grows into this open future, making previously non‑existent events real.

4. Dynamic vs static universe
   The argument is often framed against the “static block universe” associated with some readings of relativity theory. Advocates maintain that the dynamic character of change, causation, and agency is more perspicuously captured by an ontology on which the domain of what exists is not temporally complete.

The Growing Argument is thus not merely logical, but interpretive: it claims that our best understanding of temporal experience, linguistic practice, and modal intuitions favors a view on which being is temporally accumulative.

Criticisms and Ongoing Debates

The Growing Argument is controversial. Critics challenge both its premises and its inference to presentism or the growing block theory.

1. Denying ontological growth
   Eternalists commonly reject premise (2), arguing that the sense in which “reality grows” is merely indexical or perspectival. On this view, what changes is not what exists, but which events are present-relative to a given time or observer. The four‑dimensional world does not gain or lose elements; rather, different slices of it become present in turn.

2. Explaining appearance without growth
   Critics contend that eternalism can account for the appearance of growth by appealing to:

   • Temporal perspective: at time t it is true that “such-and-such does not yet exist,” while at time t′ it is true that “it exists.”
   • Changing truth-values of tensed statements, without any change in the underlying ontological inventory.
     Thus, they argue, the appearance of becoming does not require literal increase in being.

3. Compatibility with physics
   Some object that the Growing Argument conflicts with relativistic spacetime. In relativity, there is no absolute, frame‑independent “present” that slices the universe into what exists and what does not. Defenders respond by proposing:

   • A preferred foliation of spacetime (often empirically undetectable),
   • Or a more sophisticated relativized present,
     maintaining that physical theory underdetermines the correct metaphysics of time.

4. Questions about the past and future
   Even within tensed metaphysics, there is disagreement:

   • Presentists hold that only the present exists, so growth is a matter of continually changing total existence. Critics ask how past truths (e.g., “Julius Caesar was assassinated”) remain true if the relevant entities no longer exist.
   • Growing block theorists maintain that the past and present exist, with the block “growing” as new presents are added. Here critics worry about epistemic problems (how can we know we are not in the “end” of the block?) and about the status of the future.

5. Is growth metaphysically coherent?
   Some philosophers challenge the very notion of growth in being. They argue that saying “more things exist now than before” presupposes a standpoint outside time from which the totality of being at different times can be compared—something that may be unavailable or ill-defined.

Debate over the Growing Argument therefore intersects with broader disputes about:

• The A-theory vs B-theory of time (tensed vs tenseless views),
• The status of temporal experience as a guide to metaphysics,
• The interpretation of relativity in relation to tense,
• And the nature of truthmakers for past and future tense propositions.

While there is no consensus on its force, the Growing Argument remains a central tool for defenders of dynamic theories of time and a focal point for ongoing discussion about whether reality is fundamentally static or expanding in being as time passes.