Draft:Existential Realism

• Comment: Please add more reliable, secondary and independent references to the subject. You can also consider three best sources. Fade258 (talk) 12:51, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

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Existential Realism is a contemporary ontological framework in the philosophy of time developed by Tenzin C. Trepp. It proposes a strict distinction between what exists—what is materially and empirically present now—and what is real—what plays, has played, or may play a causal or representational role in shaping the present.

Core Concepts

Existential Realism (ER) addresses long-standing debates between presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory. It maintains that only the present is existent—meaning empirically accessible and temporally immediate—while acknowledging the reality of the past and future in a broader metaphysical sense.

Summary of Temporal Ontologies

Theory	Past	Present	Future
Presentism	not real, not existent	real and existent	not real, not existent
Eternalism	real and existent	real and existent	real and existent
Growing Block	real and existent	real and existent	not real, not existent
Existential Realism	real (via traces/effects)	real and existent	real (via predictive structures)

Distinction Between Existence and Reality

In ER, existence is reserved for entities that are currently present and empirically observable. Reality, however, encompasses entities and events that causally or representationally contribute to the present world, regardless of their temporal status.

• Existence: Present + empirical accessibility
• Reality: Existence + (causal or representational) relevance across time

For example, a fossil is evidence that a dinosaur—though no longer existing—is still real. Similarly, a well-supported forecast (e.g., a solar eclipse) is treated as real despite not yet existing.

Motivation

ER seeks to:

• Retain presentism’s focus on empirical immediacy
• Avoid erasing the ontological status of the past and future
• Incorporate epistemic and phenomenological dimensions into the metaphysics of time

Epistemology and Phenomenology

Existential Realism integrates both epistemology and phenomenology into its ontological stance. The concept aligns with Edmund Husserl’s analysis of retention and protention, which describes how consciousness retains immediate past experiences and anticipates imminent future ones. ER asserts that the reality of past and future is grounded in observable traces and predictive models, respectively.

Comparison with Other Theories

While presentism claims only present entities are real and existent, ER denies this by affirming that non-existent entities (such as past events) can still be real. Unlike eternalism, ER avoids treating time as a static block where all moments are equally existent. It also diverges from the growing block universe by denying that past entities continue to exist.

Implications

Existential Realism offers solutions to major challenges in temporal ontology, including:

• The truthmaker problem for past-tense propositions
• Cross-temporal causation and moral responsibility
• Epistemic asymmetries between memory and anticipation

It has implications for:

• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of science
• Philosophy of mind
• Cognitive science
• Phenomenology

See also

• Philosophy of time
• Presentism (philosophy of time)
• Eternalism (philosophy of time)
• Growing block universe
• Truthmaker theory
• Retention and protention
• Constructive empiricism

External links

• Original article by Tenzin C. Trepp on Academia.edu