The Moving Spotlight: An Essay on Time and Ontology

Ross P. Cameron argues that the flow of time is a genuine feature of reality. He suggests that the best version of the A-Theory is a version of the Moving Spotlight view, according to which past and future beings are real, but there is nonetheless an objectively privileged present. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory should be viewed as having more in common with Presentism (the view that reality is limited to the present) than with the B-Theory (the view that time is just another dimension like space through which things are spread out). Furthermore, it provides the best account of truthmakers for claims about what was or will be the case. Cameron goes on to defend an account of the open future, and argues that this is a better account than that available to the Growing Block theory.