{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02564102564102564, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011217948717948718, 'mean_word_length': 5.438144329896907, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Reply to Sullivan

In ‘An A-theory without tense operators’ (Sullivan 2016), Meghan Sullivan vigorously contests the received view that an A-theory of time is adequately expressible only in a language with sentential tense operators. She develops and defends an interesting alternative A-theory in a language with tense predicate modifiers instead. Her argument intersects Modal Logic as Metaphysics at several points. The proper formulation of A-theoretic doctrines such as presentism is sensitive to the background quantified temporal logic, and in particular to the dispute between permanentism and temporaryism, the temporal analogue in the book of the modal dispute between necessitism and contingentism: the permanentist asserts, and the temporaryist denies, that always everything is always something. Moreover, I sketch a conception of radical change, analogous to radical contingency, adequately expressible only in A-theoretic language (Williamson 2013, 403–422). I agree with Sullivan that an A-theory is adequately expressible in a language with temporal predicate modifiers. However, I will question whether the move to such a language makes as much difference as Sullivan suggests, and whether it has the advantages she claims for it.