Ontic Vagueness in Temporary Existence: A Challenge to Sullivan's Minimal A-Theoretic Metaphysics of Time

There are two major theories of time that aim to give an answer to what time is like: A-theory and B-theory. Roughly, for the A-theorist, time is real, time passes, and there is an objective, metaphysically privileged present. In the paper "The Minimal A-Theory," Meghan Sullivan outlines a version of the A-theoretic model of time that does not include temporaryism, the view that there are temporary existents, arguing that temporaryists have not succeeded in capturing a commonsensical belief about existential change. Sullivan's minimal A-theory is unorthodox, but not immediately implausible. In this paper, I will survey Sullivan's starting assumptions and her argument for determinate temporary existence, making explicit her criteria for possible vagueness in our beliefs. I will then raise concerns with a premise in her argument against the Moorean argument for temporaryism by articulating how one model of ontic vagueness challenges Sullivan's argument that temporaryism does not have a Moorean advantage.