Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s11229-025-05361-4

Publication Title

Synthese

Volume

206

Issue

5

Pages

254

Abstract

According to a prominent philosophical argument for the beginning of time – the Grim Reaper Argument (GRA) – had it been possible for the past to be infinite, then a provably impossible scenario could have been constructed. Such a scenario is not possible, so, the GRA concludes, the past cannot be infinite. Here, we show that the GRA includes one premise acceptable only for Humeans and another premise acceptable only for anti-Humeans. Since, plausibly, everyone is either a Humean or an anti-Humean, the GRA is an argument for no one. Additionally, we argue that there may not be a way to successfully reformulate the GRA with premises acceptable to either Humeans or anti-Humeans.

Rights

© 2025 The Authors

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "Not applicable."

Original Publication Citation

Linford, D., & Malpass, A. (2025). The Grim Reaper Argument is an argument for no one. Synthese, 206(5), Article 254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05361-4

ORCID

0000-0001-8008-496 (Linford)

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