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The main argument of this thesis is that the future-oriented vision that characterizes modernity has, in recent years, become inverted into an obsession with the past, an obsession that is played out using the discourses of "ownership". The argument is developed by drawing a parallel between the question of time and place as it has been addressed in social theoretical discourses and (increasing) public concerns with owning the past - a past that is accessed and (more importantly) appropriated by means of claims to the ownership of ancient objects. The argument looks at two specific cases in which ownership of objects is translated into claims for ownership of the past: the Parthenon Marbles case and the Kennewick Man case. First, the argument engages in legal analysis of the property claims set out in these cases. Second, it analyses these legal claims by reference to the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon (among others) in order to question the meaning of these legal conflicts. What light do current social-theoretical discussions shed on the proliferation of cultural property and cultural heritage. Arguably, claims that turn on ownership of these sorts of objects themselves express a deep discomfort with the present understanding of modern society's location in time. The thesis concludes by suggesting that this obsession with the past is a reaction to the modernist obsession with the future, and that the lack of "place" that is so characteristic of modernity is also experienced as a lack of "time" for human flourishing. The proliferation of cultural property and cultural heritage cases and issues in law, and the increasing number of new museums, can be traced to these interconnecting absences, which discourses of ownership attempt to overcome.

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This thesis is about branching time. In the opening chapter I discuss philosophical ideas in the philosophy of time and modality, and motivate branching time. In the second chapter I outline the basics of temporal and modal logic and model theory. In chapter three I examine various ways of construing the future tense in branching time. In chapter four I examine closely 'Ockhamist' semantics, and suggest a modification to the theory of the Thin Red Line, making a position referred to as 'STRL'. In chapter five I outline how a theory of counterfactuals can be made compatible with STRL logic. In chapter 6 I discuss branching time's relation to relativity theory. In chapter 7 I end with a discussion of the metaphysics of Belnap and the metaphysics of STRL.

This dissertation is an investigation of presentism, the thesis that all and only present things exist. Though an increasingly popular topic, it is ill-understood. The investigation has three main aims. Firstly, to improve understanding of the presentist thesis by distinguishing, outlining, and exploring various plausible competing interpretations ('theories'). Secondly, to motivate presentism and weigh-up competing presentist theories against theory-choice criteria. Thirdly, to develop and defend a preferred, and novel, presentist variant: Effervescent Presentism. What the presentist thesis amounts to depends on how key concepts employed in its statement are interpreted; distinct interpretations each specify competing description of temporal reality. Specifically, the focus is on how we understand existence and the A-determinations—presentness, together with its related notions of pastness and futurity. The dissertation divides into three parts. In Part One, I establish a fixed, tensed, conception of existence avoiding the triviality charge against presentism, and permitting a robust distinction between mere temporal variation and metaphysical change. Then, having outlined a broadly pragmatic methodology, I provide some motivations for presentism, focusing on its explanatory virtues for the nature of causation. This justifies interest in the project, but also establishes a distinguishing criterion for presentist theories: how well they support those motivations. In Part Two, I outline alternative presentist theories, and introduce potential theory-choice criteria to suggest plausible interpretative directions and preferentially distinguish theories. Part Three then introduces, develops, and defends effervescent presentism, in greater detail due to its preference and complexity. It delivers an understanding of presentness in terms of a law-based account of causal activity. This ties time intimately to causation, and consequently supports the presentist motivations from Part One and the need to unify time. The research should demonstrate the tenability of effervescent presentism, and its worthiness of wider consideration.

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Although the experience of time is immediately familiar to us all, a number of difficult and very important problems are raised by it. On examination some of these are found to be logical, some psychological, some physical; but underlying these and presupposed by them, there remains a number of questions which are essentially metaphysical. These questions have been treated from various aspects by different philosophers. As it would be impossible to consider all these different views, those of Kant, Bergson, Alexander, McTaggart, and Dunne have been taken as representative for the purposes of exposition and criticism. This comprises the first part of the thesis. The second part contains an attempt to coordinate the conclusions reached earlier, and to sketch a theory of time. Prediction, irreversibility, and the status of the future are discussed. It is shown that time is essentially asymmetrical and irreducible to logical terms; and it is suggested that it is itself the a logical element in the universe, as the condition of change, contingency, and novelty. Finally, the reality of time is considered. Time is unstable, and cannot yield absolute perfection; yet only in time is progress towards the ideal possible. We must not emphasize the transience of time, and forget its creativeness.