ABSTRACT
Tenses are covertly egocentric because the force of a tensed sentence depends on the date at which it is uttered. Tenses can be explicated only in terms of past, present and future, and therefore people must either proceed down an infinite regress, or allow that every temporal instant is both past, present and future, which is a patent contradiction. The future tense is appropriate for events occurring after the present instant, the past for those before. The same proposition will be expressed now in one tense, now in another, just as it will be expressed now in one person now in another. As Platonists people are not concerned with tenses, and disregard, so far as people can, the tense structure of the locutions actually used to express propositions. Tensed utterances, like those containing personal pronouns or explicitly token-reflexive words such as 'now' or 'here', depend on their context of utterance.
