Abstract
Some philosophers argue that non-presentist A-theories (i.e. the views that the tenses—past, present, and future—are objective features and that not only present things exist) problematically imply that we cannot know that this moment is present. The problem is usually presented as arising from the combination of the A-theoretic ideology of a privileged presentness and a non-presentist ontology. The goal of this essay is to show that the epistemic problem can be rephrased as a pessimistic induction. By doing so, I will show that the epistemic problem, in fact, stems from the A-theoretic ideology alone. Hence, once it is properly presented, the epistemic problem presents a serious threat to all A-theories.