Temporal becoming is usually considered the essence of the concept of time. But in our century most physicists and philosophers have defended the view that becoming is dependent on the existence of conscious beings and that there is no ontological difference between past and future. I evaluate these related claims both in light of their conceptual implications and by bringing to bear our best spacetime theories. ;Since a mind-independent becoming should be grounded in an ontological, non-epistem…
Read moreTemporal becoming is usually considered the essence of the concept of time. But in our century most physicists and philosophers have defended the view that becoming is dependent on the existence of conscious beings and that there is no ontological difference between past and future. I evaluate these related claims both in light of their conceptual implications and by bringing to bear our best spacetime theories. ;Since a mind-independent becoming should be grounded in an ontological, non-epistemic asymmetry between past and future, I discuss the philosophical motivations for various "non-full views" of the future in contrast to the view that the future is as real as the past. I present the disagreement between these views both in terms of what is and in terms of possession of a definite truth value, thereby distinguishing an ontological and a semantic formulation. A formal definition of the "tree model" of reality allows a clear distinction of the often conflated notions of 'determinate', 'determined' and 'stable', and helps to formulate the differences between the "non-full" views and the "full view" of reality. ;To settle the issue concerning these views, I bring into the discussion the special theory of relativity . I show that oft-discussed arguments against the openness of the future presuppose a clarification of the properties of the relation 'being determinate for', in particular symmetry and transitivity. Within STR, objective becoming can be defended at the cost of relativizing what is determinate to spacetime points, of making the relation of determinedness time-asymmetric, and of denying determinateness to spacelike-related events. ;I conclude by urging that mind-independent temporal becoming can find a more hospitable environment in some isotropic cosmological models of general relativity, a claim that has been unreasonably neglected. If the universe does not present causal anomalies , the proper time of a co-moving 'fundamental particle' can be made common to every other world line. The existence of such a cosmic time would make current scientific talk of 'cosmic evolution' and 'the future of the universe' non-metaphorical
