Daniel Peterson

Ever since the now infamous comments made by Hermann Minkowski in 1908 concerning the proper way to view space-time, the debate has raged as to whether or not the universe should be viewed as a four-dimensional, unified whole wherein the past, present, and future are equally real or whether the views espoused by the possibilists, historicists, and presentists regarding the unreality of the future (and, for presentists, the past) are best. Now, a century after Minkowski’s proposed blockworld first sparked debate, we seek a more conclusive argument in favor of the eternalist picture of space-time. Utilizing an argument based on the relativity of simultaneity in the tradition of Putnam and Rietdijk and novel but reasonable assumptions as to the nature of “reality”, we will show that the past, present, and future are equally real, thus ruling out presentism and other theories of time that bestow special ontological status to the past, present, or future as untenable. Finally, we will respond to our critics who would suggest that: 1) there is no metaphysical difference between the positions of eternalism and presentism, 2) the present must be defined as the “here” as well as the “now”, or 3) presentism is correct and our understanding of relativity is incomplete because it does not incorporate a preferred frame. We call eternalist response 1 deflationary since it purports to dissolve or deconstruct the age-old debate between the two views and response 2 compatibilist because it does nothing to alter special relativity (SR) arguing instead that SR unadorned has the resources to save presentism. Response 3 we will call incompatibilism because it adorns SR in some way in order to save presentism a la some sort of preferred frame. We will show that neither move 1 nor 2 can save presentism and move 3 is not well motivated at this juncture except as an ad hoc device to refute eternalism.

In his 2007 paper “Quantum Sleeping Beauty”, Peter Lewis poses a problem for the supporters’ of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics appeal to subjective probability. Lewis’s argument hinges on parallels between the traditional “sleeping beauty” problem in epistemology and a quantum variant. These two cases, Lewis argues, advocate different treatments of credences even though they share important epistemic similarities, leading to a tension between the traditional solution to the sleeping beauty problem (typically called the “thirder” solution) and Everettian quantum mechanics. In this paper I examine the metaphysical and epistemological differences between Lewis’s two cases, and, in particular, I show how diachronic Dutch book arguments support both the thirder solution in the traditional case and the Everettian’s solution in the variant case. These Dutch books, I argue, reveal an important disanalogy between Lewis’s two cases such that Lewis’s argument does not reveal an inconsistency in either the Everettian’s or the thirder’s assignment of credences

In this paper I draw the distinction between intuitive and theory-relative accounts of the time reversal symmetry and identify problems with each. I then propose an alternative to these two types of accounts that steers a middle course between them and minimizes each account’s problems. This new account of time reversal requires that, when dealing with sets of physical theories that satisfy certain constraints, we determine all of the discrete symmetries of the physical laws we are interested in and look for involutions that leave spatial coordinates unaffected and that act consistently across our physical laws. This new account of time reversal has the interesting feature that it makes the nature of the time reversal symmetry an empirical feature of the world without requiring us to assume that any particular physical theory is time reversal invariant from the start. Finally, I provide an analysis of several toy cases that reveals differences between my new account of time reversal and its competitors.

Non-cognitive dispositions have recently become psychological constructs of interest in the education, economics, philosophy, sociology, and psychology literature. In this article, I draw the distinction between property-first and measurement-first approaches to understanding the meaning of a particular non-cognitive disposition theoretical term, ‘grit’, as well as the relationship between this term and its corresponding measurement procedure. I argue that, depending on which approach one takes, one is confronted with different norms for judging the success of any disposition-measurement procedure pair, meaning that the difference in philosophical approaches may have practical import. I argue that the measurement-first approach is the one educators and educational policy-makers ought to adopt towards grit as it is less likely to lead to over-valuing grit in situations where a gritty disposition may be harmful, better respects scientific virtues and values, and provides a clearer understanding of grit than the property-first approach

Saul Smilansky has argued that, since acts of petitionary prayer are best understood as requests, not desires, there may be many more impermissible prayer acts than one might expect. I discuss Smilansky’s analysis and argue that his conclusion follows only for those who do not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly benevolent deity and take advantage of what Smilansky calls the theist’s ‘moral escape clause’. However, I take my argument to lead us to a variant of the problems of evil and petitionary prayer instead of a problem with Smilansky’s reasoning, requirng us to either abandon at least one of three properties commonly assigned to God or else to abandon an intuitive account of prayer that makes it morally impermissible to pray for morally impermissible ends.

In this paper I provide an account of physical symmetries, which are defined relative to a specific physical theory, and overarching symmetries, which hold across many different physical theories. I outline two general strategies for uniting disparate physical symmetries under the same overarching symmetry, calling the first "realist" and the second "conventionalist". Finally, I argue that, should physicists and philosophers be interested in finding symmetries that do interesting and helpful physical and metaphysical work, the realist strategy would serve them better than the conventionalist strategy.