Elton Marques

This paper suggests an answer to a rarely approached question on the model known as the Moving Spotlight Theory. Its advantage lies in that it adds to the debate a clear view of the kind of nature that might correspond to the ‘moving spotlight’ responsible for the passage of time. More specifically, our theory indicates clearly what kind of thing about which the model’s spotlight can tell us. The paper’s main goal is not the defense of the moving spotlight as a theory itself, but an approach for understanding the metaphor at the core of this theory. To achieve our purpose, we bring to the main thesis and promote the union of two components: a) the present is the awareness of our mental states and b) the flow of our awareness or our mental states should correspond to the passage of time and to the spotlight itself. We hope to indicate what is required to correspond to the “spotlight” in an illuminating way and address anticipated difficulties.

In this article, I will argue that the argument for fatalism based on the relativity of simultaneity fails. The original proponents of the argument called the thesis in terms of ‘determinism’, but Levin refers to it as ‘relativistic fatalism’. Relativistic fatalism is a view supported by the alleged dependence of the property of being future on an arbitrary choice of some coordinate system. First I will try to explain the classic argument, attributed to it a dialectic that justified to call it in the same terms as Levin did. Subsequently, I will refuse the relativistic fatalism using many strategies to deal with it.