"Becoming" is that feature of experiential time or of the organization of things in "psychological," "phenomenological" or "experiential" time that distinguishes things or times in the past from those in the future. For example, it is claimed that we are aware of a fundamental difference between events in the past, such as the Battle of Yorktown, and events in the future, such as an upcoming trip to France. Physics, it is claimed, does not make and cannot ground any such distinction. ;This thesi…
Read more"Becoming" is that feature of experiential time or of the organization of things in "psychological," "phenomenological" or "experiential" time that distinguishes things or times in the past from those in the future. For example, it is claimed that we are aware of a fundamental difference between events in the past, such as the Battle of Yorktown, and events in the future, such as an upcoming trip to France. Physics, it is claimed, does not make and cannot ground any such distinction. ;This thesis examines the status of this claim about physical time with respect to special relativity, and spacetime theories more generally. It concludes that we can formulate a conception of temporality responsible both to the modern physics of spacetime and to the structure of temporal experience. This position is contrasted with that of philosophers who believe that such a conception is not available, and who, therefore, claim either that temporality is an entirely subjective or psychological phenomenon or that physics cannot provide any insight into the actual structure of time . ;However, the conception of temporality developed there does have some counter-intuitive features. First, a version of McTaggart's paradox shows that it is relational rather than absolute; the distinction between past, present and future is defined only relative to particular occupants of spacetime. Second, a theorem due to Howard Stein shows that this conception must be local rather than global; there can be no well-defined distinction between past, present and future relative to the universe as a whole. To defend this conception, it provides responses to three objections to the second of these features. First, the development of an indexical account of temporal concepts provides a response to the objection that our temporal concepts are intrinsically global. Next, a conception of determinism and determinacy in relativistic spacetimes provides a response to the charge that local temporality either commits one to an objectionable verificationism or involves one in serious metaphysical paradoxes. The dissertation concludes by briefly considering how to incorporate concerns from quantum theory and from general relativity into the framework developed there