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3Epistemological Time AsymmetryPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1): 317-324. 1990.There is a wide-spread belief that we know more about the past than we do about the future. It may be difficult to express the content of this belief exactly and it may turn out that, when we find some precise expression of this belief, it is not so obviously true. I shall assume, however, that there is something to a belief shared not only by eminent philosophers but by cultures wholly distinct from our own, as the following quote indicates.We know where the future is. It’s in front of us. Righ…Read more
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226On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of PassageRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50 153-167. 2002.J. M. E. McTaggart, in a famous argument, denied the reality of time because he thought that passage or temporal becoming was essential for the existence of time and that passage was a self-contradictory concept. This denial of passage has provoked a vast literature, two of the most important contributions being C. D. Broad’s painstaking defence of passage in his Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy and D. C. Williams’ dazzling condemnation of it “The Myth of Passage.” A careful reading of the…Read more
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40Jens Erik Fenstad. On the completeness of some transfinite recursive progressions of axiomatic theories. The journal of symbolic logic, vol. 33 , pp. 69–76 (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 34 (1): 131-131. 1969.
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226I present an account of the passage of time and the present in relativistic spacetimes, and I defend these views against recent criticism by Oliver Pooley and Craig Callender.
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90Of Time and the Two ImagesHumana Mente 5 (21). 2012.In this paper I argue that the clash of the Sellars’ two images is particularly acute in the case of time. In Time and the World Order Sellars seems embarked on a quest to locate manifest time in Minkowski spacetime. I suggest that he should have argued for the replacement of manifest time with the local, path-dependent time of the “scientific image”, just as he suggests that manifest objects must be replaced by their scientific counterparts.
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48Kit Fine on Tense and RealityManuscrito 39 (4): 75-99. 2016.ABSTRACT Kit Fine recently described and defended a novel position in the philosophy of time, fragmentalism. It is not often that a new option appears in this old field, and for that reason alone these two essays merit serious attention. I will try to present briefly but fairly some of the considerations that Fine thinks favour fragmentalism. I will also weigh the merits of fragmentalism against the view that Fine presents as its chief rival, relativism, as well as the merits of both against the…Read more
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27Closed Time and Local Time: A Reply to DoweManuscrito 40 (1): 197-207. 2017.ABSTRACT In his contribution to this issue, “A and B Theories of Closed Time”, Phil Dowe argues that A- and B-theories of time are equally compatible with closed time, though it is commonly supposed that only B-theories are compatible with it. With some reservations to be noted below I agree with Dowe’s general conclusion, but in the course of his argument there are a number of false statements and misrepresentations of detail that require comment. I will not be able to deal with all of them in …Read more
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219The Direction of TimeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (3): 347-370. 1996.The aim of this essay is to introduce philosophers of science to some recent philosophical discussions of the nature and origin of the direction of time. The essay is organized around books by Hans Reichenbach, Paul Horwich, and Huw Price. I outline their major arguments and treat certain critical points in detail. I speculate at the end about the ways in which the subject may continue to develop and in which it may connect with other areas of philosophy
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49Time’s Arrows Today: Recent Physical and Philosophical Work on the Direction of Time (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1995.While experience tells us that time flows from the past to the present and into the future, a number of philosophical and physical objections exist to this commonsense view of dynamic time. In an attempt to make sense of this conundrum, philosophers and physicists are forced to confront fascinating questions, such as: Can effects precede causes? Can one travel in time? Can the expansion of the Universe or the process of measurement in quantum mechanics define a direction in time? In this book, r…Read more
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24In response to the discussion of the "now" in PSYCHE - D, I sent a message (in 1996) to be posted, which the moderator killed. I think he (probably correctly) thinks the discussion is getting off topics appropriate for his list. At any rate, I wished to put a question to you (Henry Stapp) that you might (or might not) wish to address off list.
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1033Presentism and eternalism in perspectiveIn Dennis Dieks (ed.), The Ontology of Spacetime I, Elsevier. 2006.The distinction between presentism and eternalism is usually sought in some formula like ‘Only presently existing things exist’ or ‘Past, present, and future events are equally real’. I argue that ambiguities in the copula prevent these slogans from distinguishing significant opposed positions. I suggest in addition that one can find a series of significant distinctions if one takes spacetime structure into account. These presentisms and eternalisms are not contradictory. They are complementary …Read more
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56World Enough and Space-TimeDialogue 31 (4): 701-. 1992.John Earman's new book,World Enough and Space-Time, is a brisk account of the controversy between space-time absolutists and relationists. The book is intended, one is told, to be “appropriate for use in an upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate course in the philosophy of science”, but Earman's no-holds-barred approach to the mathematics of space-time theories will have bludgeoned most philosophical readers, undergraduate or beyond, into submission long before it is revealed that Piran…Read more
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141The replacement of timeAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (4). 1994.This Article does not have an abstract
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161Is classical mechanics time reversal invariant?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (3): 907-913. 1994.
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7Tachyons and Causal Theories of Space-TimePhilosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 3 155-159. 1988.
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94Time Travel and BecomingThe Monist 88 (3): 413-422. 2005.I wish to discuss a supposed implication of one sort of time travel. The sort of time travel is time travel into one’s past along a closed timelike curve. The implication is that in spacetimes with CTCs there can be no temporal passage or “flow” of time. I will argue that the implication does not hold.
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33Palle Yourgrau, Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 21 (3): 229-233. 2001.
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28Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy of MathematicsPhilosophy Research Archives 5 539-553. 1979.Wittgenstein's remarks in his Tractatus on mathematics are quite obscure. Benacerraf and Putnam wrote, "In his Tractatus Loqico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein maintained, following Russell and Frege, that mathematics was reducible to logic." On the other hand, Max Black claims, "Wittgenstein does not regard mathematics as reducible to logic, in the manner of Whitehead and Russell." I offer a detailed commentary upon Wittgenstein's remarks, concluding that his views most likely do not follow those o…Read more
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151The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics R. I. G. Hughes Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1989, ix + 369 pp., US$42.50 (review)Dialogue 32 (4): 833-. 1993.
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