display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
7 ideas
15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
Full Idea: The spotlight theorist accepts the block universe, but also something in addition: a joint-carving monadic property of presentness, which is possessed by just one moment of time, and which 'moves', to be possessed by later and later times. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
A reaction: This seems better than the merely detached eternalist view, which seems to ignore the key phenomenon. I just can't comprehend any theory which makes the future as real as the past. |
14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
Full Idea: Intermediate between the polar opposites of presentism and eternalism is the view (defended by Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997) that the past is real but the future is not. Reality consists of a growing four-dimensional manifold, the 'growing block universe'. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: The obvious and plausible basis for this is that statements about the past seem to have truthmakers, but statements about the future lack them. Does a truth always require ontological commitment? Death is cessation of existence. |
14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
Full Idea: The presentist must deny the truth of everyday claims that concern multiple times taken together. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: This rests on the extent to which every truth has an ontological commitment. You can deny the literal existence of multiple times without denying such truths. |
14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
Full Idea: The Presentist acknowledges that no atemporal description of the case can be given; a vantage point must be chosen for any description. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
A reaction: This is because Presentists are committed to tense, which have to be either explicit or implicit in any sentence. But what of famously 'timeless' truths such as '2 and 2 are 4'? |
14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
Full Idea: The temporal reductionist claims that tensed locutions are indexical - 'present' being the time of utterance etc. This generalises to say that nothing corresponding to tense need be admitted as a fundamental feature of the world. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: [He particular cites Mellor for this view] Highly implausible. I very much doubt whether it is possible to explain the indexicality of a word like 'now' without referring to tenses. Does time only exist when sentences and thoughts occur? |
14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
Full Idea: The B-series has two components: eternalism - the thesis that all future entities are real - and the thesis of reducibility of tense. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.2) |
14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
Full Idea: The B-theoretic description of the world is completely adequate except that it leaves out information about which time is present. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.6) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty basic deficiency. How could there a time which lacked a present moment? The present is when things happen. How would it qualify as time at all if it lacked past, present and future? |