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Full Idea
The objection to Presentism from Special Relativity is this: 1) Relativity is true, 2) so there is no absolute simultaneity, 3) so there is no absolute presentness, but 4) Presentism entails absolute presentness, so 5) Presentism is false.
Gist of Idea
Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs
Source
Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.9)
Book Ref
'Persistence: contemporary readings', ed/tr. Haslanger,S/|Kurtz,RM [MIT 2006], p.326
A Reaction
I don't accept this objection. There may be accounts that can give Relativity one present (Idea 12689-90). Maybe Einstein was too instrumentalist in his account. Maybe we can have Presentism with multiple present moments.
Related Ideas
Idea 12689 Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis]
Idea 12690 The present is the collapse of the light wavefront from the Big Bang [Ellis]
Idea 7621 Special relativity, unlike general relativity, was operationalist in spirit [Putnam on Einstein]
Idea 14013 Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne]
Idea 14016 The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne]
| 13990 | Presentism is the view that only present objects exist [Markosian] |
| 13991 | Presentism has the problem that if Socrates ceases to exist, so do propositions about him [Markosian] |
| 13992 | Presentism says if objects don't exist now, we can't have attitudes to them or relations with them [Markosian] |
| 13994 | Presentism seems to entail that we cannot talk about other times [Markosian] |
| 13995 | Serious Presentism says things must exist to have relations and properties; Unrestricted version denies this [Markosian] |
| 14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
| 13996 | Maybe Presentists can refer to the haecceity of a thing, after the thing itself disappears [Markosian] |
| 13997 | Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past [Markosian] |
| 13998 | Objects in the past, like Socrates, are more like imaginary objects than like remote spatial objects [Markosian] |
| 13999 | People are mistaken when they think 'Socrates was a philosopher' says something [Markosian] |
| 14000 | 'Grabby' truth conditions first select their object, unlike 'searchy' truth conditions [Markosian] |
| 13993 | Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian] |
| 14001 | People who use science to make philosophical points don't realise how philosophical science is [Markosian] |