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Full Idea
There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction).
Gist of Idea
Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity
Source
Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III)
Book Ref
Bourne,Craig: 'A Future for Presentism' [OUP 2006], p.153
A Reaction
[My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism.
Related Idea
Idea 13993 Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian]
14007 | How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne] |
14008 | The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne] |
14010 | All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne] |
14009 | It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne] |
14011 | Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne] |
14013 | Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne] |
14015 | No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne] |
14016 | The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne] |
14017 | Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne] |
14018 | Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne] |
14019 | Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne] |
14003 | Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne] |
14005 | B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne] |
14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |