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Full Idea
Special Relativity denies absolute simultaneity, and therefore requires a past and a future, as well as a present. The Presentist, however, only requires the present.
Gist of Idea
Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism)
Source
Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VII)
Book Ref
Bourne,Craig: 'A Future for Presentism' [OUP 2006], p.183
A Reaction
It is nice to accuse Relativity of ontological extravagence. When it 'requires' past and future, that may not be a massive commitment, since the whole theory is fairly operationalist, according to Putnam.
Related Ideas
Idea 13993 Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian]
Idea 7621 Special relativity, unlike general relativity, was operationalist in spirit [Putnam on Einstein]
| 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] |