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Single Idea 14735

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 6. Space-Time ]

Full Idea

Unlike time, space has three dimensions and lacks a distinguishing direction; unlike space, time seems to be specially connected with causation.

Gist of Idea

Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation

Source

Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.5)

Book Ref

Sider,Theodore: 'Four Dimensionalism' [OUP 2003], p.87

A Reaction

These strike me as nice reasons to doubt (what I already prima facie doubt) that there is a single manifold that is 'space-time', for all that twentieth century physics tells us it is so. A century is a mere click of a clock where truth is concerned.

The 29 ideas from 'Four Dimensionalism'

14752 Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider]
14721 Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider]
14722 Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider]
14723 Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider]
14724 Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider]
14725 Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider]
14194 Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider]
14727 Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider]
14726 Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider]
14728 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider]
14729 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider]
14730 Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider]
14731 Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider]
14734 The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider]
14735 Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider]
14736 The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider]
14740 If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider]
14741 The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider]
14743 The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider]
14747 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider]
14745 If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider]
14754 If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider]
14756 For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider]
14757 Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider]
14758 How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider]
14760 Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider]
14762 Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider]
14763 Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider]
14738 Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider]