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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.
Clarification
The block universe is eternalism
Gist of Idea
The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it
Source
Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9)
Book Ref
Sider,Theodore: 'Writing the Book of the World' [OUP 2011], p.259
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.
| 15202 | Eternity coexists with passing time, as the centre of a circle coexists with its circumference [Aquinas] |
| 8197 | Maybe past (which affects us) and future (which we can affect) are both real [Dummett] |
| 15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
| 17960 | Eternalism says all times are equally real, and future and past objects and properties are real [Merricks] |
| 14020 | 'Eternalism' is the thesis that reality includes past, present and future entities [Crisp,TM] |
| 15104 | The 'moving spotlight' theory makes one time privileged, while all times are on a par ontologically [Cameron] |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| 22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |