more from this thinker     |     more from this text


Single Idea 22939

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / f. Tenseless (B) series ]

Full Idea

How can anything change in a B-universe?

Gist of Idea

The B-series doesn't seem to allow change

Source

Robin Le Poidevin (Travels in Four Dimensions [2003], 08 'Second')

Book Ref

Le Poidevin,Robin: 'Travels in Four Dimensions' [OUP 2003], p.141


A Reaction

It seems that change needs time to move on. A timeless series of varying states doesn't seem to be the same thing as change. B-seriesers must be tempted to deny change, and yet nothing seems more obvious to us than change.


The 12 ideas with the same theme [B-series, of equal times, with no past-present-future]:

Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider]
The new tenseless theory offers indexical truth-conditions, instead of a reductive analysis [Le Poidevin]
B-theorists say tensed sentences have an unfilled argument-place for a time [Fine,K]
To say that the past causes the present needs them both to be equally real [Le Poidevin]
If the B-universe is eternal, why am I trapped in a changing moment of it? [Le Poidevin]
The B-series doesn't seem to allow change [Le Poidevin]
The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider]
The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider]
The B-series needs a revised view of causes, laws and explanations [Bardon]
The B-series is realist about time, but idealist about its passage [Bardon]
The B-series adds directionality when it accepts 'earlier' and 'later' [Bardon]
The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller]