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Full Idea
If region A has a year's 'freeze' every three years, region B does it every four years, and C every five years, every sixty years they would all freeze, and there would be no witnesses. The simplest hypothesis is that a year passes with no events.
Gist of Idea
If three regions 'freeze' every three, four and five years, after sixty years everything stops for a year
Source
report of Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.247
Book Ref
Lowe,E.J.: 'A Survey of Metaphysics' [OUP 2002], p.247
A Reaction
Lovely argument. I definitely vote for there being a year of time with no events, even though it contradicats Einstein and the rest. As usual, we should be doing ontology, but get lured into epistemology.
| 18455 | Some think time is seen at rest, as well as in movement [Porphyry] |
| 16697 | Time is independent of motion, because God could stop everything for a short or long time [Crathorn, by Pasnau] |
| 12955 | If there were duration without change, we could never establish its length [Leibniz] |
| 4226 | If three regions 'freeze' every three, four and five years, after sixty years everything stops for a year [Shoemaker, by Lowe] |
| 8595 | If three regions freeze every 3rd, 4th and 5th year, they all freeze together every 60 years [Shoemaker] |
| 22917 | Since nothing occurs in a temporal vacuum, there is no way to measure its length [Le Poidevin] |
| 22921 | Temporal vacuums would be unexperienced, unmeasured, and unending [Le Poidevin] |