display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
| 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. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
| 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. |
| 12486 | An 'instant' is where we perceive no succession, and is the time of a single idea [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A part of duration wherein we perceive no succession, is that which we may call an 'instant'; and is that which takes up the time of only one idea in our minds. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.10) | |
| A reaction: Given that the present appears to have zero duration (if it is where past and future meet), then this strikes me as a pretty accurate account of what we mean by an instant. |
| 12487 | We can never show that two successive periods of time were equal [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Two successive lengths of duration, however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.21) | |
| A reaction: Nice thought. You can't lay the durations next to one another, the way you can lengths. You can only count the clock ticks, but not be sure whether their speed remained constant. |