Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Writing the Book of the World', 'The Status of Content' and 'works'

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2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / f. Eternalism
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.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / i. Denying time
The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: Time is composed of non-entities, because it is composed of the past which does not exist now, although it did exist, and of the future, which does not yet exist; therefore time does not exist.
     From: William of Ockham (works [1335], 6:496), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist'
     A reaction: I've a lot of sympathy with this! I favour Presentism, so the past is gone and the future is yet to arrive. But we have no coherent concept of a present moment of any duration to contain reality. We are just completely bogglificated by it all.