'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

Several philosophers have maintained in recent years that the endurance/perdurance debate is merely verbal: these prima facie distinct theories of objects’ persistence are in fact metaphysically equivalent, they claim. The present paper challenges this view. Three proposed translation schemes are examined; all are shown to be faulty. In the process, constructive reasons for regarding the debate as a substantive one are provided. It is also suggested that the theories may have differing practical implications.

For centuries, philosophers of time have produced texts containing words and pictures. Although some historians study visual representations of time, I have not found any history of philosophy on pictures of time within texts. This paper argues that studying such pictures can be rewarding. I will make this case by studying pictures of time in the works of Leibniz, Arthur Eddington and C. D. Broad, and argue they play subtle roles. Further, I will argue that historians of philosophy more widely (...) could benefit from paying more attention to pictures. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers of time have produced texts containing words and pictures. Although some historians study visual representations of time, I have not found any history of philosophy on pictures of time within texts. This paper argues that studying such pictures can be rewarding. I will make this case by studying pictures of time in the works of Leibniz, Arthur Eddington and C. D. Broad, and argue they play subtle roles. Further, I will argue that historians of philosophy more widely (...) could benefit from paying more attention to pictures. (shrink)

Dolev's ambitious project is to show that the traditional debate in the philosophy of time between the so-called ‘tensed’ and ‘tenseless’ theorists is not a sustainable one. The key to the negative portion argument is that both the tensed and tenseless view of time can be understood only from within their respective ontological frameworks. Moreover, that there is only really an appearance of understanding within these frameworks, since neither framework furnishes us with the wherewithal to genuinely understand temporal language. Moving (...) past these frameworks is the goal Dolev sets us. The positive aspect of the text tries to teach us how to transcend this merely ontological dispute and engage in phenomenological considerations of time itself. The conclusion to the positive project is that we cannot postulate an adequate metaphysical system of time, though we can understand what time is if we treat it as the time of our experiences in everyday life .The prospect that we might be able to move past the existing debate into fresh philosophical terrain is exciting. But I am not quite persuaded by the arguments that are intended to motivate the move to pastures new. First, on occasion Dolev seems to slightly …. (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the claim that future contingents are (...) truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the claim that future contingents are (...) truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

Is the objective passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? There are two easy routes to an affirmative answer: (1) provide a deflationary analysis of passage compatible with the block universe, or (2) argue that a privileged global present is compatible with relativity. (1) does not take passage seriously. (2) does not take relativity seriously. This paper is concerned with the viability of views that seek to take both passage and relativity seriously. The investigation proceeds by considering how traditional A-theoretic (...) conceptions of passage might be generalized to relativistic space-times without incorporating a privileged global present. I argue that the most promising position marries the idea that open possibilities for the future are settled as time passes with a ‘non-standard’ interpretation of the relevant formal models. (shrink)

Growing Block theorists are committed, roughly, to two theses: that past and present events exist and that future events do not, and that the present is dynamic and constantly changing. These two theses support a picture of the universe as growing, gaining in more and more things and events, as these recede into the past; but the two theses do not specify how the growth of the block is to be understood ; what status the past is supposed to have (...) compared to the present ; and what should be taken to be the fundamental constituents of the spatio-temporal reality. In my paper I argue that getting clearer on these three questions—Q1, Q2, and Q3—will give us very different metaphysical pictures. I distinguish between three variants of the growing block theory: the Fourdimensional Growing Block which goes back to C.D. Broad; the Dead Past Growing Block which is currently defended by Forrest and Forbes; and the Growing Events theory, which draws on some of Whitehead’s ideas on processes. I flesh out each of these variants of the GB view, examine the most urgent challenges to their respective metaphysical pictures, and offer suggestions as to how these challenges can be positively addressed. (shrink)

A probabilistic and counterfactual theory of causality is developed within the framework of branching time. The theory combines ideas developed by James Fetzer, Donald Nute, Patrick Suppes, Ming Xu, John Pollock, David Lewis and Mellor among others.

This paper argues for the following disjunction: either we do not live in a world with a branching temporal structure, or backwards time travel is nomologically impossible, given the initial state of the universe, or backwards time travel to our space-time location is impossible given large-scale facts about space and time. A fortiori, if backwards time travel to our location is possible, we do not live in a branching universe.

In a recent paper in this journal, McCall and Lowe (2003) argue that an understanding of Special Relativity reveals that the A theorist’s notion of temporal passage is consistent with the B theory of time. They arrive at this conclusion by considering the twins’ paradox, where one of two twins (T) travels to Alpha Centauri and back and upon her return has aged 30 years, while her earth-bound twin (S) has aged 40 years.Does this reconcile the A theoretic notion of (...) temporal passage with the B theory of time? I argue not. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the thesis that time travel is logically possible, is inconsistent with the necessary truth of any of the usual ‘open futureobjective present’ models of the universe. It has been relatively uncontroversial until recently to hold that presentism is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel. I argue that recent arguments to the contrary do not show that presentism is consistent with time travel. Moreover, the necessary truth of other open future-objective present models which we (...) might, prima facie, have supposed to be more amenable to the possibility of time travel, turn out also to be inconsistent with this possibility. (shrink)

I argue that two competing accounts of persistence, three and four dimensionalism, are in fact metaphysically equivalent. I begin by clearly defining three and four dimensionalism, and then I show that the two theories are intertranslatable and equally simple. Through consideration of a number of different cases where intuitions about persistence are contradictory, I then go on to show that both theories describe these cases in the same manner. Further consideration of some empirical issues arising from the theory of special (...) relativity lead me to conclude that the two theories are equally explanatory, and thus finally that they are metaphysically equivalent. (shrink)

Here are some intuitions we have about the nature of space and time. There is something fundamentally different about the past, present, and future. What is definitive of the past is that the past events are fixed. What is definitive of the future is that future events are not fixed. What is definitive of the present is that it marks the objective ontological border between the past and the future and, by doing so, instantiates a particularly salient phenomenological property of (...) nowness. Call the combination of these intuitions according to which there exists an objective present, a fixed past, and an open future, the intuitive view. I argue that, given the intuitive view, the possibility of backwards causation—and hence, for instance, backwards time travel—is problematic. (shrink)

My aim is to argue for the incompatibility of one of the central principles of physics, namely the principle of least action (PLA), with the increasingly popular view that the world is, ultimately, merely something like a con- glomerate of objects and irreducible dispositions. First, I argue that the essentialist implications many suppose this view has are not compatible with the PLA. Second, I argue that, irrespective of whether this view has any essentialist implications, it is not compatible with the (...) kind of explanation that the PLA affords. (shrink)

One currently popular view about the nature of objective probabilities, or objective chances, is that they – or some of them, at least – are primitive features of the physical world, not reducible to anything else nor explicable in terms of frequencies, degrees of belief, or anything else. In this paper I explore the question of what the semantic content of primitive chance claims could be. Every attempt I look at to supply such content either comes up empty-handed, or begs (...) important questions against the skeptic who doubts the meaningfulness of primitive chance claims. In the second half of the paper I show that, by contrast, there are clear, and clearly contentful, ways to understand objective chance claims if we ground them on deterministic physical underpinnings. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a theory of local temporality, sometimes referred to as a point-present theory. This theory has the great advantage that it allows for the possibility of an open future without requiring any alterations to our standard understanding of special relativity. Such theories, however, have regularly been rejected out of hand as metaphysically incoherent. After surveying the debate, I argue that such a transformation of temporal concepts (i) is suggested by the indexical semantics of tense in a (...) relativistic universe, (ii) when properly understood easily withstands the usual accusations of metaphysical incoherence and (iii) leads naturally to a meta-philosophical position from which we can understand and escape the increasing sterility of debates between radical Parmenideans and radical Heracliteans in the philosophy of time. (shrink)

The basic idea of Maudlin's superb book is methodological: ‘metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the natural world, can do no better than to reflect on physics. Physical theories provide us with the best handle we have on what there is, and the philosopher's proper task is the interpretation and elucidation of those theories. In particular, when choosing the fundamental posits of one's ontology, one must look to scientific practice rather than to philosophical prejudice’ .The apparently diverse topics covered (...) by the book's six chapters are united in bearing out this basic idea. They do so with considerable care and sophistication. The chapters also champion a campaign against David Lewis's thesis of Humean Supervenience. Lewis's thesis says that everything actual supervenes on the distribution of intrinsic qualities across points in space-time.Chapter 1 claims that laws of …. (shrink)

Two fundamental categories of any ontology are the category of objects and the category of universals. We discuss the question whether either of these categories can be infinite or not. In the category of objects, the subcategory of physical objects is examined within the context of different cosmological theories regarding the different kinds of fundamental objects in the universe. Abstract objects are discussed in terms of sets and the intensional objects of conceptual realism. The category of universals is discussed in (...) terms of the three major theories of universals: nominalism, realism, and conceptualism. The finitude of mind pertains only to conceptualism. We consider the question of whether or not this finitude precludes impredicative concept formation. An explication of potential infinity, especially as applied to concepts and expressions, is given. We also briefly discuss a logic of plural objects, or groups of single objects (individuals), which is based on Bertrand Russell’s (1903, The principles of mathematics, 2nd edn. (1938). Norton & Co, NY) notion of a class as many. The universal class as many does not exist in this logic if there are two or more single objects; but the issue is undecided if there is just one individual. We note that adding plural objects (groups) to an ontology with a countable infinity of individuals (single objects) does not generate an uncountable infinity of classes as many. (shrink)

This paper motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, (...) is an attractive position that can do much of the same work in satisfying our intuitions about time as presentism, but without the ontological cost. (shrink)

The future is different from the past. What is past is fixed and set in stone. The future, on the other hand, is open insofar as it holds numerous possibilities. Branching-tree models of time account for this asymmetry by positing an ontological difference between the past and the future. Given a time t, a unique unified past lies behind t, whereas multiple alternative existing futures lie ahead of t. My goal in this paper is to show that there is an (...) incompatibility between the way branching-tree models account for the open future and the possibility of time travel. That is, I argue that once time travel enters the picture, branching time fails to model the openness of the future by means of alternative future branches. I show how this holds independently of whether branching-time models are cashed out in A-theoretic or B-theoretic terms. (shrink)

Argues that divine timelessness is at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive for addressing the problem of foreknowledge and future contingents.

I investigate the consequences for semantics, and in particular for the semantics of tense, if time is assumed to have a branching structure not out of metaphysical necessity (to solve some philosophical problem) but just as a contingent physical fact, as is suggested by a currently-popular approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

This dissertation offers new proposals, based on a philosophical appraisal of scientific findings, to address old philosophical problems regarding our immediate acquaintance with time. It focuses on two topics: our capacity to determine the length of intervals and our acquaintance with the present moment. A review of the relevant scientific findings concerning these topics grounds the main contributions of this dissertation. Thus, this study introduces to the philosophical literature an empirically adequate way to talk about how the mind represents time (...) at the most fundamental level. In order to account for our immediate acquaintance with the duration of intervals, a theoretical framework for classifying clocks is used to explain why the representational outputs of the circadian clock and the stopwatch have metric structure. A philosophical analysis of these outputs is proposed to classify them and explain their properties. With respect to our immediate acquaintance with the present, a novel two-phase model of the present is proposed. This model shows that there are two forms of acquaintance with the present, which has consequences for contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. (shrink)

This essay introduces a formal structure to model the indeterminacy of the future in Einstein-Minkowski space-time. We consider a first-order language, supplemented with an operator for predicate-term negation, and defend the claim that such an operation provides an appropriate model for the indeterminacy of future contingents. In the final section, it is proved that given a language otherwise adequate to represent a physical theory, at least some of the predicates of that language are indeterminate when the future is not causally (...) determined by the present and the past. (shrink)

The seventeenth century Muslim philosopher Muhammad Sadr al-Din Shirazi, known as Mulla Sadra, introduced the idea of substantial motion in Islamic philosophy. This view is characterized by a continuity criterion for diachronic identity, a four-dimensional view of individual substances, the notion that possibilities change, and the continual creation of all creatures. Modern philosophical logic provides means to model a variety of claims about individuals, substances, modality and time. In this paper, the semantics of formal systems discussed by Carnap, Bressan and (...) Gupta are reviewed with regard to the issue of substance and identity. Next a model introduced by Storrs McCall is described that is able to build upon and yet resolve some of the issues about substance and identity as characterized by Bressan and others. McCall’s model is also shown to be able to provide an illustration of Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of substantial motion. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Einstein-Minkowski space-time of special relativity provides an adequate model for classical tense logic, including rigorous definitions of tensed becoming and of the logical priority of proper time. In addition, the extension of classical tense logic with an operator for predicate-term negation provides us with a framework for interpreting and defending the significance of future contingency in special relativity. The framework for future contingents developed here involves the dual falsehood of non-logical contraries, only one of which (...) becomes true. This has several methodological, metaphysical and physical advantages over the alternative traditional frameworks for handling future contingents. (shrink)