Adolph Grünbaum has argued that Duhem's conventionalism is false for the case of Euclidean geometry. According to Duhem, any portion of a physical theory can be preserved from falsifiability by providing suitable modifications elsewhere in the theory. Grünbaum argues that physical theory is composed of two parts: A geometrical part H, and a physical part A. For his test case—Euclidean geometry—he contends that by a suitable specification of A, a falsification of H is possible; i.e., H can be rendered “accessible (...) to experimental ascertainment in isolation from other physical regularities.”. (shrink)

This paper considers a problem for dynamic presentism that has received little attention: its apparent inability to accommodate the duration of events (such as conscious experiences). After outlining the problem, I defend presentism from it. This defence proceeds in two stages. First, I argue the objection rests on a faulty assumption: that duration is temporal extension. The paper challenges that assumption on several different ways of conceiving of temporal extension. This is the negative case and forms the bulk of the (...) paper. Second, after diagnosing the error leading to the identification of duration with temporal extension, I outline a new presentist-friendly account of duration that avoids the problem. In particular, a non-reductive account of duration is offered that treats it as a primitive quality which bestows its possessor with a certain modal quality: that the possessor potentially does not change whilst there are changes in its environs. This is the positive case. Together the positive and negative cases provide presentism with an interesting and novel way of overcoming the problem of duration. (shrink)

It is the objective of this paper to point out that discussions about cause and effect, and particularly those which bear upon their temporal relationship, are often blurred by failure to make use of the time-honored distinction between transeunt and immanent causes. Transeunt causes are in evidence whenever we discern two systems, S1 and S2, spatially separated, but locked in interaction. In this perspective, cotemporaneous changes can be asserted both of S1 and S2. S1 has an effect on S2, and (...) vice versa. Both effects take place simultaneously but are, as a rule, of different nature. Whether we read the causal relationship from S1, as the cause, to the changes of S2, as the effect, or the other way, from S2 to S1, depends on nothing more objective than the momentary direction of our interest. Immanent causes get into focus whenever we compare the internal conditions C1 and C2 which characterize a system S0 at two different moments t1 and t2. If t1 is earlier than t2, there is a sense in which we can say that C1 is a cause, and C2 its effect. (shrink)