In this paper I argue that Nietzsche should be understood as a “thorough-going nihilist”. Rather than broaching two general projects of destroying current values and constructing new ones, I argue that Nietzsche should be understood only as a destroyer of values. I do this by looking at Nietzsche’s views on nihilism and the role played by Nietzsche’s cyclical view of time, or his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. I provide a typology of nihilisms, as they are found (...) in Nietzsche—negative, reactive and radical—through a close reading of an unpublished fragment in his later notebooks, remnants of which are scattered throughout his published work. I show how the progression between the different stages of nihilism are a “necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto” , with the eternal recurrence of the same playing a vital role in this progression. The last stage of nihilism—radical nihilism—is ambiguous between a life-denying, or passive, nihilism and a life-affirming, or active, one; but, I argue, both kinds of nihilism preclude a construction of new values. But there is an inherent tension within Nietzsche’s account of nihilism insofar as it relies on the eternal recurrence of the same. This tension is brought out nicely by Löwith and partially resolved by Klossowski. There are at least two meanings of the eternal recurrence of the same. In one sense, the cosmological reading, it is intended to make sense of the idea that time is infinite and matter is finite by claiming that every possible combination of matter will recur infinite times. In the other sense, the anthropological reading, it is a kind of thought experiment, analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative: “live in every moment so that you could will that moment back again over and over” . There is a tension between these readings insofar as one must will to live in such a way that they will do it again, over and over , but also that what they do will make no difference, for what one decides to do has been done innumerable times. I argue that this tension can only be resolved by considering Nietzsche as aiming at “goal-lessness as such” and placing him as an active nihilist. (shrink)

An increasingly popular approach to reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom is to say that, because God’s beliefs depend on what we do, we are free to do otherwise than what we actually do despite God’s infallible foreknowledge. This paper develops a new challenge for this dependence response. The challenge stems from a case of backward time travel in which an agent intuitively lacks the freedom to do otherwise because of the time-traveler’s knowledge of what the agent will do, and (...) this is so despite the fact that the time-traveler’s knowledge depends on what the agent will do. (shrink)

Newton a susținut ideea timpului absolut, spre deosebire de Leibniz pentru care timpul este doar o relație între evenimente și nu poate fi exprimat în mod independent, afirmație în concordanță ci relativitatea spațiu-timpului. Eternismul susține că trecutul și viitorul există într-un sens real, mergându-se până la ideea că timpul este o dimensiune similară cu dimensiunile spațiale, că evenimentele viitoare și trecute sunt "prezente" pe axa timpului, dar această opinie este contestată. Cel mai cunoscut exemplu de imposibilitate a călătoriei în timp (...) este paradoxul bunicului sau argumentul auto-infanticidului: o persoană care călătorește în trecut și își ucide propriul bunic, împiedicând astfel existența unuia din părinți, și deci propria sa existență. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12629.47843. (shrink)

Despite being time-travel adventure series, both classic Doctor Who (1963-1989, 1996) and its reboot (2005-present) have not seen the development of a coherent ontology of time for their fictional universe. As such, it is extremely difficult to review established theories of the nature of time in an attempt to shoe-horn Doctor Who into an existing framework. Difficulties include the evolution of the views of the central character, the alien “Doctor,” from a position that insists “time can’t be rewritten” to its (...) opposite as well as a curious anthropomorphizing of the temporal through show concepts like “fixed points in time.” I argue that one way to draw a coherent philosophy of time from the program is to treat the Time Lords as establishing not only the possibility of time travel but also the universe’s timeline itself. This leads to an examination of four-dimensional realism as characterizing the ontology of Doctor Who’s fictive timeline. (shrink)

Une autre définition du voyage dans le temps (Arntzenius 2006) (Smeenk and Wüthrich 2011) l'assimile à l'existence des courbes temporelles fermées, une variété lorentzienne d'une particule matérielle dans l'espace-temps qui revient à son point de départ. Certains auteurs acceptent l’existence de deux dimensions temporelles et d’autres envisagent des scénarios comportant plusieurs univers « parallèles », chacun ayant son propre espace-temps à quatre dimensions.Mais la question est de savoir si un voyage dans une autre dimension temporelle ou dans un autre univers (...) parallèle est en fait un voyage dans le temps ou virtuel. Examiner la possibilité de revenir dans le temps dans un univers hypothétique décrit par une métrique de Gödel a amené Kurt Gödel à affirmer que le temps pouvait être une sorte d’illusion, une autre dimension de l’espace, donnant lieu à un « bloc à 4 dimensions. ». (shrink)

This thesis proposes that key, competing theories of dispositions mistake and conflate how we identify, designate and talk about dispositions and dispositional terms for the nature of dispositions and the meaning of dispositional terms when they argue that: a) dispositions are extrinsic properties of their bearers (Boyle 1666) b) all properties are purely dispositional (Bird 2007) c) all properties are purely categorical (there are no dispositional properties) (Armstrong in AMP 1996) d) dispositional and categorical properties are separate and distinct properties (...) (Prior, Pargetter and Jackson 1982). In so doing these theories make unwarranted and unsupported ontological conclusions about dispositions. The thesis traces the principal source of this confusion and conflation to a reliance on the counterfactual analysis of dispositions that wrongly encourages the conflation of a disposition (say fragility) with its manifestation (shattering). There is good reason to hold that the counterfactual analysis of dispositions is false — the truth of a counterfactual statement (such as “if x were dropped x would break”) is neither necessary nor sufficient for the truth of a dispositional ascription (such as “x is fragile”). (shrink)

A very simple contextualist treatment of a sentence containing an epistemic modal, e.g. a might be F, is that it is true iff for all the contextually salient community knows, a is F. It is widely agreed that the simple theory will not work in some cases, but the counterexamples produced so far seem amenable to a more complicated contextualist theory. We argue, however, that no contextualist theory can capture the evaluations speakers naturally make of sentences containing epistemic modals. If (...) we want to respect these evaluations, our best option is a relativist theory of epistemic modals. On a relativist theory, an utterance of a might be F can be true relative to one context of evaluation and false relative to another. We argue that such a theory does better than any rival approach at capturing all the behaviour of epistemic modals. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in philosophy of action that there is and must be teleologically basic action: something done on an occasion without doing it by means of doing anything else. It is widely believed that basic actions are exercises of skill. As the source of the need for basic action is the structure of practical reasoning, this yields a conception of skill and practical reasoning as complementary but mutually exclusive. On this view, practical reasoning and complex intentional action depend (...) on skill and basic action, but the latter pair are not themselves rationally structured: the movements a basic action comprises are not intentional actions, and they are not structured as means to an end. However, Michael Thompson and Douglas Lavin have argued that action that bears no inner rational structure is not intentional action at all, and that therefore there can be no such thing as basic action. In this paper, I argue that their critique shows that standard conceptions of basic action are indeed untenable, but not that we can do without an alternative. I develop an alternative conception of skill and basic action on which their basicness is not to be equated with simplicity: like deliberation and non-basic action, they are teleologically complex, but their complexity takes a different form. On this view, skill contrasts with deliberation—not because it is not a manifestation of practical reason, but because the two are specifically different manifestations of practical reason. (shrink)

This volume sets the agenda for future work on time and chance, which are central to theemerging sub-field of metaphysics of science.

Recently, Cody Gilmore has deployed an ingenious case involving backwards time travel to highlight an apparent conflict between the theory that objects persist by perduring, and the thesis that wholly coincident objects are impossible. However, careful attention to the concepts of location and parthood that Gilmore’s cases involve shows that the perdurantist faces no genuine objection from these cases, and that the perdurantist has a number of plausible and dialectically appropriate ways to avoid the supposed conflict.

Review of the book "Robert Brandom's Normative Inferentialism" by Giacomo Turbanti.

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of puzzle. (...) The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

The article deals with the conception of backward causation, i.e. with the question whether an effect can precede its cause. It analyses some arguments for possibility of backward causation. It is especially Dummett’s theory of quasi-causation that is a moderate form of backward causation concept. The article refuses the arguments for possibility of backward causation as unconvincing of false.

I discuss three connections between Dummett's writings about time and philosophical aspects of physics. The first connection arises from remarks of Dummett's about the different relations of observation to time and to space. The main point is uncontroversial and applies equally to classical and quantum physics. It concerns the fact that perceptual processing is so rapid, compared with the typical time-scale on which macroscopic objects change their observable properties, that it engenders the idea of a `common now', spread across space. (...) The other two connections are specific to quantum theory, as interpreted along the lines of Everett. So for these two connections, the physics side is controversial, just as the philosophical side is. In Section 3, I connect the subjective uncertainty before an Everettian `splitting' of the multiverse to Dummett's suggestion, inspired by McTaggart, that a complete, i.e. indexical-free description of a temporal reality is impossible. And in Section 4, I connect Barbour's denial that time is real---a denial along the lines of Everett, rather than McTaggart---to Dummett's suggestion that statements about the past are not determinately true or false, because they are not effectively decidable. (shrink)

There is a connection between moral facts and personal identity facts: morality grounds personal identity. If, for example, old Sally enters a teletransporter, and new Sally emerges, the fundamental question to ask is: is new Sally morally responsible for actions (and omissions) of old Sally? If the moral facts are such that she is morally responsible, then Sally persisted through the teletransporter event, and if not, Sally ceased to exist.

ABSTRACT In 'An Insoluble Problem', Storrs McCall presents an argument which he takes to reveal the real problem with backwards time travel. McCall asks us to imagine a scenario in which a renowned artist produces his famous works by copying them from reproductions brought back to him by a time-travelling art critic. The novelty of the scenario lies in its introduction of aesthetic constraints on the possibility of time travel, something which sets it apart from other time travel cases. McCall (...) states that 'The puzzle lies... in finding where artistic creativity enters the equation', and that 'Unlike the traditional "paradoxes of time travel", this problem has no solution'. We offer four responses to McCall's puzzle. Whilst we show that the puzzle is not insoluble, we also argue that it reveals something about the proper relationship between copying and creativity, which may not have been apparent without considering time travel. (shrink)

As the past-future asymmetry – that fact that we have records of the past but not the future – is still a puzzle the aim of this paper is twofold: a) to explain the asymmetry and its status in philosophy and physics and to critically review the proposed solutions to this puzzle; b) to advance a dynamic solution to the puzzle in terms of the ‘universality’ of the entropy relation in statistical mechanics.

My topic is the question 'Does time pass?'. Although much has been written in attempts to answer this question, not enough attention has been paid to the asking of the question itself. As a result, it has not been clear exactly what is at issue in this matter, and, consequently, it has not been clear just what are the different views available to one who wishes to give an answer to the question. I hope to ameliorate this situation. ;The aims (...) of my essay are: to state the issues involved in the controversy over temporal passage in a fruitful way; to formulate what I see as the leading candidates among the possible responses to those issues; and to consider the best arguments relevant to the choice among these alternative views. ;Roughly one-quarter of the essay is devoted to linguistic questions about time and tense. Another quarter is devoted to metaphysical matters involving the status of such putative properties as pastness, presentness and futurity. What emerge are not just two but, rather, five distinct views about whether or not time passes: one view, which I call the 4D view, to the effect that time does not pass, and four different views, which I call the 3D views, to the effect that time does pass. Each of these five views consists of a package of linguistic and metaphysical components. ;Once I have formulated these five different views, I present, for each of the five views, a formal language, with semantics, that would be appropriate for that view. Next, various arguments that have been suggested in the literature against the claim that time passes are considered as arguments against the 3D views; each such argument is found to be defective. Similarly, various arguments that have been suggested in the literature against the claim that time does not pass are considered as arguments against the 4D view; each of these arguments is also found to be defective. ;Finally, I explain why I prefer a certain one of the 3D views over its four rivals, and I consider some possible objections to that view. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to help authors construct coherent time-travel narratives by establishing five features of multiverse time travel. To this end, multiverse time travel will be contrasted to fixed-universe time travel, and both versions related to various cases - where each case is designed to illustrate a key feature of multiverse time travel.