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Model of the Universe

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press UK (1996)

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  1. The Passage of Time as Causal Succession of Events.Avril Styrman - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy 120 (12):681-697.
    This work introduces a causal explanation of the passage of time, and contrasts it with rival explanations. In the causal explanation, laws of physics are shown to entail that events are in causal succession, and the passage of time is defined as their causal succession. The causal explanation is coupled with phenomenology of the passage of time, and contrasted with the project of making sense of the idea that time does not pass.
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  • Tense Logic and Ontology of Time.Avril Styrman - 2021 - Emilio M. Sanfilippo Et Al, Eds., Proceedings of FOUST 2021: 5th Workshop on Foundational Ontology, Held at JOWO 2021: Episode VII The Bolzano Summer of Knowledge, September 11–18, 2021, Bolzano, Italy, CEURWS, Vol. 2969, 2021.
    This work aims to make tense logic a more robust tool for ontologists, philosophers, knowledge engineers and programmers by outlining a fusion of tense logic and ontology of time. In order to make tense logic better understandable, the central formal primitives of standard tense logic are derived as theorems from an informal and intuitive ontology of time. In order to make formulation of temporal propositions easier, temporal operators that were introduced by Georg Henrik von Wright are developed, and mapped to (...)
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  • The Endurance/Perdurance Controversy is No Storm in a Teacup.Tobias Hansson Wahlberg - 2014 - Axiomathes 24 (4):463-482.
    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.
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  • The Priority of the Now.Sam Baron - 2014 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:0-0.
    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, (...)
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  • Consequentialism and the World in Time.M. Oreste Fiocco - 2012 - Ratio 26 (2):212-224.
    Consequentialism is a general approach to understanding the nature of morality that seems to entail a certain view of the world in time. This entailment raises specific problems for the approach. The first seems to lead to the conclusion that every actual act is right – an unacceptable result for any moral theory. The second calls into question the idea that consequentialism is an approach to morality, for it leads to the conclusion that this approach produces a theory whose truth (...)
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  • Time, Truth, Actuality, and Causation: On the Impossibility of Divine Foreknowledge.Michael Tooley - 2010 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (1):143 - 163.
    In this essay, my goal is, first, to describe the most important contemporary philosophical approaches to the nature of time, and then, secondly, to discuss the ways in which those different accounts bear upon the question of the possibility of divine foreknowledge. I shall argue that different accounts of the nature of time give rise to different objections to the idea of divine foreknowledge, but that, in addition, there is a general argument for the impossibility of divine foreknowledge that is (...)
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  • Back to the open future.Elizabeth Barnes & Ross P. Cameron - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):1-26.
    Many of us are tempted by the thought that the future is open, whereas the past is not. The future might unfold one way, or it might unfold another; but the past, having occurred, is now settled. In previous work we presented an account of what openness consists in: roughly, that the openness of the future is a matter of it being metaphysically indeterminate how things will turn out to be. We were previously concerned merely with presenting the view and (...)
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  • The Open Future.Stephan Torre - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (5):360-373.
    A commonly held idea regarding the nature of time is that the future is open and the past is fixed or closed. This article investigates the notion that there is an asymmetry in openness between the past and the future. The following questions are considered: How exactly is this asymmetry in openness to be understood? What is the relation between an open future and various ontological views about the future? Is an open future a branching future? What is the relation (...)
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  • Wanting, Willing, Trying and Kane's Theory of Free Will.John Lemos - 2011 - Dialectica 65 (1):31-48.
    Robert Kane's event-causal libertarian theory of free will has been subjected to a variety of criticisms. In response to the luck objection, he has provided an ambiguous answer which results in additional criticisms that are avoidable. I explain Kane's theory, the luck objection and Kane's reply to the problem of luck. I note that in some places he suggests that the dual wantings of agents engaged in self-forming actions (SFAs) provides the key to answering the luck objection, whereas in other (...)
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  • Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will.Randolph Clarke & Justin Capes - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    To have free will is to have what it takes to act freely. When an agent acts freely—when she exercises her free will—what she does is up to her. A plurality of alternatives is open to her, and she determines which she pursues. When she does, she is an ultimate source or origin of her action. So runs a familiar conception of free will.
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  • What is Metaphysical Equivalence?Kristie Miller - 2005 - Philosophical Papers 34 (1):45-74.
    Abstract Theories are metaphysically equivalent just if there is no fact of the matter that could render one theory true and the other false. In this paper I argue that if we are judiciously to resolve disputes about whether theories are equivalent or not, we need to develop testable criteria that will give us epistemic access to the obtaining of the relation of metaphysical equivalence holding between those theories. I develop such ?diagnostic? criteria. I argue that correctly inter-translatable theories are (...)
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  • Defending contingentism in metaphysics.Kristie Miller - 2009 - Dialectica 63 (1):23-49.
    Metaphysics is supposed to tell us about the metaphysical nature of our world: under what conditions composition occurs; how objects persist through time; whether properties are universals or tropes. It is near orthodoxy that whichever of these sorts of metaphysical claims is true is necessarily true. This paper looks at the debate between that orthodox view and a recently emerging view that claims like these are contingent, by focusing on the metaphysical debate between monists and pluralists about concrete particulars. This (...)
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  • Time, tense and special relativity.Joshua M. Mozersky - 2000 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14 (3):221 – 236.
    In this essay I address the issue of whether Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity counts against a tensed or "A-series" understanding of time. Though this debate is an old one, it continues to be lively with many prominent authors recently arguing that a genuine A-series is compatible with a relativistic world view. My aim in what follows is to outline why Special Relativity is thought to count against a tensed understanding of time and then to address the philosophical attempts to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Indeterminate truth.Patrick Greenough - 2008 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1):213-241.
    In §2-4, I survey three extant ways of making sense of indeterminate truth and find each of them wanting. All the later sections of the paper are concerned with showing that the most promising way of making sense of indeterminate truth is via either a theory of truthmaker gaps or via a theory of truthmaking gaps. The first intimations of a truthmaker–truthmaking gap theory of indeterminacy are to be found in Quine (1981). In §5, we see how Quine proposes to (...)
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  • (1 other version)A coherent, naturalistic, and plausible formulation of libertarian free will.Mark Balaguer - 2002 - Noûs 36 (3):379-406.
    Let libertarianism be the view that humans are capable of making decisions that are simultaneously undetermined and appropriately non-random. It’s often argued that this view is incoherent because indeterminacy entails randomness (of some appropriate kind). I argue here that the truth is just the opposite: the right kind of indeterminacy in our decisions actually entails appropriate non-randomness, so that libertarianism is coherent, and the question of whether it’s true reduces to the wide-open empirical question of whether certain of our decisions (...)
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  • The indeterminate present and the open future.Cristian Mariani & Giuliano Torrengo - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3923-3944.
    Explanations of the genuine openness of the future often appeal to objective indeterminacy. According to the received view, such indeterminacy is indeterminacy of certain future-tensed state of affairs that presently obtain. We shall call this view the weak indeterminate present, to distinguish it from the view we will defend in this paper, which we dub the strong indeterminate present. According to our view, unsettledness of the future is grounded on the present indeterminacy of some present-tensed state of affairs. In order (...)
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  • Storrs McCall's Tree of The Universe and Counterfactuals شجرة الكون وقضايا مناقضة الواقع عند ستورس مكال.Salah Osman - 1999 - Journal of the Faculty of Arts, Menoufia University 2956-2090 39:83 – 128.
    لم يكن العلم يومًا غريبًا عن الفلسفة، بل لقد أدت العلاقة الجدلية المستمرة بينهما إلى مزيد من المصداقية والقبول لبعض النماذج التفسيرية، سواء منها ما كان في الأصل نموذجًا فلسفيًا ثم وجد دعمًا علميًا – كنموذج الذرات والفـراغ عند «ديمرقــريطس» وتبنى النظرية الذرية الحديثة لإطاره العام – أو ما كان منها نموذجًا علميًا تم تداوله فلسفيًا – كنموذج النقاط المادية المتجاذبة عند »نيوتن« وتبنى معظم فلاسفة الحقبة الحديثة له. وفي هذا المقال يهتم الدكتور صلاح عثمان بمناقشة نموذج شجرة الكون لفيلسوف (...)
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  • The A-Theory of Time, The B-Theory of Time, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’.Dean W. Zimmerman - 2005 - Dialectica 59 (4):401-457.
    The paper has two parts: First, I describe a relatively popular thesis in the philosophy of propositional attitudes, worthy of the name ‘taking tense seriously’; and I distinguish it from a family of views in the metaphysics of time, namely, the A-theories (or what are sometimes called ‘tensed theories of time’). Once the distinction is in focus, a skeptical worry arises. Some A-theorists maintain that the difference between past, present, and future, is to be drawn in terms of what exists: (...)
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  • Science as a Guide to Metaphysics?Katherine Hawley - 2006 - Synthese 149 (3):451-470.
    Analytic metaphysics is in resurgence; there is renewed and vigorous interest in topics such as time, causation, persistence, parthood and possible worlds. We who share this interest often pay lip-service to the idea that metaphysics should be informed by modern science; some take this duty very seriously.2 But there is also a widespread suspicion that science cannot really contribute to metaphysics, and that scientific findings grossly underdetermine metaphysical claims. For some, this prompts the thought ‘so much the worse for metaphysics’; (...)
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  • The Metaphysical Equivalence Of Three And Four Dimensionalism.Kristie Miller - 2005 - Erkenntnis 62 (1):91-117.
    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 (...)
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  • Explanation and nowness: an objection to the A-Theory.Leo Carton Mollica - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (9):2513-2530.
    This paper presents an argument against the A-Theory of time. Briefly, I shall contend that the A-Theorist has no explanation for why the present moment in particular has the metaphysical privilege she accords it, and that this puts the theory at a disadvantage. In what follows, I shall begin by presenting this argument. I will follow that with some potential explanations for why the present moment is privileged and reasons militating against them, in addition to some other possible objections to (...)
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  • Accounting for Experiences as of Passage: Why Topology Isn’t Enough.Graeme A. Forbes - 2014 - Topoi 34 (1):187-194.
    Time appears to us to pass. Some philosophers think that we should account for these experiences by appeal to change in what there unrestrictedly is . I argue that such an appeal can only be the beginning of an account of passage. To show this, I consider a minimal type of view—a purely topological view—that attempts to account for experiences as of passage by an appeal to ontological change and topological features of the present. I argue that, if ontological change (...)
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  • On A- and B-theoretic elements of branching spacetimes.Matt Farr - 2012 - Synthese 188 (1):85-116.
    This paper assesses branching spacetime theories in light of metaphysical considerations concerning time. I present the A, B, and C series in terms of the temporal structure they impose on sets of events, and raise problems for two elements of extant branching spacetime theories—McCall’s ‘branch attrition’, and the ‘no backward branching’ feature of Belnap’s ‘branching space-time’—in terms of their respective A- and B-theoretic nature. I argue that McCall’s presentation of branch attrition can only be coherently formulated on a model with (...)
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  • Presentism and Truthmaking.Ben Caplan & David Sanson - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (3):196-208.
    Three plausible views—Presentism, Truthmaking, and Independence—form an inconsistent triad. By Presentism, all being is present being. By Truthmaking, all truth supervenes on, and is explained in terms of, being. By Independence, some past truths do not supervene on, or are not explained in terms of, present being. We survey and assess some responses to this.
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  • Reassessing the prospects for a growing Block model of the universe.John Earman - 2008 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (2):135 – 164.
    Although C. D. Broad's notion of Becoming has received a fair amount of attention in the philosophy-of-time literature, there are no serious attempts to show how to replace the standard 'block' spacetime models by models that are more congenial to Broad's idea that the sum total of existence is continuously increased by Becoming or the coming into existence of events. In the Newtonian setting Broad-type models can be constructed in a cheating fashion by starting with a Newtonian block model, carving (...)
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  • How do we know it is now now?David Braddon-Mitchell - 2004 - Analysis 64 (3):199–203.
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  • Travelling in Branching Time.Manolo Martínez - 2011 - Disputatio 4 (31):59-75.
    Miller (2005) and Miller (2008) argue that the branching picture of time is incompatible with the possibility of backwards time travel. In this paper I show that Miller’s conclusion is based on a hidden assumption which, while generally plausible, is unwarranted if time travel is possible. Branching time is, after all, compatible with time travel as Miller characterises it.
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  • Backwards Causation, Time, and the Open Future.Kristie Miller - 2008 - Metaphysica 9 (2):173-191.
    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 (...)
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  • Time flow does not require a second time dimension.Storrs McCall - 1998 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (2):317 – 322.
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  • Infinity in ontology and mind.Nino B. Cocchiarella - 2008 - Axiomathes 18 (1):1-24.
    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 (...)
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  • B-theory, fixity, and fatalism.Joseph Diekemper - 2007 - Noûs 41 (3):429–452.
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  • Problems for Temporary Existence in Tense Logic.Meghan Sullivan - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (1):43-57.
    A‐theorists of time postulate a deep distinction between the present, past and future. Settling on an appropriate logic for such a view is no easy matter. This Philosophy Compass article describes one of the most vexing formal problems facing A‐theorists. It is commonly thought that A‐theories can only be formally expressed in a tense logic: a logic with operators like P and F . And it seems natural to think that we live in a world where objects come to exist (...)
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  • A foundation for presentism.Robert E. Pezet - 2017 - Synthese 194 (5):1809–1837.
    Presentism states that everything is present. Crucial to our understanding of this thesis is how we interpret the ‘is’. Recently, several philosophers have claimed that on any interpretation presentism comes out as either trivially true or manifestly false. Yet, presentism is meant to be a substantive and interesting thesis. I outline in detail the nature of the problem and the standard interpretative options. After unfavourably assessing several popular responses in the literature, I offer an alternative interpretation that provides the desired (...)
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  • A letter on the present state of affairs: Prior, indeterminism and relativity 40 years later.Thomas Müller & Niko Strobach - 2012 - Synthese 188 (3):469-485.
    The paper re-evaluates Prior's tenets about indeterminism and relativity from the point of view of the current state of the debate. We first discuss Prior's claims about indeterministic tense logic and about relativity separately and confront them with new technical developments. Then we combine the two topics in a discussion of indeterministic approaches to space-time logics. Finally we show why Prior would not have to "dig his heels in" when it comes to relativity: We point out a way of combining (...)
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