Relativity and Three Four‐dimensionalisms

Philosophy Compass 11 (2):102-120 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Relativity theory is often said to support something called ‘the four-dimensional view of reality’. But there are at least three different views that sometimes go by this name. One is ‘spacetime unitism’, according to which there is a spacetime manifold, and if there are such things as points of space or instants of time, these are just spacetime regions of different sorts: thus space and time are not separate manifolds. A second is the B-theory of time, according to which the past, present, and future are all equally real and there is nothing metaphysically special about the present. A third is perdurantism, according to which persisting material objects are made up of different temporal parts located at different times. We sketch routes from relativity to unitism and to the B-theory. We then discuss some routes to perdurantism, via the B-theory and via unitism

Author Profiles

Damiano Costa
Università della Svizzera Italiana
Cody Gilmore
University of California, Davis

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-11-23

Downloads
3,237 (#1,885)

6 months
315 (#5,632)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?