Tense and Relativity

Noûs 52 (3):667-696 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Those inclined to positions in the philosophy of time that take tense seriously have typically assumed that not all regions of space-time are equal: one special region of space-time corresponds to what is presently happening. When combined with assumptions from modern physics this has the unsettling consequence that the shape of this favored region distinguishes people in certain places or people traveling at certain velocities. In this paper I shall attempt to avoid this result by developing a tensed picture of reality that is nonetheless consistent with ‘hypersurface egalitarianism’—the view that all hypersurfaces are equal.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Getting tense about relativity.James Read & Emily Qureshi-Hurst - 2020 - Synthese 198 (9):8103-8125.
Time, tense and special relativity.Joshua M. Mozersky - 2000 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14 (3):221 – 236.
Physics’ silence on time.Yuval Dolev - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):455-469.
Becoming inflated.Craig Bourne - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):107-119.
Taking times out: Tense logic as a theory of time.Thomas Pashby - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 50:13-18.
Experience, thought, and the metaphysics of time.Simon Prosser - 2013 - In Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure, Time: Language, Cognition & Reality. Oxford University Press. pp. 1--157.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-11-04

Downloads
947 (#24,493)

6 months
152 (#30,623)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Andrew Bacon
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

The Broadest Necessity.Andrew Bacon - 2018 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 47 (5):733-783.
Diamonds are Forever.Cian Dorr & Jeremy Goodman - 2019 - Noûs 54 (3):632-665.
Relativity in a Fundamentally Absolute World.Jack Spencer - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):305-328.
Relativity and the A-theory.Antony Eagle - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 86–98.

View all 8 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein, Themes From Kaplan. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 481-563.
Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Past, present and future.Arthur N. Prior - 1967 - Oxford,: Clarendon P..
Relativism and Monadic Truth.Herman Cappelen & John Hawthorne - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by John Hawthorne.

View all 28 references / Add more references