Savitt, Steven (2011) Chronogeometrical Determinism and the Local Present. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Hilary Putnam (et al.) argued that the special theory of relativity shows that there can be no temporal becoming. Howard Stein replied by defining a becoming relation in Minkowski spacetime. Clifton and Hogarth extended and sharpened Stein’s results.
Game over? To the contrary, it has been argued (Saunders, Callender) that the Stein-Clifton-Hogarth theorems actually support Putnam’s contention, in that if an apparently minimal condition is put on the becoming relation (the condition that two distinct events are able to “share a present”), then these theorems entail that the becoming relation must be the universal relation.
I recount this dialectic in some detail and then try to define and defend a becoming relation based on a present that does indeed consist of more than one point or event but still satisfies the sort of objectivity requirements that Stein-Clifton-Hogarth require of a becoming relation. This present is not a global hyperplane or surface, however; it is a local structure.
I close with some methodological (or are they metaphysical?) remarks about the relation between the present and the real and about the importance of the specious or psychological present.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | time, presentism, eternalism, Putnam, Stein, Sellars | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism | ||||||
| Depositing User: | Steven Savitt | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 08 Feb 2011 16:00 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Feb 2011 16:00 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 8481 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism | ||||||
| Date: | 7 February 2011 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8481 |
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