HPS
2675 Philosophy of Space and
Time Spring 2009
Phil 2660
| I. Philosophy Topics | |
| A. Arguments for the unreality of change/time | |
| 0. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion | |
| 1. McTaggart’s argument | McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time” Mind 18
(1908) 457-484.
Mellor, H. Real Time II, Ch. 7 ("McTaggarts' Proof") (Routledge, 1998.) Dyke, “McTaggart and the Truth About Time,” in C. Callender (ed.) Time Reality and Experience (Cambridge UP, 2002). Dainton, Time and Space (McGill-Queen’s, 2001). Ch 2 (“McTaggart on time’sunreality”). |
| 2. Gödel’s argument | Gödel, “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy,” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist. Earman, Bangs, Crunches, etc., Appendix to Ch. 6 (“Gödel and the Ideality of Time”). Yourgrau, Disappearance of Time: Gödel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy. Belot, “Dust, Time, and Symmetry,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science56 (2005): 255-91. |
| 3. Arguments from GTR and quantum gravity (see II.C). | |
| B. Becoming, A-theory of time, and the growing block. | |
| Overviews: | Savitt, “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/ Markosian, “Time,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/ |
| 1. Temporal passage is nothing but the B-series | Williams, “The Myth of Passage,” Journal of
Philosophy 48 (1951): 457-472.
Mellor, Real Time II (Routledge, 1998). |
| 2. B-Series accounts of change: endurantism vs. perdurantism | Balashov, “Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski Spacetime,” Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 129-166. Hales and Johnson, “Endurantism, Perdurantism and Special Relativity,” Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003): 524-539. Butterfield, “The Rotating Disk Argument Defeated,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 1-45. |
| 3. Defending the A-series | Savitt, S. "A Limited Defense of Passage," American
Philosophical Quarterly, 38 (2001), pp. 261-270.
Zimmerman, “The Privileged Present: Defending an ‘A-theory’ of Time,” in T. Sider et al. (eds), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics (Blackwell, 2007). Zimmerman, “The A-theory of Time, the B-theory, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’,” Dialectica 59 (2005) 401-570. |
| 4. The growing block universe | Broad, Scientific Thought, Ch. 2 (“The General Problem
of Time and Change”).
Tooley, Time Tense and Causation (Oxford UP, 1997). Earman, “Reassessing the Prospects of a Growing Block Model of the Universe,” pre-print. |
| 5. Is relativity theory incompatible with becoming? | Putnam, “Time and Physical Geometry,” Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967):240-247. Stein, “On Relativity Theory and the Openness of the Future,” Philosophy ofScience 58 (1991): 147-167. Clifton and Hogarth, “The Definability of Becoming in Minkowski Spacetime,” Synthese 103 (1995): 355-387. Callender, Shedding Light on Time,” Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S587-599. |
| 6. Explaining our sense of the ‘nowness’ of time | Butterfield, “Seeing the Present,” Mind XCIII
(1984): 161-176.
Callender, Craig “The Common Now,” Philosophical Issues, 18, Interdisciplinary Core Philosophy, 2008, pp. 339-61. |
| C. Presentism vs. eternalism vs. historicism: Is there a real debate? | |
| 1. No | Meyer, “The Presentist’s Dilemma,”
Philosophical Studies 122 (2005): 213-225.
Callender, “Time’s Ontic Voltage,” pre-print. Doroto, “The Irrelevance of the Presentist/Eternalist Debate for the Ontology of Minkowski Spacetime,” in D. Dieks (ed), The Ontology of Spacetime I (Elsevier, 2006). Savitt, “Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective,” in Dieks (ed) op. cit. |
| 2. Yes | Sider, Fourdimensionalism (Oxford UP, 2001). Ch. 2
(“Against Presentism”)
Sider, “Quantifies and temporal Ontology,” Mind 115 (2006): 75-97. |
| II. Philosophy of Physics Topics | |
| A. Time vs. Space | Callender, “What Makes Time Special?” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10 Skow, “The Difference between Space and Time,” Noûs 41 (2007): 227-252. Weinstein, “Many Times,” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10 Craig and Weinstein, “Determinism AND Well-Posedness in Multiple Time Dimensions,” http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0210. |
| B. Time reversal invariance and the CPT theorem | Albert, “Time Reversal Invariance,” Ch. 1 of Time
and Chance (Harvard UP, 2000).
Malament, “On Time Reversal Invariance of Classical Electromagnetic Theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (2004): 295-315. Leeds, “Discussion: Malament on Time Reversal,” Philosophy of Science 73 (2006): 448-458. North, “Two Views on Time Reversal,” Philosophy of Science 75 (2008): 201-223. Arntzenius, “The CPT Theorem,” pre-print. Greaves, “Towards a Geometrical Understanding of the CPT Theorem,” pre-print. |
| C. Timeless physics | Rovelli, “Forget Time,” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10
Kiefer, “Does Time Exist in Quantum Gravity?” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10 Prati, “The Nature of Time: from a Timeless Hamiltonian Framework to Clock Time of Metrology,” ibid. |
| D. Time’s arrows | |
| Overview | Torretti, “The problem of time’s arrow historico-critically reexamined,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2007): 732-756. |
| 1. The entropic arrow and the “past hypothesis” | Albert, Time and Chance (Harvard UP, 2000).
Earman, “The ‘Past Hypothesis’: Not Even False,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (2006): 399-430. |
| 2. The electromagnetic arrow | Frisch, M. (2000), “(Dis)Solving the puzzle of the arrow of radiation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51: 381-410. Frisch, M. (2005), Inconsistency, asymmetry, and non-locality: a philosophicalinvestigation of classical electrodynamics (Oxford University Press, 2005). Earman, “Sharpening the Electromagnetic Arrow(s) of Time,” to appear in C. Calender (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. |
| 3. Cosmology, inflation, and all that | Carroll and Chen, “Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time,” http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0410270. Carroll, “The Cosmic Origins of Time’s Arrow,” Scientific American 298 No. 6 (June 2008) |
| 4. Probability principles | Kevin Davey, "Justification in Statistical Mechanics," Philosophy of Science 75(2008), pp. 28-44. |
| Other topics: Time travel/time machines; beginning and end of time, the topology of time… |