Time, Fission, Fusion: An Argument against the Block Universe with Endurance

Abstract

Many philosophers believe in the Block Universe containing all objects and events -those that we intuitively call past, present, and future. But some of those who endorse this ontology of time also believe that objects persist by enduring -by being present in their entirety at all moments at which they exist. This combination of views, the Block Universe with Endurance, has survived the initial assault of the problem of temporary intrinsics and of several later objections. But I argue that the Block Universe with Endurance fails to account for a striking feature of our temporal experience and must be rejected in favor of the Block Universe with Exdurance. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ *This paper revisits an older project (Balashov 2005). My thanks to Jordan Lavender, Mark Moyer, Laurie Paul, Brad Skow, and the members of UGA's Metaphysics Reading Group for many helpful discussions of the issues raised here.

Commentary: Physical time within human time

“…This official statement of stage theory is also Block Universe-friendly but may be much less intuitive. The best arguments in its favor involve rather abstract philosophical conundrums of material coincidence and vagueness (Sider, 2001 ), but I contend that it can also be supported by reflection on a central feature of our temporal experience (Hoy, 1978 ; Torre, 2010 ; Parsons, 2015 ; Skow, 2015 ; Balashov, 2017 ), especially when this is followed by a leap of imagination inspired by influential thought experiments (Parfit, 1971 , 1984 , 2008 ).…”

“…This, I think, raises the problem of explaining Ed's present experiences and his beliefs about them: He is sad (let us assume) and believes it is Friday. The bottom arrow in Figure 1A represents his perspective on the Block Universe, tainted with sadness, but there are many other perspectives, including the happy one (the top arrow in Figure 1A , modeled after Figure 2 in Balashov, 2017 ), and nothing in the Block Universe favors one of them over another. What then explains Ed's belief that he is viewing the Block Universe exclusively from the Friday perspective filled with sadness, rather than exclusively from the Saturday perspective filled with happiness and joy?…”

“…Suppose, in contrast, that Ed exdures —that, instead of the selfsame enduring Ed, there are multiple stages of him, each representing his perspective on the single Block Universe ( Figure 1B , modeled after Figure 3 in Balashov, 2017 ). His Friday stage is sad and finds itself exclusively on Friday, thus giving Ed an illusory belief in the exclusive presence on Friday and his exclusive sadness, but the same can be said of his Saturday stage and the corresponding illusory belief that goes along with it.…”

“…This opening move is open to many objections, including the tendency to dismiss it as based on an obvious confusion between the tensed and tenseless uses of “view” and “feel,” insufficient attention to the indexical nature of the phenomena described in this scenario, and more. I believe these objections can be addressed by further developing the scenario (Balashov, 2017 ). The problem of explaining the nature of the present experiences arises quite early in the process of reconciling the manifest image of time with its scientific image, and it appears to be relatively independent of the issues of time flow and time direction.…”

The common present in a block universe

“…Again, the sad experience is available to me in a way the uplifting one is not. 3 Every philosophy of time must explain these data. It has long been argued that Atheorists can do it better than B-theorists 4 because their explanation is most natural and straightforward: present experiences appear to be special because they are special.…”