On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of Passage

Savitt, Steven F.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511550263.009

Cited by 38 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…(Incidentally, it's not clear to me that B-theorists should claim any of this (for contrary views, see e.g. Savitt 2002, Oaklander 2012, Leininger 2013, Deng 2013, Mozersky 2015, Frischhut 2013, Hoerl 2014. But many B-theorists do, and that version of the B-theory is widely endorsed.…”

Section: An Interpretation Of Le Poidevin's B-theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

Deng

2015

Philosophia

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In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In 'Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?', Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin's understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn't be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as unwarranted. I examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn't isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin's idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are 'eternally real'. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin's remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul.

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Section: An Interpretation Of Le Poidevin's B-theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

Deng

2015

Philosophia

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“…E2) A final example that well illustrates the problems raised by Sellars' two images is offered by the following question: can the timelike-separation of events in spacetime theories be interpreted as giving rise to a tenseless form of local, nonglobal becoming? Philosophers who have recently advocated this minimalist claim (Savitt 2002;Dieks 2006a;Dorato 2006b) are well aware that the question remains whether such a metaphysical interpretation of relativity is capable of explaining the sense of the passage of time typical of our manifest image, which is exactly the explanatory task required by (2) above. If this task is not fulfilled, the ontological posit presupposed by (1) must be abandoned or at least corrected.…”

Section: Metaphysics Physics and The Nature Of Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science

Karakostas¹,

Dieks²

2013

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“…( 1971: 197) I suggested briefly in the introduction to this chapter that a philosopher might wish to consider the "mere occurrence [of events] at various serially ordered clock times" to be becoming, and I have defended the idea at greater length elsewhere (Savitt 2002). I argue there that this usage captures the mainstream, metaphysically unobjectionable content of the concept of passage.…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Time in the Special Theory of Relativity

Savitt

2011

Oxford Handbooks Online

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Restricted to special relativity, this chapter observes that the most significant change in the concept of time is certainly the relativity of simultaneity. What events are simultaneous with some event for one observer are different from those that are simultaneous with respect to an object traveling in a different inertial frame. Many believe that this relativity can play a role in an argument for eternalism. This chapter critically surveys these arguments before taking on the implications of relativity for the metaphysics of time. It also tackles the conventionality of simultaneity. Many philosophers of science, especially during the early days of relativity, felt that simultaneity is not only relative but also conventional—there is a crucial element of choice in deciding what events are simultaneous for any other in a given inertial reference frame, so that there is no fact of the matter about what is simultaneous.

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On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of Passage

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

On Whether B-Theoretic Atheists Should Fear Death

EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science

Time in the Special Theory of Relativity

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