Relativity and the Moving Spotlight

Skow, Bradford

doi:10.5840/jphil20091061224

Cited by 42 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…The Moving Spotlight Theory is said to be compatible with Special Relativity (Skow, 2008). There is also a mirroring between the temporal structure of spacetime and the structure of supertime, a dimension similar to time, but not time; it is said to be distinct and disconnected from it and makes the transition to the relativistic theory.…”

Section: Planck's Equation About Quantum Energy Is Another Example: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accordingly, spacetime has a temporal metric and a temporal orientation with instants of time pictured as points without extensions or as the "tips of backward-facing light cones, possibly softened in some quantum or twistor way: local in all four dimensions" 65 . However, only one moment (at a time) is regarded as absolutely present, and that moment keeps changing, as if a spotlight were moving over it.The Moving Spotlight Theory is said to be compatible with Special Relativity (Skow, 2008). There is also a mirroring between the temporal structure of spacetime and the structure of supertime, a dimension similar to time, but not time; it is said to be distinct and disconnected from it and makes the transition to the relativistic theory.…”

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Yet another time about time … Part I: An essay on the phenomenology of physical time

Simeonov¹

2015

Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

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This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout human history embracing all analytical and creative (anthropocentric) disciplines. Time has been a central theme in physical and life sciences, philosophy, psychology, music, art and many more. This theme is known with a vast body of knowledge across different theories and categories. What has been explored concerns its nature (rational, irrational, arational), appearances/qualia, degrees, dimensions and scales of conceptualization (internal, external, fractal, discrete, continuous, mechanical, quantum, local, global, etc.). Of particular interest have been parameters of time such as duration ranges, resolutions, modes (present, now, past, future), varieties of tenses (e.g. present perfect, present progressive, etc.) and some intuitive, but also fancy phenomenological characteristics such as "arrow", "stream", "texture", "width", "depth", "density", even "scent". Perhaps the most distinct characteristic of this fundamental concept is the absolute time constituting the flow of consciousness according to Husserl, the reflection of pure (human) nature without having the distinction between exo and endo. This essay is a personal reflection upon time in modern physics and phenomenological philosophy.Keywords: space, time, consciousness, physics, mathematics, philosophy, phenomenology. ___________________________________________________________________ PrologueSpace and time are particularly modalities of human consciousness. Whereas space can be realized through our eyes and limbs, time remains elusive to our minds and still bothers philosophers since antiquity (Dyke & Bardon, 2013). In the beginning of the 20 th century science made a crucial switchover. Time was spatialized 1 . Until then the world was threedimensional. With the Special Relativity Theory (Einstein, 1905;Minkowski, 1909) the concept of time became the fourth dimension 2 and an integral element of the new physical worldview. It caused confusion among many of Einstein's contemporaries, and not only with its relativistic dilation in the well-known equation with the speed of light ť = t (1-(v/c) 2 ) ½ .1 It could be argued that time was spatialized earlier. Though time and space were separate for Newton (something that Einstein challenged), the clock time he assumed was laid out like space and was devoid of the dynamism of Bergsonian durée, (Bergson, 1912;Čapek, 1961). 2 It was Laplace who treated time as just another dimension equivalent to space, and thereby paved the way for the development of relativity theory as it came to be understood (but not as Čapek, following Bergson, understood it).This notion of relativistic time appeared wrong and unnatural, not without good reason, since:• Time is ineffable, eluding science and mathematics: it can only be grasped through intuition and shown indirectly and partia...

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Section: Planck's Equation About Quantum Energy Is Another Example: Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Yet another time about time … Part I: An essay on the phenomenology of physical time

Simeonov¹

2015

Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

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“…What matters for my purpose is to note that both more typical forms of presentism and theories like the moving spotlight (Skow 2009) -which are committed to some sort eternalism -share the view that there is a moment that is ontologically privileged. Let us begin by supposing that the metaphysical present is temporally extended (TEP) and has a finite duration, so that is it divisible into smaller parts (it is at least dense).…”

Section: The Presentist's Dilemmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Eternalist defenders of an ontically privileged moment might retort that our perception of succession entails no more than the moving spotlight view of time (Skow 2009). 22 It follows that the retentive and protentive aspects of our experience could be admitted also in an eternalist, A-theoretical metaphysics, in which one changing instant is anyway privileged, a fact that might convincingly explain our experience of succession.…”

Section: Assuming Extended Content For Our Experience Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Presentism and the Experience of Time

Dorato¹

2014

Topoi

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Abstract:Presentists have typically argued that the Block View is incapable of explaining our experience of time. In this paper I argue that the phenomenology of our experience of time is, on the contrary, against presentism. My argument is based on a dilemma: presentists must either assume that the metaphysical present has no temporal extension, or that it is temporally extended. The former horn leads to phenomenological problems. The latter renders presentism metaphysically incoherent, unless one posits a discrete present that, however, suffers from the same difficulties that the instantaneous present is prone to. After introducing the main phenomenological models of our experience of time that are discussed in the literature, I show that none of them favors presentism. I conclude by arguing that if even the phenomenology (besides the physics) of time sides against presentism, the latter metaphysical theory has no scientific evidence in its favor and ought to be dropped.

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“…B-theorists further contend that the 'flow' of time-the becoming present of events followed by their fading into the past-is not an objective feature of reality but is a mere appearance produced by our own perspective within the continuum. Most eternalists would accept this latter view as well, though there are a few who propose that the equal reality of all times need not preclude the existence of an objective 'now' that moves along the continuum like a spotlight (Skow 2009;cf. Broad 1923, p. 59).…”

Section: Conceptual Augmentation From the Philosophy Of Timementioning

confidence: 99%