Time: A Philosophical Analysis

✍ Scribed by T. Chapman (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 180
• Series: Synthese Library 159
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book is intended as an exposition of a particular theory of time in the sense of an interrelated set of attempted solutions to philosophical problems about it. Generally speaking there are two views about time held by philosophers and some scientists interested in philosophical issues. The first called the A-theory (after McTaggart's expression A-determinations for the properties of being past, present or future) is often thought to be closer to our commonsense view of time or to the concept of time presupposed by ordinary language. It includes at least the following theses, (a) Logic ought really to include tensed quantifiers for existence on one of its important usages means, present existence. More generally, we can't reduce all tensed locutions to tenseless ones. (b) The distinction between past, present and future is an objective one. It is not, for example, dependent on our consciousness of change; some A-theorists hold also, that the distinction, in effect, is an absolute one.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xv
Retrocausation and the Necessity of the Past....Pages 1-12
Retrocausation and Tachyons....Pages 13-38
Indeterminism....Pages 39-56
Indeterminism and the Special Theory of Relativity....Pages 57-61
The Objectivity of the Distinction between Past, Present and Future....Pages 62-85
Temporal Order and the Causal Theory of Time....Pages 86-97
Temporal Asymmetry (continued)....Pages 98-109
Reference and Identity Over Time....Pages 110-119
A Modal Logic with Temporal Variables....Pages 120-131
General Questions....Pages 132-155
Back Matter....Pages 156-168

✦ Subjects

Philosophy of Science