Problems of Static view and tenseless theory Flashcards
(6 cards)
If future events are as real as past ones, how can it be up to us what happens in the future? Does the view makes the future as unalterable as the past? Taylor and Van Inwagen (7)
If no distinction between past and other times may think future is just as fixed as past - lead to fatalism - no one can ever do then they actually do. 2) Osmo - Life had been written down and could not do otherwise - unavoidable. But why is book accurate? Either coincidence or someone knew in advace. 3) Osmo though is not suggesting fatalism rather coincidence or foreknowledge. 4) 1) You will leave this room by 5pm. 2) For you not to leave the room by 5pm, you have to render 1 false. 3) No one can render false a statement that is true. 4) Thus you cannot fail to leave this room by 5pm. Yet Taylor gives no reason to suppose why this proposition cannot be up to you and change whether it is a true statement. 5) Van Inwagen - idea of you being to do otherwise than you actually do is logically incoherent. But no reason to accept this. 6)You COULD still do x even if you do not. Still have potential and possibility. 7) Overall - Don;t have choice in past cus no backward causation - but can affect later times. No choice in past does not suggest no choice in future.
If there are no tense facts or tense properties, why do we thank goodness when something is over?
Prior - When finished marking - glad it is over. That it is in past. 2)Sv - no such property of absolute presentness - but being past in mid June - yet not thankful that marking ends in mid june - be equally grateful in middle of marking if case. Suggests there is an absolute present. 3) Mellor’s reply: accept there are tensed preferences - deny though satisfaction requires irreducibly tensed states of affairs. Preference that marking in the past is satisfied it i have it after end of marking. 4) Mellor - key is not that marking is over but i believe it is over. Gladness founded on belief - that has truth conditions in tensless terms - belief that marking is over is true if held at end of marking.
Our asymmetric attitudes towards time (2)
Why do we have these preferences? Though dv just as clueless as sv - reality of tense offers nothing. 2) Seems to be nothing other than just a different preference - possible to be happy for good things to have happened in past ‘we will always have paris’…and prefer bad things in future because possible to prevent them.
The apparent specialness of the present (3)
Attraction of dv - time appears to pass. Sv give no reason for this appearance. 2) Difference between past and future - don’t plan for past, can’t remember future. Sv - can only plan for later times - not future as no backward causation. Can only remember past as impossible to know events occuring earlier than their time. 3) Why does present seem to be different then? Have realness and liveliness/ Appearance is mistaken. seems unique because it’s the last time you can remember and earliest time that you can’t plan for.
The appearance of time’s passage (3)
Why does time appear to pass? Why is movement towards future events and away from past ones, not vice versa. 2) Mellor/Olson - time seems to pass because of the need to change our tensed statements and beliefs in order to avoid error - those beliefs are about things that change - weather/day. 3) Gives illusion time passes..but actually is just a different location in same way different beliefs about what is near and far does in different spatial locations.
The appearance of time’s passage - horwich (3)
Mellor and Olson account still does not account for why it seems event draw nearer and others recede. 2) Horwich - memories of earlier events and anticipation of later ones gives us a percived location on a timeline - which changes as what we can remember and anticpate changes. Gives appearance moving through time. 3) why that Direction of passage? Horwich - movement is always movement from earlier locations to later ones. Trivial answer - and not deep truth - derive from meaning of words. Yet dynamists can’t say anymore.
