Block Universe Research Articles

EPR and the 'Passage' of Time

The essay revisits the puzzle of the ‘passage’ of time in relation to EPR-type measurements and asks what philosophical consequences can be drawn from them. Some argue that the lack of invariance of temporal order in the measurement of a space-like related EPR pair, under relativistic motion, casts serious doubts on the ‘reality’ of the lapse of time. Others argue thatcertain features of quantum mechanics establisha tensed theory of time – understood here as Possibilism or the growing block universe. The paper analyzes the employment of frame-invariant entropic clocks in a relativistic setting and argues that tenselessness does not imply timelessness. But this conclusion does not support a tensed theory of time, which requires a preferred foliation. It is argued that the only reliable inference from the EPR example and the use of entropic clocks is an inference not just to a Leibnizian order of the succession of events but a frame-invariant order according to some selected clocks.

Nietzsche's Sophist: Rhêtôr, Musician, Stoic

Traditional readings of Nietzsche's essay “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” tend to emphasize the clash between philosophy and rhetoric in the form of two distinct personae—the intuitive, Sophistical artist who embraces the rhetorical power of language to create and destroy on the one hand, and the rational, Stoic philosopher who uses concepts to order the world into a block universe on the other. However, I argue that his essay presents us with not two characters but three—the Stoic philosopher, political rhêtôr, and the Dionysian artist. Furthermore, none of these three characters can be said to be representative of Nietzsche's attitude toward the Sophists. This article thus proposes a model of the Sophistical artist which combines aspects from each of these personae in a way that brings together the power of tragic suffering, persuasive word, and passionate music, respectively. This reading of Nietzsche's work discloses an ideal image of a “new” Sophist as an unfettered spirit for whom Dionysian music and philosophical word cooperate to produce a complex rhetorical discourse capable of overcoming the nihilism of the modern age in order to produce a higher culture. This attitude would therefore make the new Sophist capable of grand aspirations and opportune actions while always remaining cognizant of the sublime and terrible nature that underlies his fragile dreams of beauty.

Why Does Time Pass?

According to the moving spotlight theory of time, the property of being present moves from earlier times to later times, like a spotlight shone on spacetime by God. In more detail, the theory has three components. First, it is a version of eternalism: all times, past present and future, exist. (Here I use “exist” in its tenseless sense.) Second, it is a version of the A-theory of time: there are non-relative facts about which times are past, which time is present, and which times are future. That is, it is not just that the year 1066 is past relative to 2007. The year 1066 is also past full-stop, not relative to any other time. (The A-theory is opposed to the B-theory of time, which says that facts about which times are past obtain only relative to other times.) And third, on this view the passage of time is a real phenomenon. Which moment is present keeps changing. As I will sometimes put it, the NOW moves from the past toward the future.1 And this does not mean that relative to different times, different times are present. Even the B-theory can say that 1999 is present relative to 1999 but is not present relative to 2007. No, according to the moving spotlight theory, the claim that which moment is present keeps changing is supposed to be true, even from a perspective outside time.2 My main goal in this paper is to present a new version of the moving spotlight theory (though in some respects the theory I present also resembles the growing block universe theory of time). This version makes a connection between the passage of time (the motion of the NOW) and change. In fact, it uses facts about change to explain facts about the passage of time. The bulk of the paper is devoted to describing, in detail, how the theory works. I also believe that my new version has advantages over the standard version. It explains things that the standard version cannot explain. It explains both

Four-dimensional realism and understandable models: Contributions to the block universe issue

Four-dimensional realism and understandable models: Contributions to the block universe issue

Everywhere and everywhen: adventures in physics and philosophy

1. A Longish Introduction: The Problem of Change 1.1 Melissus's Paradox 1.2 What is Change? 1.3 Laws 1.4 Spacetime Today 2. Zeno's Paradoxes: 2.1 The Dichotomy Paradox 2.2 'Supertasks' 3. Zeno's Arrow Paradox: 3.1 The Paradox 3.2 What Philosophy Can Teach Physics 4. The Shape of Space I-Topology 4.1 An End to Space? 4.2 Neither Bounded Nor Infinite 4.3 What Physics Can Teach Philosophy 5. Beyond the Third Dimension? 5.1 Multi-Dimensional Life 5.2 More Than Three Dimensions? 6. Why Three Dimensions? 6.1 The Force of Gravity and the Dimensions of Space 6.2 Does Intelligent Life Take Three Dimensions? 6.3 Is the Universe Made for Humans? 6.4 The Megaverse 6.5 Philosophy in Physics 7. The Shape of Space II-Curved Space? 7.1 Mathematical Certainty 7.2 Life in Non-Euclidean Geometry 7.3 What Kind of Knowledge is Geometry? 8. Looking For Geometry 8.1 Measuring the Geometry of Space? 8.2 The 'Geometry' of Poincare's Space 8.3 How to Disprove a Definition 8.4 Experiencing Space: 8.5 Where is Geometry? 9. What is Space? 9.1 Space=Matter 9.2 Relational Space 9.3 Absolute Space 9.4 Relational Space Redux 9.5 What Physics and Philosophy Can Teach Each Other 10. Time 10.1 Time vs. Space 10.2 Nowism 10.3 A Moving Now? 10.4 McTaggart's Argument 10.5 Passing Time in a Block Universe 11. Time and Tralfamadore 11.1 The Mind's Worldline 11.2 Experience of Space vs. Time 11.3 Another Arrow 11.4 Physics and the Philosophy of Perception 12. Time Travel 12.1 What is Time Travel? 12.2 Is Time Travel Possible? 12.3 The Problem with Time Travel 12.4 Possible and Impossible Time Travel 12.5 The Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel 13. Why Can't I Stop my Younger Self from Time Traveling? 13.1 Physics Might Stop Me 13.2 ... and If Not, Logic Will 13.3 My Precise Physical State Stops Me 13.4 Living in a Physical Universe 14. Spacetime and the Theory of Relativity 14.1 Photons and Bullets 14.2 Convention 14.3 Relativity-When is Now? 14.4 Relativistic Spacetime 14.5 Relativity of Length 14.6 Relativity of Time 15. Time in Relativity 15.1 The Twins 15.2 General Relativity 15.3 Time vs. Space Yet Again 16. Hands and Mirrors 16.1 Is Handedness Intrinsic or Extrinsic? 16.2 The 'Fitting' Account 16.3 Kant's Argument against the Fitting Account 16.4 Looking Left and Right 16.5 Mirrors 16.6 Orientability 17. Identity 17.1 Particle Statistics 17.2 Schr:odinger's Counting Games 18. Quarticles 18.1 New Counting Games 18.2 Hookon Identity 18.3 Indistinguishable Quarticles? 18.4 Quanta as Quarticles 19. Where Next?

Time and Spacetime: The Crystallizing Block Universe

The nature of the future is completely different from the nature of the past. When quantum effects are significant, the future shows all the signs of quantum weirdness, including duality, uncertainty, and entanglement. With the passage of time, after the time-irreversible process of state-vector reduction has taken place, the past emerges, with the previous quantum uncertainty replaced by the classical certainty of definite particle identities and states. The present time is where this transition largely takes place, but the process does not take place uniformly: Evidence from delayed choice and related experiments shows that isolated patches of quantum indeterminacy remain, and that their transition from probability to certainty only takes place later. Thus, when quantum effects are significant, the picture of a classical Evolving Block Universe (`EBU') cedes place to one of a Crystallizing Block Universe (`CBU'), which reflects this quantum transition from indeterminacy to certainty, while nevertheless resembling the EBU on large enough scales.

Pluralistic Pilgrimage: Travel as the Quest for the Strange

Pluralistic Pilgrimage: Travel as the Quest for the Strange Frederick J. Ruf “The aim of knowledge,” declares Hegel, “is to divest the objective world of its strangeness and to make us more at home in it.”1 Some might say the same of pilgrimage. William James quotes Hegel’s statement in A Pluralistic Universe, a text that I’d like to propose as a model for contemporary pilgrimage. If I’m allowed to shift Hegel’s concern somewhat, his words surely offer the two chief options in pilgrimage: the effort to be at home, and to use pilgrimage to go, we might say, Home; or the effort to leave home, to seek the strange and plunge into it. It’s a stark choice and one we need to keep in mind when looking at least one contemporary form of pilgrimage, travel. We might see the search for Home in many analyses of Medieval Christian pilgrimage, for it is often seen as a powerful device for establishing and cementing identity. As Jonathan Sumption points out in Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, pilgrimage acted as a counter and solution to the profound disruptions of evil, be they physical, emotional, or spiritual. Life was seen to contain overpowering forces that governed and could destroy an individual’s existence, both on earth and in an afterlife. Religious life had “a desperate, almost frenzied quality” in the later middle ages because present and eternal health, harmony, and happiness were so precarious.2 Pilgrimage offered opportunities to re‐form the self according to healing models by journeying to sites that housed the relics of the saints or presented the scenes of Christ’s life and death. Though we might see medieval Christian pilgrimage as itself disruptive since it involved, as Sumption himself suggests, “an escape from the stifling framework of parish life,” as well as “curiosity to see new places and experience new things,” its importance in the stabilizing of the medieval self is certainly what Sumption’s analysis emphasizes. Victor and Edith Turner’s classic study of pilgrimage might be largely viewed as outmoded and non‐empirical, yet it is still highly influential, and it doesn’t contradict this aspect of Sumption’s view, for while there is a separation from home and liminality on the journey, according to the Turners, there is also “aggregation” on arrival when one is exposed to the powerfully formative symbols of the destination at a point (in time and space) when the pilgrim is most susceptible to their effect.3 More recently, scholars like Eade and Sallnow focus on the contested discourses of any given pilgrimage site, an understanding that multiplies the identities that are formed, but that does not seem to undercut the stability of what takes place according to any given story of the site when the pilgrim arrives. The definition of “home” may be contested but it still seems to be Home that is both sought and found.4 What draws my interest in this essay is the very un‐Hegelian desire to be less at home, the desire to seek the strange. I believe it can be found preeminently in the experience of that most contemporary form of pilgrimage, travel, even in the most common tourism. The religious importance of travel and its oddness are insufficiently appreciated and demand greater understanding which I hope to begin to provide. William James’s pluralism and pilgrimage In his classic study of pluralism, James takes issue with what he calls the “block universe,” the view that we live in a clear and unified world that is transparent and uniform and familiar.5 That block universe utterly lacks pluralism. Being an early twentieth‐century New Englander, James probably is thinking of a block of wood or ice, both of them with a uniform composition, grain or crystalline structure. Both are homely objects, perhaps for chopping or carpentry, or for cooling. Severely geometrical, they have the right angles of post and lintel, of beams, of frames, of flooring, of joists and studs, and of civilizations. And, yet, I can’t help but see a neighborhood metaphor in James’s figure, as well. Mightn’t James be arguing against a...

Time and Truth: The Presentism-Eternalism Debate

AbstractThere are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agrees with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreement. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect.

Free Will in the Block Universe

Carl Hoefer has argued that determinism in block universes does not privilege any particular time slice as the fundamental determiner of other time slices. He concludes from this that our actions are free, insofar as they are pieces of time slices we may legitimately regard as fundamental determiners. However, I argue that Hoefer does not adequately deal with certain remaining problems. For one, there remain pervasive asymmetries in causation and the macroscopic efficacy of our actions. I suggest that what Hoefer may have shown us is that causation, not determinism, was the threat to free will all along. Additionally, Hoefer might avoid the problem of the asymmetry of macroscopic efficacy by noting we have a very small region of space-time completely determined by our choices. However, this move implies our freedom to act is freedom to do very little, given that the region is trivial. I suggest that Hoefer should instead claim that we do have pervasive macroscopic efficacy toward the past, though I am unsure of how well this thesis works. Regardless, there remains a problem that the inside-out perspective requires us to see our choices as brute facts or random occurrences. Attempts to resolve this problem seem to require either a theory of agent causation or a traditional compatibilist argument, making Hoefer’s thesis extraneous, unless he can show us that these require the inside-out perspective. However, Hoefer has not yet shown us this, so there is work to be done.

A RELATIVISTIC ESCHATOLOGY: TIME, ETERNITY, AND ESCHATOLOGY IN LIGHT OF THE PHYSICS OF RELATIVITY

Unique epistemological challenges arise whenever one embarks on the critical and self-critical reflection of the nature of time and the end of time. I attempt to construct my preference for an eschatological distinction between time and eternity from within a middle way, avoiding both the hubris that claims complete com- prehension and the resignation that concedes readily to know noth- ing. Surveying the history of reflection on this multifaceted question of time, with its ephemeral and everlasting dimensions, I argue that the eschatological interplay between the already and the not yet has much to offer: promise for the religion-science dialogue as well as hope for humanity, especially for those on society's bleakest edges. But understandings of time, to be authentically theological, must be also informed by cosmology and the physics of relativity. My pro- posal seeks to respect the theological and scientific interpretations of the nature of time, serving the ongoing, creative interaction of these disciplines. Between physics and theology I identify four formal dif- ferences in analyzing eschatology, all grounded in the one fundamen- tal difference between extrapolation and promise. Discussion of what I term deficits in both the scientific and theological approaches leads to further examination of the complex relationship between time and eternity. I distinguish three models of such relationships, which I label the ontological, the quantitative, and the eschatological distinc- tion between time and eternity. Because of the way it embraces a multiplicity of times, especially relating to the culmination and the consummation of creation, I opt for the eschatological model. The eschatological disruption of linear chronology relates well to relativ- istic physics: This model is open, dynamic, and relational, and it may add a new aspect to the debate over the block universe.

SPACE, TIME, AND CAUSALITY

The characters of space, time, and causality are issues that are constrained by physics but that require also acts of metaphysical decision. Relativity theory is consistent both with the idea of an a temporal block universe and with a temporal universe of true becoming. Science's account of causal properties is patchy and does not imply the closure of the universe to other forms of causal influence. Intrinsic unpredictabilities offer opportunities for metaphysical conjecture concerning the form that such additional causal principles might take. Different theological understandings of how God relates to time afford legitimate criteria for differing metaphysical decisions about the nature of temporality.

METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCE BETWEEN METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE

The paper argues that metaphysics depends upon science when it comes to claims about the constitution of the real world. That thesis is illustrated by considering the examples of global supervenience, the tenseless vs. the tensed theory of time and existence, events vs. substances, and relations vs. intrinsic properties. An argument is sketched out for a metaphysics of a four-dimensional block universe whose content are events and their sequences, events consisting in physical properties instantiated at space-time points, these properties being relations rather than intrinsic properties.

Physics in the real universe: time and spacetime

The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible microphysical laws and does not represent macro-physical behaviour and the development of emergent complex systems, including life, which do indeed exist in the real universe. When these are taken into account, the unchanging block universe view of spacetime is best replaced by an evolving block universe which extends as time evolves, with the potential of the future continually becoming the certainty of the past. However this time evolution is not related to any preferred surfaces in spacetime; rather it is associated with the evolution of proper time along families of world lines

How Relativity Contradicts Presentism

But this picture of a ‘block universe’, composed of a timeless web of ‘world-lines’ in a four-dimensional space, however strongly suggested by the theory of relativity, is a piece of gratuitous metaphysics. Since the concept of change, of something happening, is an inseparable component of the common-sense concept of time and a necessary component of the scientist's view of reality, it is quite out of the question that theoretical physics should require us to hold the Eleatic view that nothing happens in ‘the objective world’. Here, as so often in the philosophy of science, a useful limitation in the form of representation is mistaken for a deficiency of the universe (Black, 1962).

The Time of Our Lives

Early last century an article appeared which transformed the philosophy of time. The article was James Ellis McTaggart's ‘The unreality of time’, published in 1908. As his title implies, McTaggart argued in this article that there is in reality no such thing as time. But that claim, although startling enough, is not what makes the article so remarkable. The same claim had after all been made long before McTaggart, for example by Kant in 1781, and in McTaggart's sense it is still made by those who think that time is merely one of the four dimensions of an unchanging ‘block universe’. However, most of those who think this are more influenced by Minkowski's comment, also made in 1908, that relativity has doomed space and time to ‘fade away into mere shadows’ of a unified spacetime than they are by McTaggart's more substantial arguments.

Universal Regularities and Initial Conditions in Newtonian Physics

The Newtonian universe is usually understood to contain two classes of causal factors: universal regularitiesand initial conditions. I demonstrate that,in fact, the Newtonian universe contains no causal factors other thanuniversal regularities: the initial conditions ofany physical system are merely theconsequence of universal regularities acting on previoussystems. It follows that aNewtonian universe lacks the degree of contingency that is usually attributed to it. This is a necessary precondition for maintaining that the Newtonian universe is a block universe that exhibits no temporal development. It follows also that Newtonian physics is inconsistent, since a Newtonian universe as a whole exhibits some properties – such as the total mass of the universe – that are not determined by the laws of Newtonian physics, and that must therefore be considered contingent.

Time in special relativity and its philosophical significance

Two opposing views about the significance of the concept of time occurring in the special theory of relativity are discussed. The first view is that relativistic time is inherently 'conventional' and therefore not of importance for questions about the nature of reality. The other is that the structure of relativistic time shows that we live in a four-dimensional 'block universe', in which past and future are mere illusions. Against the first position the author argues that relativistic time is no more conventional than time in classical physics; it is equally 'real'. But this by itself does not mean that the second position is right. It does not follow from the relativistic structure of time that past and future, and a shifting 'now', are unreal. This is because there is a fundamental difference between the physical concept of time and the notion of time occurring in the doctrine of the shifting 'now'.

Time Concepts in Physics, Biology, and Pharmacokinetics

Three major types of time relativity are discussed: physical, biological, and psychological. Physical relativity illustrates how the same distant event may occur in the past of one observer and in the future of another. Moreover, space and time variables are not viewed in isolation from one another, but rather are blended together into a static, four-dimensional “block universe.” Biological relativities arise through coordinate transformations of physical time-scales such that relevant processes become invariant in space-time. Because pharmacokinetic processes are integrated through a common, highly coordinated series of systems, relations between mammalian species may be probed through empiric allometric coordinate transformations. Psychological time relativity deals with a creature's awareness of its own duration and location within a restricted range of reality; it involves the transformation of perceived sequences (stimuli) into durations.

Life and politics as plural: James and Bentley on the twentieth century problem

If twentieth century thought has been characterized by a preoccupation with the themes of analysis, fragmentation, specialization, alienation and anomie, American speculation on the disunity of the cosmos has owed a great debt to the metaphysics and psychology of William James and the political theory of Arthur F. Bentley. While James revolted against idealistic holism by describing a "pluralistic universe" and an empirical self constituted by disparate processes, Bentley reacted against a political science of state and sovereignty by developing a doctrine of political pluralism based on the activity of interest groups. The division of the whole into its separate, and often unrelated, constituents was carried out in America in the name of pluralism. Though Europeans might despair about dissolution and estrangement, American pragmatists and behaviorists revelled in their new freedom from the "block universe." The destruction of monism could be interpreted as the final step in the liberation of America from the Old World. With optimism and confidence James used the political analogy of a federal republic to elucidate his pluralistic metaphysics, t Bentley, a self-conscious disciple of James, improved upon his master by dissecting the "federal republic" itself. No pessimist, he praised the Jamesian approach: "No one has made a more brilliant raid into the social field than James in his analysis of the 'selves.' " e Karl Jaspers has remarked that while pragmatism "seemed to be laying new foundations" for existence-philosophy, "what it built thereon was nothing more than an aggregate of crude analysis of life and cheap optimism, was a mere expression of a blind confidence in the extant confusion." 3 Why, when others were attempting to reconstruct unity of purpose, did philosophers like James and Bentley embrace a purposeless diversity? Did they discover something worthwhile in twentieth century life and politics to which Europeans were blinded and which contemporary Americans have lost? James was one of the first writers to adopt a fully pluralistic view of government and politics. In The Varieties of Religious Experience he noted that no major social institution could be defined simply. This was particularly