HPS 2675       Philosophy of Space and Time        Spring 2009
Phil 2660

Reading List

Back to course document list.

I. Philosophy Topics
A. Arguments for the unreality of change/time
0. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion
1. McTaggart’s argument McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time” Mind 18 (1908) 457-484.

Mellor, H. Real Time II, Ch. 7 ("McTaggarts' Proof") (Routledge, 1998.)

Dyke, “McTaggart and the Truth About Time,” in C. Callender (ed.) Time Reality and Experience (Cambridge UP, 2002).

Dainton, Time and Space (McGill-Queen’s, 2001). Ch 2 (“McTaggart on time’sunreality”).

2. Gödel’s argument

Gödel, “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy,” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist.

Earman, Bangs, Crunches, etc., Appendix to Ch. 6 (“Gödel and the Ideality of Time”).

Yourgrau, Disappearance of Time: Gödel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy.

Belot, “Dust, Time, and Symmetry,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science56 (2005): 255-91.

3. Arguments from GTR and quantum gravity (see II.C).
B. Becoming, A-theory of time, and the growing block.
Overviews:

Savitt, “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/

Markosian, “Time,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/

1. Temporal passage is nothing but the B-series Williams, “The Myth of Passage,” Journal of Philosophy 48 (1951): 457-472.

Mellor, Real Time II (Routledge, 1998).

2. B-Series accounts of change: endurantism vs. perdurantism

Balashov, “Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski Spacetime,” Philosophical Studies 99 (2000): 129-166.

Hales and Johnson, “Endurantism, Perdurantism and Special Relativity,” Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003): 524-539.

Butterfield, “The Rotating Disk Argument Defeated,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 1-45.

3. Defending the A-series Savitt, S. "A Limited Defense of Passage," American Philosophical Quarterly, 38 (2001), pp. 261-270.

Zimmerman, “The Privileged Present: Defending an ‘A-theory’ of Time,” in T. Sider et al. (eds), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics (Blackwell, 2007).

Zimmerman, “The A-theory of Time, the B-theory, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’,” Dialectica 59 (2005) 401-570.

4. The growing block universe Broad, Scientific Thought, Ch. 2 (“The General Problem of Time and Change”).

Tooley, Time Tense and Causation (Oxford UP, 1997).

Earman, “Reassessing the Prospects of a Growing Block Model of the Universe,” pre-print.

5. Is relativity theory incompatible with becoming?

Putnam, “Time and Physical Geometry,” Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967):240-247.

Stein, “On Relativity Theory and the Openness of the Future,” Philosophy ofScience 58 (1991): 147-167.

Clifton and Hogarth, “The Definability of Becoming in Minkowski Spacetime,” Synthese 103 (1995): 355-387.

Callender, Shedding Light on Time,” Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S587-599.

6. Explaining our sense of the ‘nowness’ of time Butterfield, “Seeing the Present,” Mind XCIII (1984): 161-176.

Callender, Craig “The Common Now,” Philosophical Issues, 18, Interdisciplinary Core Philosophy, 2008, pp. 339-61.

C. Presentism vs. eternalism vs. historicism: Is there a real debate?
1. No Meyer, “The Presentist’s Dilemma,” Philosophical Studies 122 (2005): 213-225.

Callender, “Time’s Ontic Voltage,” pre-print.

Doroto, “The Irrelevance of the Presentist/Eternalist Debate for the Ontology of Minkowski Spacetime,” in D. Dieks (ed), The Ontology of Spacetime I (Elsevier, 2006).

Savitt, “Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective,” in Dieks (ed) op. cit.

2. Yes Sider, Fourdimensionalism (Oxford UP, 2001). Ch. 2 (“Against Presentism”)

Sider, “Quantifies and temporal Ontology,” Mind 115 (2006): 75-97.

II. Philosophy of Physics Topics
A. Time vs. Space

Callender, “What Makes Time Special?” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10

Skow, “The Difference between Space and Time,” Noûs 41 (2007): 227-252.

Weinstein, “Many Times,” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10

Craig and Weinstein, “Determinism AND Well-Posedness in Multiple Time Dimensions,” http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0210.

B. Time reversal invariance and the CPT theorem Albert, “Time Reversal Invariance,” Ch. 1 of Time and Chance (Harvard UP, 2000).

Malament, “On Time Reversal Invariance of Classical Electromagnetic Theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (2004): 295-315.

Leeds, “Discussion: Malament on Time Reversal,” Philosophy of Science 73 (2006): 448-458.

North, “Two Views on Time Reversal,” Philosophy of Science 75 (2008): 201-223.

Arntzenius, “The CPT Theorem,” pre-print.

Greaves, “Towards a Geometrical Understanding of the CPT Theorem,” pre-print.

C. Timeless physics Rovelli, “Forget Time,” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10

Kiefer, “Does Time Exist in Quantum Gravity?” http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10

Prati, “The Nature of Time: from a Timeless Hamiltonian Framework to Clock Time of Metrology,” ibid.

D. Time’s arrows
Overview

Torretti, “The problem of time’s arrow historico-critically reexamined,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2007): 732-756.

1. The entropic arrow and the “past hypothesis” Albert, Time and Chance (Harvard UP, 2000).

Earman, “The ‘Past Hypothesis’: Not Even False,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (2006): 399-430.

2. The electromagnetic arrow

Frisch, M. (2000), “(Dis)Solving the puzzle of the arrow of radiation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51: 381-410.

Frisch, M. (2005), Inconsistency, asymmetry, and non-locality: a philosophicalinvestigation of classical electrodynamics (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Earman, “Sharpening the Electromagnetic Arrow(s) of Time,” to appear in C. Calender (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time.

3. Cosmology, inflation, and all that

Carroll and Chen, “Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time,” http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0410270.

Carroll, “The Cosmic Origins of Time’s Arrow,” Scientific American 298 No. 6 (June 2008)

4. Probability principles Kevin Davey, "Justification in Statistical Mechanics," Philosophy of Science 75(2008), pp. 28-44.
Other topics:
Time travel/time machines;
beginning and end of time,
the topology of time…