The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
In this paper a principle of substitutivity of logical equivalents salve veritate and a version of Leibniz’s law are formulated and each is shown to cause problems when combined with naive truth theories.
When philosophers of perception contemplate concrete examples, the tendency is to choose perceptions whose content does not essentially involve time, but concern how things are at the moment they are perceived. This is true whether the cases are veridical (seeing a tree as a tree) or illusory (misperceiving the colour or spatial properties of an object). Less discussed, and arguably more complex and...
There is little doubt that we perceive the world as tensed—that is, as consisting of a past, present and future each with a different ontological status—and transient—that is, as involving a passage of time. We also have the ability to execute precisely timed behaviors that appear to depend upon making correct temporal judgments about which changes are truly present and which are not. A common...
The paper offers a critical examination of a prominent, “quasi-deflationist” argument advanced in the contemporary debate on the semantic paradoxes against non-naive and non-transparent theories of truth. The argument claims that truth unrestrictedly fulfils certain expressive functions, and that its so doing requires the unrestricted validity of naivety and transparency principles. The paper criticises...
Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed so, arguing that their theory has a much better explanation for the fact that we all experience the passage of time: we experience time as passing because time really does pass. In this paper I expose and reject the argument behind the A-theorist’s claim. I argue that all parties have conceded far too easily...
I reconstruct from Rietdijk and Putnam’s well-known papers an argument against the applicability of the concept of becoming in Special Relativity, which I think is unaffected by some of the objections found in the literature. I then consider a line of thought found in the discussion of the possible conventionality of simultaneity in Special Relativity, beginning with Reichenbach, and apply it to the...
There are two no-change objections that can be raised against the B-theory of time. One (McTaggart’s objection) stems from the observation that in a B-theoretic scenario changes of determinations can only be represented by propositions which have eternal truth values. The other (James’ objection) derives from the principle that nothing can vary over a period of time if it doesn’t instantiate a state...
A version of this paper was given at the workshop on Curry’s Paradox at the University of Otago, and to a meeting of the Melbourne Logic group both in August 2012.
Michael Dummett argued that, whilst we can imagine circumstances under which agents may rationally believe themselves capable of affecting the past, the attitude of such agents is bound to seem ‘paradoxical and unnatural to us’. Therefore, only agents very unlike us could intentionally affect the past. I argue that this is not the case. I outline circumstances in which the attitude of such agents...
It is a common claim that one concept of time, tenseless theory , is in greater conflict with how the world seems to us (with the phenomenology ) than the competing theories of tense theory and presentism. This paper offers at least one counter-example to that claim. Here, it is argued that tenseless theory fares better than its competitors in...
What sorts of sequent-calculus rules succeed in specifying a legitimate piece of vocabulary? Following on Arthur Prior’s discussion of the connective tonk, there have been a flurry of criteria offered. Here, I step back a bit, examining the role of structural rules in an inferentialist theory of meaning, and sketch a theory on which any way at all of giving left and right sequent rules for a piece...
Charles W. Dement (1953–2005) in memoriam That low man seeks a little thing to do,Sees it and does it:This high man, with a great thing to pursue,Dies ere he knows it. Robert Browning
Many take the lesson of the paradoxes to be that we ought to impose some form of logical revision. It is argued here that this kind of move should not be taken lightly.
At the centre of Arthur Prior’s ‘Thank goodness’ argument for the A-theory of time is a particular form of relief. Time must objectively pass, Prior argues, or else the relief felt when a painful experience has ended is not intelligible. In this paper, I offer a detailed analysis of the type of relief at issue in this argument, which I call temporal relief, and distinguish it from another form of...
The paper presents a thorough exploration of the problem of persistence in a relativistic context. Using formal methods such as mereology, formal theories of location and the so called intrinsic formulation of special relativity we provide a new, more rigorous and more comprehensive taxonomy of persisting entities. This new taxonomy differs significantly from the ones that are present in the recent...
This note motivates a logic for a theory that can express its own notion of logical consequence—a ‘syntactically closed’ theory of naive validity . The main issue for such a logic is Curry’s paradox, which is averted by the failure of contraction. The logic features two related, but different, implication connectives. A Hilbert system is proposed that is complete and non-trivial...
This paper has two aims. First, to bring together the models of temporal phenomenology on offer and to present these using a consistent set of distinctions and terminologies. Second, to examine the methodologies currently practiced in the development of these models. To that end we present an abstract characterisation in which we catalogue all extant models. We then argue that neither of the two extreme...
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.