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| But sometimes the term is instead used to refer to the view that objects persist by having ]. | But sometimes the term is instead used to refer to the view that objects persist by having ]. | ||
| This description above isn't accurate. In the philosophy of time there are three questions. | |||
| 1. Do events have tensed values of time or tenseless? For example. Two days ago, yesterday's wheaterforecast had the value: future, yesterday it was present and today it is past. We call that tensed values, or according to John McTaggart: A-values. Julius Caesar lived after Alexander the great, but before George Washington and simultaneously with Cleopatra. We call that tenseness values or B-values of time. | |||
| 2. Does the past and future have an existing status, in other words are past and future equally real as the present? When the past and future is seen as equally existing we call that eternalism. If past is seen as no longer existing we call that presentism. A third view is the "growing universe theory" where just like eternalism the present is equally real as the past, but the future is yet to exist. The present is then the latest expansion, or growth of the universe. | |||
| 3. Do objects perdure or persist trough time? Perdurance of objects is the classical view. Where objects are three-dimensional and move trough time similarly as objects move trough space. In other word they relocate themself in the dimension of time. Persistance of objects trough time holds that objects are really four-dimensional. the three dimensional objects we perceive are just segments of a bigger four-dimensional object that lays spread out over the dimension of time. This view of persistance of objects trough time is also referred to by Theodore Sider as fourdimensionalism because it holds all objects have four dimensions. Although it does seem this view is best compatable with B-series of time and with eternalism that doesn't necessarily have to be so. | |||
| ==External links== | ==External links== | ||
Revision as of 22:21, 9 September 2007
In the philosophy of time, four dimensionalism is a term sometimes used to refer to the view that the past, present and future are all 'equally real', and that (tenselessly) there exist dinosaurs, people and (if there will be such things) cities on Mars. These things don't exist now but they do exist, with the analogy often being that, if I am in London, New York doesn't exist here even though it does exist. It is to be contrasted with presentism. 'Four dimensionalism' is also sometimes used to refer to this view plus the B-Theory of time.
But sometimes the term is instead used to refer to the view that objects persist by having temporal parts.
External links
- Brown, C.L., 2006, "What is Space?" A philosophical, largely Wittgensteinian, approach towards a dissolution of the question: "What is space?"
- Rea, M. C., "Four Dimensionalism" in The Oxford Handbook for Metaphysics. Oxford Univ. Press. Describes presentism and four dimensionalism.
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