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pragmatist comments on Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 31 October 2014 11:11PM

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Comment author: pragmatist 03 November 2014 12:19:19PM *  1 point [-]

That is trueish, but the point of introducing a distinction between relative facts (before and after) and absolute facts (past and future) is to get a handle in change/becoming,

This is the stated motivation, although I must confess I have no idea how the A-theory is supposed to be even a partial explanation of becoming.

Note also that presentism is not exactly equivalent to A series.

This is true, but I don't think I conflated the two in my post. I didn't say anything about the existence/non-existence of past and future entities or space-time locations. I was talking about the A-theory, not about presentism, although the two are regularly treated as a package deal in contemporary metaphysics.

I actually think the presentism/eternalism distinction is more likely susceptible to shminux's charge of vacuity than the A-theory/B-theory distinction.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 03 November 2014 01:07:27PM 2 points [-]

This is the stated motivation, although I must confess I have no idea how the A-theory is supposed to be even a partial explanation of becoming.

I don't think it's supposed to be an explanation of becoming, I think it's supposed to be a model of time that takes becoming into account. Explanations have to ground out somewhere.

I actually think the presentism/eternalism distinction is more likely susceptible to shminux's charge of vacuity than the A-theory/B-theory distinction.

The opinion has born put forward a number of times, but I am still waiting for someone to substantiate it by putting forward an explanation of how change is equivalent to stasis.

I can see how "time is passing through me" is equivalent to "I am passing through time" ....but those are two dynamic theories.