Presentism as an Empirical Hypothesis

Philosophy of Science 80 (5):1101-1111 (2013)
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Abstract

Within philosophy of physics it is broadly accepted that presentism as an empirical hypothesis has been falsified by the development of special relativity. In this article, I identify and reject an assumption common to both presentists and advocates of the block universe and then offer an alternative version of presentism that does not begin from spatiotemporal structure, which is an empirical hypothesis, and which has yet to be falsified. While some features of familiar presentism are lost, a sufficient core remains to warrant the label.

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Katherine Brading
Duke University

References found in this work

Time and physical geometry.Hilary Putnam - 1967 - Journal of Philosophy 64 (8):240-247.
On Einstein--Minkowski space--time.Howard Stein - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (1):5-23.
Physics and Leibniz's principles.Simon Saunders - 2003 - In Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. Cambridge University Press. pp. 289--307.

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