On Becoming, Cosmic Time and Rotating Universes

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50:253-276 (2002)
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Abstract

In the literature on the compatibility between the time of our experience and the time of physics, the special theory of relativity has enjoyed central stage. By bringing into the discussion the general theory of relativity, I suggest a new analysis of the misunderstood notion of becoming, developed from hints in Gödel's published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time. I claim that recent endorsements of such arguments, based on Gödel's own ‘rotating’ solution to Einstein's field equation, fail: once understood in the right way, becoming can be shown to be both mind-independent and compatible with spacetime physics. Being a neededtertium quidbetween views of time traditionally regarded as in conflict, such a new approach to becoming should also help to dissolve a crucial aspect of the century-old debate between the so-called A and B theories of time.

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Mauro Dorato
Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Citations of this work

Time travel and time machines.Chris Smeenk & Christian Wuthrich - 2011 - In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 577-630.
Time Reversal.Bryan W. Roberts - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge.
The irrelevance of the presentist/eternalist debate for the ontology of Minkowski spacetime.Mauro Dorato - 2006 - In Dennis Dieks (ed.), The ontology of spacetime. New York: Elsevier. pp. 93-109.

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References found in this work

The unreality of time.John Ellis McTaggart - 1908 - Mind 17 (68):457-474.
Time, Tense, and Causation.Michael Tooley - 1997 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Real time II.David Hugh Mellor - 1998 - New York: Routledge.

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