Primitive Directionality and Diachronic Grounding

Acta Analytica 35 (2):195-211 (2019)
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Abstract

Eternalists believe that there is no ontological difference between the past, present and future. Thus, a challenge arises: in virtue of what does time have a direction? Some eternalists, Oaklander and Tegtmeier ) argue that the direction of time is primitive. A natural response to positing primitive directionality is the suspicion that said posit is too mysterious to do any explanatory work. The aim of this paper is to relieve primitive directionality of some of its mystery by offering a novel way to understand the phenomenon in terms of the recently popularised notion of grounding.

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Author Profiles

James Norton
University of Tasmania
Naoyuki Kajimoto
Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Science (CASIP)
Kristie Miller
University of Sydney

References found in this work

The metaphysics within physics.Tim Maudlin - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
On what grounds what.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - In David Manley, David J. Chalmers & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press. pp. 347-383.
No Work for a Theory of Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (5-6):535-579.
Against Grounding Necessitarianism.Alexander Skiles - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (4):717-751.
Time and chance.David Z. Albert - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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