Past, present, future, and special relativity

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (2):257-280 (1997)
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Abstract

The open future view is the common-sense view that there is an ontological difference between the past, the present, and the future in the sense that the past and the present are real, whereas the future is not yet a part of reality. In this paper we develop a theory in which the open future view is consistently combined with special relativity. Technically, the heart of our contribution is a logical conservativity result showing that, although the open future view is not definable inside the causal geometry of Minkowski space-time, it can be conservatively added to it.

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Citations of this work

Shedding light on time.Craig Callender - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (3):599.
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.
On Becoming, Cosmic Time and Rotating Universes.Mauro Dorato - 2002 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50:253-276.
Time, physics, and philosophy: It’s all relative.Sam Baron - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (1):e12466.
On time, memory and dynamic form.Stephen E. Robbins - 2004 - Consciousness and Cognition 13 (4):762-788.

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References found in this work

Scientific Thought.C. D. Broad - 1923 - Paterson, N.J.,: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Time and physical geometry.Hilary Putnam - 1967 - Journal of Philosophy 64 (8):240-247.
On relativity theory and openness of the future.Howard Stein - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (2):147-167.
Language and time.Quentin Smith - 1993 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Language and Time.Quentin Smith - 1993 - New York: Oup Usa.

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