The philosophy of time contains a debate that the philosophy of space lacks, namely whether one time, the present, is objectively (i.e. mind-independently) unlike all the others. Whether reality itself is tensed, i.e. whether position in time has ontological significance, is a long-standing but still pressing question. This book defends a unified account of the structure of time and our representations of it, arguing that while the universe itself is not centred on any particular time, we can nevertheless explain why (...) we so commonly think and act as if it is. In other words, a version of the B-theory of time is defended. It is argued, first, that eternalism—the view that all times are equally real—is the proper ontology of time. Then a semantics of tensed language and belief is presented that is entirely tenseless, hence compatible with eternalism. Next, it is argued that temporal predicates express relations between ordinary, three-dimensional objects, and times; accordingly, there is no need to posit the existence of temporal parts. Finally, it is argued that the B-theory provides an adequate account of change, persistence, and temporal passage. (shrink)

In Rediscovering Colors: A Study in Pollyanna Realism, Michael Watkins endorses the Moorean view that colors are simple, non-reducible, properties of objects. Consequently, Watkins breaks from what has become the received view that either colors are reducible to certain properties of interest to science, or else nothing is really colored. What is novel about the work is that Watkins, unlike other Mooreans, takes seriously the metaphysics of colors. Consequently, Watkins provides an account of what colors are, how they are related (...) to the physical properties on which they supervene, and how colors can be causally efficacious without the threat of causal overdetermination. Along the way, he provides novel accounts of normal conditions and non-human color properties. The book will be of interest to any metaphysician and philosopher of mind interested in colors and color perception. (shrink)

' I heartily recommend it to any philosopher of language interested in the issues. [] Logicians, of course, will want to savour the whole thing.' Australian Journal of Philosophy, 71:3 (1993).

According to the hypothesis of extended phenomenal consciousness, although the material vehicles that realize phenomenal consciousness include neural elements, they are not restricted to such elements. There will be cases in which those material vehicles additionally include not only non-neural bodily elements, but also elements located beyond the skull and skin. In this paper, I examine two arguments for ExPC, one due to Noë and the other due to Kiverstein and Farina. Both of these arguments conclude that ExPC is true (...) on the basis of an analysis of sensory substitution, the phenomenon in which technological augmentation enables one sensory modality, for instance touch, to support the kind of environmental access and interaction ordinarily supported by a different sensory modality, for instance vision. I develop considerations which reveal that, as they stand, both of these arguments fall short. If the phenomenon of sensory substitution provides evidence for the truth of ExPC, it is not because of the specific arguments offered by these authors. (shrink)

Adverbial modification is probably one of the least understood areas of linguistics. The essays in this volume all address the problem of how to give an analysis of adverbial modifiers within truth-conditional semantics. Chapters I-VI provide analyses of particular modifiers within a possible worlds framework, and were written between 1974 and 1981. Original publication details of these chapters may be found on p. vi. Of these, all but Chapter I make essential use of the idea that the time reference involved (...) in tensed sentences should be a time interval rather than a single instant. The final chapter (Chapter VII) was written especially for this volume and investigates the question of how the 'situation semantics' recently devised by Jon Barwise and John Perry, as a rival to possible-worlds semantics, might deal with adverbs. In addition I have included an appendix to Chapter III and an introduction which links all the chapters together. (shrink)

t. 1. A-D -- t. 2. E-M -- t. 3. N-S -- t.4. T-I︠A︡.

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to (...) address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing. (shrink)