There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place on the background of the significant pressure exerted on the position by the relativity of simultaneity asserted in special relativity, and yet in several cases invokes modern physics for support. I classify the presentist replies to this pressure into a two by two matrix depending on whether they take a compatibilist or incompatibilist stance with respect to both special relativity in particular and modern physics in general. I then review and evaluate what I take to be some of the most forceful and intriguing presentist arguments turning on modern physics. Although nothing of what I will say eventuates its categorical demise, I hope to show that whatever presentism remains compatible with empirical facts and our best physics is metaphysically unattractive.

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The fate of presentism in modern physics

EPR-like phenomena are (presumably) indeterministic, but they furthermore suggest that our world involves seeming-strange ``funny business.'' Without invoking any heavy mathematics, the theory of branching space-times offers two apparently quite different ways in which EPR-like funny business goes beyond simple indeterminism. (1) The first is a modal version of a Bell-like correlation: There exist two space-like separated indeterministic initial events whose families of outcomes are nevertheless modally correlated. That is, although the occurrence of each outcome of each of the two space-like separated initial events is separately possible, some joint occurrence of their outcomes (one from each) is impossible. (2) The second sounds like superluminal causation: A certain initial event can bear a cause-like relation to a certain without being in the causal past of that outcome. The two accounts of EPR-like funny business are proved equivalent, a result that supports the claim of each as useful to mark the line between mere indeterminism and EPR-like funny business. This is a ``postprint'' based on the version published in Non-locality and modality, T. Placek and J. Butterfield eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2002, pp. 293--315. The archive at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu contains two recent related articles by the author, ``No-common-cause EPR-like funny business in branching space-times'' (2002) and ``A theory of causation: causae causantes (originating causes) as inus conditions in branching space-times'' (2002).

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EPR-Like “Funny Business” in the Theory of Branching Space-Times

In this paper we try to give a small sample illustrating the approach of Andreka et al. [2],[5],[21]–[24] to a logical analysis of relativity theory conducted purely in first-order logic, FOL. We stick with FOL for methodological reasons. Here we first concentrate on special relativity, but in [22],[2],[5],[24] steps are made in the direction of generalizing this FOL-approach towards general relativity. We discuss that direction in the second half of this introduction. In [5] we build up variants of relativity theory as “competing” axiom systems formalized in FOL. The reason for having several versions for the theory, i.e. several axiom systems, is that this way we can study the consequences of the various axioms, enabling us to find out which axiom is responsible for what interesting or “exotic” prediction of relativity theory. Among others, this enables us to refine the conceptual analysis of relativity in Friedman [12] and Rindler [28], or compare the Reichenbach-GrunbaumSalmon approach to relativity (cf. [31] or [12]) with the standard one. Later we will refer to the just indicated “several competing axiom systems” feature of our theory as flexibility feature or modularity feature. One of our FOL axiom systems will be called Specrel. We will see that Specrel is a faithful, streamlined FOL axiomatization of (the kinematics of)

Logical analysis of relativity theories

Branching time puts an indeterminist causal structure on instantaneous but world-wide “super-events” called moments This theory has “action at a distance” as an inevitable presupposition In contrast, branching space-times puts an indeterminist causal order on tiny little point events The benefit of branching space-times theory is that it can represent local indeterminist events with only local outcomes The “seeing to it that” or “stit” theory of agency developed in Belnap, Perloff and Xu, 2001 employs branching time as a substructure, and thus has the following shortcoming: It is inevitably committed to an account of action-outcomes that makes them instantaneously world-wide This essay asks how the stit theory of agency can be adapted to branching space-times in such a way that action-outcomes are local

Agents and Agency in Branching Space-Times

Temporal logic arose at the border of philosophy and linguistics. From the seventies onward, it became a major tool also in computer science and artificial intelligence, which have become the most powerful source of new logical developments since. We discuss some recent themes demonstrating new connections with modal logic. In the course of this, we point out some new types of open research questions. to appear in A. Montanari, A. Policriti & Y. Venema, eds. special issue on Temporal Logic Bulletin of the Interest Group for Pure and Applied Logics

N. Rakic

Papers

Common sense time and special relativity