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Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 2002"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The theory of relativity has excited more philosophical commentary, and exerted more influence in mainstream philosophy, than any scientific theory, with the possible exception of Newton's theory of gravity as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Introduction But this picture of a ‘block universe’, composed of a timeless web of ‘world-lines’ in a four-dimensional space, however strongly suggested by the theory of relativity, is a piece of gratuitous metaphysics. Since the concept of change, of something happening, is an inseparable component of the common-sense concept of time and a necessary component of the scientist's view of reality, it is quite out of the question that theoretical physics should require us to hold the Eleatic view that nothing happens in ‘the objective world’. Here, as so often in the philosophy of science, a useful limitation in the form of representation is mistaken for a deficiency of the universe (Black, 1962). The theory of relativity has excited more philosophical commentary, and exerted more influence in mainstream philosophy, than any scientific theory, with the possible exception of Newton's theory of gravity. But it is a remarkable fact that its influence on metaphysics proper has been somewhat marginal. That is probably a testimony to the anti-metaphysical attitude that characterized so much philosophy in the last century, certainly in the Anglo-American tradition, and certainly among more scientifically-minded philosophers. Although the hey-day of logical empiricism is longsince past, philosophers of physics have continued to remain cool to metaphysics. Since they remain the ones best suited to explain the implications of relativity theory for the philosophy of time, if they find no interesting links between these disciplines, metaphysicians are unlikely to look for them.

77 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the grandfather paradox is examined in the context of modern physics and it is shown that to avoid inconsistency some circumstance will have to occur which makes you fail in this attempt to kill your grandfather.
Abstract: Time travel has been a staple of science fiction. With the advent of general relativity it has been entertained by serious physicists. But, especially in the philosophy literature, there have been arguments that time travel is inherently paradoxical. The most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox: you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, thereby preventing your own existence. To avoid inconsistency some circumstance will have to occur which makes you fail in this attempt to kill your grandfather. Doesn't this require some implausible constraint on otherwise unrelated circumstances? We examine such worries in the context of modern physics.

62 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a patient dissection of McTaggart's argument in the chapter ‘Ostensible Temporality’ in his Examination of Time.
Abstract: In the literature on time in the twentieth century stemming from J. M. E. McTaggart's famous argument for the unreality of time, two gems stand out. The first is C. D. Broad's patient dissection of McTaggart's argument in the chapter ‘Ostensible Temporality’ in his Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy. Broad carefully, and to my mind persuasively, uncovers the root errors in McTaggart's argument. In addition he tentatively proposes that the features of time that he calls its transitory aspect can be explained in terms of a dynamic aspect of time that he calls Absolute Becoming.

61 citations


Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: For example, it seems intuitively obvious that what I am doing right now is more real than what I did just one second ago as discussed by the authors... and yet, remarkably, every philosopher of time today, except for the author, denies this obvious fact about reality.
Abstract: Introduction It seems intuitively obvious that what I am doing right now is more real than what I did just one second ago, and it seems intuitively obvious that what I did just one second ago is more real than what I did forty years ago. And yet, remarkably, every philosopher of time today, except for the author, denies this obvious fact about reality. What went wrong? How could philosophers get so far away from what is the most experientially evident fact about reality? The concept of a degree of existence (of being more or less real) went out of fashion with the rise of analytic philosophy early in the 20th century, specifically, with Russell's 1905 article ‘On Denoting’, for in 1904 and earlier years he and G. E. Moore held a sort of Meinongian theory of degrees of existence (subsistence and existence are distinguished, with existence being a higher degree of being than subsistence). Early work by Frege also rejected the notion of degreed existence and implied that existence is an all or nothing affair; either something exists or it does not exist, and it makes no sense to talk about it existing to some degree. Most (but not all) philosophers from Plato to Meinong have held doctrines of degrees of existence. Unfortunately, however, they also denied this obvious temporal fact about reality, for they explained degrees of reality in other ways than the way we know it (as being more or less distant from the present).

55 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of the demolition process of time denial in physics and argue that extreme radicalism is empirically self-refuting, and that the prospect for tempered radicalism in a timeless theory of quantum gravity is discussed.
Abstract: Introduction The conceptual and technical difficulties involved in creating a quantum theory of gravity have led some physicists to question, and even in some cases to deny, the reality of time. More surprisingly, this denial has found a sympathetic audience among certain philosophers of physics. What should we make of these wild ideas? Does it even make sense to deny the reality of time? In fact physical science has been chipping away at common sense aspects of time ever since its inception. Section 1 offers a brief survey of the demolition process. Section 2 distinguishes a tempered from an extremely radical form that a denial of time might take, and argues that extreme radicalism is empirically self-refuting. Section 3 begins an investigation of the prospects for tempered radicalism in a timeless theory of quantum gravity. How Physics Bears on the Reality of Time Let me begin with a quotation: Time by itself does not exist. Time gets its meaning from the objects: from the fact that events are in the past, or that they are here now, or they will follow in the future. It is not possible that anybody may measure time by itself; it may only be measured by looking at the motion of the objects, or at their peaceful quiet. This quote is from Lucretius's De Rerum Natura . It illustrates the fact that, for a long time now, there have been philosophers who have doubted the reality of time.

46 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them, and that such a perception would put us in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck.
Abstract: A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented with this thing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa.

37 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a new analysis of the misunderstood notion of becoming, developed from hints in Godel's published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time, is proposed, based on a rotating solution to the field equation.
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 Godel's published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time. I claim that recent endorsements of such arguments, based on Godel'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 needed tertium quid between 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.

35 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Bob Hale1
TL;DR: Logical knowledge is knowledge about logic that is not the same thing as knowledge that is gained by using logic, i.e. inferential knowledge, and it is barely open to question that—if there is any logical knowledge at all—there is a lot of inferential logical knowledge.
Abstract: At least some of us, at least some of the time—when not in the grip of radical sceptical doubt—are inclined to believe that we know, for example, that if we infer a conclusion from two true premises, one a conditional whose consequent is that conclusion and the other the antecedent of that conditional, then our conclusion must be true, or that we know similar things about other simple patterns of inference. If we do indeed have knowledge of this sort, it is what I mean by logical knowledge. Logical knowledge is, roughly speaking, knowledge about logic—such as knowledge that a certain principle of inference necessarily preserves truth, or that every proposition of a certain form must be true—and so is not the same thing as knowledge that is gained by using logic, i.e. inferential knowledge. That is not to say, of course, that logical knowledge can't be inferential. On the contrary, it is barely open to question that—if there is any logical knowledge at all—there is a lot of inferential logical knowledge. For example, if we know that the introduction and elimination principles for the conditional are truth-preserving, we can surely get to know, by inference, that the principle of hypothetical syllogism (i.e. transitivity of the conditional) is so too, not to mention other, less obvious and more recondite, examples of putative logical knowledge.

29 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The notion of downward causation was introduced by as mentioned in this paper, who showed that the proper explanation of the motions of an atom at the tip of my forefinger primarily involves my intentions, rather than the immediately preceding motions of other nearby atoms, or any other such particle-level events.
Abstract: Since the death of strong reductionism, philosophers of science have expanded the horizons of their understandings of the physical, mental, and social worlds, and the complex relations among them. To give one interesting example, John Dupre has endorsed a notion of downward causation: ‘higher-level’ events causing events at a ‘lower’ ontological level. For example, my intention to type the letter ‘t’ causes the particular motions experienced by all the atoms in my left forefinger as I type it. The proper explanation of the motions of an atom at the tip of my forefinger primarily involves my intentions, rather than (for example) the immediately preceding motions of other nearby atoms, or any other such particle–level events.

25 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a discussion of rule-following inspired by Wittgenstein, Kripke asks us to consider the relation which holds between meaning plus by ‘+' and answering questions like, ‘What is the sum of 68 and 57?’ as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In a discussion of rule-following inspired by Wittgenstein, Kripke asks us to consider the relation which holds between meaning plus by ‘+’ and answering questions like, ‘What is the sum of 68 and 57?’. A dispositional theory has it that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then you will probably answer, ‘125’. That is because, according to such a theory, to mean plus by ‘+’ is , roughly speaking, to be disposed, by and large, and among other things, to answer such questions with the correct sum. Kripke wants to emphasize, by contrast, that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then, faced with the question, ‘What is 68 + 57?’ you ought to answer, ‘125’. One could sum up the assumption about meaning which appears to underpin this criticism of dispositional theories in terms of the slogan that meaning is normative. Allan Gibbard gives us a way of reading that slogan which is suggested by Kripke's brief remarks: The crux of the slogan that meaning is normative … might be another slogan: that means implies ought . To use roughly Kripke's example, from statements saying what I mean by the plus sign and other arithmetic terms and constructions, it will follow that I ought to answer ‘7’ when asked ‘What's 5 + 2?’.

22 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal and almost no one agrees with his conclusion today as mentioned in this paper. But his argument remains the locus classicus for both the A-theory and the Btheory of time.
Abstract: McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal Today, almost no one agrees with his conclusion1 But his argument remains the locus classicus for both the A–theory and the B-theory of time I want to show how McTaggart's argument provided the impetus for both of these opposing views of the nature of time I will also present and defend what I take to be the correct view of the nature of time

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Does not the theory of a general tendency of entropy to diminish take too much for granted?
Abstract: Does not the theory of a general tendency of entropy to diminish [sic] take too much for granted? To a certain extent it is supported by experimental evidence. We must accept such evidence as far as it goes and no further. We have no right to supplement it by a large draft of the scientific imagination. (Burbury 1904, 49)

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a recent article, "Tensed Time and Our Differential Experience of the Past and Future" as mentioned in this paper, William Lane Craig (1999a) attempts to resuscitate A. N. Prior's (1959) "Thank Goodness" argument against the B-theory by combining it with Plantinga's (1983) views about basic beliefs.
Abstract: In a recent article, ‘Tensed Time and Our Differential Experience of the Past and Future,’ William Lane Craig (1999a) attempts to resuscitate A. N. Prior's (1959) ‘Thank Goodness’ argument against the B-theory by combining it with Plantinga's (1983) views about basic beliefs. In essence Craig's view is that since there is a universal experience and belief in the objectivity of tense and the reality of becoming, (that he identifies with ‘the presentist metaphysic’) ‘this belief constitutes an intrinsic defeater-defeater which overwhelms the objections brought against it.’ (1999a, 519) An intrinsic defeater-defeater is a belief that enjoys such warrant for us that it simply overwhelms the defeaters brought against it without specifically rebutting or undercutting them. Thus, Craig claims that an effete philosophical argument like McTaggart's paradox is nothing more than ‘an engaging and recalcitrant brain teaser whose conclusion nobody really takes seriously.’ (1999a, 532) It is difficult to reconcile this statement with Craig's own writings elsewhere. For Craig has vigorously argued in at least two other articles that 'hybrid A-B theorists like McCall, Schlesinger, and Smith [who give ontological status to both A-properties and B-relations] are in deep trouble’ (1998, 127) since they are all effectively refuted by McTaggart's Paradox (cf. Craig 1997). It is not Craig's inconsistency regarding the significance of McTaggart conundrum that I want to draw attention to, however. Rather I wish to raise a different issue.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names. The enterprise is of particular interest because the theories are very similar in fundamental respects. In particular, they can agree on three major features of names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful. Neither theory by itself offers complete explanations of all three features. But each theory is consistent with them and goes some way towards explaining them.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The somewhat naive opinions of the previous paragraph are subject to attack from many sides It may be objected that an activity does not count as thinking at all unless it is at least minimally logical, so logic is constitutive of thought rather than a guide to it.
Abstract: Logic ought to guide our thinking It is better, more rational, more intelligent to think logically than to think illogically Illogical thought leads to bad judgment and error In any case, if logic had no role to play as a guide to thought, why should we bother with it?The somewhat naive opinions of the previous paragraph are subject to attack from many sides It may be objected that an activity does not count as thinking at all unless it is at least minimally logical, so logic is constitutive of thought rather than a guide to it Or it may be objected that whereas logic describes a system of timeless relations between propositions, thinking is a dynamic process involving revisions, and so could not use a merely static guide Or again the objection may be that there is no such thing as logic, only a whole variety of different logics, not all of which could possibly be good guides

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors show that there is a rival to Mellor's view of time against which the first horn of the dilemma begs the question both as originally presented, and as supplemented, and their refutation requires an answer from a presentist metaphysics, to a question which came to the fore only after Prior's death.
Abstract: For twenty years, D. H. Mellor has promoted an influential defence of a view of time he first called the ‘tenseless’ view, but now associates with what he calls the ‘B-theory.’ It is his defence of this view, not the view itself, which is generally taken to be novel. It is organized around a forcefully presented attack on rival views which he claims to be a development of McTaggart's celebrated argument that the ‘A-series’ is contradictory. I will call this attack ‘Mellor's McTaggart.’ Although it has received much critical attention, it has not been well understood. For one thing, it has changed over the years in a way that is little appreciated. Whereas Mellor's (1981) original version amounts to a dilemma each horn of which contains a single strand of argument, later statements (1986, 1998) of the first horn contain a second strand of argument unannounced. I shall be concerned to disentangle these strands. I shall also show them to have been largely anticipated by Gareth Evans (1979). However, my main aim is not the clarification of Mellor's McTaggart, but its refutation. I shall show that there is a rival to Mellor's view of time against which the first horn of the dilemma begs the question both as originally presented, and as supplemented. This rival is a ‘Priorean’ version of the ‘presentist’ doctrine that only what is present exists. Although Prior himself gave McTaggart's own argument short shrift, in refuting Mellor's development of it I do not merely resurrect Prior's moves. Mellor's McTaggart introduces specifically semantic considerations. It focuses not as McTaggart did on presentness and futurity etc., but on the truth-values of tokens of propositions in which presentness and futurity etc. are (said to be) ascribed. Consequently, its refutation requires an answer, from the perspective of a presentist metaphysics, to a question which came to the fore only after Prior's death. The question is this: How should semantic theory be developed in the light of the need for a theory of linguistic understanding? Though Evans (1979) flirted with the issue of how this question should be answered from a presentist perspective, the answer he articulates is wrong. I shall do no more than sketch the correct answer. That is all a refutation of Mellor's McTaggart requires.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The real paradox of Zeno's Arrow is that, although entirely stationary, it has, against all odds, successfully traversed over two millennia of human thought to trouble successive generations of philosophers as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Perhaps the real paradox of Zeno's Arrow is that, although entirely stationary, it has, against all odds, successfully traversed over two millennia of human thought to trouble successive generations of philosophers. The prospects were not good: few original Zenonian fragments survive, and our access to the paradoxes has been for the most part through unsympathetic commentaries. Moreover, like its sister paradoxes of motion, the Arrow has repeatedly been dismissed as specious and easily dissolved. Even those commentators who have taken it seriously have propounded solutions with which they profess themselves to be perfectly satisfied. So my question is: will Zeno's Arrow survive into the millennium just begun?

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the worm theory and the stage theory are compared, and it is shown that considerations of special relativity favor the worm theories over the stage theories, and that the fundamental entities of the perdurantist ontology are stages.
Abstract: Four–dimensionalism, or perdurantism, the view that temporally extended objects persist through time by having (spatio-)temporal parts or stages, includes two varieties, the worm theory and the stage theory. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four–dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of space–time and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. The stage theorist, however, claims, not that perduring objects have stages, but that the fundamental entities of the perdurantist ontology are stages. I argue that considerations of special relativity favor the worm theory over the stage theory.

Journal ArticleDOI
Julia Tanney1
TL;DR: Sainsbury as discussed by the authors develops the idea that the "compossibility of objectivity, discovery, and invention" is part of our ordinary (non-theoretical, non-scientific) understanding of the mental.
Abstract: This article develops the idea that the ‘compossibility of objectivity, discovery, and invention’ is part of our ordinary (non-theoretical, non-scientific) understanding of the mental. Contemporary theories in the philosophy of mind, which are broadly speaking “realist” fail to make sense of this compossibility: they fail, in particular, to make sense of the inventive aspects of self-ascription. The invited article is in a small collection published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy as a supplement to the journal Philosophy. This particular volume is remarkable as it includes articles from a number of eminent philosophers, including R.M. Sainsbury, David Wiggins, Gregory McCulloch, Crispin Wright, Christopher Peacocke, Timothy Williams, and Charles Travis.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The presentism of Barbour and Butterfield as discussed by the authors is the view that our access to the past is mediated by records or local representations of it, and it can be arrived at by thinking of time as decomposing in some natural way linearly ordered atomic parts, "moments".
Abstract: I want to consider some features of the position put forward by Julian Barbour in The End of Time that seem to me of particular philosophical interest. At the level of generality at which I'll be concerned with it, the view is relatively easy to describe. It can be arrived at by thinking of time as decomposing in some natural way linearly ordered atomic parts, ‘moments’, and combining an observation about the internal structure of moments with an epistemological doctrine about our access to the past. The epistemological doctrine, which I'll call ‘Presentism’, following Butterfield, is the view that our access to the past is mediated by records, or local representations, of it. The observation is that the state of the world at any moment has the structure of what Barbour calls a ‘time capsule’, which is to say that it constitutes a partial record of its past, it is pregnant with interrelated mutually consistent representations of its own history.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relativistic impulse springs from strongly held beliefs such as the following: snails are delicious, cockroaches are disgusting, marital infidelity is alright provided nobody gets hurt, a Pacific sunset trumps any Impressionist canvas, philosophy is pointless if it is not widely intelligible, the belief that there is life elsewhere in the universe is justified, death is nothing to fear.
Abstract: Let me begin with a reminder of the crude but intuitive distinction from which the relativistic impulse springs. Any of the following claims would be likely to find both supporters and dissenters:That snails are deliciousThat cockroaches are disgustingThat marital infidelity is alright provided nobody gets hurtThat a Pacific sunset trumps any Impressionist canvasand perhapsThat Philosophy is pointless if it is not widely intelligibleThat the belief that there is life elsewhere in the universe is justifiedThat death is nothing to fearDisputes about such claims may or may not involve quite strongly held convictions and attitudes. Sometimes they may be tractable disputes: there may be some other matter about which one of the disputing parties is mistaken or ignorant, where such a mistake or ignorance can perhaps be easily remedied, with the result of a change of heart about the original claim; or there may be a type of experience of which one of the disputing parties is innocent, and such that the effect of initiation into that experience is, once again, a change of view.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: McDowell as discussed by the authors argues that hostility to psychologism is not hostility to the psychological "Psychologism", but hostility to scientism, which is either one of several forms of scientism.
Abstract: ‘Hostility to psychologism’, John McDowell writes, 'is not hostility to the psychological ‘Psychologism’ is an accusation But it may be either of severalThe psychologism McDowell is master of detecting is, as he sometimes puts it, a form of scientism It is a priori psychology where, at best, only substantive empirical psychology would do It often represents itself as describing the way any thinker (or any empirical, or language-using one) must be; as describing requirements on being a thinker at all But it misses viable alternatives It is just speculation as to how we are

Journal ArticleDOI
A. W. Moore1
TL;DR: The authors look at six common things that we do with words and show how we can hold fast to a simple common-sense view of what we are doing despite the doubts to which reflection is apt to give rise.
Abstract: My title is a quotation from Davidson's essay ‘On Saying That’. And although my concerns are at some remove from his, they do connect at one significant point. We (non-philosophers as well as philosophers) find ourselves under the continual pressure of theory to deny that ordinary familiar semantic features of ordinary familiar words equip them to serve certain ordinary familiar functions. One of Davidson's aims is to resist that pressure as far as the function of reporting indirect speech is concerned. In similar vein I want to look at some common things that we do with words and show how we can hold fast to a simple common-sense view of what we are doing despite the doubts to which reflection is apt to give rise. In fact I want to look at six things we do with words, six linguistic moves we make. These six moves are related in a number of important ways. Even so, they are really the subjects of six separate essays (six separate sketchy essays at that), and I am well aware that treating them together in the way that I shall be doing—worse still, trying thereby to make some headway with solving one or two extremely difficult philosophical problems, as I shall also be doing—will mean that in each case I can at best produce something highly programmatic.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It seems to be an obvious truth that there could be more people, or trees, or cars than there actually are as discussed by the authors, and it is also sufficient for the truth of (1) that some pepole, or tree, or car that are distinct from all those that actually exist.
Abstract: It seems to be an obvious truth that(1) There could be something that doesn't actually exist.That is, it seems to be obiously true that(1a) ◊∃×(Actually ∼ (× exists)).It is sufficient for the truth of (1) that there could be more people, or trees, or cars, than there actually are. It is also sufficient for the truth of (1) that there could be some pepole, or trees, or cars that are distinct from all those that actually exist. Do (1) and suchlike statements involve a commitment to possibilia, to things that possibly exist, but do not actually exist? If not, why not? And if so, what is the nature of the possibilia to which (1) and its ilk commit us? These simple little questions are at the tip of an iceberg.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Backward causation requires the so-called full view, or possibly the half-full view, of time as discussed by the authors, and it is not possible to see how backward causation can arise in the real world.
Abstract: Over the last forty years, philosophers have argued back and forth about backward causation. It requires a certain structure of time for something as backward causation to be not only possible but also to take place in the real world. In case temporal becoming is an objective feature of the world in the sense that the future is unreal, or at least ontologically indeterminate, it is impossible to see how backward causation can arise. Th e same difficulty does not hold with respect to forward causation. For even though it is assumed according to one dynamic view of time, the instant view or presentism, that merely present events exist—and past events therefore are no longer real or have become ontologically indeterminate—such a view can still maintain that past events once were there to cause present events. Future events, however, are still to come, and being indeterminate or nothing at all, they cannot cause any events in the present. In other words, causation backwards in time can occur only if we think of time as static; that is, no objective becoming exists, and the world consists of tenselessly occurring future events that exist in the same sense as past and present events. Backward causation requires the so-called full view, or possibly the half-full view, of time.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The idea of mental representation occupies a rather prominent place in much contemporary discussion, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and not as a particularly controversial idea either as mentioned in this paper, however, the reflections here, however, are intended to douse much of that discussion with some cold water.
Abstract: To the memory of Alan White The idea of mental representation occupies a rather prominent place in much contemporary discussion, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and not as a particularly controversial idea either. My reflections here, however, are intended to douse much of that discussion with some cold water. I should emphasize at the outset that I have no problems at all with the very idea of mental representation. What I find quite unsatisfactory is the philosophical or doctrinal underpinning of much current theorising about it. Anyway, I shall suggest that talk of mental representation needs at least to be supplemented with, if not actually replaced by, a distinct notion of mental presentation , which cannot be reduced to it. But I start with the notion of an impression.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a sense, the answer is obious: beliefs are so marked. Yet that bromide leads directly to competing schools of thought as mentioned in this paper. And the reason is simple.
Abstract: Consider the frame S believes that—. Fill it with a conditional, say If you eat an Apple, you'll drink a Coke. what makes the result true? More generally, what facts are marked by instances of S believes (A→C)? In a sense the answer is obious: beliefs are so marked. Yet that bromide leads directly to competing schools of thought. And the reason is simple. Common-sense thinks of belief two ways. Sometimes it sees it as a three-part affair. When so viewed either you believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment. This take on belief is coarse-grained. It says belief has three flavours: acceptance, rejection, neither. But it's not the only way common-sense thinks of belief. Sometimes it's more subtle: ‘How strong is your faith?’ can be apposite between believers. That signals an important fact. Ordinary practice also treats belief as a fine-grained affair. It speaks of levels of confidence. It admits degrees of belief. It contains a fine-grained take as well. There are two ways belief is seen in everyday life. One is coarse-grained. The other is fine-grained.