This book is intended as an exposition of a particular theory of time in the sense of an interrelated set of attempted solutions to philosophical problems about it. Generally speaking there are two views about time held by philosophers and some scientists interested in philosophical issues. The first called the A-theory (after McTaggart's expression A-determinations for the properties of being past, present or future) is often thought to be closer to our commonsense view of time or to the concept of time presupposed by ordinary language. It includes at least the following theses, (a) Logic ought really to include tensed quantifiers for existence on one of its important usages means, present existence. More generally, we can't reduce all tensed locutions to tenseless ones. (b) The distinction between past, present and future is an objective one. It is not, for example, dependent on our consciousness of change; some A-theorists hold also, that the distinction, in effect, is an absolute one.
Presenting the history of space-time physics, from Newton to Einstein, as a philosophical development DiSalle reflects our increasing understanding of the connections between ideas of space and time and our physical knowledge. He suggests that philosophy's greatest impact on physics has come about, less by the influence of philosophical hypotheses, than by the philosophical analysis of concepts of space, time and motion, and the roles they play in our assumptions about physical objects and physical measurements. This way of thinking leads to interpretations of the work of Newton and Einstein and the connections between them. It also offers ways of looking at old questions about a priori knowledge, the physical interpretation of mathematics, and the nature of conceptual change. Understanding Space-Time will interest readers in philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and physics, as well as readers interested in the relations between physics and philosophy.
Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time.
The Philosophy of Time Society grew out of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on the Philosophy of Time offered by George Schlesinger in 1991. The members of that seminar wanted to promote interest in the philosophy of time and Jon N. Turgerson offered to become the first Director of the society with the initial costs underwritten by the Drake University Center for the Humanities. Thus, the Philosophy of Time Society (PTS) was formed in 1993. Its goal is to promote the study of the philosophy of time from a broad analytic perspective, and to provide a forum as an affiliated group with the American Philosophical Association, to discuss the issues in and related to the philosophy of time. The society held its first meeting during the Eastern Division of the AP A in Atlanta, George, in December 1993. In 1997 I began my tenure as Executive Director of PTS and with my term ending in 2000, I decided to put together a volume of selected papers read at PTS meetings over the years. The result is the present volume. It contains some of the latest developments in the field, including discussions of recent books by Michael Tooley, Time, Tense, and Causation, and D. H. Mellor, Real Time II, and much more. The main issue in the philosophy of time is and remains the status of temporal becoming and the passage of time.
Although scholarship in philosophy of action has grown in recent years, there has been little work explicitly dealing with the role of time in agency, a role with great significance for the study of action. As the articles in this collection demonstrate, virtually every fundamental issue in the philosophy of action involves considerations of time. The four sections of this volume address the metaphysics of action, diachronic practical rationality, the relation between deliberation and action, and the phenomenology of agency, providing an overview of the central developments in each area with an emphasis on the role of temporality. Including contributions by established, rising, and new voices in the field, Time and the Philosophy of Action brings analytic work in philosophy of action together with contributions from continental philosophy and cognitive science to elaborate the central thesis that agency not only develops in time but is shaped by it at every level.
It is ten years since Adolf Griinbaum published the first edition of this book. It was promptly recognized to be one of the few major works in the philosophy of the natural sciences of this generation. In part, this is so because Griinbaum has chosen a problem basic both to philosophy and to the natural sciences - the nature of space and time; and in part, this is so because he so admirably exemplifies that Aristotelian devotion to the intimate and mutual dependence of actual science and philosophical understanding. More than this, however, the quality of his work derives from his achievement in combining detail with scope. The problems of space and time have been among the most difficult in contemporary and classical thought, and Griinbaum has been responsible to the full depth and complexity of these difficulties. This revised and enlarged second edition is a work in progress, in the tradition of reflective analysis of modern science of such figures as Ehrenfest and Reichenbach. In publishing this work among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we hope to contribute to and encourage that broad tradition of natural philosophy which is marked by the close collaboration of philoso phers and scientists. To this end, we have published the proceedings of our Colloquia, of meetings and conferences here and abroad, as well as the works of single authors.
A new 2024 translation of Martin Heidegger's major work "Being and Time" (Sein und Zeit), originally published in 1927 in multiple publications. This edition contains a new afterword by the Translator, a timeline of Heidegger's life and works, a philosophic index of core Heideggerian concepts and a guide for terminology across 19th and 20th century Existentialists. This translation is designed for readability and accessibility to Heidegger's enigmatic and dense philosophy. Complex and specific philosophic terms are translated as literally as possible and academic footnotes have been removed to ensure easy reading. Being and Time presents a complex philosophical discourse on the nature of being (Sein) and time (Zeit), focusing in particular on the temporal-existentialist concept of Dasein, a term that combines the German words for "to be" (sein) and "there" (da). This classic philosophic work examines the traditional metaphysical understanding of being, arguing that this understanding, typically based on the idea of a constant presence, fails to account for the temporal and existential dimensions of being. Heidegger proposes that an understanding of being requires an analysis of Dasein, which is characterized not only by its existence, but also by its being in the world and its temporal existence. The concept of Dasein is central to the his argument, emphasizing that Dasein is always already situated in a world, and its understanding of being is shaped by its temporal existence. This perspective challenges traditional metaphysical notions of being as static and unchanging, proposing instead that being is fundamentally temporal and connected to human existence and understanding. As the title suggests, Heidegger sees the question of Being as indistinguishable from Time, arguing that Newtonian conceptions of time as a series of now-points are inadequate for understanding the being of Dasein. His Ontochronology argues that the existential and ontological analysis of Dasein reveals a more fundamental concept of time, one that is integral to the structure of Being itself. The text further elaborates on the idea of "thrownness" and several other existentialist themes. Thrownness is one of the three conditions that signifies Dasein's immersion in the world, where it finds itself already entangled in a web of relations and meanings. This "thrownness", combined with Dasein's inherent being-toward-death, underscores the existential condition of human beings, framing their existence as a continual engagement with their own finitude and the possibilities of their being. Heidegger posits that understanding the nature of being requires a fundamental rethinking of both being and time, dogmatically stating that the true nature of being can only be grasped through an understanding of the temporality that characterizes the existence of being.
The issues of the nature and existence of God, time and infinity, respectively, and how they relate to each other, are some of the most complicated problems of metaphysics.This volume presents contributions of thirteen internationally renowned scholars who deal with various aspects of these complex issues. The contributions were presented and discussed during the international conference: God, Time, Infinity held in Warsaw, September 22—24, 2015.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a thinker of extraordinary range and creativity who has left enduring legacies in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this volume a team of distinguished contributors examine all the main aspects of Newton's thought, including not only his approach to space, time, mechanics, and universal gravity in his Principia, his research in optics, and his contributions to mathematics, but also his more clandestine investigations into alchemy, theology, and prophecy, which have sometimes been overshadowed by his mathematical and scientific interests.
