Philosophers' Imprint: Thoroughly Modern McTaggart: Or, What McTaggart Would Have Said if He Had Read the General Theory of Relativity

Author:	John Earman
Title:	Thoroughly Modern McTaggart: Or, What McTaggart Would Have Said if He Had Read the General Theory of Relativity
Publication Info:	Ann Arbor, Michigan: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan University Library Philosophers' Imprint August 2002
Source:	Thoroughly Modern McTaggart: Or, What McTaggart Would Have Said if He Had Read the General Theory of Relativity John Earman Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan, University Library vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1-28, August 2002
Abstract:	The philosophical literature on time and change is fixated on the issue of whether the B-series account of change is adequate or whether real change requires Becoming of either the property-based variety of McTaggart's A-series or the non-property-based form embodied in C. D. Broad's idea of the piling up of successive layers of existence. For present purposes it is assumed that the B-series suffices to ground real change. But then it is noted that modern science in the guise of Einstein's general theory poses a threat to real change by implying that none of the genuine physical magnitudes countenanced by the theory changes its value with time. The aims of this paper are to explain how this seemingly paradoxical conclusion arises and to assess the merits and demerits of possible reactions to it.
Keywords:	time change relativity Einstein McTaggart C.D. Broad
URL:	http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0002.003
PDF:	Link to full PDF [0.6mb ]

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