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Towards a View of Time as Depth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Alexander J. Argyros
Alexander J. Argyros*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Dallas

Extract

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One of the more recalcitrant issues in the philosophy of time concerns the question of temporal asymmetry. Some theorists, many of them, like Einstein, physicists, believe that time is fundamentally reversible. According to this view, the physical universe is indifferent to the direction of time; consequently, something like an arrow of time is held to be a human subjective imposition on an otherwise temporally isotropic world. Another position, held by Alfred North Whitehead and contemporary process philosophers, maintains that temporal asymmetry is a primitive condition of the universe, and that therefore even the most basic physical processes, such as those occurring at the subatomic level, display a distinct temporal direction. Finally, the philosopher of time J.T. Fraser (1978) claims that temporal asymmetry is an emergent feature of the universe, appearing for the first time with biogenesis. According to Fraser, with the emergence of life comes a present, or “now”, a temporal dimension whose absence in more primitive levels of cosmic evolution prohibits the attribution of an arrow of time to any pre-biotic entity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 38 , Issue 151 , September 1990 , pp. 29 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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