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‘Thank Goodness it's Over there!’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

C. L. Hardin
Affiliation:
Syracuse University

Abstract

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Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1984

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References

1 Philosophy, January 1959, 12–17.

2 J. M. E. McTaggart, Philosophical Studies (London: Arnold, 1934), Ch. 5.

3 Nothing essential hinges on this two-dimensional space being curved rather than flat.

4 The physical phenomena of Smooth Mapping need not be identicalfor all observers, but they should be similar enough for the construction of a reliable science. Indeed, if there were no physical difference among the experiences of the inhabitants, they might not develop the notion that they were spatially contemporaneous. Even so, they are likely to represent space perpendicular to and in the direction of travel rather differently, since the latter consists of places accessible to a giveninhabitant and the former does not. (This creates no problem for the present analysis since it remains true that no place may be visited twice.) My thanks to Jonathan Bennett and Tom McKay who helped make the exposition of the ideas more Smooth and less Broken than they might otherwise have been.