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Band 49 (2012) Located at the crossroads between natural 1 philosophy, the theory and history of / science, and the philosophy of technology, philosophiaphilosophia philosophia naturalis Journal for The philosophy of naTure has represented for many decades – not 2012 / Journal for The only in the German speaking countries but internationally – a broad range philosophy of naTure 49 naturalis of topics not addressed by any other naturalis periodical. The journal has a highly interdisciplinary Herausgeber / Editors Andreas Bartels focus. Articles with systematic as well Bernd-Olaf Küppers as historical approaches are published C. Ulises Moulines in German and English. Their quality is assured by a strict peer review policy. Inhaltlich an der Schnittstelle zwischen Naturphilosophie, Wissen- schaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte Temporal exisTence and persisTence und Technik-Philosophie angesiedelt, in spaceTime vertritt die Zeitschrift Cord Friebe (ed.) philosophia naturalis Journal for The philosophy of naTure philosophia naturalis seit mehreren Jahrzehnten nicht nur im Yuri Balashov Do Composite Objects Have an Age in deutschen Sprachraum, sondern auch im Relativistic Spacetime? internationalen Vergleich, einen weiten Mauro Dorato Presentism/Eternalism and Endurantism/ Themenbereich, der von keinem anderen Perdurantism: Why the Unsubstantiality of the Publikationsorgan vertreten wird. First Debate Implies that of the Second Die Zeitschrift ist ausgesprochen Florian Fischer On the Asymmetry of Endurantistic and interdisziplinär ausgerichtet. Sie Perdurantistic Coexistence in Special Relativity veröffentlicht Aufsätze in deutscher Cord Friebe Eternalism and the Temporal Content of und englischer Sprache, die sowohl Persistence systematisch als auch historisch Cody Gilmore Keep in Touch orientiert sind. Deren Qualität Thomas Müller Indeterminism and Persistence wird durch ein besonders strenges Thorben Petersen Explicating Eternalism – A Study in Begutachtungsverfahren Metaontology gesichert. ISSN 0031-8027 www.klostermann.de ISBN 978-3-465-04155-9 KLOSTERMANN Band / Volume 49 / 2012 Heft / Issue 1 1201umschlag.indd 1 11.04.2012 15:16:17 philosophia Journal for the PhilosoPhy of nature naturalis 49 / 2012 / 1 Herausgeber / Editors Andreas Bartels Bernd-Olaf Küppers C. Ulises Moulines Beirat / Editorial Board Werner Diederich (Hamburg) Michael Esfeld (Lausanne) Don Howard (Notre Dame) Andreas Hüttemann (Münster) Bernulf Kanitscheider (Gießen) Daryn Lehoux (Kingston, Ontario) James Lennox (Pittsburgh) Holger Lyre (Magdeburg) Peter Mittelstaedt (Köln) Felix Mühlhölzer (Göttingen) Friedrich Rapp (Dortmund) Friedrich Steinle (Berlin) Manfred Stöckler (Bremen) Eckart Voland (Gießen) Gerhard Vollmer (Braunschweig) Marcel Weber (Konstanz) Michael Wolff (Bielefeld) KLOSTERMANN © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Cord Friebe (ed.) temPoral existence and Persistence in sPacetime Cord Friebe Preface 5 Yuri Balashov Do Composite Objects Have an Age in Relativistic Spacetime? 9 Mauro Dorato Presentism/Eternalism and Endurantism/ Perdurantism: Why the Unsubstantiality of the First Debate Implies that of the Second 25 Florian Fischer On the Asymmetry of Endurantistic and Perdurantistic Coexistence in Special Relativity 43 Cord Friebe Eternalism and the Temporal Content of Persistence 63 Cody Gilmore Keep in Touch 85 Thomas Müller Indeterminism and Persistence 113 Thorben Petersen Explicating Eternalism – A Study in Metaontology 137 Verzeichnis der Autoren 162 Richtlinien zur Manuskriptgestaltung 163 © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. The articles are indexed in The Philosopher’s Index and Mathematical Reviews. Abonnenten der Printausgabe können über Ingentaconnect auf die Online- Ausgabe der Zeitschrift zugreifen: www.ingentaconnect.com Zurückliegende Jahrgänge sind mit einer Sperrfrist von fünf Jahren für die Abonnenten von www.digizeitschriften.de zugänglich. © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2012 Die Zeitschrift und alle in ihr enthaltenen Beiträge und Abbildungen sind urheberrechlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Satz: Mirjam Loch, Frankfurt am Main / Druck: KM-Druck, Groß-Umstadt. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier ∞ ISO 9706. ISBN 978-3-465-04155-9 ISSN 0031-8027 © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Preface Relativity still challenges the philosophy of time: although several sophisticated theories of temporal existence and persistence have been developed in the last decades, there is still an ongoing debate about how to apply the various concepts to spacetime theories and about whether those distinctions are even relevant at all for the ontology of spacetime. As it turns out ontologists of spacetime physics can broadly be arranged into two different camps: the first group is concerned with the appar- ently central question in the philosophy of (space-)time, i. e., whether the present is ontologically distinguished. The second deals with the problem of temporal change: material objects persist through (space-) time and survive change – how do they manage to do so? Both debates have reached a high level of specialization; they are ‘overspecialized’, in my view, and need to be interrelated. So, the main purpose of this issue is: to bring together “temporal existence” and “persistence” in space- time. I shall say in few words about why this is a desideratum and why this could be fruitful. Since the famous Putnam/Stein-controversy (1967/68) philosophers of spacetime physics have examined the relation between time and real- ity. Is the present ontologically distinguished – or by being the edge of determination (growing block view), separating an ‘open’ future from a ‘fixed’ past, or even existentially by being all there is (presentism)? Or, is spacetime rather, somehow, a ‘static’ block universe within all events exist simply by being located somewhere, at some spacetime point p or other, independently of p being present? And, if so, is there any room in that block universe for becoming (as opposed to merely being) and for change (as opposed to mere spatial variation)? All these questions are usually discussed under the common assumption that the funda- mental entities in spacetime are point-events, i.e., spatially and tempo- rally unextended simples – Einsteinian flashes of lightning, for example. Compositions of those point-events into spatially extended wholes or into temporally extended objects have been considered, for a long time, as being merely pragmatic. Persistence as a matter of ontology was – in its application to spacetime theories – for many years not considered. But this seems to be idiosyncratic, in my view. Firstly, from a historical philosophia naturalis 49 / 2012 / 1 © Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. 6 Cord Friebe point of view: According to Kant, to give a paradigmatic example and to mention a classical presentist (at least as I would read him), “Beharr- lichkeit” is the criterion of “Wirklichkeit”, thus persistence is essential for temporal existence. Secondly, from a purely analytical standpoint: According to Mellor, to mention a paradigmatic contemporary eternal- ist, persistence (endurance, in this case) is likewise essential for tempo- ral existence, namely in order to give “existence” a temporal content, in particular, to distinguish temporal change from a-temporal variation. Hence, the temporal-existence group should say more about persist- ence. On the other hand, the ontology of persistence and change – name- ly, in terms of contemporary analytic philosophy, the investigation of whether objects survive change by being “wholly present” at more than one time (endurantism) or by having different “temporal parts” (perdu- rantism) – has been discussed so far, by philosophers of spacetime phys- ics, exclusively with the underlying assumption of the so-called eternal- ist hypothesis. But this is apparently too restrictive: it firstly suggests (wrongly, in my view) that other views of time and reality are already refuted by the theories of relativity. Why not consider, for instance, per- sisting objects in a growing block universe? At least in the light of quan- tum physics, relativity should be compatible with an ontological inde- terminism and so, perhaps, with a dynamic view of temporal existence. Several interesting questions concerning persisting objects may arise: what does it mean, for example, that a persisting object perdures if the world is dynamical and/or indeterministic? Secondly, the underlying eternalist hypothesis itself seems to be ambiguous: Sometimes the block universe is conceived of in a way that does not allow for any (objective) temporally restricted or ‘perspectival’ sense of “existence”. And some- times, in contrast, there is distinguished a narrow concept of “exist- ence-at” from an unrestricted “existence-simpliciter”. So, it threatens a switching between two different block universe views, with important consequences for the endurance/perdurance distinction. The eternalist hypothesis should therefore be reconsidered, and the persistence-camp should also broaden its scope. This special issue collects papers from the international workshop
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