Notes for 4/6/2026

 4/6/2026
[Philosophy Club every Monday, 4-5 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")]
[Bioethics Club: Mondays from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Leigh Hall 408]

How fast does time pass?
 
What is time?

Time is often compared to space

Time line

Time is often considered to be symmetrical with respect to past and future

Does time have a direction?


There are different conceptual models of time

There are three dominant models of time:

1.    Presentism (only the present exists)
a.    The past used to exist but doesn’t anymore
b.    The future will exist but doesn’t now
c.    The present exists, but not for long
(Analogy: novel written in disappearing ink)

2.    Fixed past open future (growing block view)
a.    The past is “fixed”. What has happened is a permanent part of history and has as KIND of reality.
b.    The future is open (undetermined). What is going to happen is not yet fixed.
c.    The present exists and is somehow more robust than the past (the past has a kind of ersatz reality)

(Analogy: novel written in permanent ink)

3.    Block universe or 4-dimensionalism 
a.    Past, present, and future are all equally real. All equally fixed.
b.    The “present” / “now” functions like “here” in space.
(Analogy: Novel that is already written.)


One reason in favor of the 4-D model: 
Truthmaker theory
Correspondence theory of truth = truth is accurate description of reality

A “truthmaker” is what exists on the side of a description to MAKE the description true.

Tomorrow I will have lunch with Bob.
Yesterday I had lunch with Bob.
In order for these statements to be true NOW, some argue that there must be truthmakers for them which EXIST NOW.


Is time travel possible?
What, exactly, is time travel?

Start at time 1 and end at time 2 where time 1 and time 2 are different. And we are not traveling at the “normal rate.” (what we want from a definition of time travel is a kind of “jumping” from one time to another without “crossing” the intervening time)

Presentism (only the present exists) appears to preclude time travel, because temporal destinations different from the present don’t exist.


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