Time

Three Issues

"There are the three issues that dominate most contemporary philosophy of time: the ‘passage’ of time; ‘absolute’ versus ‘relational’ theories of time; and the ‘direction’ of time."

The Distinction between Dates and Tenses

"We think about time in two very different ways. One way is in terms of the ideas of past, present, and future. My birth is in the past, my writing this is in the present, and my death is in the future. The other way in which we think about time is in terms of the ideas of earlier, later, and simultaneous. My birth was earlier than my writing this, but later than the First World War; my writing this is later than my birth, but earlier than my death. On this way of thinking about time, things and events in time may be ordered by their dated – their places in the sequence of events making up the history of the world. The first way of ordering events in time is the dynamic time series, the second is the static time series. While an event can only have one position in the static time series, it must have every position on the dynamic series."

Absolute and Relational Conceptions of Time

"Can time be understood independently of change? Many philosophers have thought not – the most famous of these being Aristotle, who thought that time simply is the measure of change. But other philosophers have thought that time is not reducible to change, but rather the ‘container’ in which changes occur. This was Isaac Newton’s view. The issue here is often describes as whether time is ‘absolute’ or ‘relational’."

David Hume on Time

"It is of the essence of temporal moments to be successive (rather than co-existent). The infinite divisibility of space implies that of time, as it is evident from the nature of motion. If the latter, therefore, be impossible, the former must be equally so."

SOURCES

Philosophy 1. A Guide through the Subject. Ed. by A.C. Grayling. Oxford University Press. 2012

Millican P. Space and Time.

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/3b-space-and-time?_ga=2.246591620.1637919952.1509919743-1263256002.1508865090