From: *Jason Resch* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 6:00 AM Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Of course they differ: in one case you have a purely local concept
of the present; in the other case you require some global notion
of a "present", which cannot even be uniquely defined.
What exists?
A: *naive presentism*: only a 3-dimensional space evolving in time
(some particular "slice" of spacetime exists, which constantly changes)
B: *local-presents*: Events, each in their position in space time,
each in their own present time
C: *block-time*: Events, each in their position in space time
We both agree relativity rules out A. But I struggle to see the
difference between B and C (ontologically speaking), unless you are
proposing the view that the only thing that exists is a single event
(I don't think you are though).
There are of the order of 10^80 protons in the visible universe. One
does not confuse this fact by imagining that there is only one proton......
I think your problem with the ontology of the strictly local "present"
is that you still have in you mind some notion of an absolute, external
time, in which all these "presents" exist. Your description of "block
time" in C above makes precisely this mistake.
Bruce
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