Presentism and Special Relativity

I was once a presentist, but I have become convinced that special relativity makes presentism untenable. I would be interested in hearing what others have to say on this subject.

Comments

[D. Ian Spencer]

I think you would have to do a pretty radical reinterpretation of STR to make it compatible with Presentism. That sort of thing has been advocated from time to time. You would then have to argue that this reading of STR is the correct one or at least more plausible than other interpretations (such as ones that involve Minkowski spacetime).

[Adrian Bardon]

Thanks for your comment! Both Prior and Markosian suggest that consistent with relativity there might be a sort of hidden, absolute simultaneity--perhaps epistemically inaccessible to us. I just don't see how there is room for this in SR, and I was wondering if there were any sympathizers with this point of view out there.

[Bradley J Rettler]

Making presentism compatible with SR requires a Lorentzian interpretation of SR. That's about the extent of my knowledge. However, Thomas M Crisp has a paper forthcoming in "Einstein, Relativity and Simultanaeity" entitled 'Presentism, Eternalism and Relativity Physics.' It's available at http://faculty.biola.edu/thomasc/Presentism,%20Eternalism%20and%20Relativity%20Physics.pdf

[Justin Snedegar]

I'm currently attending the Colorado Summer Seminar, and have been enjoying lectures by Brad Monton, a philosopher of physics. Brad talked about the STR objection to presentism, and seemed disappointed that no philosophers seem to mention that SR is false. It has been supplanted by General Relativity. General relativity is on shaky ground itself because of the tension between GR and quantum theory. Brad did mention, however that the loss of absolute simultaneity would likely carry through to whatever the 'correct' physical theory turns out to be.

[Adrian Bardon]

Indeed, SR is only a partial approximation of what a mature physical theory pertaining to time and space would look like. But, as you note, the prospects for absolute simultaneity do not seem good at all--and this is the main point.

[J. Brian Pitts]

While relativistic physics is surprising given the A-theory and hence to some degree disconfirming of the A-theory (and thus presentism in particular), it takes some elaboration to figure out just how disconfirming it is and why. Simply taking either SR or GR for granted and then exegeting it for metaphysical conclusions is not the best strategy, partly because scientific knowledge is approximate and theories are underdetermined by data. The question to ask is whether there are plausible physical first principles that are friendly to the A-theory (by preserving simultaneity) and that yield a theory empirically equivalent to General Relativity or sufficiently close thereto. This is a hard physics problem on which hardly anyone has worked, so it is no wonder if progress is slow. I have worked on it some, with partial but not total success. Julian Barbour's work is also relevant.

[Lydon Swartzendruber]

"It is a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
......Lewis Carroll
A presentist, whether he/she be a chronological snob, be engaging in historical fallacies, or be right or wrong, may go about his/her analysis of history without giving special relativity a second thought, it has no bearing whatsoever, unless, of course, the subject under the microscope is the history of science. The "pure" presentist, who thinks there is no past or future, only a now, leaves me hopelessly confused.