1st Seminar

Speaker: Akiko FRISCHHUT (Akita International University)
Date and Time: 1st of June (Sat.), 15:30-17:00
Venue: Tanaka Memorial Hall, Osaka City University
Title: The Web of Change: A New Theory for the Moving Spotlight
 

It is fair to say that the moving spotlight theory of time —or, brief, MST— has not been popular in the past. Recently, however, it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest. In this paper I want to introduce and evaluate a novel version. Starting from what I call a ‘traditional’ set up, this version differs radically from other MST accounts with its holistic characterization of temporal passage as a network of mutually dependent changes in terms of past, present and future. The characterization emerges as a solution to my version of the infamous regress argument against MST, which I take to be a particular instance of Lewis’ problem of temporary intrinsics. I argue that MST can be stated coherently, but only if we embrace a number of controversial implications. One consequence is that one’s acceptance of MST depends, at least in part, on views that do not strictly pertain to the metaphysics of time, but on other metaphysical and even meta-ontological commitments.