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Time in a one‐instant world
Author(s) -
Latham Andrew J.,
Miller Kristie
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/rati.12271
Subject(s) - instant , population , series (stratigraphy) , epistemology , possible world , philosophy , sociology , demography , chemistry , paleontology , biology , food science
Many philosophers hold that ‘one‐instant worlds’—worlds that contain a single instant—fail to contain time. We experimentally investigate whether these worlds satisfy the folk concept of time. We found that ~50% of participants hold that there is time in such worlds. We argue that this suggests one of two possibilities. First, the population disagree about whether at least one of the A‐, B‐, or C‐series is necessary for time, with there being a substantial sub‐population for whom the presence of neither an A‐, B‐, nor C‐series, is necessary for time, and hence those folk have a radically more minimal concept of time than has been attributed to them by philosophers. Or, second, the population do not disagree about whether at least one of the A‐, B‐, or C‐series is necessary for time, but disagree about what it takes for a world to fail to contain even a C‐series.