Abstract
If something changes from being in one state to being in another state, when exactly does it change? And what’s going on at that time? These questions are often discussed under the heading of the ‘moment’ or ‘instant’ of change. In this paper, I will investigate a view on which there is an intrinsically distinguished, atomic time at which something changes, and at that time it is metaphysically indeterminate what is the case. The background metaphysical picture is situationalism, a theory on which reality is composed of irreducibly conflicting parts. These conflicting parts give rise to unsettledness in reality as a whole, and also (I will suggest) at the point of change. I propose this view as a competitor for existing accounts of the time of change, and spell out a few reasons in its favour.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 116 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Synthese |
| Volume | 200 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 8 Apr 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:I am grateful for discussion of earlier versions of this paper with Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Nick. Jones, Al Wilson, Mike Hicks, Alex Roberts, Natalja Deng, Seungil Lee and attendees at the 2020. Eastern APA meeting of the Philosophy of Time Society, as well as the referees for this journal. My work on this paper was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to the Global Philosophy of Religion Project at the University of Birmingham. The opinions expressed in this publication are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy