Talk by Craig Callender at MCMP (Fri. 14th Dec.)

[Dardashti, Radin]

Talk: Craig Callender

Title: Falling Through Time

Friday December 14th
Ludwigstr.31 /II room 225
Time: 4 to 6 pm

Abstract:
The idea that time flows is firmly entrenched in the manifest 
conception of time. Such is the strength of this feeling that many 
distinguished thinkers assume that positing a basic physical or 
metaphysical flow is the only action fully respecting it. I'll argue 
that this is a mistake. The cosmologist Gold emphasized that we need to 
explain the flow, asserting that “there can be a self-consistent set of 
rules that would give a beast this kind of phoney picture of time."  
While I don't think flow need be illusory -- instead it could be like 
color -- I want to take up this interdisciplinary explanatory project. 
Appealing to the hard facts of life in a relativistic world, our 
environments, and our psychology, I develop a theory of why "beasts" 
like us feel like we're falling through time.