Presentism
The present exists; the past and the future do not.
Block
The past, present and future all exist.
Growing Block
The past and present exist; the future is coming into existence.
Shrinking Block
The future and the present exist; the past is destroyed as we go.
Growing and Shrinking Block
The future is coming into existence; the past is being destroyed.
Anti-presentism:
The past and future exist; the present does not.
Anti-block
The past, present, and future do not exist.
Random Block
A surprise combination of existence, growth and destruction.
9 comments:
That's terrific.
Isn't presentism a limiting case of the growing and shrinking block model? (in which the block that exists is reduced to a surface really). Well, this is so, if presentism is okay with saying that future will come into existence.
It's been suggested (thanks JDN) that we add some possibilities, by taking each of the cases above, and restricting attention to the causal past/future of an observer (or set of observers). This kind of thing was first suggested by Stein (1991).
So instead of a growing block, we would have a growing cone, etc.
Try dynamic rather than kinematic Markov processes.
Sorry, here's the URL:
http://boundaryinstitute.org/articles/Dynamical_Markov_files/v3_document.htm
I endorse random block, but only when it takes the depicted form, namely, containing a series of love-heart-shaped cross sections.
I advocate the view that spacetime is shaped like the Menger sponge.
I think the anti-block is the most convincing.
The Menger sponge spacetime is a cool idea. It's a compact spacetime! However, it's ridiculously discontinuous. This is weird, but I think the idea is worth taking seriously. It certainly seems unlikely that there could ever be an experiment establishing the continuity (let alone the analyticity!) of spacetime.