Philosophy 411: Philosophy of Time

Spring 2007

Alexander R. Pruss

 

Course website: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85/411

Class Times: Tuesday and Thursday 4:15-5:30 pm

E-mail: ap85@georgetown.edu

Office telephone: 202-687-4148

Office hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 1:00-2:25

 

Texts:

 

Expectations from students:  Students will do the assigned reading before every lecture, attend class, participate in discussion (online and in class), and write the assigned papers.  Specific requirements:

           Papers:

Eight short (1.5-3 pages) exegetical / philosophical paper approximately every second week, which you are expected to be ready to present in class.  Deadlines:

·        By the end of January, you must have handed in at least one paper.

·        By the end of February, you must have handed in at least three papers.

·        By the end of March, you must have handed it at least five papers.

·        By the end of April, you must have handed in all papers.

Late papers are accepted, but the grades will be reduced.

When you come into class with a paper, please have two copies.  One for yourself to present from, and one for me to write comments on the margins of.

Online Discussion: 

The Blackboard page for the course (https://campus.georgetown.edu) has a discussion board.  At least one philosophical posting (a paragraph long at least) must be made by each student in each of January, February, March and April.  In the posting you might respond to someone else, pose an interesting philosophical question tied to the reading, offer an interpretation, argue against something I said, etc.

 

Academic integrity:  Plagiarism is one of the most serious of the violations of academic integrity and consists in presenting the work of another as one’s own.  When you use ideas or words that are not your own (whether from a friend, the internet, a book, a paper, graffiti under a bridge, etc.), you need to indicate their source (name of friend, URL of website, standard bibliographic information for books and papers, location of bridge and date of graffiti, etc.;  the choice of format does not matter, but be consistent)  The standard outcome for all violations of academic integrity in this course is an automatic failing grade in the course and further disciplinary proceedings with the Honor Council.  Georgetown policy gives me no discretion with regard to Honor Council proceedings—all credible suspicions must be tracked down.

 

Course plan: Time permitting, we’ll explore different aspects of the strangeness of time.  See below

 

Tentative syllabus (the online version of this will be periodically updated):

Underlined readings are online links (some are GU-only).

Date

 

Reading Assignment

Thu Jan 11

Infinity

(none)

Tue Jan 16

Zeno’s paradoxes

Aristotle

Thu Jan 18

 

Grünbaum, Mckie

Tue Jan 23

The Kalaam argument

Craig

Thu Jan 25

Relativity theory and its paradoxes

 Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, up to the end of Chapter XIII.  The library has four copies of the book, plus an electronic version.

Tue Jan 30

 

 Einstein, Relativity, up to the end of Chapter XXIX

Thu Feb  1

Time travel

Lewis, Young

Tue Feb  6

 

 Sider, Smith, and Parsons

Thu Feb  8

Temporal topologies

 Mellor, Weir, Wikipedia (read Mellor first)

Tue Feb 13

The flow of time

Bergson (up to page 59), Williams

Thu Feb 15

 

Smart

Tue Feb 20

The A- and B-theories

McTaggart

Thu Feb 22

 

Tue Feb 27

 

 C. D. Broad and Quentin Smith (in white box in philosophy mail room)

Thu Mar  1

 

 Quentin Smith on special relativity

Tue Mar  6

 

Thu Mar  8

 

Tue Mar 13

God, the future and free will

 Beer, Smart on time and becoming (in white box)

Thu Mar 15

 

 Smith (online), Smith "The Translation Method" (in white box), Pruss

Tue Mar 20

 

Anscombe (with text of Aristotle included), Bradley, Wolff

Thu Mar 22

Boethius, Pike, Taylor

Tue Mar 27

 Presentism

Bigelow (online); Merricks (in box; note: "Truthmaker" is the thesis that every true claim is true in virtue of the existence of something, so that the claim "Socrates is sitting" is true in virtue of the existence of the sitting of Socrates; "TSB" is the claim that Truth Supervenes on Being, namely that if some true proposition were false, then some being that exists would not have existed or some being that does not exist would have existed--what truths there depends solely on what exists); Rea (online)

Thu Mar 29

More on presentism; perdurantism

Crisp (optional!); Sider (online); Rea (online)

Tue Apr  3

The arrow of time

Kestenbaum (online); Lewis (online)

Tue Apr 10

 

 

Thu Apr 12

Time, emotions and ethics

Gale

Tue Apr 17

 

Cockburn

Thu Apr 19

 

Parfit

Tue Apr 24

Death

Lucretius and Epicurus, Nagel

Thu Apr 26

Life after death

Price, Swinburne