PHI 365 Philosophy of Space and Time
In this course, we will explore the connections between developments in physics and questions in metaphysics about space and time. Some of the questions we will be addressing are: What is space? Is space a ‘container’ or the relative distances between different objects? What is time? How is time like space? If time exists, what is required for its existence? Does time have an intrinsic direction? We will study the philosophical debates about space and time from two contexts. The first is from a prerelativistic, pre-quantum physics, while the second considers how relativistic physics affects the discussions about relationalism, the view that our world consists of material bodies and the spatiotemporal relations among them.