Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Space and Time

  • Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism

    There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory. Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal. Egological egalitarianism is the view  there is a plurality of equally real selves.  I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically,…

  • Did the Universe Have a Beginning in Time?

    Some of you may remember the commenter 'spur' from the old Powerblogs incarnation of this weblog.  His comments were the best of any I received in over ten years of blogging.  I think it is now safe to 'out' him as Stephen Puryear of North Carolina State University.  He recently sent me a copy of…

  • Why Are We Bothered by our Temporal but not our Spatial Limitations?

    Our lives have definite limits both in space and in time. At any given time, my body occupies a vanishingly small portion of space, and if one were to plot my path over time, the resulting space-time ‘trajectory’ would pass through an exceedingly small number of spatiotemporal positions. And yet my spatial limitations do not…