Abstract
I argue that we should understand the flow of time using three ideas: information, emergence, and perspectives. Doing so produces an account that has a strong naturalistic basis but does not rely on fundamental physics. Instead it focuses on the theories that describe the realm of our experience; this allows us to justify our intuitions about time but removes the worry of subjectivity and avoids reducing flow to a psychological illusion.I will develop a metaphysical account of time’s flow that defines it as the localised becoming of events and argue that this should be understood via a perspectival ontology. From inside of time the world is presentist and from the outside it is eternalist. The principal focus will be on the importance and ineliminability of the presentist perspective; it is this perspective that allows us to understand how we have an open future and a fixed past, which is a crucial element of flow.
I will show that the internal perspective, along with the open future and fixed past, is an essential element of physics despite common assumptions that physics is perspective independent. Evidence for this will be found by looking at the role that information plays in physics and showing how this is an important factor in how we understand and interpret theories such as thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. I will analyse a number of these instances and provide new ways of thinking about how they use information.
This will support the major conclusion of this project: that the fixity of the past is due to localised records that allow us to make inferences about it. Likewise the future is open because there is no epistemic structure which fixes it, only prob-abilistic claims. Epistemic concerns like this are frequently dismissed as trivially subjective; but I will show that they are, in fact, an essential element of many of our physical theories and have important metaphysical consequences that cannot be ignored.
In particular, this model will provide a way to understand how flow connects to the well established view that time asymmetry emerges out of fundamental physics, and the wider emergentist project that shows we live in a levelled reality.
| Date of Award | 1 Oct 2024 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Alexander Franklin (Supervisor) & Eleanor Knox (Supervisor) |