The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time

As the study of time has flourished in the physical and human sciences, the philosophy of time has come into its own as a lively and diverse area of academic research. Philosophers investigate not just the metaphysics of time, and our experience and representation of time, but the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially with regard to quantum mechanics and relativity theory. This Handbook presents twenty-three specially written essays by leading figures in their fields: it is the first comprehensive collaborative study of the philosophy of time, and will set the agenda for future work.Introduction ; I: TIME AND METAPHYSICS ; 1. Persistence ; 2. Fatalism and the Future ; 3. Time and Chance Propensities ; 4. Tense and Modality ; 5. Presentism ; 6. The Possibility of Discrete Time ; 7. Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold ; II: THE DIRECTION OF TIME ; 8. The Asymmetry of Influence ; 9. The Flow of Time ; 10. Time in Thermodynamics ; III: TIME, ETHICS, AND EXPERIENCE ; 11. Prospects for Temporal Neutrality ; 12. Time, Passage, and Immediate Experience ; 13. Time in Action ; 14. Time in Cognitive Development ; 15. Temporal Experience ; IV: TIME IN CLASSICAL AND RELATIVISTIC PHYSICS ; 16. Sharpening the Electromagnetic Arrow(s) of Time ; 17. Time, Topology, and the Twin Paradox ; 18. Time in the Special Theory of Relativity ; 19. Time in Classical Dynamics ; 20. Time Travel and Time Machines ; V: TIME IN A QUANTUM WORLD ; 21. The CPT Theorem ; 22. Time in Quantum Mechanics ; 23. Time in Quantum Gravity ; Index