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Conventionalism about time direction

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pIn what sense is the direction of time a matter of convention? In jats:italicThe Direction of Time</jats:italic>, Hans Reichenbach makes brief reference to parallels between his views about the status of time’s direction and his conventionalism about geometry. In this article, I: (1) provide a conventionalist account of time direction motivated by a number of Reichenbach’s claims in the book; (2) show how forwards and backwards time can give equivalent descriptions of the world despite the former being the ‘natural’ direction of time; and (3) argue that this offers an important middle-ground position between existing realist and antirealist accounts of the direction of time.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

Original Research, All Things Reichenbach, Time, Direction of time, Conventionalism, Reichenbach, Past hypothesis

Journal Title

Synthese

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0039-7857
1573-0964

Volume Title

200

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC