Conventionalism about time direction

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In what sense is the direction of time a matter of convention? In <jats:italic>The 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>