Life in Four Dimensions

Abstract There is a widespread idea that people experience this world as if it is other than a block world; as if, instead, this world is dynamical and time passes in a robustly A-theoretic manner. In light of this, some argue that there is good reason to think that the world is robustly dynamical, for the best explanation of having these various experiences is experiencing time as it really is, in itself, as dynamical. Thus, there is a kind of inference to the best explanation from the nature of people’s experience, broadly construed, to the conclusion that this world is not a block. This book takes up the challenge of responding to this argument in its various guises. By appealing to new empirical work undertaken at the Centre for Time in Sydney, it is argued that for a whole range of ways that one experiences this world temporally, including attitudinally, belief-wise, and perception-wise, people experience the world just as it is: as a block world. There is, at the end of the day, no pressure to conclude that this world is dynamical via the nature of any of people’s experiences of the world.