Philosophy of Time

Philosophy of Time

Fall 2025

Alexander R. Pruss

Course website: http://AlexanderPruss.com/classes/time

Class Times: Tue 2-4:45 pm in MH 107

E-mail: Alexander_Pruss@baylor.edu

Office hours: MH 213: Monday and Wednesday, 10:45-12:00 or by appointment or drop-in

Texts:

· Online readings

· Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (also available online)

Expectations from students: Students will do the assigned reading before every lecture, attend class, participate in discussion, and write the assigned papers.

There are three evaluation options:

1. Write a short weekly paper for every week during which there is at least one class meeting, handing it in during that class meeting, except the first week of classes, for a total of 14 papers.

2. Write a standard 20 page seminar paper due three business days before grades are due.

3. You may switch from 1 to 2 mid-semester. If you do so, then your grade will be computed as follows. First, I will convert the average out of ten score of your short weekly paper (but with no dropping or doubling) grade to a percentage p using a table given below. Second, I will compute a percentage grade q based on your seminar paper. Your percentage grade in the course will then be the higher of q and (np+(14-n)q)/14, where n is the number of weekly papers you gave me.

The short weekly papers are about 1.5-3 pages long (typically 2). They are to be on the reading assigned for the class during which they are handed in, and the instructor may ask for them to be presented, or else on an approved topic.

o The paper can be one of three types:

§ Type I: The paper begins by giving a careful summary of one argument in the reading, and then gives an original argumentative attack on the argument, making clear which assumptions or steps in the argument are being questioned and why. You are not to attack the conclusion of the paper—only the argument itself. In your objection to the argument, you must explicitly state whether you are objecting to the argument’s validity or to its soundness or whether you agree that it is sound, but are concerned about some other argumentative fault (such as begging the question).

§ Type II: The paper begins by giving a careful summary of one argument in the reading, as in a Type I paper, and then briefly shows an important weakness in the argument. The paper then modifies the argument in an original way, improving it in such a way that it avoids the weakness.

§ Type III: The paper describes an important conclusion reached by one of the papers in the reading, and produces an original argument directly for or against that conclusion. If the original argument makes use of claims that some of our reading argued against, you will need to respond to at least some these objections. In general, a better Type III paper takes up at least one objection to some point in its argument.

Exceptions:

(a) You are permitted to make up missing one weekly paper by writing an extra paper the successive week. The extra paper is to be tied to the readings of the class during which you are handing it in (so this isn’t a license to spend more time on a paper on earlier material). In serious circumstances, other extensions may be permitted, but these should be cleared ahead of time if reasonably possible.

(b) Your first paper may be handed in on Friday.

The weekly papers are graded on the following 4.0-10.0 point scale:

· 10.0: Publishable as-is in a good journal that accepts short papers (e.g., Thought and Analysis)

· 9.0: Revisable into a paper publishable in a good journal.

· 8.0: Revisable into a paper presentable at a good conference.

· 7.0: Normal graduate-level work

· 6.0: Barely satisfactory graduate-level work

· 5.0: Unsatisfactory graduate-level work

· 4.0: Very unsatisfactory graduate-level work

You should not worry at all if you get a 6 once. Nor should a 5 close to the beginning of the semester, especially if you are a first year student, worry you unduly. But if your grades are consistently below 7, you should make greater effort, in particular by speaking with the instructor before handing in papers.

The scores will be averaged, except that if you never impermissibly miss a weekly paper, I will drop the grade from your two lowest-graded weekly paper, and I will count the grade from your highest-graded weekly paper doubly.

Your final score out of 10 will then be converted to a percentage grade using this non-linear table, with linear interpolation as needed:

4	0%
5	55%
6	83.33%
7	93.33%
8	98%
10	100%

To go from a letter-grade to percentage, I do this:

A+	100
A	96.67
A-	93.33
B+	90
B	86.67
B-	83.33
C+	80
C	76.67
C-	73.33
D+	70
D	66.67
D-	63.33
F	55
Zero	0

To go from a percentage grade to a letter grade, I choose the letter grade closest to the percentage (with the higher in case of a tie). But if you get A+ in the course, I can only record an A.

Academic integrity: We have an omniscient Judge. And there is the Honor Council.

AI policy: Even though (I believe) AI is not a person and its products are not “thoughts”, treat AI much like you would a person in writing your papers. I encourage you to have conversations with AIs about the topics of the class. If you get ideas from these conversations, put in a footnote saying you got the idea from an AI, and specifically cite which AI. If you use the AI’s words, put them in quotation marks. (If your whole paper is in quotation marks, it’s not cheating, but you haven’t done the writing yourself and so it’s like a paper not turned in, a zero.) Just as you can ask a friend to help you understand the reading, you can ask an AI to help you understand the reading, and in both cases you should have a footnote acknowledging the help you got. Just as you can ask a friend, or the Writing Center or Microsoft Word to find mistakes in your grammar and spelling, you can ask an AI to do that, and as long as the contribution of the AI is to fix errors in grammar and spelling, you don’t need to cite. But don’t ask an AI to rewrite your paper for you—now you’re cheating as the wording and/or organization is no longer yours, and one of the things I want you to learn in this class is how to write. When in doubt, put in a footnote at the end what help you got, whether from humans or AI, and if the help might be so much that the paper isn’t really yours, pre-clear it with me.

Course plan: Time permitting, we’ll explore different aspects of the strangeness of time. The pace at which we go will be determined by how class discussion goes. Readings will be put into the online syllabus on the course web page. If this course were taught without temporal limitations, it would cover the following topics:

· Zeno's paradoxes

· Special Relativity

· Time travel

· Temporal topologies

· Time's flow

· The A and B theories, with special attention paid to Kaplan's account of indexicals

· God, free will and the future

· Presentism

· Perdurantism

· Time's arrow

· Temporal emotions

· Death and beyond