I’ve assigned Grünbaum’s article as a way of rounding off our discussion of Zeno. He gives more attention than we have so far to the paradoxes of plurality (i.e., to the arguments in the quotations in Salmon’s introduction, p. 13, and in Russell’s lecture, p. 47). He also addresses the Achilles and Dichotomy paradoxes in ways that can be connected with the issues raised by Black and Benacerraf.
I’ll also make a second assignment for Tuesday. You should think back over the survey from the first class (I’ve copied the questions below). Even if your answers haven’t changed, I suspect your reasons for them have. You should also think about the survey in one other respect (and this is the main part of the assignment): what questions would you would add to the survey?
Finally, a reminder that I’ll invite you to complete an evaluation at the end of the period, so think about things that you wish had been different about the course or should stay the same, and think also about which readings seemed most valuable and which ones least valuable.
Survey questions
1) Could there be time if there was no change? ☐ yes ☐ no
2) Is time more a feature of the world outside us or of our internal thought and experience? ☐ world outside ☐ internal thought and experience
3) Is time more like a container for things that happen or a relation among them? ☐ container ☐ relation
4) Assign past, present, and future each a degree of reality on a scale of 0 (not at all real) to 10 (as real as can be).
5) How long does the present last? (Use any scale that seems appropriate; and, if you think the present is a point in time, give its length as 0.)
6) Are the past and future separate from the present or are they parts or aspects of it? ☐ separate from the present ☐ parts or aspects of the present
7) Is time continuous or a series of discrete moments? ☐ continuous ☐ discrete
8) Is it possible to complete a task that involves infinitely many actions? ☐ yes ☐ no