Time, Causality, and the Quantum Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 1: Essay on the Causal Theory of Time

ISBN-13: 9789027710741 / Angielski / Miękka / 1980 / 308 str.

S. Mehlberg;Carolyn R. Fawcett;Robert S. Cohen

Opis

An intermittent but mentally quite disabling illness prevented Henry Mehlberg from becoming recognized more widely as the formidable scholar he was, when at his best. During World War II, he had lived in hiding under the false identity of an egg farmer, when the Nazis occupied his native Poland. After relatively short academic appointments at the University of Toronto and at Princeton University, he taught at the University of Chicago until reaching the age of normal retirement. But partly at the initiative of his Chicago colleague Charles Morris, who had preceded him to a 'post-retirement' profes- sorship at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and with the support of Eugene Wigner, he then received an appointment at that University, where he remained until his death in 1979. In Chicago, he organized a discussion group of scholars from that area as a kind of small scale model of the Vienna Circle, which met at his apart- ment, where he lived with his first wife Janina, a mathematician. It was during this Chicago period that the functional disturbances from his illness were pronounced and not infrequent. The very unfortunate result was that colleagues who had no prior knowledge of the caliber of his writings in Polish and French or of his very considerable intellectual powers, had little incentive to read his published work, which he had begun to write in English.

Spis treści

to Volumes I and II.- I: The Causal Theory of Time in the Works of Its Principal Representatives.- I. Leibniz and the Beginnings of the Causal Theory of Time.- 1. The Relational Theory.- 2. The Causal Theory.- II. Kant’s Phenomenalist Interpretation of the Causal Theory of Time.- 1. General Remarks on Kant’s Phenomenalism.- 2. The Causal Theory of Simultaneity.- 3. The Causal Theory of Succession.- 4. Examination of Schopenhauer’s Criticism.- 5. The Plurality of Concepts of Time in Kant.- III. Lechalas’ Adaptation of the Causal Theory of Time to the Laws of pre-Einsteinian Physics.- 1. General Remarks on Lechalas’ Theory.- 2. The Principle of Determinism, Considered as Defining the Temporal Order.- 3. Physical Reversibility.- 4. Psycho-Physiological Reversibility.- 5. The Epistemological Interpretation of the Causal Theory.- IV. The Relativistic Phase of the Causal Theory of Time: The Axiomatic Systems of Robb and Carnap.- 1. Robb’s System.- 2. Carnap’s Systems.- 3. The Epistemological Priority of the Causal Relation.- 4. The Ontological Priority of the Causal Relation.- V. The Relativistic Phase of the Causal Theory of Time: The Work of Reichenbach.- 1. The Causal Theory.- 2. Criticism of the Principle of Marking.- 3. Criticism Continued: Subjective and Objective Time.- 4. Criticism, Continued and Concluded: Convention and Reality in the Temporal Order.- 5. The Semi-Causal, Semi-Statistical Theory.- 6. The Branch Hypothesis.- 7. Conclusion.- VI. Russell’s Causal Explanation of Duration.- 1. The Logical Analysis of Duration.- 2. Russell’s Causal Definition.- 3. Criticism and Comment.- 4. Epistemological Remarks.- 5. Conclusion.- VII. Alternative Approaches to Time’s Arrow.- Introductory.- 1. K. Godel and S. Chandrasekhar.- 2. G. J. Whitrow.- 3. A. Grünbaum and O. Costa de Beauregard.- 4. R. Schlegel and R. Swinburne.- 5. S. Watanabe.- II: Duration and Causality.- VIII. The Intuitive Foundations of the Knowledge of Time.- 1. Preliminary Remarks.- 2. Intuitive Time and Memory.- 3. Intuitive Time and Perception.- 4. The Continuum of Instants Attached to Intuitive Time.- 5. Other Intuitively Knowable Aspects of Time.- 6. The Epistemological Significance of Intuitive Time.- IX. Physical Time.- 1. General Remarks on the Causal Theory of Physical Time.- 2. Symmetrical Causality.- 3. The Concept of Event.- 4. The Ordinal Concept.- 4.1. Coincidence.- 4.2. The Spatio-Temporal Order.- 4.3. Simultaneity.- 4.4. Succession.- 5. The First Group of Axioms.- 6. The Geometrical Concepts.- 7. The Second Group of Axioms.- 8. The Third Group of Axioms.- 9. The Time Metric.- 10. Reference Systems, Coordinates, Transformation Formulas.- 11. Inertial Systems.- 12. Optical Criteria.- X. Non-Physical Time.- 1. Psychophysical Time: The Perceptual Method.- 2. Psychophysical Time: The Expressive Method.- 3. Psychological and Inter-Psychological Time.- 4. Universal Time.- 5. Conclusion.- Supplement.- 1. The Present Empirical Status of Psychophysical Parallelism.- 2. Conceptual Analysis of Psychophysical Parallelism.- Notes.- Index of Names.