Time Remains

Abstract

On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom. At a quantum level, this view of "change as relative variation" leads to a "fundamentally timeless" formalism for quantum gravity. Here, we will show how one may avoid this acute `problem of time'. Under our view, duration is still regarded as relative, but temporal succession is taken to be absolute. Following our approach, which is presented in more formal terms in arXiv:1303.7139, it is possible to conceive of a genuinely dynamical theory of quantum gravity within which time, in a substantive sense, remains.

30 pages, 1 figure. Version accepted for publication in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

References in corpus (7)

• Einstein gravity as a 3D conformally invariant theory
• An effective approach to the problem of time
• Constraints and gauge transformations: Dirac's theorem is not always valid
• Change in Hamiltonian General Relativity from the Lack of a Time-like Killing Vector Field
• The Conformal Constraint in Canonical Quantum Gravity
• Scale Anomaly as the Origin of Time
• Extending Hamilton's principle to quantize classical fields

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• On the Conceptual Issues Surrounding the Notion of Relational Bohmian Dynamics
• Geometrogenesis in GFT: An Analysis
• GPS Observables in Newtonian Spacetime or Why We Do Not Need 'Physical' Coordinate Systems
• $\Psi$-Epistemic Quantum Cosmology?
• Against Radical Relationalism: in Defense of the Ordinal Structure of Time
• Does Quantum Cosmology Predict the Age of the Universe?
• Change in Hamiltonian General Relativity with Spinors
• Foundational Issues in Group Field Theory
• Quantum Cosmology and the Age of the Universe
• The Limitations of the Notion of `Observable' in Diffeomorphism-Invariant Models
• Against the disappearance of spacetime in quantum gravity
• Diffeomorphism-Invariant Quantities in Phase Space: More than Correlations
• Gauge and Metaphysics of Spacetime