Becoming, Duration, and the Evolving Block Universe

Abstract

The two-times problem asks how the directed, oriented time of biological and conscious systems relates to the time of fundamental physics. The Evolving Block Universe, in which spacetime grows through an irreversible quantum dynamics along physically preferred worldlines, accounts for the direction of physical time and for its emergence across scales up to the time kept by the brain. It leaves open the relation between this physical time and the experience of passage. We argue that Bergson's durée, the continuous qualitative experience of lived time, names this residue and marks the first-person level at which the physical hierarchy reaches its limit. On this reading the two accounts divide the problem between them: the Evolving Block Universe describes its structural, third-person half, and durée its experiential, first-person half. The remaining gap between the two halves is explanatory. It is an instance of the familiar gap between the physical description of a system and the character of its states as they are lived, and it is compatible with physicalism.

arXiv comment19 pages, 1 figure