25 March 2025 – Natalja Deng (Yonsei University) – “Letter-freedom”
Aula “Martinetti”, Via Festa del Perdono 7, h. 14:00
Abstract. Consider a goal for philosophy of time that is distinct from, but closely related to, the goal of naturalizing it. To borrow Callender’s phrase, the goal in question is that of moving philosophy of time past the ABCs, i.e. past the McTaggart-inspired distinctions between A-, B-, and C-theories of time. This talk will provide a programmatic overview of a 4-step roadmap towards letter-free philosophy of time, with a focus on steps 1-3. I motivate and defend these by way of two case studies, focusing on Huggett’s ‘Skeptical notes on a physics of passage’ and Ismael’s ‘The open universe: totality, self-reference and time’, respectively. The fourth and final step, which I’ll also comment on, involves accepting that time’s nature with respect to the AB(C) question is ineffable. This view, with Daoist and Buddhist affinities, is the surprising upshot of a truly naturalistic (or rather, letter-free) stance on time.