TEMP-FRAME

TEMP-FRAME

Livello-0Sfondo

 

 

 

Principal Investigator (PI): Giuliano Torrengo (University of Milan)

Post-docs: Samuele Iaquinto, David Ingram (University of Milan)

The members of the CPT

Questions on the nature of time are at the core of many challenging philosophical debates. This is no surprise, given the all but ubiquitous presence of temporal elements in most matters. Indeed, almost any aspect of reality seems to be imbued with dynamic traits – from the formation of galaxies, through chemical and subatomic interactions, to the evolution of life. Our ordinary experience, too, is attuned to this world of change and movement, as is reflected by the centrality of temporal elements in the way our perceptual systems work, and in the way thought and natural languages are structured. Nonetheless, different disciplines embrace widely different ways of approaching time, and although most philosophical problems about the nature of time are intertwined with each other, they often arise within distinct areas, such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of physics. Outside philosophy, too, disciplines such as psychology, computer science, sociology, history and economics, to name but a few, have engaged in discussions that are relevant for our understanding of time. Although this diversity is a positive aspect of the topic’s interdisciplinary nature, its potential benefits are impaired by a lack of successful communication between the frameworks. The central idea of TEMPFRAME is to work out the theoretical foundation of a common ground that can be exploited to facilitate mutual interactions between different disciplines. The core aim is to collect, in a systematic way, various results that are useful for our understanding of time, organising them into philosophical theories that, in turn, can be used by scholars in disciplines outside philosophy.

Within the TEMP-FRAME, many COLLOQUIA and WORKSHOPS will be organized in collaborations with other scholars and research groups in Europe.

Further themes of investigations:

The open future

The reality (or unreality) of the past

Physical laws and the nature of time

Time travel, and the relation between causality and temporality

Persistence and temporal location

Time, possibility and necessity

Time and biological evolution

Free action and fate

Dispositions and powers in time

The metaphysics of change

Life, the universe, and everything…

(See also Themes of Investigation and Collaborations at the CPT page)

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Con il contributo di Regione Lombardia e Fondazione Cariplo

per il progetto TempFrame — A New Approach to the Study of Time (2015-0746)