The Moment Of Change: A Systematic History In The Philosophy Of Space And Time (the New Synthese Historical Library)

This book is a systematic history of one of the oldest problems in the philosophy of space and time: How is the change from one state to its opposite to be described? To my knowledge it is the first comprehensive book providing information about and analysis of texts on this topic throughout the ages. The target audience I envisaged are advanced students and scholars of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy who are interested in the philosophy of space and time. Authors treated in this book range from Plato, Aristotle, the logicians of the late Middle Ages, Kant, Brentano and Russell to contemporary authors such as Chisholm, Hamblin, Sorabji or Graham Priest, taking into account such theories as interval semantics or paraconsistent logic. For the first time, two main questions about the moment of change are explicitly kept apart: Which (if any) of the opposite states does the moment of change belong to? And does it contain an instantaneous event? The texts are discussed within a clear framework of the main systematic options for describing the moment of change, sometimes using predicate logic extended by newly introduced logical prefixes. The last part contains a new suggestion of how to solve the problem of the moment of change. It is centred around a theory of instantaneous states which provides a new solution to Zeno's Flying Arrow Paradox.

The Moment of Change is the first systematic history of one of the oldest problems in the philosophy of space and time: How is the change from one state to its opposite to be described?
Authors treated in this book range from Plato, Aristotle, medieval logicians, Kant, Brentano and Russell to contemporary authors, taking into account such theories as interval semantics and paraconsistent logic.
The texts are analysed under two main aspects: Which (if any) of the opposite states does the moment of change belong to? And does it contain an instantaneous event? In the last part a new way of treating the moment of change is developed, which leads to a solution to Zeno's Flying Arrow Paradox.
Audience: The book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy.

Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-19 Plato....Pages 20-46 Aristotle....Pages 47-83 The Moment of Change in the Middle Ages....Pages 84-110 Kant, Mendelssohn, Schopenhauer....Pages 111-123 The Either/or-Option....Pages 124-145 The Either-Way-Option....Pages 146-160 The Both-States-Option....Pages 161-170 The Neither/NOR-Option....Pages 171-182 The ‘Neutral Instant Analysis’ (NIA)....Pages 183-197 Introduction....Pages 198-200 The Snapshot Myth....Pages 201-205 A Path to a Plausible Description of the Moment of Change....Pages 206-224 The Classification of the Moment of Change....Pages 225-234 Back Matter....Pages 235-305