It's All a Matter of Perspectives: An approach to time, modality, and the first-person.

摘要

There are deep structural analogies between the metaphysics of time, modality, and the first-person. My purpose in this dissertation is to examine these structural analogies, with the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the broader metaphysical issues that are common to all three domains. I argue that attention to the structural parallels between these areas can help us answer two central questions: First, what are the fundamental issues at stake in the debates in each area? And second, what does it take to be realist about the phenomena in each domain? I present a novel meta-metaphysical framework for approaching these issues, which is inspired by the analogies between the three domains. On the approach I propose, the primary question at stake in many of the debates in these areas is as follows: Of the various perspectives we adopt on reality, which perspective is fundamental? I explain how reconceptualizing the issues surrounding time, modality, and the first-person in terms of perspectives in this way provides a clearer understanding of the surrounding debates, and allows us to characterize what a realist position in each domain must be like. In particular, I argue that accommodating what we intuitively take to be genuine temporal passage, metaphysical contingency, and subjectivity requires that we embrace a kind of pluralism about the structure of reality, on which the multiple distinct perspectives we adopt on reality are on a par. I explore how such a pluralist metaphysical picture can be understood, and consider its implications for our understanding of the temporal, the modal, and the subjective.