Time in a one‐instant world

Abstract

Abstract Many philosophers hold that ‘one‐instant worlds’—worlds that contain a single instant—fail to contain time. We experimentally investigate whether these worlds satisfy thefolkconcept of time. We found that ~50% of participants hold that there is time in such worlds. We argue that this suggests one of two possibilities. First, the population disagree about whether at least one of the A‐, B‐, or C‐series is necessary for time, with there being a substantial sub‐population for whom the presence of neither an A‐, B‐, nor C‐series, is necessary for time, and hence those folk have a radically more minimal concept of time than has been attributed to them by philosophers. Or, second, the population do not disagree about whether at least one of the A‐, B‐, or C‐series is necessary for time, but disagree about what it takes for a world to fail to contain even a C‐series.

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