Temporal Direction, Intuitionism and Physics

TL;DR

This paper discusses whether intuitionistic mathematics can help physics incorporate the openness of the future, but argues it doesn't work.

Contribution

The paper challenges Gisin's claim that intuitionistic mathematics can introduce temporal openness into physics.

Findings

Intuitionistic mathematics is as tenseless as classical mathematics.

Physics cannot represent temporal openness regardless of the mathematics used.

Understanding tensed time is a task for phenomenology, not physics.

Abstract

In a recent paper, Nicolas Gisin suggests that by conducting physics with intuitionistic rather than classical mathematics, rich temporality—that is, passage and tense, and specifically the future’s openness—can be incorporated into physics. Physics based on classical mathematics is tenseless and deterministic, and that, so he holds, renders it incongruent with experience. According to Gisin, physics ought to represent the indeterminate nature of reality, and he proposes that intuitionistic mathematics is the key to succeeding in doing so. While I share his insistence on the reality of passage and tense and on the future being real and open, I argue that the amendment he offers does not work. I show that, its attunement to time notwithstanding, intuitionistic mathematics is as tenseless as classical mathematics and that physics is bound to remain tenseless regardless of the math it employs. There is much to learn about tensed time, but the task belongs to phenomenology and not to physics.