Whatever its ultimate philosophical merits, it is often thought that the growing block theory presents an intuitive picture of reality that accords well with our pre-reflective or folk view of time, and of the past, present, and future. This is partly motivated by the idea that we find it intuitive that, in some sense, the future is open and the past closed, and that the growing block theory is particularly well suited to accommodate this being so. In this paper, we empirically investigate three claims. First, that people's intuitive or pre-reflective sense that the future is open is at least partly captured by there being truth-gaps for future contingents: what we call alethic openness. Second, that people, perhaps tacitly, believe that the fact that the future is alethically open is a reason to endorse the growing block theory; and third, that part of what explains why people tend to naively represent our world as a growing block is that they represent the future as alethically open. We found evidence in support of the first two claims. We consider the implications of these findings for several debates in the philosophy of time.

中文翻译：

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运动开放性和时间的成长块理论

无论其最终的哲学价值如何，人们通常认为，生长块理论呈现了一幅直观的现实图景，与我们对时间、过去、现在和未来的预反思或民间观点非常吻合。这部分是由于我们发现直觉上的想法，即在某种意义上，未来是开放的，过去是封闭的，并且生长块理论特别适合适应这种情况。在本文中，我们实证研究了三个主张。首先，人们对未来开放的直觉或反思前的感觉至少部分地被未来特遣队的真相差距所捕捉：我们称之为 alethic openness。其次，人们可能默认地相信未来在道德上是开放的这一事实是支持增长块理论的一个理由；第三，解释为什么人们倾向于天真地将我们的世界描述为一个不断增长的块的部分原因在于，他们将未来描述为在道德上是开放的。我们找到了支持前两项主张的证据。我们考虑了这些发现对时间哲学中的几场辩论的影响。