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Are we Only Five Minutes Old? Acock on the Age of the Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Joseph Wayne Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Adelaide
Sharyn Ward
Affiliation:
Adelaide South Australia

Extract

Malcolm Acock (1983) attempts to show that three widely accepted “solutions” to the philosophical problem of theory choice between the ordinary account of the age of the universe, and “Russell's hypothesis” that the world sprang into existence five minutes ago, are unsatisfactory. In the following paper we shall attempt to show why “Russell's hypothesis” is defective as a cosmological explanation of the age of the universe.

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

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References

Acock, M. (1983), “The Age of the Universe”, Philosophy of Science 50: 130–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Locke, D. (1971), Memory. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, B. (1921), The Analysis of Mind. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar