Hmm I think the difficulty is that in these arguments there are a lot of different issues For example in the absolutism relationalism stuff the argument takes on a very specific tone in the primary texts that is pretty anachronistic space as sensorium in Clarke s letters for example So I suppose it s useful to put these things into a more analytic framework whereby the issues really are these two 1 Is Space time an object instead of substance and 2 Are there facts of the matter concering spatio temporal determinations e g location In general then an Idealist will certainly say no to 1 while it will depend what sort of anti realism you subscribe to to know the answer to 1 for example I think Putnam would say that spacetime is an object per his system but that VanFraassen would not But the answer to 2 is a bit complicated Leibniz for example although he didn t believe that spacetime was an object does believe there are facts of the matter concerning the lengths of spatial intervals Conversely Grunbaum a realist about spacetime as an object thought that all spatio temporal determinations were conventional i e set by some arbitrary co ordinative definition To complicate matters again Reichenbach held the self same view about facts of the matter concerning spatiotemporal determinations but was very much in the phenomenalist spirit of the positivists in general and their neo Kantian Plus view of the role of conceptualization in the setting of facts So I don t know I get worried about the use of idealism and anti realism in such close proximity to one another as they really are two different creatures Take for example the flow of time issue I kind of short shrifted this section should have said more probably Take the B Theorist solution to Mctaggart s paradox On this view the paradox doesn t arise because a A determinations can be reduced to B determinations via some token reflexive account or what have you where what It is raining now comes out to has as truth conditions The tokening of It is raining now is simultaneous with it raining and b real change can be found in the B series alone So for a B theorist the flow of time is merely a feature of our experience of time not found in some objectively moving NOW Certainly we would call a b theorist an anti realist about the flow of time but idealist I wouldn t think so as they believe time as the B series to be what it is independent of observers But again to further muck up matters a B theorist could still be a relationalist about spacetime spacetime not an object but just a system of relations among events and a conventionalist about spacetime determinations e g lengths between objects Anyway I ll stop typing now Spacetimeguy 08 54 July 16 2005