Philosophical Issues of Black Holes
  Black holes are extremely relativistic objects. Physical processes around
them occur in a regime where the gravitational field is extremely intense.
Under such conditions, our representations of space, time, gravity, and
thermodynamics are pushed to their limits. In such a situation philosophical
issues naturally arise. In this chapter I review some philosophical questions
related to black holes. In particular, the relevance of black holes for the
metaphysical dispute between presentists and eternalists, the origin of the
second law of thermodynamics and its relation to black holes, the problem of
information, black holes and hypercomputing, the nature of determinisim, and
the breakdown of predictability in black hole space-times. I maintain that
black hole physics can be used to illuminate some important problems in the
border between science and philosophy, either epistemology and ontology.
