McTaggart's Argument against the Reality of Time

2011 ◽  
pp. 64-67
Author(s):  
M. Joshua Mozersky
Keyword(s):  
Mctaggart’S Argument

Reconstructing McTaggart's Argument

Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (226) ◽  
pp. 541-543
Author(s):  
George N. Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Mctaggart’S Argument

Some Additional Metaphysical Questions

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Peter Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Humean Supervenience ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument

The book has been making the case that perspectival content is necessary for the explanation of much of human activity, and that the best approach to tense is to think in terms of interperspectival contents. It has already covered a number of metaphysical worries about tense and perspectival contents (McTaggart’s argument, for example) but there are two additional worries that need to be addressed. The first has to do with the problem of truth-makers. The second has to do with the kinds of contents that are metaphysically admissible. It is argued that metaphysical concerns about truth-makers and Humean supervenience do not undermine the positing of interperspectival contents. Such contents are part and parcel of basic low-level descriptions and they do not thwart attempts at naturalization of our accounts of action, emotion, etc.

Time

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument ◽  
Different Sources

Philosophical thinking about time is characterised by tensions between competing conceptions. Different sources of evidence yield different conclusions about it. Common sense suggests there is an objective present, and that time is dynamic. Science recognises neither feature. This Element examines McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time, which epitomises this tension, showing how it gave rise to the A-theory/B-theory debate. Each theory is in tension with either ordinary or scientific thinking, so must accommodate the competing conception. Reconciling the A-theory with science does not look promising. Prospects look better for the B-theory's attempt to accommodate ordinary thinking about time.

Mc Taggart and the Truth about Time

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 137-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Dyke
Keyword(s):  
Nature Of Time ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument ◽  
Locus Classicus

McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal. Today, almost no one agrees with his conclusion.1 But his argument remains the locus classicus for both the A–theory and the B-theory of time. I want to show how McTaggart's argument provided the impetus for both of these opposing views of the nature of time. I will also present and defend what I take to be the correct view of the nature of time.

Farewell to McTaggart’s Argument?

Philosophia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tooley
Keyword(s):  
Mctaggart’S Argument

On Absolute Becoming and the Myth of Passage

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 153-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven F. Savitt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Dynamic Aspect ◽  
Famous Argument ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument

In the literature on time in the twentieth century stemming from J. M. E. McTaggart's famous argument for the unreality of time, two gems stand out. The first is C. D. Broad's patient dissection of McTaggart's argument in the chapter ‘Ostensible Temporality’ in his Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy. Broad carefully, and to my mind persuasively, uncovers the root errors in McTaggart's argument. In addition he tentatively proposes that the features of time that he calls its transitory aspect can be explained in terms of a dynamic aspect of time that he calls Absolute Becoming.

Time and Metaphysics: Kant and McTaggart on the Reality of Time

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-194
Author(s):  
Matthew Rukgaber
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Infinite Regress ◽  
First Person ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument

Abstract The paper examines Kant’s theory of time in light of McTaggart’s argument that time is unreal. First, it presents McTaggart’s theory of time and his argument that a contradiction inevitably emerges in time’s analysis, leading either to an infinite regress of times or the denial that time is real. The paper then shows that Kant rejects the absolute notion of time, the idea that there are eternal coordinates that are experienced by us as being in time. It argues against subjectivist or psychological interpretations of Kant’s theory of time. The main argument is that Kant’s notion of a priori intuition, rather than being the flow of mental states in consciousness, is the subject’s self-intuition as being temporally present, and, moreover, that the present acts as a temporal metric, specifying a first-person perspective in the world and designating a temporal simple.

McTaggart's Argument

Philosophy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Corish
Keyword(s):  
Number Series ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument

The argument of J. M. E. McTaggart in ‘The Unreality of Time’ (Mind 1908) fails logically. There is no A series as such, but there is a shifting past-present-future arrangement within and consistent with the earlier-later B series, past being always earlier, future always later, present always a position earlier or later. An exactly similar logical structure is constructible within the number series, by making each number as one goes up it in turn (it does not matter what ‘it’, or ‘present’, means, ontologically). The subsequent argument that past-present-future time falls into contradiction then fails also, and proves to be equivocal.

A Century of Time

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Wave Packet ◽  
Cosmic Time ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Tense Logic ◽  
Frame Dependence ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
Temporal Becoming ◽  
Mctaggart’S Argument

This chapter argues for the position of temporal becoming across a wide variety of fields. The chapter's central sections address successively the metaphysics, physics and logic of time. It rebuts McTaggart's argument that temporal becoming involves a contradiction. It admits that special relativity's frame — dependence of simultaneity is inimical to temporal becoming. However it also argues that temporal becoming is rehabilitated both by general relativity's allowance of cosmic time functions and, more fundamentally, by the collapse of the wave-packet in quantum theory. Finally, the discussion considers the logic of time, especially tense logic, and applies this to recent cosmological speculation about the Big Bang and more generally to the idea of the beginning of time.

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