Behind Time: The Incoherence of Time and McTaggart's Atemporal Replacement

Ashgate (1998)
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Abstract

The aim of this book is to show how McTaggart's atemporal vision of reality is a serious attempt to describe a coherent world without time. It proposes that the answer to the puzzling nature of time is not to be found in the components of time itself, but in an atemporal reality that lies behind it. McTaggart takes an idealist view that reduces all that is real to spirit, that any expression of reality is dependent on a manifestation of consciousness. McTaggart's argument that time is unreal, has been the subject of much philosophical debate since it first appeared in 1908; but much discussion has ignored McTaggart's positive account of time and concentrated on his negative proof. The author argues that the negative thesis should be separated from the positive account, he attacks the standard approaches to interpreting time and provides a full account of McTaggart's atemporal world. The conclusion is drawn that the timeless world has psychological appeal and can form the basis for an atemporal thinking which can break away from the confusing philosophical models of temporality that often bear little resemblance to our experience of it.

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The Role of Subjective Temporality in Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel.Stan Klein & Chloe Steindam - 2016 - In Kourken Michaelian, Stanley B. Klein & Karl K. Szpunar (eds.), Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 135-152.

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