McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time, first published in 1908, set the agenda for 20th-century philosophy of time. Yet there is very little agreement on what it actually says—nobody agrees with the conclusion, but still everybody finds something important in it. This book presents the first critical overview of the last century of debate on what is popularly called "McTaggart’s Paradox". Scholars have long assumed that McTaggart’s argument stands alone and does not rely on any contentious ontological principles. (...) The author demonstrates that these assumptions are incorrect—McTaggart himself explicitly claimed his argument to be dependent on the ontological principles that form the basis of his idealist metaphysics. The result is that scholars have proceeded to understand the argument on the basis of their own metaphysical assumptions, duly arriving at very different interpretations. This book offers an alternative reading of McTaggart’s argument, and at the same time explains why other commentators arrive at their mutually incompatible interpretations. It will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in the philosophy of time and other areas of contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Ingthorsson, McTaggart’s Paradox and the R-theory of Time L. Nathan Oaklander University of Michigan-Flint, USA [email protected] his provocative book, McTaggart’s Paradox, R.D. Ingthors- son argues that McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time rests on the principle of temporal parity according to which all times or events in time exist equally or co-exist in a sense that is compatible with their being successive. Moreover, since temporal parity is also an essential tenet of the B-theory, McTaggart’s argument against the (...) reality of time can also be used to undermine the B-theory. Ingthorsson argues further that only by adopting an ontologically frugal presentist metaphysics can one avoid McTaggart’s paradox and account for identity through time and change. The aim of this paper is to clarify Russell’s authentic view of time in con- trast to the B-theory which is McTaggart’s misrepresentation of Russell and argue that temporal parity it is not a fundamental tenet of the Rus- sellian theory. For that reason, the R-theory is immune to objections that are based on temporal parity. I shall then offer my own interpretation of McTaggart’s paradox that renders Ingthorsson’s version of presentism subject to it. (shrink)

But nathelees, syn I knowe youre delit, / I shal fulfille youre worldly appetit.1 Chaucer’s Wife of Bath centers on a wonderfully fruitful paradox: she claims for women and for herself the right to “maistrie” and “sovereynetee” in marriage, but she does so by articulating the discourse imparted to her by the “auctoritee” of anti-feminism.2 Indeed, this paradoxical challenge to and reiteration of anti-feminist ideas has left Chaucer’s readers debating for decades which way the irony cuts: is the Wife (...) to be understood as a proto-feminist, or is she merely “a delightful buffoon inadvertently lampooning herself for the ironic pleasure of a knowing, male audience”?3 How we choose to answer this question .. (shrink)

In his review of The Ontology of Time, Thomas Crisp (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2005a ) argues that Oaklander's version of McTaggart's paradox does not make any trouble for his version of presentism. The aim of this paper is to refute that claim by demonstrating that Crisp's version of presentism does indeed succumb to a version of McTaggart's argument. I shall proceed as follows. In Part I I shall explain Crisp's view and then argue in Part II (...) that his analysis of temporal becoming, temporal properties and temporal relations is inadequate. Finally, in Part III, I shall demonstrate that his presentist ontology of time is susceptible to the paradox he so assiduously sought to avoid. (shrink)

Asking “What is time?” can be both a simple and a profound question. In this article we intend to introduce the reader to the philosophy of time. To do so, we will deal with McTaggart's paradox. By explaining it and introducing the basic concepts to understand it, we will be able to get an idea of what this branch of philosophy is all about. The main intention of this article is not to explain anything new but to clarify (...) the background of a debate by explaining its roots. By taking a deep dive into the concept of time, we will see that it is not a simple concept at all. In any subsequent possible definition with regards to concepts such time for education or time for ethics, a logical clarification of what time is important and will color all further predication of the concept of time. Considering the impact of digital transformation in our lives in general, and in education in particular, a philosophy of time brings major elements such as paradoxes, which are not of practical character but important for the semantic of the words, such as “duration”, “temporal position” of events, etc. (shrink)

McTaggart?s explanation of the human understanding of time, which uses the time series, is a significant moment in the history of philosophy, and his attempt to prove time?s unreality had strong but diverse reactions. The majority of thinkers who wrote after him agree that time is indeed real, but the intellectual division that was created around the question of which part of the paradox in dispute will dominate philosophy of time in the 20th and 21st century. It can be (...) concluded that both major theories within this field have an undeniable influence on the division of time series which McTaggart made. After analyzing the paradox, the focus will be on clarifying the debate between tensed and tenseless theorists. The former dispute the claim that the A-series is contradictory and argue that the tensed time is the proper determination of events in time, while the latter claim that the B-series is independent and that time can be determined only by temporal relations. By recognizing the differences between these two lines of thought, it will become easier to understand the nature of their relationship to the time series, namely by considering the ways in which they defend their own and attack the contrary view. nema. (shrink)

Since McTaggart first proposed his paradox asserting the unreality of time, numerous philosophers have attempted to defend the tensed theory of time against it. Certainly, one of the most highly developed and original is that put forth by Quentin Smith. Through discussing McTaggart's positive conception of time as well as his negative attack on its reality, I hope to clarify the dispute between those who believe in the existence of the transitory temporal properties of pastness, presentness and futurity, (...) and those who deny their existence. We shall see that the debate centers around the ontological status of succession and the B-relations of earlier and later. I shall argue that Smith's tensed theory fails because he cannot account for the sense in which events have their tensed properties successively, and he cannot account for the direction of time. (shrink)

One of the theories that have been produced in linguistics in the light of J. E. McTaggart’s influential essay “The Unreality of Time” (1908) is a critique of reality that may be attributed to the semantics of tenses in natural languages. This chapter from my book The Linguistic Picture of the World: Alice’s Adventures in Many Languages proposes an alternative approach to the semantics of time, not as a dubious product of linguists’ imagination, i.e. not as something that can easily (...) be discarded from the philosophy of language but rather as a firm category of human thinking. Particular emphasis is placed on the idea of time as it is expressed by the seemingly rather contradictory morphology of the past, present, and future. (shrink)

To be truly provocative and outrageous the superior philosophical sophistry will commonly possess four somewhat adventitious features. I shall rate it as classic if it has all four. First, and least adventitiously, the argument will be crisp and initially seductive. Second, by the standard the sophistry sets direct rebuttal will be laborious and diffuse. Third, the recipe for the latter will prescribe that we pick out some hitherto unarticulated logical principle such that if the principle be true then the sophistical (...) argument must be invalid, and then, on the strength of that consequence assume the principle to be true. Consequently and fourth, as an antidote parody is supreme. With a persuasive absence of fuss and bias we can turn the tables if we show that, if the sophistical argument were really valid, then some structurally similar argument would prove just as consummately far too much. In short, from the rhetorical point of view at least, Gaunilo is more lethal than Kant. Even if the similarity is defective, the sophist will lose some of his adventitious and insufferable poise, if he ventures to show why. (shrink)

McTaggart’s original arguments have been interpreted and reinterpreted in a series of highly complex and, oft times, original ways. In this introductory paper I will offer a brief exposition of the original argument that McTaggart first gave and note a number of different ways in which philosophers have seen fit to respond. In doing so I hope to offer little more than an introduction to the topic that will pave the way for the papers that follow. It should also be (...) noted that many of the criticisms that I very tentatively suggest are not as developed as they should be were they to be taken to represent serious and insurmountable problems. All that I do here is to provide a very general overview of the philosophical terrain and point to some features that may turn out to be problematic if we attempt to navigate the terrain in any particular way. (shrink)

To be truly provocative and outrageous the superior philosophical sophistry will commonly possess four somewhat adventitious features. I shall rate it as classic if it has all four. First, and least adventitiously, the argument will be crisp and initially seductive. Second, by the standard the sophistry sets direct rebuttal will be laborious and diffuse. Third, the recipe for the latter will prescribe that we pick out some hitherto unarticulated logical principle such that if the principle be true then the sophistical (...) argument must be invalid, and then, on the strength of that consequence assume the principle to be true. Consequently and fourth, as an antidote parody is supreme. With a persuasive absence of fuss and bias we can turn the tables if we show that, if the sophistical argument were really valid, then some structurally similar argument would prove just as consummately far too much. In short, from the rhetorical point of view at least, Gaunilo is more lethal than Kant. Even if the similarity is defective, the sophist will lose some of his adventitious and insufferable poise, if he ventures to show why. (shrink)

Mc Taggart's celebrated proof of the unreality of time is a chain of implications whose final step asserts that the A-series (i.e. the classification of events as past, present or future) is intrinsically contradictory. This is widely believed to be the heart of the argument, and it is where most attempted refutations have been addressed; yet, it is also the only part of the proof which may be generalised to other contexts, since none of the notions involved in it is (...) specifically temporal. In fact, as I show in the first part of the paper, McTaggart's refutation of the A-series can be easily interpreted in mathematical terms; subsequently, in order to strengthen my claim, I apply the same framework by analogy to the cases of space, modality, and personal identity. Therefore, either McTaggart's proof as a whole may be extended to each of these notions, or it must embed some distinctly temporal element in one of the steps leading up to the contradiction of the A-series. I conclude by suggesting where this element might lay, and by hinting at what I believe to be the true logical fallacy of the proof. (shrink)

The present paper is divided in two parts . In the first part we will propose Meinong’s theory of time outlined in 1899 interpreted in such a way that the subtlety of his argumentation is emphasised. In the second, we will discuss different solutions for the celebrated McTaggart’s paradox, reaching the conclusion that a theory of time suggested by the reflections of the Austrian Philosopher seems to be the most adequate perspective for tackling this problem.

Recently we proposed "quantum language" (or, the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"), which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes=Kant epistemology. We believe that quantum language is the language to describe science, which is the final goal of dualistic idealism. Hence there is a reason to want to clarify, from the quantum linguistic point of view, the following problems: "brain in a vat argument", "the Cogito proposition", (...) "five-minute hypothesis", "only the present exists", "Copernican revolution", "McTaggart's paradox", and so on. In this paper, these will be discussed and clarified in quantum language. That is, these are not in quantum language. Also we emphasize that Leibniz's relationalism in Leibniz-Clarke correspondence is regarded as one of the most important parts of the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This paper is the revised version of the paper: Open Journal of Philosophy, 2018 Vol.8, No.5, 466-480). (shrink)

In his famous argument for the unreality of time, McTaggart claims that i) being past, being present, and being future are incompatible properties of an event, yet ii) every event admits all these three properties. In this paper, I examine two key concepts involved in the formulation of i) and ii), namely that of “validity” and that of “contradiction”, and for each concept I distinguish a static version and a dynamic version of it. I then arrive at three different ways (...) of formulating McTaggart’s claims that avoid the notorious McTaggart’s Paradox. So long as we demand that McTaggart make clear use/mention and token/type distinctions in his claims, we shall find that it is indeed very difficult for him to get a genuine contradiction from i) and ii). (shrink)

This paper provides a Bergsonian response to J.M.E. McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time. McTaggart’s argument has been used as the primary framework for analytic discussions about time for over a hundred years. McTaggart argued that all events in time can be categorised in two ways: either using the A-series (whereby all events are ‘past,’ ‘present,’ or ‘future’) or the B-series (whereby two events are linked by the relation of ‘earlier’ and ‘later’). He argued that the A-series is contradictory (...) and that the B-series does not capture the nature of time. So he famously concluded that time is unreal. I demonstrate that McTaggart’s argument does not pay sufficient attention to the time of consciousness captured by Bergson’s durée. I show that two distinct temporal realms can be extracted from Bergson’s philosophy: (i) la durée and (ii) a mathematical time-ordering generally classified by analytic philosophers as the B-series. The A-series is shown to be an attempt to ‘have it all’ – to retain the features that apply only to the mathematical ordering (e.g., divisibility into distinct segments), but that also somehow contain only those features that apply to subjective temporal experience (e.g., the ‘flow’ of time). (shrink)

Se busca establecer una relación, no satisfactoriamente explorada, entre la fenomenologia merleaupontiana del tiempo y un problema central de la "theory of time" analítica, la paradoja de McTaggart. Al clarificar, en polémica con Priest , el autêntico sentido del "subjetivismo" merleaupontiano con respecto al tiempo, se senala cómo establecer una confluencia entre el acercamiento fenomenológico y las tesis desarrolladas por Michael Dummett como respuesta a la mencionada paradoja. Con los senalamientos de Dummett y la interpretación de Bimbenet acerca del "perspectivismo" (...) merleaupontiano, se intenta una solución "situacional" a la paradoja. The article seeks to establish a relationship that has not yet been explored satisfactorily between Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of time and a central issue of analytical "theory of time": McTaggart's paradox. By clarifying the authentic meaning of Merleau-Ponty's "subjectivism" regarding time, against Priest's interpretation , the article points out a convergence between the phenom-enological approach and Michael Dummett's theses developed in response to the abovementioned paradox. A "situational" solution to the paradox is attempted on the basis of Dummett's ideas and Bimbenet's interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's "perspectivism". Pretende-se estabelecer uma relação, não satisfatoriamente explorada, entre a fenomenologia merleau-pontiana do tempo e um problema central da "theory of time" analítica, o paradoxo de McTaggart. Ao esclarecer, em polémica com Priest , o autêntico sentido do "subjetivismo" merleau-pontiano a respeito do tempo, indica-se como estabelecer uma confluência entre a aproximação fenomenológica e as teses desenvolvidas por Michael Dummett como resposta ao mencionado paradoxo. Com as indicações de Dummett e a interpretação de Bimbenet sobre o "perspectivismo" merleau-pontiano, tenta-se uma solução "situacional" ao paradoxo. (shrink)

This short article aims to illustrate the mutually question-begging arguments that are often presented in debates between opponents and defenderss of McTaggart’s “proof” that A-properties (pastness, presentness and futurity) are logically incoherent. A sample of such arguments is taken from a recent debate between L. Nathan Oaklander (a defender of McTaggart) and myself (an opponent of McTaggart) and a method of escaping the impasse that is often reached in such debates is suggested.

This short article aims to illustrate the mutually question-begging arguments that are often presented in debates between opponents and defenderss of McTaggart’s “proof” that A-properties (pastness, presentness and futurity) are logically incoherent. A sample of such arguments is taken from a recent debate between L. Nathan Oaklander (a defender of McTaggart) and myself (an opponent of McTaggart) and a method of escaping the impasse that is often reached in such debates is suggested.

In R. D. Ingthorsson’s provocative and carefully researched book, McTaggart’s Paradox, the author aims to demonstrate that “practically every writer is guilty of some or other of the misunderstandings of McTaggart’s paradox that I outline in this book”. The most dramatic misunderstanding that commentators make is the failure to realize that McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time depends on the principle of temporal parity: the thesis that all times, whether A times or B times, exist equally or (...) co-exist. Since temporal parity is also a central tenet of the B view, B-theorists cannot use McTaggart’s paradox to support their view as temporal parity also demonstrates that the B-theory cannot accommodate change or account for the temporality of earlier than and later than. Ingthorsson concludes that only if we reject temporal parity, the B view, and all versions of the A view except presentism, can we account for the intuitively plausible view, “the one that coincides with ‘the man on the street’ … that only those things exist that exist now, and that only those things will count as co-existing that are simultaneous with each other”. (shrink)

J. McTaggart argues that the philosophical conception of time is constituted by the notions of fluid and static time. Since, on his view, neither notion is philosophically viable, he concludes that time is nothing but an illusion that arises from our distorted perception of essentially atemporal reality. In the paper, I argue that despite McTaggart’s failure to prove the unreality of time as such, he does succeed in establishing his lesser claim that the concept of fluid time is without any (...) ontological import whatsoever. (shrink)

McTaggart’s theory of time is the locus classicus of the contemporary philosophy of time. However, despite its prominence, there is little agreement as to what the theory actually amounts. In this paper, it is first argued that, contrary to the received opinion, McTaggart’s A-time/B-time distinction is not a distinction between static and fluid temporal series. Rather, it is a certain distinction between two types of static temporal series. It is then shown that in his temporal transience paradox, McTaggart employs (...) these two distinct notions of temporal series. The paper is concluded with the claim that McTaggart's temporal transience paradox is best understood not as a contradiction, but as a dilemma both horns of which are unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The title of this paper may, at first glance, somewhat surprise the casual reader. That the writings of a philosopher who was, by his own confession, an atheist should contain a trenchant critique of the theistic position is only to be expected; but the suggestion that any positive contribution to the philosophy of religion can be found in them may appear somewhat startling, and even paradoxical.

John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart A COMMENTARY ON HEGEL'S LOGIC Elibron Classics www.elibron.com ...

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed (...) facts, but also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender. (shrink)