Trident

2.02

A Defence of the A-Theory of Time

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Abstract

 

(Click here to go to the full essay.)

There are two rival accounts of time:

A-Theory 

Temporal becoming is an objective feature of the world, with the present instant having an objectively special status among all the instants.
B-Theory The objective temporal extension is essentially static, like space, with all instants having the same ontological status. Our perceptions of becoming and the special status of the present are subjective.

McTaggart argued that the A-theory is the correct account of time, and then showed that it led to a paradox. He therefore concluded that time is unreal. A more common reaction to this result is to say that McTaggart’s argument shows that the A-theory is incoherent, and that we should adopt the B-Theory. In any case, Special Relativity drives us towards a B-theoretic account of time.

In this essay, I argue that the B-theory is inconsistent with the fundamental phenomenology of time, as is experienced by us. To insist on so radical a revision of our account of this phenomenology would be to undermine the whole evidential basis on which we base our claims about the physical world. To defend A-theory we must then:

1            confront McTaggart’s paradox, and then

2            produce an A-Theoretic account of Special Relativity.

This essay attempts the first of these tasks; the second will be undertaken in another essay, “A-Theory and Special Relativity”.

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 The price of avoiding the paradox is to admit that the mechanism of saying can not capture what temporal becoming is. This does not mean we can not recognise it when we see it (which of course we do all the time), nor that we can not use language to teach children what aspects of reality the tenses refer to. It is just that we have to use temporal becoming as part of our language to do this. We can not say what time is within pure language, but we can depict it as part of our overall language activity. The multiplicity of time is a radical multiplicity, and as such is not susceptible to capture within the mechanism of saying which ultimately relies on the simple display of a sentence-token to perform the act of assertion.

(Click here to go to the full essay.)

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Last updated 3 June 2001