Sophia Cheika
McTaggart’s The Unreality of Time:
John McTaggart’s most important work, The Nature of Existence, was published in two parts in 1921 and posthumously in 1927. The prerequisite to his proposition about time was his conception about reality. He believed reality was fundamentally spiritual and he depicted this by deriving contradictions from the assumption that the material world exists. So too, he believed that time itself involves contradictions. Because if there were material things (which he believes there are not), they would have to exist in time and if nothing does exist in time then there must be no material things. There are two ways, he explains, the ordering of events of positions in time. The B-series is the first order described as relation to earlier than and later than and is permanent. So for example if X is earlier than Y, then X is always earlier than Y. The second series within the B-series described as the present time is labeled the A-series. These series contains past, present, and future. These properties are not permanent. So for example if an event is in the future this does not imply that it will always be in the future. According to McTaggart, in order for time to be real both series must exist, albeit, he claims the A-series is more important. “I believe that nothing that exists can be temporal, and that therefore time is unreal,” he said.
Three of his premises we will work with are: 1: Nothing really has any A-series property. 2: If nothing really has any A series property then nothing exists in time. 3: Nothing exists in time. Let’s first work with premise 1. “ For the only change we can get is from future to present, and from present to past,” the passage McTaggart says. But my argument to his first premise is: If any event has one of the three basic A-series properties of past, present, and future, it has all of them. But this is impossible, since these properties are, as he says incompatible. So no event ever has any of these properties. If any event has one of the following properties, being past, present, being future then it also has the others. 2: No one event can have more than one of the following properties: past, present, and future. 3: No event has any of the following properties. Being past, being present, being future. The argument is in the form of 1: If p then q 2: not q therefore 3: not p. So for McTaggart’s argument for the unreality time, are his premises true? McTaggart realizes people will object his premises because he says, “it has been impossible to state the difficulty without almost giving the explanation.” Argument to the premise would be: “McTaggart’s argument rests on an ambiguity. Every event has all of the A-series properties at some time or other; but what is impossible is that any event have all of these properties at the same time. We can’t just talk just about events having these properties, being past, present and future, we have to talk about them having these properties at certain times. And when we do that, the contradiction goes away, since there is no contradiction in a certain event being past at one time but future at another.” (Standford.edu).
But, we can also argue the argument made against this premise by saying: What does it mean for an event to have one of these three properties at a certain time? Maybe no event simply has the properties of being past, present, and future. So instead of talking about the simple A series properties like Past, present, future, we have 9 second level a series properties like “was past” and “Was present and “is past and “will be future.” So now what does it mean for an event to have one of these three properties at a certain time? Or in other words it’s broken down into past in the past, past in the present, past in the future etc. So this argument argues the premise we argued (about it not making sense) and basically objects it and says but it can all be at a certain time if we extend the levels of past present and future and extend it into 9 second levels.
I got this argument from the philosophy paper, from a J Speaks Course in conjunction with Stanford EDU. For the premise, “Nothing Really has any A-series properties” they see how it can be objectionable and that McTaggart sees it as objectionable himself. They introduce the 9 second level A series. They, however have a more thorough review on this argument by saying McTaggart delays this rather than resolves the contradiction in the A series. “Thus the answer to the objection is that, just as a thing is in time, it is in the A series. If it is really in time, it is really in the A series. If it is believed to be in time, it is believed to be in the A series. If it is imagined as in times it is imagined as in the A series.
“The second objection is based on the possibility, discussed by Mr. Bradley, that there might be several independent time-series in reality. For Mr. Bradley, indeed, time is only appearance. There is no real time at all, and therefore there are not several real series of time. But the hypothesis here is that there should be within reality several real and independent time-series.
The objection, I imagine, is that the time-series would be all real, while the distinction of past, present, and future would only have meaning within each series, and could not, therefore, be taken as ultimately real. There would be, for example, many presents. Now, of course, many points of time can be present (each point in each time-series is a present once), but they must be present successively. And the presents of the different time-series would not be successive, since they are not in the same time. (Neither would they be simultaneous, since that equally involves being in the same time. They would have no time-relation whatever.) And different presents, unless they are successive, cannot be real. So the different time-series, which are real, must be able to exist independently of the distinction between past, present, and future.” (J speaks) The paper states how McTaggart himself in this quote objects and argues his own premise and how we can argue that argument.
The paper from J Speaks goes on to explain that the problem that McTaggart sees here is that just as our three initial A-series properties (past, present, future) are both incompatible and that every event that has one has them all, the same can be said of our new nine A-series properties, past in the past present in the past future in the past past in the present present in the present future in the present past in the future present in the future future in the future 9 second-level A series properties. “To see this, focus on the three “middle” second-level A series properties. Isn’t there the same contradiction in an event having all three of these as in an event having the three first-level A-series properties of being past, present, and future?” (J Speaks) Thus making a whole other argument about the argument made about the same first premise we’ve been talking about in regards to the A series.
Works Cited:
https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2009-10/20229/LECTURES/4-mctaggart.pdf
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mctaggart/
http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html