Maverick Philosopher

Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (St. Augustine)  This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time. 

On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). If the B-theory is correct, then our ordinary sense that events approach us from the future, arrive at the present, and then recede into the past is at best a mind-dependent phenomenon. For on the B-theory, there are no such irreducible  monadic A-properties as futurity, presentness and pastness. There is just a manifold of tenselessly existing events ordered by the B-relations. Time does not pass or flow, let alone fly. There is no temporal becoming.  My birth is not sinking into the past, becoming ever more past, nor is my death  approaching from the future, getting closer and closer.  Tempus fugit does not express a truth about reality.  At best, it picks out a truth about our experience of reality. 

If there is no temporal becoming in reality, then change  is not a becoming different or a passing away or a coming into being.  When a tomato ripens, it doee not become ripe: it simply is unripe at certain times and is ripe at certain later times.  And when it cease to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.

Employing a political metaphor, one could say that a B-theorist is an egalitarian about times and the events at times: they are all equal in point of reality.  Accordingly, my blogging now is no more real (but also no less real) than Socrates' drinking the hemlock millenia ago.  Nor is it more real than my death which, needless to say,  lies in the future.  Each time is present at itself, but no time is present, period.  And each time (and the events at it) exists relative to itself, but no time exists absolutely.

This is not to say that the B-theorist does not have uses for 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.'  He can speak with the vulgar while thinking with the learned.  Thus a B-theorist can hold that an utterance at time t of 'E is past' expresses the fact that E is earlier than t.  An old objection is that this does not capture the meaning of 'E is past.' For the fact that E is earlier than t, if true, is always true; while 'E is past' is true only after E. This difference in truth conditions shows a difference in meaning. The B-theorist can respond by saying that his concern is not with semantics but with ontology. His concern is with the reality, or rather the lack of reality, of tense, and not with the meanings of tensed sentences or sentences featuring A-expressions. The B-theorist can say that, regardless of meaning, what makes it true that E is past at t is that E is earlier than t, and that, in mind-independent reality, nothing else is needed to make 'E is past' uttered at t true.

Compare 'BV is hungry' and 'I am hungry' said by BV. The one is true if and only if the other is.  But the two sentences differ in meaning. The first, if true, is true no matter who says it; but the second is true only if asserted by someone who is hungry. Despite the difference in meaning, what makes it true that I am hungry (assertively uttered by BV) is that BV is hungry. In sum, the B-theorist need not be committed to the insupportable contention that A-statements are translatable salva significatione into B-statements.

The B-theorist, then, denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege.  Every
time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter.  This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness.  There just is no irreducible monadic property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it.  To exist is to exist tenselessly.  The B-theory excludes presentism according to which there is a genuine, irreducible, property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property.  Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent.  If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist, not jusdt now (which is trivial) but at all.

Please note that the B-theory is incompatible not only with presentism, but with any theory that is committed to irreducible A-properties.  Thus the B-theory rules out 'pastism,' the crazy theory that only the past exists and 'futurism,' the crazy view that only the future exists.  It also rules out the sane view that only the past and the present exist, and the sane view that the past, present, and future exist.

 Why be a B-theorist?  McTaggart has a famous argument according to which the monadic A-properties lead to contradiction.  We should examine that argument in a separate post.

Related articles

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Caesar Is No More: The Aporetics of Reference to the Past

Which is the Hardest of the Philosophical Subdisciplines?

Without a doubt, the philosophy of time.  The philosophy of mind is a piece of cake by comparison.  According to a story, possibly apocryphal, Peter van Inwagen was once asked why he didn't publish on time.  "Too hard," was his reply. If it is too hard for van Inwagen, it is hard.  According to Hugh McCann, "Few subjects in philosophy are as difficult, as exasperating even, as the subject of time, for few elements in our experience are so inherently enigmatic."  (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 68)

This puts me in mind of perhaps the stupidest commercial of the '80s: "Man invented time. Seiko perfected it."  Stupid but stimulating: how many fallacies can you spot?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Van Cliburn (1934-2013)

Van Cliburn, Cold War Musical Envoy, Dies at 78

Tschaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23

 

Can a Thing Exist Without Existing Now?

Clearly, a thing can exist without existing here.  The Washington Monument exists but not in my backyard.   Accordingly, 'x exists here' can be split up as follows:

1. x exists here iff (i) x exists & (ii) x is in the vicinity of the speaker.

It seems pretty obvious that existence and the indexical property of hereness  are different properties if you want to call them properties. 

A much more difficult  question is whether a thing can exist without existing now.  Is it true that:

2. x exists now iff (i) x exists & (ii) x is temporally present?

Clearly, we can prise apart the existence of a (spatially located) thing and its hereness.  Anyone who maintained that to exist = to be here we would deem either crazy or not conversant with the English language, a sort of 'local yokel' in excelsis.  But can we prise apart the existence of a thing and its temporal presentness?  Is there a real distinction between the existence of a thing and its temporal presentness?

A.  A negative answer will be returned by the presentist who maintains that only the temporally present exists.  He will maintain that what no longer exists and what does not yet exist does not now exist, and therefore does not exist at all.

Note that it ought to be is perfectly obvious to anyone who understands English that what no longer exists and what does not yet exist does not now exist.  What is not at all obvious is the part after 'therefore' in the sentence before last.  It is not at all obvious that an individual or event or time that is wholly past or wholly future does not exist at all.

B.  An affirmative answer will be returned by all those who reject presentism.  Some will reject presentism on the ground that abstracta exist, but are not in time at all, and so cannot be said to exist now. A presentist can accommodate this point by restricting his thesis:

Restricted Presentism:  Necessarily, only temporally present concreta exist.

Nevertheless, the anti-presentist will insist that there are past and perhaps also future concreta that exist but do not exist now.  Scollay Square, for example, no longer exists.  But that it not to say that it is now nothing.  After all, we  still refer to it and say true things about it.  It is true, for example, that my father visited Scollay Square while on shore leave during WW II on a break from service on destroyer escorts in the North Atlantic.  So it is true that a a sailor who no longer exists visited a place that no longer exists and was involved in events that no longer exist.  It also true that Scollay Square had been demolished by the time I arrived in Boston in 1973.  I can now argue as follows:

1. Various predicates (e.g., is remembered by some Bostonians) are true of Scollay Square.
2. Scollay Square does not exist now.
3. If x does not exist, then no predicate is true of x.
Therefore
4. Scollay Square exists. (From 1 and 3)
Therefore
5. Scollay Square  exists but is not temporally present. (From 2 and 4)
Therefore
6. Restricted Presentism is false.

I think there are three ways to attack this argument: (a) reject one or more of the premises; (b) find fault with the reasoning; (c) complain that it is not clear what Restricted Presentism amounts to.

Have at it, boys. 

Related articles

Scollay Square No Longer Exists

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

Caesar Is No More: The Aporetics of Reference to the Past

Krauss Kreamed

Ed Feser is quite the polemicist, as witness his latest flogging of Lawrence Krauss. 

Many commentators with no theological ax to grind -- such as David Albert, Massimo
Pigliucci, Brian Leiter, and even New Atheist featherweight Jerry Coyne -- slammed Krauss’s amateurish foray into philosophy.  Here’s some take-to-the-bank advice to would-be atheist provocateurs: When even Jerry Coyne thinks your attempt at atheist apologetics “mediocre,” it’s time to throw in the towel. Causa finita est.  Game over.  Shut the hell up already. 

But isn't there something unseemly about beating up a cripple and rolling a drunk?  Not that I haven't done it myself.

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The Conservative Sociologist

'Conservative sociologist' smacks of an oxymoron, does it not?  So just for fun this morning I typed the phrase into my search engine of choice and was directed to The Conservative Sociologist where I encountered the graphic below.  The proprietor of the site is of the female persuasion.  We need more distaff bloggers, though not a federal program to encourage them.