Fine's McTaggart, temporal passage, and the A versus B debate

Ratio 26 (1):19-34 (2012)
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Abstract

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

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Natalja Deng
Yonsei University

Citations of this work

The Moving Spotlight Theory.Daniel Deasy - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2073-2089.
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References found in this work

A Defense of Presentism.Ned Markosian - 2004 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 1:47-82.
Tense and reality.Kit Fine - 2005 - In Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 261--320.
A Defense of Presentism.Ned Markosian - 2004 - In Dean W. Zimmerman, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 1. Oxford University Press.
How fast does time pass?Ned Markosian - 1993 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4):829-844.
The Flow of Time.Huw Price - 2011 - In Craig Callender, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press.

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