The Unreality of Time - The General Structure of The Argument

The General Structure of The Argument

McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time has two parts. In the first part, he argues that the B-series alone is insufficient for time to exist. In doing so, he also argues that the A-series is essential to time. Time demands change, and both the B- and C-series without the A-series do not involve change. Therefore, time must be described using the A-series.

In the second part, he argues for the conclusion that the A-series is incoherent because it leads to contradiction. Specifically, he argues that since every event that occurs will at one time be the future, at another time be the present, and at a third time (and forever henceforth) be past, every event exemplifies or instantiates every temporal property: futurity, presentness, and pastness.

Since these properties are mutually exclusive (they cannot be co-instantiated), the A-series conception of time generates an absurdity, a contradiction. If both parts of his argument are sound, then time must just be an illusion; it has no genuine ontological status.