The Unreality of Time - The Nature of Change

The Nature of Change

McTaggart asks if the change that occurs to an event in the A-series is a quality of the event or a relation between events. He considers that there is one relation that deserves consideration: "a past event changes only in one respect — that every moment it is further from the present than it was before"

The relative position of an event in the A-series might be considered as an indication of change. McTaggart then argues that this relationship shows that the A-series itself cannot exist.

The basic argument against the A-series notes that if events change by a relation in which they get farther from the present in the A-series, then one term of the relation would be in the C-series and the other term would be the present moment of the A-series. This means that: "The relations which form the A-series then must be relations of events and moments to something not itself in the time-series."

This concept then leads to other arguments against the A-series. In the first of these, it is pointed out that the terms future, past, and present are incompatible, yet each event has all three of these relations. McTaggart notes that this might be avoided by describing an event as has been future, is present and will be past. He believes this involves a vicious circle, because it assumes time to explain time, i.e. assumes another A-series in the future or past.

In the second argument, related to the first, it is pointed out that if each event has been future, is present, and will be past, then when one considers an A-series, there is yet another A-series where an event is present in the future, and so on ad infinitum. McTaggart calls this a vicious infinite series and argues, therefore, that the A-series is untenable.

It may be added that McTaggart's argument against the A-series rests on the assumption of two premises:

1.All events have the properties of past, present and future, at the same time.

2.That these A-properties are incompatible (or mutually-exclusive) with one another.

A person may object to the first premise, accusing McTaggart of assuming that all events have these properties at the same time. It is in assuming that all events start out with a contradiction that requires tensing that creates the regress, but once we reject this, the contradiction does not even take off. An event is said to be past, but is not also present nor future, and as well, an event is said to be present, but not past and future.

He concludes these arguments by stating that "Our ground for rejecting time, it may be said, is that time cannot be explained without assuming time."