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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A paper which considers McTaggart's view that time is not real, with reference to his A and B series of tenses and dates, and including arguments from other thinkers who rebut his views. Bibliography lists 2 sources
Page Count:
11 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JL5_JLtime.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
is convincing, it has come in for considerable criticism from other philosophers. McTaggart states that nothing which has existence can be temporal, and consequently time cannot be real. He offers
two models which can be used to represent time, but asserts that neither of these is actually workable if one is seeking to demonstrate the validity of time. Change, he
maintains, is essential to time, and change should be sought in the events rather than the objects which are being investigated in relation to time: this is something which is
strenuously argued by other thinkers such as Russell, who maintain that the process of change should be observed in objects rather than events.
The two models which Mctaggart constructs to illustrate his theories are the A series and the
B series, the first being related to past, present and future and the second to the concepts of earlier-than and later-than. These, he asserts, are the only two ways in
which one can order events in time. Certainly, it is clear that one can distinguish between the different terms of the A series. The past, for instance, is that which
we can observe as having been done, whereas the future is that which we cannot yet observe. The past cannot be affected by actions in the present, whereas the future
can. Consequently, one plans for the future, but learns from the past. Action, therefore, can only be a characteristic of the present - an action in the future requires waiting,
an action in the past is done and cannot be altered. If one considers presentness as the defining characteristic of reality, then one could say that existence is continually coming
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