On the proper treatment of the notion of temporal passage

Abstract

Recently there has been a resurgence of objections to Realist conceptions of passage. What these arguments, closely resembling McTaggart's celebrated inconsistency argument, try to show, is that, so long as Realists hold on to the tenet that there is always a unique time that is present (at the expense of all others), their picture of the world is as "static" as that of their anti-realist foes. These new objections (for brevity, I shall collectively refer to them as "the New McTaggart") aim at arguing directly for the claim that, if passage is real, then, pace the central uniqueness requirement of standard realism, more then one time must be thought of as present (cf. Fine 2005, Oaklander 2010, Price 2012). Proponents of the New McTaggart conclude that Realism about tense ought therefore to be abandoned, as it fails to deliver its chief promise (on pain of contradiction). In the first part of this project, I propose to advance a new and independent objection to standard theories of passage, based on their failure to account for the explanatory role that passage must play in the production of past states of affairs. The purpose of the whole project is twofold. In the first part I wish to argue that, although the New McTaggart offers a sound objection to standard conceptions of passage, its proponents wrongly conclude that the culprit is Realism about tense. The culprit, I wish to argue, is the comparative (as opposed to intrinsic) nature of these accounts. I hope to argue that construing of passage as an intrinsic state of change allows one to fence off both the New McTaggart objection and the explanatory gap objection. In the second part of this project I propose to explore a number of options as to the (physical and metaphysical) nature of the intrinsic state of change which the passage of time consists of. (AU)