Compatibilization between the unreality of time and human perceptions based on McTaggart's Paradox

Abstract

In his 1908 article The Unreality of Time, J. M. E. McTaggart presents the most important paradox of the philosophy of time in the twentieth century - in which he concludes, according to its title, that time is unreal -. Although they accept the relevance of McTaggart's argument, contemporary philosophers have mostly concentrated their efforts on works that seek to reject its premises, since they refuse the conclusion that follows from them. Our goal is to examine the problem, by contrast, on the assumption that this conclusion is true - thus pondering the consequences that flow from it and how such a conclusion can accommodate human perceptions -. To this end, we plan to rigorously investigate McTaggart's metaphysics, seeking to verify how it can accommodate both the unreality of time and the ordinary perceptions of humans (according to which time seems to exist).