John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866–1925) was not only a philosopher with an unusual name, he was also a man with unusual views. Firstly, he was an idealist in that he believed the universe to contain nothing but souls, or minds. Secondly, he thought that time is not real.
McTaggart’s reason for thinking that time is unreal relies on one highly observable feature about it: that it’s something that passes. Now, if time passes, then every event that occurs will be future, present, and also past. However, says McTaggart, no event can be past or future if it’s present, can be future or present if it’s past, can be past or present if it’s future: these properties are incompatible. Therefore, time cannot pass because it results in events having contradictory properties. Why is there a real problem here? Surely the issue is easily resolved if we point out that no event is past, present, and future simultaneously: every event is first future, then present, later past. Not so, says McTaggart. For (and this is a condensed and very much simplified version of what McTaggart has to say here), when we explain what it means for an event to be first present, then future, later past, we have to appeal to pastness, presentness, and futurity, and those are the very things we are trying to make sense of! Take my birth as an example. To explain how this event can be past, present, and future, we have to say that it is future and present in the past, and past in the present. Yet, whether time can pass and events can therefore possess properties such as pastness, present, and futurity was the very thing in question. It is therefore bad philos-ophically for us to invoke those things in our explanation. | |||