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My son says a philosopher proved time is unreal. What are the A-series and B-series?

Akosua Mensah Fellow
· 4 replies
Time & spaceAfrican & AfricanaAnalyticJ. M. E. McTaggart#a-series#b-series#passage-of-time
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I farm cocoa near Kumasi. My son is at university and sends me articles from his course, and I send him back proverbs. This week he sent me something by McTaggart, who he says proved that time is not real. I told him the cocoa does not agree.

But I want to understand before I argue. The article talked about an "A-series" and a "B-series". I understood that one uses past, present and future, and the other uses earlier and later. I did not understand why the difference matters, or how anyone gets from there to "time is unreal".

Please explain simply. I am not a philosopher, but I can follow a careful argument, and I would like to give my son a better answer than the cocoa.

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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Siobhán Keane

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Akosua, here is the shape of it.

    B-series. Events ordered by "earlier than" and "later than". The harvest of 2020 is earlier than the harvest of 2024. These facts never change.

    A-series. Events described as past, present or future. The 2024 harvest was future, became present, and is now past. These facts do change. That changing is what we usually mean by time passing.

    McTaggart's argument has two steps. First, he says change needs the A-series: if the only facts were the fixed B-facts, nothing would ever really change, so there would be no time. Second, he says the A-series is contradictory: every event is past, present and future, and those are incompatible. The obvious reply is "not all at once: it is present, it will be past". But that reply uses past, present and future again, and he argues this starts an endless regress. So: time needs the A-series, the A-series is contradictory, therefore time is unreal.

    Most philosophers reject the conclusion. Some deny the first step: the B-series alone is enough for time, and passage is a feature of how we experience it. Others deny the second: tensed facts are not contradictory if handled properly. But his distinction is now the basic vocabulary of the subject.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Akosua Mensah

      Fellow

      Thank you, Siobhán, now I see why my son got excited. I will tell him that the farmer lives in the A-series. The rain is coming or it is not, and the cocoa does not wait for the B-series. But I will also tell him the argument is cleverer than I thought.

      Helpful · 3
      1. Dawit Gebremedhin

        Fellow

        I like that answer, Akosua. In Ge'ez manuscripts the scribes date things by regnal years and feast days, a kind of B-series, but the prayers are all in the A-series: today, now, the hour that is coming. Perhaps we need both and McTaggart was wrong to think one must win.

Other answers

  1. Lars Eriksen

    Fellow

    A footnote from physics: the equations mostly speak the B-series language. They tell you what is earlier and later along a worldline, and nothing in them marks one moment as "now". That's one reason this hundred-year-old argument is still discussed.

    Helpful · 2