The Unrelitiy of Time

November 21, 2025 | 875 words | 5min read

Paper Title: The Unrelitiy of Time

Link to Paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreality_of_Time

Date: 1908

Paper Type: Philosophy, Philosophy of Time, Metaphysics

Short Abstract: In this paper, McTaggart introduces the A- and B-series of time and argues that both are inadequate for explaining time. From this he concludes that time is not real.

1. Content

The text begins with McTaggart introducing the A- and B-series of time, which he argues are theories of how time appears to us, i.e., phenomenology.

In the A-series we have three categories of time: “past”, “present”, and “future”, and all moments of time belong to one of these categories. He identifies these moments with events. An example of the A-series is: 2025 is the present year; the moon landing was 55 years ago (past); in the future I will die. Importantly, the A-series is non-permanent and dynamic: something can be present and later become past. For this reason, the A-series requires an external reference point. However, McTaggart does not know what this point would be and finds the requirement for such an external reference point already problematic.

In the B-series, time is represented as a relation between events, specifically the earlier–later relation. This means the B-series is an ordered series of events: for example, e₁ is before e₂, which is before e₃, and so on. For example, the year 2025 is after 2024, which is after the moon landing, which is after the Second World War. Importantly, this series is permanent and static: if an event comes before another event, it will be before it for all eternity.

The problem with the B-series is that it does not capture change adequately, which for McTaggart is essential to what time is. Earlier–later relationships never change (e.g., 2010 is always later than 2000). Thus, he argues that the A-series is necessary for time.

For him, the A-series and B-series are not mutually exclusive. Instead, whenever we have an A-series, we automatically get a B-series as well (e.g., anything in the present is earlier than anything in the future and later than anything in the past).

McTaggart holds that the problem with the A-series is that its definition results in a vicious circle: we define time via the A-series, but to define the A-series we again need time; thus we need some kind of meta-time, which must again be defined via the A-series, and so on. More precisely: an event in reality can be present, past, or future, but it cannot, for example, be both past and future simultaneously. This means that at any given time an event is only in one category of the A-series, and only later or earlier will it belong to another category. But we have just used the words later and earlier, which are temporal terms — that is, we use temporal concepts to explain what time is. This leads to an infinite regress: to explain time we need to invoke meta-time, but to explain meta-time we need meta-meta-time, and so on.

Since the A-series is necessary for time (which the B-series cannot provide), but the A-series results in an infinite regress, he concludes that the A-series is false; therefore time is not real.

2. Objection

One common objection to his view is that he says events change, but perhaps it is not events that change but things, i.e., objects in the world. McTaggart offers the following counterexample: imagine a fire poker. When placed in the fire, it is at one time hot, and at another time it becomes cold. We then say some change has occurred. Now imagine that one side of the poker is red because of heat and the other side is black because it is cool. We would not say that the poker has changed color. In other words: a thing can have different properties simultaneously in space without counting as changing.

But if we do not have change in the spatial dimension, then we also do not have change in the temporal dimension. In both cases, spatial and temporal:

• There is a single object with a set of properties.
• The distribution of those properties is just different in different “dimensions” (space/time).
• Nothing becomes different. Nothing passes.
• It is simply spread out differently.

If “change” is simply: a thing has property F at one coordinate and property G at another coordinate, then time is like space.

But McTaggart insists that real time requires becoming, that objects move through time. Object–property variation does not give you this.

In other words: time must apply to events, not objects. Objects merely have different properties at different times (like the poker having different colors in different places). Events undergo changes: they will happen, they are happening, they have happened.

3. The Full Argument

1. The A-Series is essential for time; without the A-series there is no time.
   • (i) An important attribute of time is change.
   • (ii) Change is not possible within the B-Series.
     • If we have events m, n, o ordered in the B-series as m < n < o,
     • then they are forever ordered; no change can occur.
2. The A-Series is contradictory because it results in an infinite regress.
   • To define the A-Series we need meta-time.
   • To define meta-time we need a meta-meta-time.
   • And so on.
3. Conclusion: time is not real.

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