Time without passage

Many contemporary philosophers are convinced that McTaggart was essentially correct: our world is a block-like four-dimensional ensemble, lacking a moving present, wherein all times and events are equally real. But few (if any) of these philosophers follow McTaggart by holding that time is unreal. According to these contemporary Block-or B-theorists, what we call “time” is simply that dimension which exists in addition to the three of space and in virtue of which the properties of things can change; a thing “changes” by having different properties at different locations in this additional dimension. Since not everything happens at once and things do change, there clearly is such a dimension, and so time is undeniably real. McTaggart concluded that time was unreal because he believed that time essentially involves a moving present, and that no such thing could exist. Modern B-theorists take a different tack, and while agreeing with McTaggart that there cannot be a moving present, they argue that this amounts to a discovery about the real nature of time. We are accustomed to advances in knowledge overturning commonly held beliefs about how things are. The Earth does not seem to move, but it turns out that it does; time seems to pass, but it turns out that it does not. Where is the difference?

This chapter and the next are given over to an examination of the Block view of time.