1 The parenthetical textual references throughout are all to McTaggart's The Nature of Existence (Cambridge University Press, vol. 1, 1921, vol. 2, 1927), except where otherwise indicated.Google Scholar

2 After a certain amount of dissimulation in which he took care not to reveal his actual position, and consequently may seem to suggest the contrary (e.g., in ##110,309,314), McTaggart's identification ofall change with A-change is categorical (##311,329,610, footnote). Thus in the footnote he writes, “We cannot have time without change, and the only possible change is from future to present, and from present to past” (my italics). Broad, Both C. D. (An Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy vol. 2 [Octagon Books reprint, New York, 1976] 297–8)Google Scholar and Markenke, P. (“McTaggart's Analysis of Time”, University of California, Publications in Philosophy 18 [1935] have overlooked this identification, and the error is incorporated in the Analytical Table of Contents of The Nature of Existence, vol. 2, viii, which, as editor, Broad compiled. If one wonders why McTaggart did not make his position altogether unambiguous at the outset, the reason may lie in the fact that ifhe had, then Thesis (2) would have collapsed into Thesis (3) too soon for it to have been ofany use to him. I have been won over to the correct interpretation by my research assistant Dr. Robert Fahrnkopf, to whose investigations I owe the evidence and further material just citedGoogle Scholar.

3 Actually it would seem mote natural to take the second proposition as referring not to an event-particular, but to an event conceived, following Chisholm, as belonging to a species of states of affairs, i.e., in this case as a species of thing which obtains and recurs as well as occurs (see Chisholdm, Roderick “Events and Propositions”, Nous [02 1970]; “States of Affairs Again”, Nous [05 1971]Google Scholar; Person and Object, Chapter 4 [Allen and Unwin, 1976]).Google Scholar However, it is only an event-particular that has to slide along the A-series in a unidirectional way.

4 For an illuminating discussion and diagramatic representation of the distinctions between the various tenses see Reichenbach's “The Tenses of Verbs” in his Elements of Symbolic Logic (Macmillan, 1947)Google Scholar and Arthur Prior's further comment on the latter in Past, Present and Future, Chapter 1 (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar.

5 Actually McTaggart's poker-illustration is not entirely appropriate, since in the final analysis the entity for Russell would appear to have been a bare particular. Dr. Fahmkopf drew my attention to this discrepancy.

6 Here again McTaggart seems, at least momentarily, to conceive an event as a species of states of affairs, though in this case, because of the time-reference, not of the sort that can recur as well as occur. See footnote 3.

7 He claimed that the B-series is to be defined in terms of the A-series (#610, footnote). If, however, this is meant to imply that B-relations are definable exclusively in terms of A-determinations, his proposed definition of a B-relation, viz. “The term P is earlier than the term Q, if it is ever past while Q is present, or present while Q is future” does not bear out that claim. The notion expressed by the “while” in the definiens is that of simultaneity. For an argument which shows that this notion is itself B-relational, see Gale, Richard (“McTaggart's Analysis of Time”, American Philosophical Quarterly 3/2 [04 1966]). Gale has some further criticisms of the definition, but against these I think McTaggart can be defendedGoogle Scholar.

8 Some critics account for the apparent irrelevance of the argument by supposing that McTaggart had failed to distinguish a permanence consisting in the tenseless possession of a property from a permanence consisting in sempiternal possession of a property (e.g., Richard Gale, “McTaggart's Analysis ofTime”). Perhaps ifan explanation could not be found in the text, this conjecture might have the virtue of being no more implausible than any other.

9 My attention was drawn to the relevance of these passages by Dr. Fahrnkopf. The interpretation to which they point is originally his.

10 Mereology is concerned with the concepts ofwhole and part. For an excellent introduction to the subject see Chisholm's Person and Object, Appendix B (Allen and Unwin, 1976).Google Scholar Chisholm applies a principle of mereological essentialism to things, including physical things, which comes close to the principle which I maintain applies specifically to events (see footnote 15).

11 Compare McTaggart. “Take any event—the death of Queen Anne, for example—and consider what changes can take place in its characteristics. That it is a death, that it is the death of Anne Stuart, that it has such causes, that it has such effects—every characteristic of this sort never changes. ‘Before the stars saw one another plain’, the event in question was the death of a Queen. At the last moment of time—if time has a last moment—it will still be the death of a Queen” (#311). The point I wish to make is similar to this, but my example has a number of distinctive features I find useful, (a) It exhibits the conditions of event-identity more clearly as mereological, (b) it presents a better parallel to the poker's being hot-at-T and (c) it does not expressly involve any one substance or set of substances.

12 A detensed verb should not be confused with a tense-neutral verb—i.e., a verb which abbreviates a disjunction of tenses. It is the sort of verb which gives expression to mathematical or logical truth. My willingness to use detensing here is only provisional, for I believe it to be inappropriate for anything but a mathematical or logical purpose.

13 Though Russell was suspicious of the notion of substance because of its association with the Aristotelian notion of essence (#433), his view came close to this. McTaggart correctly remarks (#315), “Mr. Russell looks for change, not in the events in the time-series, but in the entity to which these events happen, or of which they are states.” Incidentally, this should not be taken to imply that McTaggart is underwriting the distinction underlying Russell's choice while limiting his criticism to that choice. On the Fahrnkopf-interpretation (see footnote 9), essentially McTaggart's objection is to that distinction.

14 The germ of P2 would seem to lie in Aristotle's rather cryptic remark, “For the number of locomotion is time, while the ‘now corresponds to the moving body, and is like the unit of number” (Physics, 220^a3,4, trans. Hardie and Gaye). Perhaps, however, Aristotle was more concerned to show the converse of P2, viz. that without substance there could be no A-change. His difficulty was that time itself would seem to be a null-sandwich—a temporally unextended existent, the present, between two extended non-existents, the past and the future. By arguing that substance is capable of instantaneous existence as well as identity across time he rendered the nihilistic aspect of time tolerable.

15 Pace Locke (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Chapter 27, “Of Identity and Diversity”), Butler (The Analogy of Religion, Appendix), and Chisholm (Person and Object, Appendix B), all of whom believe a substance cannot lose any of its parts or acquire new ones without loss od identity. According to Chisholm's principle of mereological essentialism, which is meant to apply quite generally For every x and y, if x is ever part of y, then y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists.

He realizes that this and two further principles as formulated by Plantinga, Alvin in “On Mereological Essentialism”, Review of Metaphysics 26 (1973), 581–603, conflicts with common sense. According to my principle, on the other hand For every x, y and t, where x is a spatial part of y at t, then y is necessarily at t, and t alone, such that x is a spatial part of y at t (provided that y is a substance and the constraints imposed by its more specific essence are not more exact).Google Scholar However the relativization of the necessity to a time requires, I believe, that the principle be interpreted tense-neutrally rather than as detensed. It abbreviates a disjunction of tensed statements.

16 Ultimately I believe the issue between reductive and nonreductive categorial accounts of substance turns upon whether the causal structure of reality is deterministic or indeterministic. Thus Schemata II(a) and II(b) can be used to represent a contrast between deterministic and indeterministic causal structures.

17 In De Interpretatione, Chapter 9. There are two main interpretations of Aristotle's discussion of future contingents. According to the more traditional, his response to logical fatalism was to impose a limitation upon the law of bivalence. According to the other, his solution was to confine necessity to what is past and present alone, leaving the future contingent. I would rather believe he had the wit to see that what are supposedly two ways of dealing with this problem are in fact mutually dependent.

18 Mainly for reasons that I have advanced elsewhere (“The Non-Causal Self-fulfilment of Intention”, The American Philosophical Quarterly 5/4 [10 1972]), and hence will not further rehearse, I also believe that the limitation becomes conspicuous for the most part only in predictive statements ofa type that gives expression to our intentions, and more particularly in statements of some such form as “I am going to X”. My immediate purpose in drawing attention to this here is mainly to show how the existential indeterminacy of the future, which the restriction upon bivalence imposes, may be attributable primarily to a very small minority among the totality of substances (on the plausible assumption that intelligent beings are a very small minority), and yet secondarily to the vast remainder by virtue of the potentiality for interaction between the minority and the majority. But in showing that the restriction is susceptible to refinement and need not be wielded like an ontological bludgeon, I wish also emphasize that neither is it entirely ad hoc. Reasons for imposing it can be found that fall outside the immediate set of problems with which we have been concernedGoogle Scholar.

19 Cf. Russell in “On the Existence of Time”, Monist 25 (1915), 214–215Google Scholar, and Smart, J. J. C., “The River of Time”, Mind (1949)Google Scholar, reprinted in Essays in Conceptual Analysis, ed. Flew, A. G. N. (Macmillan, 1956)Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Grunbaum, Adolph, e.g., in “The Status of Temporal Becoming”, The Philosophy of Time, ed. Gale, Richard (Macmillan, 1969).Google Scholar

21 For objections to the first type see Arthur Prior, Past, Present and Future)Google Scholar, and Rankin, K. W., “Referential Identifiers”, The American Philosophical Quarterly 1/3 (07 1964)Google Scholar. For objections to the first and second type, see Gale, Richard, The Language of Time (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

22 In the interests of compactness I have omitted a further set of arguments to show that the now and the then are not mind-dependent in the way in which the here and the there are mind-dependent.

23 Cr. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Part IV, sections 2 and 6; Grice, H. P., “Personal Identity”, Mind 50 (10 1941)Google Scholar; and Perry, John, “Personal Identity, Memory, and the Problem of Circularity”, in Personal Identity, ed. Perry, John (University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar Perry's collection includes the passages from Hume and Grice's article.