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‘Beyond A- and B-Time’ Reconsidered

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Abstract

This article is a response to Clifford Williams’s claim that the debate between A- and B theories of time is misconceived because these theories do not differ. I provide some missing support for Williams’s claim that the B-theory includes transition, by arguing that representative B-theoretic explanations for why we experience time as passing (even though it does not) are inherently unstable. I then argue that, contra Williams, it does not follow that there is nothing at stake in the A- versus B debate.

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Notes

  1. ‘Why the A- versus B-debate is not About Whether Time Passes’ (unpublished).

  2. This defense of my view of the B-theory is independent of, and supplementary to, that provided in ‘Why the A- versus B-debate is not About Whether Time Passes’.

References

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Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Oliver Pooley for extensive discussion of these issues.

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  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Natalja Deng

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  1. Natalja Deng
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Correspondence to Natalja Deng.

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Deng, N. ‘Beyond A- and B-Time’ Reconsidered. Philosophia 38, 741–753 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9257-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9257-6

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