The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1992) Vol. X X X , No. 2

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF B-TIME Clifford Williams Trinity College (Illinois)

Advocates of the A-theory of time have sometimes argued that the A-theory is true because it conforms to our experience of time, whereas the B-theory does not. A fatal defect with the B-theory, they say, is that it cannot account for the fact that our experience of time includes something more than the experience of the B-relations of earlier than, simultaneous with and later than. This something more is the experience of the mind-independent A-properties- pastness, presentness and futurity.

I shall argue, contrary to A-theorists, that a correct account of our experience of time confirms the B-theory and not the A-theory. We do not experience the mind-independent A-properties that the A-theory says events possess.

My strategy will be first to clear away some confusions about the debate between the A- and B-theories, and conse- quently some confusions about the experiential component of the debate. Then I shall argue that our experience of presentness is like our experience of hereness-in neither case are we aware of a mind-independent property over and above the events or objects to which we ascribe the present- ness or hereness. After doing this, I shall reply to two objections that two recent A-theorists who discuss the phenomenology of time, Quentin Smith and H. Scott Hestevold, would raise.1 My conclusion will be that, insofar as experience is a valid appeal, it supports the B-theory and not the A-theory.

1. Some Confusions The difference between the way reality is characterized in

the two theories has sometimes been described as the difference between a moving, vibrant universe on the one hand and a block universe on the other. Time in the first universe flows out of the past and into the future, whereas

Clifford Williams received his Ph. D. from Indiana University. He is the author of Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue and of several articles on time and tense.

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time in the second universe is static. In the A-theorist’s universe, the only events that exist are present cnes; past events are gone, and future ones are yet to come. In the B- theorist’s universe, all events exist; past, present and future events have an equal status.

If these descriptions of the two theories are correct, one would expect a definite experiential difference between them. If the A-theory is true, one would expect to experience flow of time-the goneness of the past and the not-yetness of the future. If the B-theory is true, one would expect to experience time as not having this kind of flow, as not having the division into past, present and future, and as somehow being static. And if this experiential difference between the two theories is correct, it is evident which theory is right-the A- theory. Our experience of time does, indeed, involve the experience of some kind of flow and of some kind of dis- tinction between past, present and future.

However, these ways of characterizing the difference between the A- and B-theories are misleading. The trouble with them is that they describe the B-theory in inconsistent ways-ways that no B-theorist would accept. B-theorists do not say that we experience time as static, since the very idea of time being static is self-contradictory. Nor do B-theorists say that we experience the universe-past, present and future-as a big block, the parts of which co-exist equally. This concept, too-the concept of temporally separated parts being coexistent-is incoherent.

Several recent A-theorists characterize the B-theory in these anomalous ways. William Lane Craig writes, “By contrast, according to the B-theorist, temporal becoming is mind-dependent and purely subjective. Time neither flows nor do things come to be except in the sense that we at one moment are conscious of them after not having been conscious of them at an earlier m ~ m e n t . ” ~ This description distorts the B-theory of time, because there are senses in which, according to it, temporal becoming is objective, time flows and things come to be. B-theorists do not assert that things do not come to be unless we are conscious of them. On the contrary, they assert that things do come to be even though we are not conscious of them. This coming to be is the coming to be at a B-time, which differs from the coming to be that A-theorists ascribe to events. Craig’s confusion here becomes explicit in his statement that the B-theory of time cannot account for the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, because in the B-theory there “is no state of affairs in the actual world which consists of God existing alone

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without creation.” The reason for this is that on the B-theory, “the creation as a whole is co-eternal with God in the sense that it exists as tenselessly as He.”3 This assertion confuses tenseless occurrence with permanence. For B-theorists, the occurrence of an event at a particular time is neither static nor permanent-and this is a conceptual truth about time, whether it be B-time or A-time. A tenseless truth about an event may be permanently true, but that does not make the event itself permanent, and this, too, is true whether the B- theory or A-theory is true.

Quentin Smith also identifies tenselessness with per- manence. “If time consists only of B-relations,” he says, “then all temporal determinations are ~ e r m a n e n t . ” ~ H. Scott Hestevold makes similar remarks. He labels the B-theory (or what he calls the tenseless view) the static view of time, according to which “talk of the ‘flow’ or ‘passage’ of time can only be metaph~rical.”~ Since we think of time, by definition, as not being static or permanent, we will have trouble on Smith’s and Hestevold’s characterizations figuring out why anyone would be tempted to adopt the B-theory.

These ways of describing the B-theory are not new. C. D Broad writes that “the theory seems to presuppose that all events, past, present, and future, in some sense ‘coexist’, and stand to each other timelessly or sempiternally in determinate relations of temporal precedence.”G G. J. Whitrow mirrors this description: “the theory of ‘the block universe’ . . . implies that past (and future) eyents coexist with those that are present.” And M. Capek refers to “the preposterous view . . . that . . . time is merely a huge and chronic hallucination of the human mind.”s

The general principle that must be invoked here is that whenever there is an obvious tilt against a theory, we should re-examine our understanding of it, because the dispute between two opposing philosophical theories is hardly ever so easily decidable. Invoking this principle in the present case means that we must take the obvious unintelligibility of the coexistence of past, present and future events (which Broad notes) and the preposterousness, of time’s illusoriness, not as reasons to reject the B-theory, but as motivation to re-examine our understanding of what the B-theory is. In particular, the A-theorist must not set up a bogus distinction that makes one wonder how anyone could possibly be a B-theorist. But, equal- ly, the B-theorist must describe how our experience of time’s flow differs from the A-theorist’s conception of that flow.

The model that I shall use to distinguish the two theories and their corresponding experiential claims is the analogue

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between presentness and hereness. I shall use this analogue both to define the difference between the A- and B-theories and to illuminate my claim that our experience of time accords with the B-theory and not the A-theory.

The difference between the two theories is that in the A- theory presentness is a mind-independent property of events in addition to the times at which the events occur and in addition to the events being simultaneous with our experience of the events. In the B-theory, presentness is not such an extra property. It is either the simultaneity of the events with our experiences of the events, or it is the times themselves at which events occur-the times that are simultaneous with our experiences of the events. The B-theory’s conception of presentness is analogous to our common conception of hereness, which we think of as objects’ being in the proximity of the places we occupy, or as the locations themselves of the objects-the locations that are in the proximity of the locations we occupy. We do not think of hereness as a mind- independent property of objects in addition to their being in the proximity of the places we occupy or in addition to their locations. The A-theorist claims that presentness differs from the common conception of hereness because presentness is an extra, mind-independent property, whereas the B-theorist claims that presentness does not differ from this conception of hereness because neither presentness nor hereness is an extra, mind-independent property.

What exactly is this extra, mind-independent property that A-theorists ascribe to events? When we search what A- theorists have written for an answer to this question, we find them generally silent. They tell us what presentness is not: it is not simply the occurrence of an event; it is not the simul- taneity of an event with the utterance, or thought, that the event occurs; it is not the time at which the event occurs; and it is not the simultaneity of an event with an experience of the event’s occurrence. But they do not tell us what present- ness actually is. This silence suggests that presentness, like yellow, is a simple, indefinable property that we can know only by direct experience. Though we can say what it is not, we cannot say what it is. We know it when we encounter it. If this is correct, and it is reasonable for A-theorists to say that it is, then presentness is the something more we experi- ence when we experience an event’s occurring, something above and beyond the event’s occurring simultaneously with our experience of the event. A-theorists assert, accordingly, that we have such experiences, and B-theorists deny that we

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do. What we experience, B-theorists say, is one of the things that A-theorists say presentness is not.

To show that B-theorists are right, I shall compare the A- and B-theories to what I shall call the A- and B-theories of space. My aim in making this comparison is to make it evident to introspection that we do not experience the something more that A-theorists say we experience.

2. Our Experience of Here and Now The A-theory of space says that hereness and thereness are

mind-independent properties of objects in addition to the places at which the objects are located and in addition to the fact that the objects are in the proximity of the places we occupy. The B-theory of space denies that hereness and thereness are extra, mind-independent properties. All that exists are the objects, their spatial locations and their spatial relations to other objects. Space does not consist of anything other than locations and relations. (It is another matter whether these are absolute or relative.) And our experience of space consists of nothing more than experiences of these locations and relations. When we experience an object being here, says the B-theorist of space, we experience the object being in the proximity of the place we occupy. The A-theorist of space disagrees: we experience something more than simply the object being in the proximity of the place we occupy. We also experience the object’s hereness.

This analogue to the A- and B-theories of time helps us to see that we do not experience an extra, mind-independent property of presentness. I say, “helps us to see,’’ for I am using the analogy only as an aid to illumine our experience of presentness, not as the premise of an argument. I shall consider four features of our experience of time that A- theorists of time have appealed to in order to show that our experience of presentness is of an extra, mind-independent property: the inexorability involved in our experience of presentness, the privilegedness we sense about presentness, the movement of presentness, and the extraness of which we are aware. Each of these has a spatial analogue that throws light on its temporal counterpart.

(a) Inexorability. One feature of our experience of time that A-theorists of time appeal to is the inexorability of the movement of time. We have the sense of being swept along against our wills. We do not say about times, as we do of places, “I think I will stay here for awhile” or “Let’s go over there.” We feel ourselves being taken to later times, and

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when we get to them, we feel ourselves taken to still later ones. We cannot choose which times we will be at as we can with places.

Richard Gale once used this sense of inexorability to support the A-theory. He wrote, “This difference between here and present or now is due to the fact that there is no spatial analogue to temporal becoming: the present (now), unlike here, shifts inexorably, independently of what we do.”9

The question here is not whether we experience inexora- bility, for the answer is that we surely do. The question is whether the experience of inexorability supports the A- theorist’s contention that we also experience an extra, mind- independent property of presentness. The answer to this question is, I believe, that the experience does not support the contention. The B-theorist can readily admit that the sense of inexorability is involved in our experience of B-time, because the very nature of time-the B-theory’s time- involves an inexorability that is lacking in space. To see this point, consider the A- and B-theories of space,

but with one emendation: imagine that we are camed from place to place without a choice of where we are taken. We would, in this condition, experience inexorability-we could not choose what places we were at; the hereness of objects would exist independently of our voluntary actions. But we would not, because of this condition, think of hereness as an objective property of objects over and above their being in the proximity of the places we occupy, or over and above the locations they occupy. Nor, except for the inexorability, would we experience anything more than the objects being in the proximity of the places we occupy. We would not, in short, adopt an A-theory of space because of our experience of spatial inexorability. Nor should we adopt an A-theory of time because of our experience of temporal inexorability. That we experience temporal inexorability does not mean that we also experience presentness as a mind-independent property over and above our awareness of the simultaneity of an event with our experience of that event. All that we experience is this simultaneity plus the inexorability involved in the movement of B-time.

(b) Priuilegedness. Another feature of our experience of time that the A-theorist appeals to is the privilegedness we sense when we experience events as present. This sense manifests itself in the feeling that we occupy the central place in the temporal spectrum. Past and future events, we feel, do not occupy this central place; they recede from it as

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they become more and more past, and approach it as they become less and less future.

The question here, again, is not whether we possess an experience of privilegedness, for we clearly do in some sense. The question is, rather, whether the existence of the experience supports the A-theory of time. That it does not can be seen by looking at the A- and B-theories of space. We also possess a sense of privilegedness about space-the sense that we occupy the central place in the spatial spectrum. Objects not in the proximity of the place we occupy do not reside in this central place; they recede from it as we move away from them, and approach it as we approach them. Surely, though, we do not think that this sense of privilege shows that we experience objects as having an extra, mind- independent property of hereness. We still accept the B- theory of space even though we regard certain objects as privileged. Similarly, we should not adopt the A-theory of time just because we regard certain events as privileged. Our experience of privilegedness is not the experience of an extra, mind-independent property of presentness, nor does having the former entail having the latter.

The A-theorist of time may object that there is a difference between our experience of temporal privilege and our experience of spatial privilege. Though we regard objects in the proximity of the place we occupy as being central in the spatial spectrum, we nevertheless view objects elsewhere as equally real. But we do not view events occurring in the past or future as equally real to present ones. Present events possess a certain kind of privilege that objects that are here do not possess.

The response to this objection is to point out that “equally real” is one of those phrases, like the ones I mentioned above, that invites confusion. What the A-theorist of time seems to mean is that we experience all objects-both those here and there-as existing at the same time, whereas we do not experience all events-past, present and future-as occurring at the same time. This asymmetry, the A-theorist argues, gives us an experience of the centrality of present events that is lacking in our experiences of objects that are here. Time possesses an inegalitarian quality that space does not possess, a quality that is prominent in our experience of time but absent from our experience of space.

If the A-theorist of time means these things, then the B- theorist of time will reply that the asymmetrical experiences do not support the A-theory of time. For they are derived from the difference between space and B-time: spatially

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separated objects can exist at the same time but temporally separated events cannot occur at the same time. If this difference between space and time means that we experience a privilegedness with time that we do not experience with space, then so be it. But the privilegedness does not entail the existence of presentness as an extra, mind-independent property. All that it entails is the asymmetry of time and space, which B-theorists of time are happy to admit, indeed, must admit if they are to maintain that there is a difference betwean time and space at all, which clearly they do maintain.

(c) Movement of the Present. Another asymmetry that the A-theorist of time appeals to is our experience of time as a movement. We have a vivid sense of the present first characterizing one set of events and then characterizing another. But we do not similarly sense here as a movement. What counts as being here is often stationary, and when it does move, it is really our movement that we sense and not the movement of space. Our experience of the movement of the present, though, is an experience of time itself moving.

It is not the inexorability of the present’s movement that the A-theorist appeals to here, or else the point would be a duplicate of the inexorability argument. Nor must we take the A-theorist’s reference to motion literally, or she will fall into conceptual absurdities that have been point6d out in the literature on the subject.10 The A-theorist’s claim is that we possess an awareness of time’s movement that is not matched by any analogous sense of space’s movement.

However, this claim, too, can be accounted for by the B- theorist. If anything is true of time and space, it is that they are intrinsically different. So one would expect an asymmetry in our experiences of them. But this asymmetry does not justify the postulation of presentness as an extra feature of time. To see this, think again of the A- and B- theories of space. Imagine that we are moving from place to place voluntarily (so that the idea of inexorability does not get tangled with the idea of movement). We would then experience the here moving. But we would not infer that because we do, we should adopt the A-theory of space. The reason we would not make this. inference is that we are already convinced that the B-theory of space is true. Our not making this inference shows that we distinguish between our experience of the moving here and the experience of here being an extra, mind-independent property of objects. And this fact in turn suggests that we should make a similar

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distinction with regard to time. Our experience of the moving present is different from the experience of the present being an extra, mind-independent property of events. The latter experience would support the A-theory of time if the experience existed; but the experience does not exist. The former experience exists, but its existence does not support the A-theory of time, for it is compatible with the B-theory of time, in the same way that our experience of the moving here is compatible with the B-theory of space.

(d) Extraness of the Present. A fourth feature of our experience of time that A-theorists of time appeal to is our direct experience of presentness as a characteristic that events possess in addition to their occurrences at certain times and in addition to their simultaneity with our experiences of them. If all that we experience is this occurrence or this simul- taneity, A-theorists assert, then we do not know when the events occur, namely, now. We might be experiencing their past or future occurrences. To know that the events occur now, we must either experience their presentness directly, or infer their presentness from our direct awareness of the presentness of our experiences of the events (which are themselves simul- taneous with the events). Since we do in fact know that events occur now, our experience of their presentness is something more than the experience of the events occurring and also something more than the experience of the events occurring simultaneously with our experiences of the. events.

A linguistic analogue to this argument has commonly been used by A-theorists to show that tensed sentences are not equivalent to tenseless-date sentences. The tensed sentence (1) Laura is outside now

is not equivalent to (2) Laura is [tenseless] outside at 11:45 A.M. on July 9,1991

the A-theorist claims, because we can know that (2) is true without knowing that (1) is true-we might know that (2) is true when the event it reports is past. So if we know only that (2) is true, we still do not know when Laura is outside. This means that there is an added element in (l), namely, the ascription of the A-property of nowness to the event reported. The A-theorist may be making only a linguistic claim in this argument, but she may mean to be making an experiential claim as well. In any case, my response to the experiential claim has an equally valid linguistic analogue."

Consider the following argument that an A-theorist of space

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might use in response to the claim made by the B-theorist of space that when we experience an object as here we are experiencing merely the object’s being in the proximity of the place we occupy, and not an extra, mind-independent property of hereness. If this is all we experience, the A-theorist of space might respond, then we do not know that the object is here, for having this experience is compatible with our not being here, as would be the case if we clairvoyantly observed both ourselves and the object being somewhere else at a future time. To know that an object is here, we must either experience its hereness directly or be aware of the hereness of our experience of the object. Since we do know that objects are here, our experience of their hereness must be something more than simply the experience of their being in the proximity of the places we occupy.

We would reject this argument because we are already convinced that its conclusion is mistaken-we do not experience hereness as an extra, mind-independent property of objects. All that we experience is the object being near our spatial location This experience is what tells us that the object is here; no additional experience of hereness is needed for us to know this.

This fact about our experience of space suggests that no additional experience beyond the experience of simultaneity is needed for us to experience presentness. If this is so, our experience of an event’s presentness would be the awareness of the simultaneity of the event with our experience of the event. And the something more we are aware of when we step back and experience the experience itself as being present is the following complex experience: the awareness of our awareness of our experience of an event being simultaneous with the experience of the event.

To clarify: when we experience an event being present, there are four items: the event, the experience of the event, the simultaneity of these two and our awareness of this simultaneity, thus:

Awareness of: Experience of event simultaneous with the event

The A-theorist of time objects that this is not enough to give ES an experience of presentness, for we do not know in this schema either when the event occurs or when the experience of the event occurs. They could occur at some past time. But since we do know when the event occurs and when our experience of the event occurs, the A-theorist continues,

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namely, in the present, we must, in addition to these elements, possess a direct experience of presentness.

My B-theorist response ie that there may, indeed, be something more than what I have just described, but it, too, is limited to our awareness of further simultaneity, thus:

Awarenwo of: awareneuw of experience of event

~ u l t a n e o u s with experience of event

This awareness is what we possess when we experience the presentness of our experience of an event (and not just the presentness of the event itself). We are, therefore, not obliged to introduce presentness as an “objective” property of mental events in order to account for our experience of the presentness of external objects.12 And in general we are not obliged to inkoduce an experience of presentnew as an extra property, since our experience of simultaneity takes care of all that we know, in the same way that our experience of objecta’ being in the proximity of our locations takes care of our knowledge of hereness.

The A-theorist of time may object that my account of our experience ?f an event’s presentness and of our experience of the expenence’s presentness introduces an infinite regrese. My answer is that if there is a regress with our experience of presentness, then there is a regress with our experience of hereness. But since there is no repsa with the latter, there is none with the former. We have an experience of an object’s being here (which consists of our awareness of the object’s being in the proximity of our location), and we may or may not also have an experience of the experience’s being here. The existence of the former does not entail the existence of the latter. Similarly, that we experience an event’s presentness does not entail that we experience the experience itself as present, though, of course, we may, and often do.

3. Objections I shall now consider two objections to my claim that we

do not experience the A-theory’s presentness. (a) Quentin Smith asserts that we sometimes have an

unreflexive awareness of evente being present. By this he means that we are aware of events being present without also being aware of our experiences of the events. He writes, I perceive the cloud to be paseing at present over the treetop without at the ~ a m e t h e reflexively grasping my own perceptual experiencing of the

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event. I am not attending to my perceiving but to that which I am perceiving: the cloud passing over the treetops. If somebody asks me, “What are you experiencing right now?” I may then reflect upon my perceptual state, but until then my attention is other-dire~ted.1~

If Smith is right, then B-theorists of time cannot claim that our experience of presentness is the awareness of the simultaneity of an event with our experience of the event, for this awareness is reflexive in Smith’s sense.

The question here is not whether we have unreflexive temporal experiences, for Smith is surely right in pointing out that we do. The question is rather, whether these unreflexive experiences are of the presentness of events or whether they are simply of the occurrence of events. B- theorists of time assert that when we experience events as occurring, we do not also unreflexively experience them as present. And their court of appeal is introspection. They fail to find the extra, unreflexive experience of presentness. They do, of course, find numerous occasions when we unreflexively experience events occurring, but this fact is compatible with their claim that the events occur in B-time.

The analogy to our experience of here helps us to see these points. There are occasions, perhaps quite numerous, when we unreflexively experience, simply as existing, objects that happen to be in the proximity of our locations, without also experiencing them as being here. To experience them as being here would require reflexively experiencing them as existing in the proximity of our location. With space, then, we distinguish between our unreflexive experience of an object existing and our reflexive experience of an object’s existing here. Introspection reveals a similar distinction in our temporal experiences: we sometimes unreflexively experience present events Occurring, without experiencing their presentness, and at other times we experience the presentness of present events. The former experiences do not require A-time, and the latter are reflexive experiences compatible with B-time.

(b) Both Smith and H. Scott Hestevold claim that the different attitudes we have toward the past and future are incompatible with the B-theory of time. We dread a future tooth extraction and have relief toward a past one. “Dread is appropriate,” Hestevold writes, “because I knowingly ‘move closer’ to an unpleasant event, and relief is appropriate because I knowingly ‘move away’ from an unpleasant event, and such temporal ‘movement’ cannot be captured in terms of ST” [the static view of timel.14 Smith and Hestevold reject D. H. Mellor’s B-theory response that the timerelations of

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before and after are sufficient to explain the appropriateness of dread and relief.15 If Mellor’s response were true, Smith asserts, the two emotions would be caused by the same fact that they are caused by different beliefs: when we experience dread, we would believe (if the B-theory’s explanation were correct) both that the tooth extraction is later than the dread and before the relief, and at the time we experience the relief, we would believe exactly the same thing.16

Mellor’s B-theory response can be reinforced by noting the analogy, again, between our experience of presentness and our experience of hereness. It is appropriate to dread being under a tree during a thunderstorm, and it is also appropriate to experience relief after having moved from under the tree if moments later it is hit by lightning. Dread in this case is con- nected to the experience of the tree’s being here and relief is connected to the experience of the tree’s being there. No one is tempted, though, to say that hereness and thereness are extra, mind-independent properties of the tree because of these facts. The existence of space-relations is sufficient to explain the dread and relief. Similarly, we do not need the extra, mind- independent characteristics of past and future to account for these emotions. Thus, to Smith’s assertion that the B-theory of time makes dread and relief derive from the same beliefs, we may respond that the B-theory of space does so as well, contrary to the fact that the two emotions come from different beliefs: when we experience dread, we believe, according to the B-theory of space, that the lightning strike occurs at the same location as the dread and that the lightning strike occurs at a different location from the relief, and when we experience the relief, we believe exactly the same thing. But since we all accept the B-theory of space, we are not persuaded of its falsity by this reasoning, and consequently should not be persuaded of the falsity of the B-theory of time by Smith’s analogous reasoning.

4. Conclusion

I conclude that we do not experience the presentness that the A-theorist of time claims characterizes events. The basis for this conclusion is inspection of our inner states. I have used our experience of hereness, not to prove this conclusion, but to aid in our inspection of temporal experiences. What the A-theorist of time must do to counter this conclusion is show that our experience of presentness differs from our experience of hereness in such a way as to require the postulation of an extra, mind-independent property for the former experience but not for the latter one. There are, of course, differences

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between the two experiences, but the question is whether they make a difference to the A- and B-theories of time.

The inference from my conclusion is that the B-theory of time is more likely to be true than the A-theory of time. It is possible, of course, for the A-theory’s presentness to exist even though we do not experience it, and thus it is possible for the A-theory to be true in spite of all that I have said. However, if the A-theory were true, one would naturally (though not logically) expect that we would experience the phenomenon it asserts to exist. The precritical and unanalyzed experience of presentness is, perhaps, the source of most A-theorists’ conviction that the A-theory is true. If what I have said is correct, this precritical experience turns out to be compatible with the B-theorist’s conception of time. I infer that, insofar as experience is a source of support for any theory, it supports the B-theory and not the A-theory.

NOTES

1 Quentin Smith, “The Phenomenology of A-Time,’’ Dialogos, 23 (July, 1988), pp. 143-153; H. Scott Kestevold, “Passage and the Presence of Experience,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50 (March, 1990),

2 William Lane Craig, “God and Real Time,” Religious Studies, 26 (3), p. pp. 537-552.

336. Craig, pp. 337-338. Smith, p. 143.

5 Hestevold, pp. 537,538. 6 C. D. Broad, An Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1938), Vol. 11, Part I; in Richard M. Gale, ed., The Philosophy of Time (Garden City, New York Doubleday, 1967), p. 137.

7 G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time (London, 1961), p. 228; in Gale, p. 339.

8 M. Capek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton, New Jersey, 1961), p. 337; in Gale, ed., The Philosophy of Time, p. 338.

9 Richard M. Gale, The Language of Time (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 214.

10 See, for example, Donald Williams, “The Myth of Passage,” in Gale, ed., The Philosophy of Time, pp. 104-107.

11 I develop this in “The Date-Analysis of Tensed Sentences,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 70 (June, 1992), 198-203.

12 I mean here to be addressing Craig’s charge that “no B-theorist . . . has successfully answered, in my estimation, the charge that his theory is incoherent because the mind-dependence of physical becoming requires a real becoming in the subjective contents of consciousness.” Craig, p. 337. If Craig’s charge is unanswerable, then so also is an analogous charge against the B-theorist of space: the mind-dependence of hereness requires a real hereness in the subjective contents of consciousness.

13 Smith, “The Phenomenology of A-Time,” p. 148.

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14 Hestevold, p. 546; Smith, pp. 149-151. “heir argument derives from A. N. Prior, “Thank Goodness “hat’s Over,” Philosophy, 34 (1959), pp. 12- 17.

16 D. H. Mellor, Real Time (Cambridge, 1981), p. 50. 16 Smith, p. 150.

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