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John Perry, Philosophy Department, "How Real Is the Future?"
ABSTRACT:
John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart argued that time is not real. He thought that the concept of time requires that events have, successively, the properties of being future, being present, and being past; this is the source of temporal change, the essence of time. These are A-properties. The 2000 election was once in the future, then it was present, and now it is in the past. But our concept of time also requires that all temporal properties derive from the order of events in time; the 2000 election was after the 1996 election and before the 2004 election. But these order properties, the B-properties, never change, and so cannot be the source of the changing properties A-properties. So the whole thing is a unreconcilable mess, and the concept of time makes no sense, so there is no time.
Contemporary philosophers of time tend to agree that time is real, but don't agree on what to do about the properties of being future, present, and past. Some argue that these are indexical or token-reflexive properties. When I say now "The 2004 election is in the future," the condition of truth on my remark is that the 2004 election is later than my remark. The relation between the 2004 and my remark never change. So there is no problem finding the fact that makes my statement true in the B-series. Others argue that this analysis leaves the nature of time utterly mysterious, since temporal change, the essence of time, is left out. We find the A-series within the B-series at the cost of losing the essence of time. Moreover, it seems that on this analysis there would be no past, present, or future without utterances, or at least thoughts, for events to be before, simultaneous with, or later than.
I'll argue that the indexical analysis of the properties of being present, past, and future is not right. There are no future events, for events are not real, do not exist, until they happen. If there is no event later than an event E, E is present. If there are events later than it, E is past. Events go from being present to being past in virtue of new events coming into existence. The B-series facts change just as the A-series facts do, and are the basis for them. Time is real, temporal change is unique, and it does not require utterances or thoughts. Confusion on these matters is due, among other things, to not distinguishing representations, models, and reality, and to the overly facile way we talk about propositions being true at times.
This talk covers work I am doing with Thomas Hofweber.
BIO:
John Perry is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.