Real Time II

D. H. Mellor

London: Routledge, 1998, pp. xiv+146

ISBN: 0415-09780-0 hardback; 0415-09781-9 paperback
eISBN: 0203-07064-X Taylor & Francis eBooks
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This book supersedes Real Time (1981). It uses the tenseless truthmakers of tensed thoughts and statements to show why and how they are both indispensable and irreducible to tenseless thoughts and statements. It rebuts Prior's 'Thank goodness that's over' objection to tenseless theories of time, and discusses the spatial analogues of tensed and tenseless theories. It revives McTaggart's argument against real tense and gives a new tenseless account of change. Lastly it shows why the direction of time must be that of causation, and uses the theory of causation of The Facts of Causation to show why there can be no backward time travel or cyclical time.

Preface
Introduction

1 Past, present and future: 1 The question about time
2 A times
3 B times
4 A- and B- series
5 Seeing A- and B-times
2 Truths and truthmakers: 1 A-facts and B-facts
2 Temporal truthmakers
3 Tokens and times: 1 Tokens
2 Token-reflexives
3 'Here be (no) tokens'
4 Necessary pasts and possible futures
5 Complex A-propositions
4 The presence of experience: 1 The A-theory of clocks
2 'Thank goodness that's over'
3 The necessary presence of experience
4 A B-theory of our times
5 Time and space: 1 Spatial analogues of time
2 A- and B-places
3 The B-theory of A-space
4 The difference between time and space
5 Relativity
6 Relativity and the present
6 Thinking in time: 1 The irreducibility of A-beliefs
2 A-meanings and B-truth-conditions
3 Actions and beliefs
4 Experiencing the flow of time
7 McTaggart's proof: 1 Change and the flow of time
2 The contradiction in the flow of time
3 In defence of McTaggart
4 McTaggart and truth conditions
5 A growing B-world?

8 Change

1 The B-theory of change
2 Events and things
3 Changes and properties
4 Change, difference and identity
5 Properties as relations to times
6 The B-facts of change
7 No experience of the flow of space

9 Events, facts and causation

1 Events as changes
2 Changes: events or facts?
3 Causes and effects of changes
4 The causation of stasis
5 In defence of factual causation

10 Causation and time

1 Perception, action and time
2 Causal and temporal order
3 Simultaneous causation
4 Ordering facts, events and times
5 The causal form of inner sense
6 Causation and change

11 The direction of time

1 Earlier and later
2 Experiencing the direction of time
3 Forward time travel

12 The linearity of time

1 Backward time travel
2 The chances of causation
3 The logical independence of causal facts
4 The impossibility of causal loops

Bibliography
Index

Updated 13 July 2005