What Is Time? Philosophy of Time: A-Theory vs B-Theory

[00:00:00][Music] time is against us time waits for no man times change time runs on time flies time stands still and I'd take time to spend time talking about time anytime but what is time what I want to do in this episode is give you all a very general introduction to the philosophy of time and the state of the debate today so when it comes to time philosophers are broadly divided into two camps called a theory and B Theory a theorists believe that time can be divided into past present and future and there are temporal properties so the peninsula War has the property of pastness the war between the Mayans and the scar has the property of Futurity past present and future are actual real distinctions that you can make and time passes as it flows from the future into the present and into the past be theorists believe that all times are equal and often draw on analogy between time and space in space there's no such place as here that's just the name we give to this bit where we happen to be there's nothing specially special about here no property of heess similarly be theorists think that there's no such thing as the present it's just the name we give to the bit of time where we happen to be but all times actually exist equally and some people believe that time is cyclical and some people believe that time is cyclical and some people believe that time time that was a joke the distinction between a series and B series comes from the pleasingly named John mtag Ellis mtag who rejected the B series because he thought it ruled out the possibility of change imagine a hot pie that cools down if a theory is true then the pie is currently hot and then it becomes cool the moment at which the pie is hot moves from the present into the past and then into the further and further past whereas if the B theory is true mtag thoughts there isn't any genuine change if the pie is hot and then it cools then the time at which the pie is hot is always in the same earlier than relation to the time at which the pie is cool saying we have a hot pie at time T1 and a cold pie at time T2 doesn't describe change any more than saying there is a chair over there there is not a chair over there describes change the B series involves permanent relations whereas the a series is more Dynamic mtag thought that time necessarily in involved change so he rejected the B series he thought it's not even a legit view of time at all he thought that if time exists it has to be like the a series and he also rejected the a series weirdly he thought it was contradictory because of something nowadays known as mctags paradox paradox imagine the universe is aish there really is a metaphysically distinct past present and future and there really are properties of pastness presentness and Futurity every event will have pastness present and Futurity they'll start off with Futurity then they'll have presentness for a bit and then they'll move into having pastness but the a properties are mutually exclusive nothing can have pastness presentness and Futurity that's a contradiction now the obvious response is well nothing has all three a properties at the same time they start off having Futurity then they have presentness and then they have pastness and there's nothing contradictory about having a property at one time and not having it at another but mtag goes one Step Beyond if an event is in the future then it is currently in the future but it will be in the past that means it has second order temporal properties it has present Futurity I.E it is presently in the future and future pastness I.E it will be in the past and when it is in the past it will have past Futurity I.E it used to be in the future but again we get a contradiction no event can have future pastness and past Futurity that would mean it both is and isn't in the future which is a contradiction so again we say they don't have them at the same time it currently has future pastness and then it will have past Futurity which is to say it has third order temporal properties it has present future pastness and future past Futurity but again some of the third order temporal properties are contradictory so we have to invoke fourth order and fifth order and so on and so on and so on and so on in an infinite regress which goes on forever solves nothing and is incredibly grammatically confusing no matter how many levels you pursue them to the contradictions in M's Paradox always come back and the reason for that is we have invoked time to explain time we said there's a contradiction with a properties to try and get rid of the contradiction we appealed to a properties we said that nothing has the contradictory properties simultaneously simultaneously means at the same time we try to fix the broken thing using the broken thing for this reason mtag rejected the a theory he thought that if time exists it has to be like the a theory because it can't be like B theory that doesn't account for change but the a theory is contradictory so the only conclusion is that time is unreal and he was late for every appointment from that day forward not really he thought that time was illusory we all partake in and operate according to the illusion of time but it doesn't actually pick out a real feature of the universe and that's really the beginning of the modern metaphysics of time the distinction between a theory and B theory is still used today though nowadays they're broad classes of views nobody's just an a theorist or just a b theorist they all split down into their little factions and M's Paradox isn't really thought of as being particularly good argument anymore but I think this is one of the coolest areas of philosophy and there's loads more questions to ask like does time pass if it really exists and do the past and the future really exist or are they kind of imaginary or what's going on there but we shall have to save those questions for another time what do you guys think about this General introduction to time do you believe M taget that there couldn't be change in a b Universe if you want to send me your questions comments queries comebacks fan mail fan art fan fiction fan dances or anything you want stick them underneath the video or send them to me by Facebook Twitter or by email next time we could either stick with the topic of time and talk about does time pass if it exists or we could talk about some International politics and economics and something called the resource curse which is all about who do resources belong to and what should we do about them leave a like if you enjoyed this video and if you don't subscribe to philosophy tube you're going to have a bad time I am beautiful no matter what you say cuz there's no objective Criterion for aesthetic judgments let's see what the philosop fans had to say about whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder Dante asked what if two equally ideal art critics had conflicting opinions that's a good question I'm not sure what Hume would say to that um I guess in that case either opinion would be fine because he's not saying there's an objective answer which only the ideal critic can get at we're just judging judgments so maybe either judgment in that case is okay Donald said that whether somebody's an ideal art critic might actually be a subjective thing we did try and rule that out when we were listing the ideal critics attributes but I agree with you that maybe some people would want different things out of their critics so maybe we should see the attributes Hume lists as things that are necessary for being an ideal critic but not sufficient relatedly uh Joseph Hall Patton yeah I think that's probably a pretty good way of reading hum's essay maybe we should read it as a list of things which if you don't have then you can't be an ideal art critic like if your taste is Prejudice or it's not delicate enough then your opinions shouldn't be considered authoritative maybe it's a way of ruling out bad aesthetic judgments rather than ruling in really good ones Jose Marie Ruiz said that maybe the true test of whether something is beautiful is whether or not it's still considered beautiful outside of the cultures and contexts in which it was created I don't know whether or not that's true but I thought that the picture of the ancient Egyptian thing that you sent me was really really cool so I will put a link to that description thank you for that I thought that was interesting Mr ponb and Michael RR said that if you couldn't understand Shakespeare then you could legit judge Twilight to be better because I mean Shakespeare's not even a live option for you you can't even access it or appreciate it as a work of art I think you might be might be on to something there I mean as an actor I obviously rebel intuitively against that and and maybe a future drama school admissions panel will hold this against me but yeah yeah I think you might be on to something with that to Tommy Wilson Google pudding ball where's my gun and all the other people on Twitter who are asking me who those two Comics were who I said were my favorite this guy is Stuart Lee he's a big inspiration to me when I write my standup he's a very very funny man and this guy he's okay you know he's pretty he's pretty funny pretty decent comedian uh he's got his own hour at The Fringe this year it's pretty cool he's my brother that's all we've got time for this week thank you very much for watching and I shall see you in the next episode bye [Music]