The central problem addressed by this thesis is to attempt and reconcile our experience of time with our scientific understanding of time. Science tells us that time is static yet we experience it as dynamic. In the literature there tend to be two positions. Those who follow the science and claim that time is static and that our experience is mind-independent; those who favour our experience and question the science. I attempt to reconcile these positions. To do this I adopt terminology set out by McTaggart (1908) who termed the static view the B series and the dynamic view the A series. The literature that has developed out of this breaks down into the A Theory where time is the past, present and future; and the B Theory, where time is just involves events being earlier than or later than other events. I reject both positions as accounts of ontology. I adopt McTaggart’s C series, a series of betweenness only, on the grounds that it is this series that is mostly aligned to science. Given the C series, our experience requires explanation. A claim of mind-dependency is insufficient. I argue that the A series really refers to mind-dependent features that are brought out by our interaction with the C series; much like the way that colour is brought out by our interaction with a colourless world. The B series is the best description of the contents of time, not time itself. To examine the experience of time I adopt phenomenology to describe that experience. From within experience I show that certain features of that experience cannot be attributed to a mind-independent reality and use this as further evidence for the above claims. Finally I suggest that most theories of time are driven by the view that a theory of time has to be consistent. I examine recent developments in logic to see whether such a consistent requirement is needed. I conclude that the most we can get out of paraconsistent approaches is inconsistent experiences, not inconsistent reality. I conclude that the A series is the best description of our experience of time, the C series the best description of the ontology of time, and the B series as the best description of the contents of time. This reconciles our experience with our understanding of time. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1286776 / Thesis(PhD)-- School of Humanities, 2007

<p> An account of salient conceptions shared among McTaggart's contemporaries is offered to maintain the interpretive hypothesis that McTaggart's rejection of time may be a consequence of a more general metaphysical theory.</p> <p> Yet though McTaggart's rejection of time may follow from a more general account, the more general account may be false. In what follows we consider the possibility of generating complete lists from given wholes, as opposed to the practice of generating wholes by enumeration or induction. Historical support is offered for this scheme, followed by a distillation of McTaggart's doctrines, a brief linkage with mereological treatments of time and geometry, and an exegesis of McTaggart's unique account of change. Finally a treatment of McTaggart's argument for the rejection of time is offered which seeks to show that McTaggart's infamous conclusion has largely been misunderstood because of McTaggart's unfortunate emphasis on the verbal implications of his doctrines and the consequent subversion of his positive account of infinite divisibility, inclusion and the relation between descriptions and wholes.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Um dos marcos mais importantes da filosofia do tempo contemporânea é o artigo de McTaggart (1908) denominado “The Unreality of Time”, no qual o autor defende que a suposição da existência do tempo é contraditória. O texto em questão demorou algumas décadas para ter sua importância filosófica devidamente reconhecida, devido à dificuldade proposta pela segunda parte de sua argumentação, chamada posteriormente de “Paradoxo de McTaggart” , pois não consiste em mostrar a coerência de suposição da que o tempo é irreal, mas que a ideia da existência disso que comumente se entende por tempo é inconsistente devido a uma contradição na aplicação dos predicados ser presente, ser passado e ser futuro. Há alguns autores que consideram o argumento de McTaggart muito plausível e que desenvolveram respostas a este, a fim de assegurar a realidade do tempo abandonando alguma (ou algumas) das suposições fundamentais que se tem a respeito da natureza do tempo. Uma destas respostas é denominada presentismo e consiste em defender que tudo e apenas o que existe é presente e tudo e apenas o que é presente existe. Essa resposta enfrenta algumas dificuldades, dentre as quais ressalta-se a dificuldade da veridação de proposições a respeito do passado e do futuro, e a dificuldade de conciliar o presentismo com a teoria da relatividade. A proposta desta dissertação é analisar a argumentação de McTaggart levando em consideração os requisitos necessários para interpretá-la a fim de que fique claro o que está sendo pretendido em cada premissa. O próximo passo será analisar o presentismo enquanto teoria coerente para, por fim, verificar a possibilidade de utilizar o presentismo como uma alternativa concreta de interpretação da realidade na qual o tempo seja real, resolvendo o paradoxo de McTaggart. / One of the most important milestones of contemporary philosophy of time is the paper by McTaggart (1908) "The Unreality of Time", in which he argues that the existence of time is contradictory. The work in question took a few decades to have its philosophical importance duly acknowledged, mainly due to the difficulty of the second part of McTaggart’s argument, which came to be called “McTaggart’s Paradox”, since it does not show the consistency of the assumption that time is unreal, but that the idea of the existence of what is commonly understood by time is inconsistent due to a contradiction in applying the predicates of being past, present or future. There are some authors who consider the McTaggart's argument very plausible, and have developed responses to it in order to ensure the reality of time, abandoning some of the fundamental notions that are usually attributed to time. One of these responses is called presentism, and consists in the assumption that all and only what exists is present and all and only what is present exists. That response faces some difficulties, like the difficulty of the truthmakers, the makers of the truth-value of assumptions about the past and the future, since only the present exists, or the difficulty reconciling presentism and Relativity Theory. The purpose of this dissertation, then, is to examine McTaggart's Paradox, analyzing the requirements needed to interpret it in a way that is consistent. If the argument shows itself sound, the next step will be to analyze presentism as a coherent theory in order to finally verify the possibility of using presentism as a concrete alternative for interpreting reality in which time is real, solving the McTaggart’s Paradox.

Um dos marcos mais importantes da filosofia do tempo contemporânea é o artigo de McTaggart (1908) denominado “The Unreality of Time”, no qual o autor defende que a suposição da existência do tempo é contraditória. O texto em questão demorou algumas décadas para ter sua importância filosófica devidamente reconhecida, devido à dificuldade proposta pela segunda parte de sua argumentação, chamada posteriormente de “Paradoxo de McTaggart” , pois não consiste em mostrar a coerência de suposição da que o tempo é irreal, mas que a ideia da existência disso que comumente se entende por tempo é inconsistente devido a uma contradição na aplicação dos predicados ser presente, ser passado e ser futuro. Há alguns autores que consideram o argumento de McTaggart muito plausível e que desenvolveram respostas a este, a fim de assegurar a realidade do tempo abandonando alguma (ou algumas) das suposições fundamentais que se tem a respeito da natureza do tempo. Uma destas respostas é denominada presentismo e consiste em defender que tudo e apenas o que existe é presente e tudo e apenas o que é presente existe. Essa resposta enfrenta algumas dificuldades, dentre as quais ressalta-se a dificuldade da veridação de proposições a respeito do passado e do futuro, e a dificuldade de conciliar o presentismo com a teoria da relatividade. A proposta desta dissertação é analisar a argumentação de McTaggart levando em consideração os requisitos necessários para interpretá-la a fim de que fique claro o que está sendo pretendido em cada premissa. O próximo passo será analisar o presentismo enquanto teoria coerente para, por fim, verificar a possibilidade de utilizar o presentismo como uma alternativa concreta de interpretação da realidade na qual o tempo seja real, resolvendo o paradoxo de McTaggart. / One of the most important milestones of contemporary philosophy of time is the paper by McTaggart (1908) "The Unreality of Time", in which he argues that the existence of time is contradictory. The work in question took a few decades to have its philosophical importance duly acknowledged, mainly due to the difficulty of the second part of McTaggart’s argument, which came to be called “McTaggart’s Paradox”, since it does not show the consistency of the assumption that time is unreal, but that the idea of the existence of what is commonly understood by time is inconsistent due to a contradiction in applying the predicates of being past, present or future. There are some authors who consider the McTaggart's argument very plausible, and have developed responses to it in order to ensure the reality of time, abandoning some of the fundamental notions that are usually attributed to time. One of these responses is called presentism, and consists in the assumption that all and only what exists is present and all and only what is present exists. That response faces some difficulties, like the difficulty of the truthmakers, the makers of the truth-value of assumptions about the past and the future, since only the present exists, or the difficulty reconciling presentism and Relativity Theory. The purpose of this dissertation, then, is to examine McTaggart's Paradox, analyzing the requirements needed to interpret it in a way that is consistent. If the argument shows itself sound, the next step will be to analyze presentism as a coherent theory in order to finally verify the possibility of using presentism as a concrete alternative for interpreting reality in which time is real, solving the McTaggart’s Paradox.

Um dos marcos mais importantes da filosofia do tempo contemporânea é o artigo de McTaggart (1908) denominado “The Unreality of Time”, no qual o autor defende que a suposição da existência do tempo é contraditória. O texto em questão demorou algumas décadas para ter sua importância filosófica devidamente reconhecida, devido à dificuldade proposta pela segunda parte de sua argumentação, chamada posteriormente de “Paradoxo de McTaggart” , pois não consiste em mostrar a coerência de suposição da que o tempo é irreal, mas que a ideia da existência disso que comumente se entende por tempo é inconsistente devido a uma contradição na aplicação dos predicados ser presente, ser passado e ser futuro. Há alguns autores que consideram o argumento de McTaggart muito plausível e que desenvolveram respostas a este, a fim de assegurar a realidade do tempo abandonando alguma (ou algumas) das suposições fundamentais que se tem a respeito da natureza do tempo. Uma destas respostas é denominada presentismo e consiste em defender que tudo e apenas o que existe é presente e tudo e apenas o que é presente existe. Essa resposta enfrenta algumas dificuldades, dentre as quais ressalta-se a dificuldade da veridação de proposições a respeito do passado e do futuro, e a dificuldade de conciliar o presentismo com a teoria da relatividade. A proposta desta dissertação é analisar a argumentação de McTaggart levando em consideração os requisitos necessários para interpretá-la a fim de que fique claro o que está sendo pretendido em cada premissa. O próximo passo será analisar o presentismo enquanto teoria coerente para, por fim, verificar a possibilidade de utilizar o presentismo como uma alternativa concreta de interpretação da realidade na qual o tempo seja real, resolvendo o paradoxo de McTaggart. / One of the most important milestones of contemporary philosophy of time is the paper by McTaggart (1908) "The Unreality of Time", in which he argues that the existence of time is contradictory. The work in question took a few decades to have its philosophical importance duly acknowledged, mainly due to the difficulty of the second part of McTaggart’s argument, which came to be called “McTaggart’s Paradox”, since it does not show the consistency of the assumption that time is unreal, but that the idea of the existence of what is commonly understood by time is inconsistent due to a contradiction in applying the predicates of being past, present or future. There are some authors who consider the McTaggart's argument very plausible, and have developed responses to it in order to ensure the reality of time, abandoning some of the fundamental notions that are usually attributed to time. One of these responses is called presentism, and consists in the assumption that all and only what exists is present and all and only what is present exists. That response faces some difficulties, like the difficulty of the truthmakers, the makers of the truth-value of assumptions about the past and the future, since only the present exists, or the difficulty reconciling presentism and Relativity Theory. The purpose of this dissertation, then, is to examine McTaggart's Paradox, analyzing the requirements needed to interpret it in a way that is consistent. If the argument shows itself sound, the next step will be to analyze presentism as a coherent theory in order to finally verify the possibility of using presentism as a concrete alternative for interpreting reality in which time is real, solving the McTaggart’s Paradox.

The purpose of this essay was to see whether our idea of time might be an illusion, and inorder to find out, I look both at what modern philosophy says about the concept of time aswell as what modern physics says. I want to see if there is consensus between the two fields inorder to find a unified definition of time; and using this definition I want to see whether timemight be an illusion. As it turns out, time is an elusive concept that is difficult to define, andeven though most, if not all, researchers in both philosophy and physics agree that time exists,there is little else they agree on when it comes to explaining what time in fact is. Inphilosophy, there is also disagreement within the field and the discussion centers on time asquality, while physics focus on time as quantity – used to measure the world around us. Giventhe different accounts of time, it seems that each of us are left to make up our own mindsabout how to define it. Whether or not time is an illusion depends on how time is defined.And until there is a clear definition of time it also becomes impossible to say for certainwhether time is an illusion.

What does it mean to say that something is “temporal” or that something “exists” in time? What is time? And how should we interpret the “ontology” of time? One important strand in twentieth century thought and the philosophy of time has given these fundamental questions a neat and tidy set of influential answers—according to this view, time itself is understood to be a kind of series, and the basic ontology of time is taken to consist of events, together with either the tenses, which get interpreted as special sorts of second order properties known as “A properties” (i.e. the properties of being either Past, Present, or Future), or with special sorts of second order relations, known as “B relations” (i.e. the relations of “earlier than”, “later than”, or “simultaneous with”) which are typically referred to as tenseless. According to this particular view, taken together, A properties and B relations are understood to exhaust the ontology of time. This is an interpretation that has been typically found throughout much of the philosophical literature on the metaphysics of time throughout the twentieth century despite the fact that both of these prospective temporal ontologies had already been shown early on to face a major problem—McTaggart's paradox (1908). According to the paradox, regardless of whichever ready-made ontology we ultimately opt for, we still are led to the same ineluctable conclusion—that time is unreal. For the better half of the twentieth century, philosophers of time, science, and language have struggled with this paradox in different ways, in various attempts to wrest their own preferred categories of temporal being from its grasp, in order to redeploy them in the course of developing a number of competing metaphysical accounts of time, which get characterized technically, as either “A” or “B” theories of time, depending primarily on whether their respective ontology remains either tensed or tenseless. What has thus emerged over the course of the past century, has been a growing preference among philosophers for interpreting temporal ontology along strictly A theoretical or B Theoretical lines, which has rendered this particular strand of thought a highly influential one with respect to a large portion of our contemporary understanding of temporal ontology, which remains one that ultimately boils down to a choice between A properties or B relations, as evidenced by Broad (1923), Smart (1963), Prior (1970), Mellor (1985), Oaklander and Smith (1994), Inwagen and Zimmerman (1998), Smith and Jokic (2003), Sider (2011), Tallant (2013), etc. Further evidence of this view can also be located not just within both A and B theories of time—which include both tensed and tenseless theories—but also within theories of presentism and eternalism, as well as within recent relationalist and substantivalist accounts of time. In the dissertation, it is argued that a common background assumption within these various accounts of time, perhaps one of the most basic and most wide-spread, turns out to be fallacious. More precisely, an extended argument is developed against the common and basic assumption found within these views that it is appropriate to depict time as consisting of either an A series or a B series in the first place. This metaphysical assumption is referred to as the “SER thesis”. The dissertation aims to show that any such serialized interpretation of time fails to be sufficiently distinguishable from what are merely formalized spatial representations or spatializations of time, and that when viewed from the standpoint of developing a viable metaphysics of time, any such formalized spatializations ultimately appear to result in something like a contradiction. Some objections are then raised to this main line of argument, where it is further shown, that the most intuitive strategies for replying to it are unsuccessful in the end, and serve only to supply us with various ways of masking the real problem, since each of these strategies seem themselves to commit some form of the ignoratio elenchi or red herring fallacies. In the remaining portions of the dissertation, a revisionary approach to the question of temporal ontology that seems capable of avoiding some of these problems is briefly sketched out. This approach employs the resources of a hermeneutic phenomenology of temporality to try and help us get outside of the standard view that is supplied by the A-B tradition and provide us with an alternative starting point. This approach draws heavily from the work of McTaggart's early twentieth century contemporaries Henri Bergson (1889) and Martin Heidegger (1927).

This paper aims to describe and elaborate on a recent discursive change within the new-age movement. Since the seventies and the publishing of speculative popular science books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The self-aware universe by Amit Goswami, the idea that quantum physics resonates with spirituality has become the topic of hundreds of books and movies. The quantum-spiritual discourse has three distinct ways to approach quantum physics in its discussion on spirituality: The parallelistic approach which emphasizes the similarities between eastern philosophies and modern physics, the monistic-idealistic approach which tells us that mind is the foundation of matter and the scientific spiritual approach which tries to explain spiritual claims scientifically. In the quantum-spiritual discourse, quantum physical phenomena (e.g. non-locality and entanglement) are being called upon to validate metaphysical statements. The primary assumption of the discourse is that the shift of paradigm due to the establishment of modern physics also is a shift of paradigm of spirituality. With the object to examine the common claims made in the discourse, cross-references between spiritual arguments and facts of quantum physics are being made. A discussion is held about the probable influence of the historical context, with particular focus on the monistic evolvement during the late nineteenth century.

This thesis examines what the visual art of Christian faith might reveal, and teach us, about the living art of faith in a world characterised by progress. The argument focuses on two prominent visual artists from the nineteenth century - William McTaggart (1835-1910) and William Dyce (1806 – 1864) - and two late twentieth century painters: Andy Goldsworthy (b. 1956) and Peter Howson (b. 1958). The principal contribution then, of the thesis is the sustained analysis of works of art as sites of religious meaning; works that do not simply reflect or echo their contexts (although this is clearly the case) but also, through the particular, may transform our understanding of those contexts and, in terms of the art of faith, may prophetically offer new ways of relating to faith in times in which faith is challenged in various ways. After setting the scene with a substantial treatment of the tensions in Victorian society (Chapter 1), the thesis then builds its arguments through close interpretations of the works of William McTaggart (Chapter 2) and William Dyce (Chapter 3) in the central part of the thesis. In Chapter 4, the argument moves to the contemporary. After a short introduction to the secularism, or unattached belief, arguably characteristic of modern Britain (4.1), the thesis presents a close analysis of Andy Goldsworthy (4.2) and Peter Howson (4.3). In the conclusion, I set up a comparison between these two contemporary Scottish artists and their Victorian forbears.

This paper aims to describe and elaborate on a recent discursive change within the new-age movement. Since the seventies and the publishing of speculative popular science books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The self-aware Universe by Amit Goswami, the idea that quantum physics resonates with spirituality has become the topic of hundreds of books and movies. The quantum-spiritual discourse has three distinct ways to approach quantum physics in its discussion on spirituality: The parallelistic approach which emphasizes the similarities between eastern philosophies and modern physics, the monistic-idealistic approach which tells us that mind is the foundation of matter and the scientific spiritual approach which tries to explain spiritual claims scientifically. In the quantum-spiritual discourse, quantum physical phenomena (e.g. non-locality and entanglement) are being called upon to validate metaphysical statements. The primary assumption of the discourse is that the shift of paradigm due to the establishment of modern physics also is a shift of paradigm of spirituality. With the object to examine the common claims made in the discourse, cross-references between spiritual arguments and facts of quantum physics are being made. A discussion is held about the probable influence of the historical context, with particular focus on the monistic evolvement during the late nineteenth century.