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Mctaggart Argument

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The key issue is the ambiguous nature of time itself. The definition of time seems very obvious by everyday life standards or even within the scientific realm. In every day life, time is the parameter that we read on a clock, that we use to schedule meetings and to measure the interval between two events. But what is time really? Is it discovered or invented? Does it even exist? There are no definite answers to such metaphysical questions but a number of different theories of time have been suggested to define and explain time.
A number of philosophers claim that time is not real. The major and most influential argument presented to support this claim is McTaggart’s. McTaggart states that there are two ways in which we can temporally locate …show more content…
There is no consensus among this category, however, as to the actual interpretation given to time. There are two subcategories within this position in relation to the McTaggart argument. One group, that we shall call the B-theorists, agrees with the claim that the A-series is not real and that the experience of events being in the past, present and future is only an appearance, but B-theorists disagree with the second part of McTaggart’s argument and claim that the B-series perfectly describes time. In other words, events possess a temporal order in relation to one another but the description of events as being past, present, and future is only an illusion, a result of the way we perceive and experience those events. In this view, the A-series is an inaccurate way to refer to the B-series.
The opposing clan embraces the claim that time cannot exist without the A-series because change is essential to time, but denies the affirmation that there is a contradiction within the A-series. Supporters of the A Theory emphasize the importance of “Taking Tense Seriously”. An event is not past, present, and future at the same time. It was future, is present and will be past. Tense makes a big difference in this context and solves the issue of contradiction that McTaggart laid down, according to …show more content…
Time travel to the future appears to be more likely, given Einstein’s theory of relativity. The means to go back in time persist in being mysterious, but recent studies of black holes and wormholes suggest that we could harness the energy of black holes in order to travel through time and space.
We are thus far from being physically able to travel through time, but the interest of studying the possibility of time travel does not necessarily lie in an aspiration to go back to the past or to discover the future. As Princeton astrophysicist Richard Gott (2001) stated it, time travel is interesting “because we want to test the boundaries of the laws of physics. The paradoxes associated with time travel pose a challenge. Such paradoxes are often a clue that some interesting physics is waiting to be

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