McTaggart’s paradox and the problem of temporary

intrinsics
William Lane Craig

McTaggart’s Paradox is so well-ploughed a field that one might doubt

whether anything fresh can be said about it. But sometimes new light can
be shed on a problem by stepping back and seeing it within a conceptual
framework which has hitherto gone unnoticed. For example, David
Lewis (1979: 235–40) sought to illuminate the Prisoners’ Dilemma by his
insight that the puzzle is actually an instance of Newcomb’s Paradox. In
the same way, I believe that McTaggart’s Paradox is actually a special case
of what Lewis has called the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics – a
conceptual contextualization of the paradox which, to my knowledge,
has gone unnoticed in the philosophical literature. A realization of the
proper conceptual context of the paradox will serve to advance our anal-
ysis of it.
The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics is the problem of identity and
intrinsic change. The question is, how can an object be self-identical at two
different times if it possesses different intrinsic properties at those times?
As Lewis says,
Persisting things change their intrinsic properties. For instance, shape:
when I sit, I have a bent shape, when I stand, I have a straightened
shape. Both shapes are temporary intrinsic properties; I have them
only some of the time. How is such change possible? (1986: 203–4)
As Trenton Merricks’s formulation of the problem makes clear (1994:
165–84), the difficulty arises from the application of the principle of the
Indiscernibility of Identicals to diachronic identity:
(1) O at t is identical with O at t*. [assume for reductio]
(2) O at t is bent. [premiss]
(3) O at t* is not bent. [premiss]
(4) If O at t is identical with O at t*, then O at t is F iff O at t* is F.
[Indiscernibility of Identicals]
(5) Therefore, O at t is bent and is not bent.
The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics thus purports to show that no object
can exist at two times at which it differs in its intrinsic properties.
Lewis believes that there are only three ostensible solutions to this
problem:

Analysis 58.2, April 1998, pp. 122–127. © William Lane Craig

123 william lane craig

First solution: contrary to what we might think, shapes are not genu-
ine intrinsic properties. They are disguised relations, which an endur-
ing thing may bear to times. One and the same enduring thing may
bear the bent-shape relation to some times, and the straight-shape
relation to others. In itself, considered apart from its relations to other
things, it has no shape at all. And likewise for all other seeming
temporary intrinsics; all of them must be reinterpreted as relations
that something with an absolutely unchanging intrinsic nature bears
to different times ….
Second solution: the only intrinsic properties of a thing are those it has
at the present moment. Other times are like false stories; they are
abstract representations, composed out of the materials of the present,
which represent or misrepresent the way things are. When something
has different intrinsic properties according to one of these ersatz other
times, that does not mean that it, or anything else, just has them--no
more so than when a man is crooked according to the Times or honest
according to the News ….
Third solution: the different shapes, and the different temporary
intrinsics generally, belong to different things. Endurance is to be
rejected in favor of perdurance. We perdure; we are made up of
temporal parts, and our temporary intrinsics are properties of these
parts, wherein they differ one from another. There is no problem at all
about how different things can differ in their intrinsic properties
(1986: 204).
Lewis’s own preferred solution is the third, which presupposes, in McTag-
gart’s terminology, a pure B-theory of time, which denies the objective
reality of tensed facts and temporal becoming, in contrast to the second
solution, which presupposes a pure A-theory of time, according to which
the only temporal entitites which exist are present ones.
Now McTaggart’s Paradox – with which I assume the reader is familiar
– is a peculiar case of the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics. A-determina-
tions are taken to be intrinsic properties which are exemplified by temporal
items. But some event E cannot have both the properties of presentness and
pastness, for example, since these are different properties. It does no good
to say that E possesses presentness and pastness at different times, for this
is precisely the problem of temporary intrinsics: how can E be self-identical
when it possesses different intrinsic properties at different times? If E was
present and is past, then E has undergone a change in its intrinsic tense
determinations – but then how can E be self-identical if it has different
intrinsic properties at different times? We cannot be talking about two
different events, for then it will not be true that E itself was present and is
 mctaggart’s paradox and temporary intrinsics 124

past. A-determinations must therefore be illusory.1

It is particularly interesting to see how Lewis’s three available solutions
work out with respect to McTaggart’s Paradox. The first solution would
hold that A-determinations are not intrinsic properties, but disguised rela-
tions to times. E, for example, may be present in relation to some time and
future in relation to others. In itself, considered apart from its relations to
times, E has no intrinsic A-determination at all. Now if, as this solution
suggests, A-determinations are really relations to items in the time series,
then they must be construed as relations to items in either the A-series or
the B-series.2 With respect to the A- series, E is, for example, future relative
to some moment ten years ago (an A-series position). With respect to the
B-series, E is, for example, past relative to 1 October, 1997 (a B-series posi-
tion). Now if we relativize events to moments in the B-series, then A-
determinations are effectively converted into B-relations: to say, for exam-
ple, that E is past relative to 1 October, 1997, is to say that E is earlier than
1 October, 1997. Thus, A-determinations are reducible to tenseless B-rela-
tions, so that tensed facts have no place in one’s ontology. Thus, this option
cannot solve the challenge posed by the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics
to changing A-determinations. But if we construe A-determinations as
relations to moments in the A-series, we solve nothing because tense deter-
minations are on this option relative to the present, which must itself, as a
relational tense determination, be present relative to the present relative to
the present, and so on, which is, as McTaggart complains, either a vicious
circle or infinite regress. The only way to halt this regress would be to say
that there is a non-relational present – but then the present must be fixed
and unchanging if the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics is to be avoided,
which is absurd. Thus, the first solution is unavailing in saving the objec-
tivity of tense determinations from the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics--
which is perhaps why no A-theorist since McTaggart (with the possible
exception of Schlesinger) has construed A-determinations as relations.
Skip, then, to the third solution, preferred by Lewis with regard to the
Problem of Temporary Intrinsics. What makes McTaggart’s Paradox so
peculiar an instance of this problem is that Lewis’s solution will not work
in McTaggart’s case. The perdurantist solution, with its appeal to an
entity’s different temporal parts’ being located at different times, is inap-
plicable to McTaggart’s Paradox because E need not persist over time at
1 More recent attempts to cast McTaggart’s Paradox, not in terms of events and their
properties, but, for example, in terms of propositions and their changing truth values
are also instances of the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics, since the properties of
having the truth value T and having the truth value F are temporary intrinsic proper-
ties of the postulated entities.
2 As explained by Buller and Foster (1992: 358–59).
125 william lane craig

all, but could exist only at an instant t. Thus we are not concerned, as in
normal cases of the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics, with some entity
which persists from t to t* but has different intrinsic properties at those
respective locations and yet remains self-identical. Rather E may exist only
at t and yet is self-identical at that moment despite its being the case that
E-at-t has both presentness and pastness. Because E does not persist
through time, there is no place for a solution postulating temporal parts of
E each having different intrinsic properties (for example, presentness and
pastness).3 McTaggart’s Paradox involves a strange case of E’s synchronic
identity being diachronically preserved. To prevent E’s self-identity from
being destroyed over time, one must, it seems, deny that there are objective
A-determinations.
What, then, of the second solution, a metaphysic of presentism?4 The
germ of the presentist solution is the insistence that the having of a prop-
erty simpliciter is a tensed having. On a presentist ontology, the Problem
of Temporary Intrinsics cannot even arise because there are (present tense)
no times which overlap in sharing an object O. For O exists (present tense)
only at one time, the present time, and so does not have (present tense)
incompatible properties, as it would if it existed tenselessly in the B-series
with different properties at different times. All the properties O has are the
ones it presently has, and so no contradiction can arise. For even if O
undergoes intrinsic change between t and t*, it nonetheless does not have
(present tense) incompatible properties: O has only the properties it has
presently and these are mutually compatible. Hence, the presentist will
construe Merricks’s (1) to (4) as:
(1′) O existed at t and exists at t*.
(2′) O was bent at t.
(3′) O is not bent at t*.
(4′) If O existed at t and exists at t*, O which existed at t is F iff O
which exists at t* is F.
By tensing all the verbs in (1′) to (4′) the presentist avoids contradiction.
Applying this solution to the case of McTaggart’s Paradox, we realize
that the A-theorist cannot understand grammatical ascriptions of pastness
and futurity to events in terms of the literal inherence of properties of past-
ness and futurity in events. For on a presentist ontology, such items do not

3 Even if E is an extended event lasting, say, throughout 1989, the perdurantist

solution does not make sense. For E’s change from being present to being past cannot
be accounted for on the basis of E’s having different temporal parts possessing differ-
ent A-properties, since all of E’s parts exist in 1989, where they are all alike either
present or past. In 1990, when E becomes past, there are no temporal parts of E at
all.
 mctaggart’s paradox and temporary intrinsics 126

exist and so possess no properties. Such ascriptions must be parsed as

asserting that the item in question was or will be F. 5 Only ascriptions of
presentness may be taken literally as the possession of an A-determination
by some temporal item. The presentist thus adroitly avoids McTaggart’s
Paradox because the only intrinsic tensed properties there are are present-
tensed and therefore compatible.
What all this implies is that McTaggart’s Paradox only defeats the tense-
theorist who holds, like McTaggart, to a hybrid A-B Theory of time, which
couples a B-theoretical ontology with objective, non-relational A-determi-
nations. Such a theorist runs afoul of the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics,
in that he cannot explain how E-at-t could at t have had the intrinsic prop-
erty of presentness and now at t* have the intrinsic property of pastness
and yet remain the same event in the transition from t to t*. This conclu-
sion is highly significant, since most proponents of McTaggart’s Paradox,
like Smart, Williams, Mellor, Oaklander, and so on, have presented it as a
refutation of the A-Theory tout simple, whereas it is in fact ineffectual
against pure A-theorists like Broad, Prior, Christensen, Levinson, and
others. On the other hand, hybrid A-B theorists, like McCall, Schlesinger,
and Smith are, it seems, in deep trouble.
4 Lewis’s own characterization of the second solution is deliciously tendentious. In
saying that non-present times are like false stories, abstract representations
composed out of the materials of the present, he is thinking of non-present times on
the analogy of the serious actualist’s conception of possible worlds as states of affairs
which exist as abstract objects but which are not instantiated. As a counterpart
theorist Lewis rejects these ersatz worlds with the same disdain he evinces toward
non-present, ersatz times. Borrowing Lewis’s analogy, we can characterize presentism
by allowing tensed states of affairs to be constituents of possible worlds. A tensed
possible world is then a maximal possible state of affairs at some time t. Tensed possi-
ble worlds which did, do, or will obtain are tensed actual worlds. The tensed actual
world at t will be the tensed actual world which obtains when t’s being present
obtains, or when t is present. The tensed history of any possible world W will be all
the tensed possible worlds constituted by the states of affairs entailed by W and each
successive t’s being present in W. To say that a temporal entity x exists in a tensed
possible world W t is to say that if W t were actual, then x would exist (present tense).
To say that x exists in a tensed actual world α t is to say that when α t becomes actual,
then x exists (present-tense). Each tensed possible world exists in each such world.
The tensed actual world ν is the maximal state of affairs that obtains (present-tense).
Were some other tensed possible world actual, then ν would not obtain, but it would
still exist as a tensed possible state of affairs. When some other tensed actual world
obtains (present-tense), then ν either does not yet or no longer obtains, but ν nonethe-
less exists as a tensed state of affairs which was or will be actualized. Since ν alone is
(present-tense) actual, none of the other tensed actual worlds (not to speak of tensed
merely possible worlds) is (present-tense) actual though they either were or will be
actual. Thus, ν is uniquely distinguished as the tensed actual world, the one tensed
possible world which obtains (present-tense).
127 william lane craig

If the analysis presented here is correct, then the debate over McTag-
gart’s Paradox needs to be re-focused on the tenability of the metaphysic
of presentism. For as Le Poidevin, one of the most ardent contemporary
defenders of McTaggart’s Paradox recognizes, presentism “represents the
only means to block McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time consist-
ently with the assumption of a non-relational past, present, and future”
(1991: 36).6 The discussion of McTaggart’s Paradox can break fertile
ground by a fresh consideration of the arguments for and against
presentism.7

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References
Buller, D. and T. Foster. 1992. The new paradox of temporal transience. Philosophical
Quarterly 42: 357–66.
Le Poidevin, R. 1991. Change, Cause, and Contradiction. London: Macmillan.
Lewis, D. 1979. Prisoners’ dilemma is a Newcomb problem. Philosophy and Public
Affairs 8: 235–40.
Lewis, D. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lowe, E. J. 1987. The indexical fallacy in McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time.
Mind 96: 62–70.
Merricks, T. 1994. Endurance and indiscernibility. Journal of Philosophy 91: 165-84.

5 As emphasized by Lowe (1987: 64–66), who seems, however, unduly diffident about
tensed ascriptions of presentness to events.
6 Le Poidevin appropriately provides a sustained attack on presentism.
7 Lewis’s own objections to the second solution are almost playful rather than serious.
He says that the presentist denies persistence, even though the presentist’s account of
endurance fulfils Lewis’s own definition that “something persists, iff, somehow or
other, it exists at various times.” He alleges that on a presentist ontology, we must
say that we have no past or future, which no one believes. But surely on presentism
I have a past in the sense that I existed at and lived through times which once were
present, and I have a future in that I shall exist and live through times which will be
present. We need more substantive reasons than these to reject the presentist solution
to the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics, y compris McTaggart’s Paradox.