Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 32–44; March 2001

MCTAGGART’S PARADOX
AND TEMPORAL SOLIPSISM

William Lane Craig

I. McTaggart’s Paradox

Undoubtedly the most celebrated argument against an A-Theory of time is the attempt by
the British idealist J.M.E. McTaggart to demonstrate that a temporally ordered series of
events, each possessing various tense determinations, is self-contradictory or leads to a
vicious infinite regress of tense determinations.1 Although McTaggart himself regarded
his demonstration as a proof that time does not exist, certain contemporary B-theorists
employ versions of his argument to prove the unreality of tense and temporal becoming,
which, they claim, are not essential to time.2
McTaggart’s argument for time’s unreality is apt to appear bewildering and even
trivial, unless we first understand its metaphysical underpinnings. Key to comprehending
the contradiction he sees in the reality of time is McTaggart’s presupposition that the
reality of time entails a B-theoretic event ontology to which objective temporal becoming
is wedded.3 McTaggart assumed that if time is real, then events are substances which are
strung out in a B-series in which each member is equally real or existent. Temporal
becoming consists in the fact that one after another of these events becomes successively
present. An event changes only in its steady acquisition or loss of new A-determinations.
It first has the A-determination (whether this is a relation or property is a matter of indif-
ference to McTaggart) of distant futurity, then near futurity, then presentness, then near
pastness, then distant pastness, all of these except presentness admitting of degrees. For
McTaggart, then, becoming present does not imply becoming existent. Rather events exist
tenselessly in a B-series and successively acquire the various A-determinations. It is the
burden of McTaggart’s Paradox to show that this hybrid A-B-Theory is self-contradictory.

1
Published first as J. Ellis McTaggart, ‘The Unreality of Time’, Mind 17 (1908): 457–74, the
argument appears in chapter 33 of McTaggart’s most important work, The Nature of Existence
(1927), in which McTaggart responds to objections from Bertrand Russell and C.D. Broad, a B-
theorist and an A-theorist respectively. For a good review of the literature see David J. Farmer,
Being in Time: The Nature of Time in Light of McTaggart’s Paradox (Lanham, Maryland:
University Press of America, 1990).
2
A prime example is D. H. Mellor, who in his Real Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), pp. 4–5, states explicitly that McTaggart’s Paradox is ‘the lynchpin of my book’. In his Son
of Real Time, however, Mellor despairs of convincing A-theorists on the basis of the famous
paradox and turns to other arguments (idem, Real Time II [London: Routledge, 1999], p. 79). An
examination of his arguments, however, reveals that they are but different versions of McTaggart’s
Paradox.
3
A similar point has been made by Rögenvaldur Ingthorsson, ‘McTaggart and the Unreality of
Time’, Axiomathes 3 (1998): 287–306.

32
William Lane Craig 33

For if events in the B-series successively assume the determinations of pastness,

presentness, and futurity, the question immediately arises: since every event in the series
becomes present, which moment deserves to be called the present? If one answers, the
present moment which is present, one embarks on a vicious infinite regress of hyper-times
in which each moment having presentness becomes present.
An examination of the arguments of contemporary proponents of McTaggart’s Paradox
reveals that, despite their often quite different formulations of the paradox, they, too, are
presupposing a B-theoretic ontology coupled with A-theoretic becoming. For example,
D. H. Mellor seems to understand temporal becoming as a qualitative change of tenses.
Thus, he says that ‘change . . . is something having incompatible properties at different
dates, such as being at different temperatures or in different places’; according to the A-
Theory, ‘Change is the changing tense of things and events moving from future to past.’4
On the A-Theory, ‘Futurity, temporal presence, and pastness are all supposed to be real
non-relational properties which everything in time successively possesses, changing
objectively as it exchanges each of these properties for the next.’5 Elsewhere he speaks of
‘the inexorable movement of the present along the B-series.’6
Similarly, Robin Le Poidevin, while repudiating the claim that McTaggart’s Paradox
depends on an event ontology of tenselessly existing events,7 in fact only repudiates an
event ontology; he affirms that the metaphysic underlying McTaggart’s argument involves
a B-series of temporal terms which are all on an ontological par. He explains that we take
reality to be temporally extended, so that the totality of facts must include not only present
but past facts.8 That leads to his re-statement of McTaggart’s argument:

We can now see the nature of McTaggart’s contradiction. Reality consists both of
present and past fact. It is a present fact that the First World War is past; symbolically:

Pp

and a past fact that the First World War is present; symbolically:

Np

But these facts cannot both obtain. Yet if there are tensed facts, they do. So there are
no tensed facts.9

4
D.H. Mellor, Real Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 89–90.
5
Ibid., p. 4.
6
Ibid., p. 24. Cf. L. Nathan Oaklander, ‘Zeilicovici on Temporal Becoming’, Philosophia 21 (1991):
329.
7
Robin Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction: A Defense of the Tenseless Theory of Time
(London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 30.
8
The notion of a totality of facts was introduced into the discussion of McTaggart’s Paradox by
Michael Dummett, ‘The Reality of the Past’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 69 (1968–69):
252–3, who pointed out that while on a tenseless theory of time there could exist such a collection
of all the facts there are, on a tensed theory there is no such consistent totality, since what facts
there are changes from one moment to the next.
9
Ibid., p. 33.
34 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

Le Poidevin assumes that the First World War tenselessly exists and has the property of
being present; but it also tenselessly has the property of pastness, which is contradictory.10
Any attempt to relativise these properties or their possession to times will either reduce them
to B-relations (for example, present at t) or lead to an infinite regress (for example, present
at present at . . .).11 Hence, concludes Le Poidevin, the tenser has to say that only present
facts comprise reality. Such a metaphysic, he admits, is immune to McTaggart’s argument.
What this discussion reveals, then, is that McTaggart’s Paradox is not really an
argument against an A-Theory of time at all. It is in fact an argument against a hybrid A-
B-Theory which combines tenseless ontology with temporary intrinsic properties of
tense.12 The consistent A-theorist, who regards the past and future as unreal in favour of a
metaphysic of presentism, rejects, like the B-theorist, this hybrid theory and so may
dismiss McTaggart’s argument as an irrelevancy.
Le Poidevin believes that presentism ‘represents the only means to block McTaggart’s
proof of the unreality of time consistently with the assumption of a non-relational past,
present, and future.’13 Nevertheless, Le Poidevin rejects the solution of presentism because,

10
This assumption comes to the fore even more clearly in his later comment on this passage. In
response to the objection that one should say, not that it is a past fact that WWI is present, but that
it is a past fact that WWI was present, which is not contradictory, Le Poidevin answers,
To this I would reply: “what, then, do people mean when they say that the past is real, but
the future not? After all there will be future states of affairs, so the future will be real, just as the
past was real. Wherein lies the asymmetry? The answer must be that, although the dinosaurs
(for example) are extinct, they are still real to the extent that it is they and their properties which
make statements about dinosaurs true, not present evidence in the form of fossils, etc. . . . To
make sense of the past’s being real and the future not, we have to talk of being real simpliciter,
not once being real, or being about to be real” (Robin Le Poidevin, ‘Lowe on McTaggart’, Mind
102 (1993): 168).
Although Le Poidevin’s characterisation of the reality of the dinosaurs could be given an
acceptable sense by the presentist (viz., by taking ‘make’ tenselessly rather than as present-tense),
still it is clear that he intends to assert the equivalence of their ontological status with that of
present day existents—otherwise there would be no asymmetry of past and future existents; future
things and their properties would make future-tense statements about them true, which renders the
future as real as the past. As Broad came to see, the consistent A-theorist does regard the past and
the future as equally real: past and future events/things/times alike do not exist. The asymmetry
between past and future lies not in their ontological status, but in the fact that in the present there
are traces only of the past, and this fact is rooted in the impossibility of backward causation, which
is founded, in turn, upon the objective reality of temporal becoming (William Lane Craig, Divine
Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism: Omniscience, Studies in
Intellectual History 19 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), pp. 150–3). To say that the past and future are
unreal is not to assert that the Principle of Bivalence fails for future-tense propositions or
statements anymore than for past-tense propositions (Ibid., pp. 43–63).
11
A point nicely made by David J. Buller and Thomas R. Foster, ‘The New Paradox of Temporal
Transience’, Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1992): 358–359; also Zdzislaw Augustynek, Time: Past,
Present, and Future, trans. Stanislaw Semczuk and Witold Strawinski, Nijhoff International
Philosophy Series 30 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), p. 115; J.M. Shorter ‘The
Reality of Time’, Philosophia 14 (1984): 324. Shorter overlooks, however, the possibility of
relativising A-determinations to the A-series rather than the B-series.
12
I have come to see that McTaggart’s argument is in fact a special case of the more general problem
of intrinsic change or the problem of temporary intrinsics. See my ‘McTaggart’s Paradox and the
Problem of Temporary Intrinsics’, Analysis 58 (1998): 122–7.
13
Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction, p. 36. Cf. B-theorist Paul Horwich’s comment on
Dummett’s presentism: ‘. . .if there is no time-neutral body of absolute facts, there is no
contradiction. Thus, by denying the assumption of this totality, McTaggart’s objection can be
sidestepped’ (Paul Horwich, Asymmetries in Time (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), p. 27).
William Lane Craig 35

he claims, it entails certain objectionable doctrines characteristic of what he calls ‘temporal

solipsism.’14 By that expression Le Poidevin means to refer to the following theses:

1. The extension of the existential quantifier is restricted to presently existing

objects.

2. Relations obtain only between contemporaries, that is, objects existing at the same
time.

3. Past and future tenses are to be interpreted as sentential operators on core present-
tense sentences, the present tense not requiring representation by an operator.

4. Instants are logical constructions out of propositions.

5. Past- and future-tense statements have only present fact as their truth conditions,
that is, what makes a certain statement about the past or future true is the evidence
that at present exists.

These are all theses defended by the great tense logician A.N. Prior.15 My interest is not to
assess the truth of these theses but rather Le Poidevin’s claim that they are entailed by a
metaphysic of presentism. Contrary to Le Poidevin, I shall argue that presentism does not
entail temporal solipsism so defined and, furthermore, that the debate over presentism so
closely parallels the debate over modal realism that a consistent position requires either
modal realism cum B-Theory of time or some sort of actualism cum A-Theory of time.

II. Presentism and Temporal Solipsism

Presentism is the doctrine that the only temporal items which exist are those which are
present. Any number of writers have remarked on the parallel between presentism and
actualism with respect to possible worlds.16 Following Plantinga, we may conceive of a

14
This expression was, to my knowledge, coined by Bertrand Russell as a derisive description of the
presentist view that only the present exists (Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1948), p. 181). A-theorists who have tried to combine presentism with the
Special Theory of Relativity in such a way that all that exists is what is located at a single space-
time point have been (justifiably) charged with an especially egregious form of solipsism
(Lawrence Sklar, ‘Time, Reality and Relativity’, in Reduction, Time and Reality, ed. Richard
Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 140). But this is not the solipsism of
which Le Poidevin speaks. For a more plausible integration of relativity with presentism, see my
‘On the Elimination of Newton’s Absolute Time by the Special Theory of Relativity’, in Recent
Advances in Relativity Theory, 2 vols., ed. Mogens Wegener (Palm Harbor, FL: Hadronic Press,
2000), I: 47–66.
15
Cf. the similar exposition of the views of Prior in contrast to those of Quine by Jeremy Butterfield,
‘Prior’s Conception of Time’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 84 (1983–84): 193–209.
16
The account given here is based on Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Can Ontology Do without Events?’
Grazer Philosophische Studien 7/8 (1979): 188–189; Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity,
Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 44–9. For further
discussion see John Bigelow, ‘Worlds Enough for Time’, Nous 25 (1991): 1–19; Philip Percival,
‘Indices of Truth and Temporal Propositions’, Philosophical Quarterly 39 (1989): 190–9; Richard
M. Gale, ‘Lewis’ Indexical Argument for World-Relative Actuality’, Dialogue 28 (1989):
289–304; Palle Yourgrau, ‘On Time and Actuality: The Dilemma of Privileged Position’, British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (1986): 405–17; Graeme Forbes, ‘Actuality and Context
Dependence I’, Analysis 43 (1983): 123–8.
36 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

possible world as a maximal possible state of affairs, where a state of affairs S is maximal
if for every state of affairs S¢, S includes S¢ or S precludes S¢. So conceived, possible
worlds and the states of affairs which comprise them are normally understood to be
tenseless states of affairs; otherwise we could never speak of events’ occurring at different
times in a possible world, since, as McTaggart’s Paradox discloses, there is no maximal or
complete description of a temporal world over time due to the reality of tensed facts.
Hence, the worlds described in possible worlds semantics are tenseless possible worlds. In
order to handle tensed facts, we need to allow tensed states of affairs as well, like the
Battle of Waterloo’s having occurred and Clinton’s being President, to be constituents of
possible worlds. A tensed possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs at some
time t of arbitrarily stipulated duration, whether an instant, an arbitrarily brief moment, an
hour, a day, and so forth. Tensed possible 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 more simply, when t is present. The world which
presently obtains is simply the tensed actual world. Tensed actual worlds constitute the
tensed history of the actual world a, for they are respectively comprised of all states of
affairs entailed by a and each successive t’s being present. This may be generalised to
any possible world W: The tensed history of 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 tenseless possible world W is to say that if W
were actual, x would exist (tenselessly) at some time t; or again, x exists in W if it is
impossible that W obtain and x fail to exist (tenselessly) at some time t. Analogously, to
say that 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 Wta is to say that
when Wta becomes actual, then x exists (present-tense); it is impossible when Wta obtains
that x does not exist (present-tense).
With respect to tenseless possible worlds, to say that Socrates has in W the property of
being snub-nosed is to say that Socrates would have (tenselessly) the property of being
snub-nosed, were W to be actual; the state of affairs W’s being actual and Socrates’ not
being (tenselessly) snub-nosed is impossible. Analogously, to say that Socrates has in a
tensed possible world W t the property of being snub-nosed is to say that Socrates would
have (present-tense) the property of being snub-nosed, were W t to be actual; the state of
affairs W t’s being actual and Socrates’ not being (present-tense) snub-nosed is impossible.
To say that Socrates has in a tensed actual world Wta the property of being snub-nosed is
to say that when Wta becomes actual, then Socrates has (present-tense) the property of
being snub-nosed; it is impossible when Wta obtains that Socrates is (present-tense) not
snub-nosed.
Each tenseless possible world exists in each world. The actual world a is the maximal
state of affairs that obtains (tenselessly). Were some other world actual, a would not
obtain, but would still exist as a possible state of affairs. Since only a is in fact actual,
none of the other tenseless possible worlds is actual, but each one is actual in or at itself.
Each world W has the property of actuality in W and in W alone. That also goes for a. But
a is not merely actual in a, but also actual simpliciter. Thus, a is uniquely distinguished
as the actual world, the one tenseless possible world that obtains. Analogously, each
tensed possible world exists in each such world. The tensed actual world n is the maximal
William Lane Craig 37

state of affairs that obtains (present-tense). Were some other tensed possible world actual,
then n would not obtain, but it would still exist as a tensed possible state of affairs. By the
same token, when some other tensed actual world obtains (present-tense), then n either
does not yet or no longer obtains, but n nonetheless exists as a tensed actual state of
affairs. Since n 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. Still each tensed world, including n, is actual in itself. But n is not
merely actual in n, but also actual simpliciter. Thus, n is uniquely distinguished as the
tensed actual world, the one tensed possible world which obtains (present-tense).
Does such a model of presentism entail or imply temporal solipsism, as Le Poidevin
alleges? I think not. Consider Le Poidevin’s arguments:
1. The range of the existential quantifier. If past and future times do not exist,
then purely past and future individuals (like Napoleon and Queen Elizabeth II’s great
grandchildren) do not exist. So if the existential quantifier is to be tied to existence, the
objection goes, its range must reflect this restriction.
It is certainly correct on the presentist view that non-present individuals do not exist
(present-tense). But the A-theorist or presentist need not be committed to a reductive or
eliminative analysis of tenseless discourse. I see no reason at all why the presentist should
object either to certain artificial tenseless languages or to tenseless statements or proposi-
tions in a language which includes tense. The language of quantified classical logic is
obviously an example of an artificial tenseless language, and the presentist is under no
obligation to reform it by introducing tense. He simply takes Quine’s tenseless dictum that
‘To be is to be a value of a bound variable’ not to tell the whole truth about being. Since
Quine is a B-theorist and a partisan of the Old B-Theory of Language (which sought to
provide canonical tenseless translations of tensed sentences), such an equation is
unproblematic from his point of view; but given an A-theoretic understanding of time,
tense, and temporal becoming, being cannot be simply equated with what is postulated
to exist by the tenseless existential quantifier in classical logic. Le Poidevin says that
he just assumes, ‘with Quine, that a theory which involves ineliminable quantification
over F’s is committed to a realist position over F’s.’17 The presentist agrees that in the
tenseless universe of discourse of classical logic, individuals within the scope of the
existential quantifier in true propositions do have (tenselessly) reality. The presentist will
understand the tenseless existential quantifier to take as its range all individuals in a, the
tenseless actual world. True statements of the form ($y) (y=x) tell us only that x exists in
a, and even if x is a purely past individual, the presentist has no reason to deny that
tenseless truth about x. On the basis of the A-Theory of time, he just does not invest
tenseless existential quantification with the sort of metaphysical significance that Quine
does.
On the other hand, if the presentist does wish to propose a reform of classical logic so
that he can endorse unqualifiedly Quine’s dictum, he could adopt the suggestion of some
A-theorists that the existential quantifier ($x) be read as disjunctively tensed: ‘there is,
was, or will be some x such that.’18 By making the quantifier disjunctively tensed, the

17
Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction, p. 38.
18
So Quentin Smith, Language and Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 192.
38 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

presentist brings within its scope all individuals in all the tensed actual worlds. This move
will undoubtedly complicate logic,19 but the presentist will justifiably insist that if one
wishes to adequately capture being in logical notation, then simplicity may have to be
sacrificed for metaphysical accuracy; if one wants a complete account, one cannot just
suppress important metaphysical distinctions out of a desire for economy of logical
expression.
Alternatively, the presentist can avail himself of the resources of tense logic and
stipulate that the existential operator fall within the scope of the relevant tense operator:
for example, P($x). (See further the comment on argument 3 below.) In this way he neatly
combines Quine’s dictum with the insights afforded by tense logic.
2. Relations between non-contemporaries. Relations cannot, on the presentist’s
view, hold between non-contemporaneous objects because at least one of the relata is
unreal. So the objection goes.
This objection, if applied equably, ought to drive one to modal realism as well as the
B-Theory of time, for if it is correct, there can exist no relations between individuals in a
and some other possible world W—no transworld identity, no greater or more perfect than
relation, no relation of any kind—for these other individuals are unreal. For any
paraphrase aimed at eliminating such relations—for example, the claim that God is greater
in a than in W because of His knowledge only in a of future contingents might be
understood as the claim that God would be less great were He ignorant of future
contingents—, a suitable, analogous paraphrase ought to be available to the presentist—
for example, my being shorter than my grandfather could be construed as the claim that
were my grandfather to exist today, I should be shorter than him. If transworld relations
are taken to exist, not between actual and non-actual individuals, but between world-
indexed individuals, for example, Socrates-in-a and Socrates-in-W, both of whom do
exist, then why cannot transtemporal relations be similarly construed as relations between
tensed world-indexed individuals, for example, Le Poidevin-in-n and Socrates-in-W t?
Transtemporal relations seem to present no greater challenge to the metaphysician than
transworld relations.
Moreover, it is rather misleading, as the above comparison makes clear, to speak of non-
contemporaries as simply unreal. For unlike merely possible objects, both of them do exist
in the actual world. They are just not real at the same time. The question, then, is why there
cannot be transtemporal relations between individuals who are real at different times.
This serves to raise the more fundamental question of the ontological status of
relations, an adjudication of which lies beyond the scope of this paper. Are relations mind-
independent entities or merely conceptual in nature? If the latter, then it is not evident that

19
See Robert Merrihew Adams, ‘Time and Thisness’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1986):
321–322, who admits that by regarding the existential quantifier as disjunctively tensed the presentist
has the resources to reproduce classical logic consistent with his commitment to the non-existence of
non-present entities, but complains that the increased complexity is acceptable only if supported by
strong enough metaphysical intuitions. I think we can safely say that the intuitions backing
presentism are enormously strong. That Adams himself feels these intuitions is evident from the fact
that he cannot bring himself to let the existential quantifier range over future individuals, consistent
with a B-theory of time, so that he is left with the incoherent half-way theory enunciated by
C.D. Broad in his middle period. See further Michael Woods, ‘Existence and Tense’, in Truth and
Meaning, ed. Gareth Evans and John McDowell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 248–62.
William Lane Craig 39

there is any problem at all in transtemporal relations. Relations between me and my

grandfather would depend on the mind of the person making the comparison, whether a
human person or God, and would not depend on the items being related’s being contem-
poraries. If the former, then relations are abstract objects which plausibly do not exist in
time at all. Non-contemporaries stand in a relation at their respective times and the
timelessly existing relation reaches across time to relate the two individuals.20 As for
the individuals themselves, we could ascribe to them relational properties: Socrates, at the
time he existed, had the property of going to be referred to by Le Poidevin or the property
of being referred to by Le Poidevin at tn. He no longer has that property, but Le Poidevin
now has the property of referring to Socrates.21 The relation between them can be
analysed in terms of such relational properties or said to exist timelessly in virtue of such
properties.
3. Tense logical operators on present-tense sentences. The characteristic claim
of tense logic that past and future tenses are to be interpreted as sentential operators on
core present-tense sentences is said to be required by thesis (4) that instants are logical
constructions out of propositions.
Though typical in tense logic, regarding the operand sentence as present-tense is not
inevitable so long as the tenseless operand when conjoined with the present-tense operator
is understood to be synonymous with a present-tense sentence rather than to assert the
present truth of a tenseless sentence. The semanticist is free simply to stipulate that this is
how his analysis of such a sentence is to be understood.

20
See Adams’s discussion of names for future individuals in ‘Time and Thisness’, pp. 322–8, where
he cautions against inferring the present existence of singular propositions about future individuals
from the fact that we can entertain, assert, or believe them: ‘For perhaps the relations of
entertaining, asserting, and believing can obtain between thoughts and utterances occurring at one
time and propositions existing only at a later time’ (p. 323). Transtemporal relations, he suggests,
could exist timelessly or as a whole in an extended period of time without existing at any instant
during the period (ibid., p. 320). This would undercut the central thesis of L. Nathan Oaklander’s
book Temporal Relations and Temporal Becoming (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1984), pp. 5–22, in which Oaklander argues that on an A-Theory of time temporal relations like
earlier than cannot exist. (Cf. F.M. Christensen, Space-like Time (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1993), p. 128, who infers from the reducibility of B-relations to A-determinations that the
former are dispensable and even non-existent).
21
This seems to me to solve the difficulty seen by James Cargile, ‘Tense and Existence’, in Cause,
Mind, and Reality, ed. John Heil, Philosophical Studies Series 47 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1989), p. 166, whose question, ‘If I refer to x, does not x have the property of being
referred to?’ reveals the tacit assumption that the properties referring to x and being referred to by y
must be possessed by x and y at the same time, which begs the question. No reason has been given
why these properties cannot be possessed by x and y respectively in succession. Wolterstorff,
‘Ontology without Events’, pp. 190–2 denies that past- (and future-) tense propositions have
individuals as constituents. They are made up wholly of properties, which, being sempiternal, can
be referred to at any time. Thus, being able to refer to past and future individuals, though
impossible, is not necessary for stating the truth conditions of sentences about them. Contrast
Adams, ‘Time and Thisness’, pp. 319–20. On the other hand, Roderick Chisholm, The First Person
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 125–6; idem, ‘Referring to Things that No
Longer Exist’, in Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, ed. James Tomberlin, Philosophical
Perspectives 4 (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeway Publishing Co., 1990), p. 554, proposes to solve the
problem by positing some sempiternal entity contemporaneous with both referent and referee
which did have (or will have) the property of being such that there exists an x such that x is F. For
the A-theorist who is a theist God will nicely fill the role of the sempiternal entity. Cf. the eternalist
solution proposed by Jonathan L. Kvanvig, ‘Adams on Actualism and Presentism’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 5 (1989): 297.
40 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

Moreover, it needs to be remembered that many A-theorists interested in ontology

eschew tense logic as a reliable guide to ontology, regarding it as a semantics without
much metaphysical import.22 In other words, they reject the metaphysical claim that
instants are logical constructions out of propositions; and since (3) is said by Le Poidevin
to be problematic only in conjunction with that claim, it follows that if one rejects
thesis (4), the presentist who holds to the purely semantic thesis that past and future
tenses are to be interpreted as sentential operators on core present-tense sentences does so
unproblematically.
4. Instants as logical constructions out of propositions. Since past and future
times do not exist, the presentist must allegedly analyse them reductively in terms of past
and future tense propositions: an instant of time is a conjunction of propositions which
would ordinarily be said to be true at that time.
The presentist should want no part of, nor is he obliged to embrace, such reductionism.
Instants or moments of time are obviously not conjunctions of propositions.23 Moments of
time elapse, and I exist at the present moment; but a conjunction of abstract objects like
propositions is itself an abstract object, which does not elapse, neither at which do I exist.
Therefore moments of time cannot be conjunctions of propositions. Moreover, to claim
that an instant is identical ‘with all the propositions which would ordinarily be described
as being (contingently) true at that instant’24 is manifestly explanatorily circular, since
instants are defined in terms of instants. Although one could conceive of tensed possible
worlds as constructed out of propositions rather than states of affairs, the semantics given
here does not equate tensed actual worlds with instants or moments of time. The
difference between a tensed world and a moment of time is not trivial, for worlds possess
their inhabitants essentially, but times do not.25 It is impossible that n obtain and I not
exist, but the present moment could have existed without me. Le Poidevin also errs in
thinking that for the presentist states of affairs which do not presently obtain do not exist,
thus exiging recourse to propositions as stand-ins for times. According to the semantics
given here, temporal worlds which do not obtain nonetheless exist. Given the existence of
these worlds, there is no difficulty in explaining the truth of past- and future-tense propo-
sitions in terms of truth in some world.
5. Present facts alone as the truth conditions of past- and future-tense
statements. Since past and future facts do not exist, all that is left to make statements
about the past or future true is the present evidence about facts causally connected with
past and future states of affairs. Given indeterminism, the Principle of Bivalence fails for a
good many such statements.
This objection obviously confuses truth conditions with the grounds of the truth of
past- and future-tense statements. On the presentist semantics given here, a future-tense
statement is true iff there exists some tensed actual world at t in which the present-tense
version of the statement is true, where t has not elapsed by the present moment. A past-
tense statement is true iff there exists some tensed actual world at t in which the present-

22
See, for example, Smith, Language and Time, pp. 166–9.
23
Cf. the remarks of Peter Van Inwagen, ‘Indexicality and Actuality’, Philosophical Review 89
(1980): 406.
24
Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction, p. 37.
25
As noted by Van Inwagen, ‘Indexicality and Actuality’, p. 404; cf. Quentin Smith, ‘The New
Theory of Reference Entails Absolute Time and Space’, Philosophy of Science 58 (1991): 411–16.
William Lane Craig 41

tense version of the statement is true, where t has elapsed by the present moment. Those
are the truth-conditions of past- and future-tense statements; but they are not what make
the statements true. Ultimately what makes the statements true is that reality was or will
be as the statements describe; when the time comes, for example, a sea battle is going on,
and therefore the statement made the day before, ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’
was true. There are tensed facts corresponding to what tensed statements assert, but past-
and future-tense facts exist because of the present-tense facts which did or will exist.26
Certainly the grounds of the truth of tensed statements is not present evidence causally
connected to the events in question, and there is no reason the presentist should adopt such
a verificationist viewpoint.
In sum, contra Le Poidevin, there are no compelling reasons to believe that presentism
entails temporal solipsism. The latter is an idiosyncratic doctrine associated with the views
of A.N. Prior and not logically connected with the A-Theory of time.

III. Chronal Realism and Modal Realism

But we can go further. It is already obvious that the B-Theory of time is strikingly parallel
to modal realism, so that we may appropriately refer to it as chronal realism. Indeed, these
doctrines are so analogous that a modal McTaggart’s Paradox arises for those who reject
modal realism, and if actualism is deemed a legitimate alternative to modal realism, then
so must presentism to chronal realism.
The modal McTaggart’s Paradox runs as follows:27 Various positions in logical space
are mutually incompatible. An object or event which is actual cannot also be merely
possible; nor can an event or object which is merely possible be actual. But every
contingent object or event has to be both actual and merely possible. It is almost
impossible to state this difficulty without also giving the solution. It will be said that

26
See Alfred J. Freddoso, ‘Accidental Necessity and Logical Determinism’, Journal of Philosophy 80
(1983): 264. He writes,
I take the claim that the pure present is metaphysically primary to be tantamount to the
assertion that for any moment t and any logically possible world w there is a set k of purely
present-tense propositions such that (a) each member of k is true at t in w, and (b) k determines
what is true at t in w in a temporally independent way, i.e., in a way which does not temporally
depend on what has been or will be true at moments of w other than t (ibid., p. 266).
That this implies a sort of power over the past (as well as the future) is explained by idem,
‘Accidental Necessity and Power over the Past’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63 (1982): 54–68.
For a discussion see my Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom, pp. 83–90, 179–90. If one
does not accept that propositions are tensed, then one could reformulate the metaphysical primacy
of the pure present in terms of non-propositional, present-tensed features of reality (e.g., God’s de
se knowledge of what He is creating).
Adams fails to appreciate the above point when he complains that on presentism ‘the facts about
the past and future must have their whole ontological basis in the present’ so that the ontological
basis of the fact that a battle was fought at Waterloo ‘is not something that is or was a battle’
(Adams, ‘Time and Thisness’, p. 322). I can only understand Adams to mean that on the presentist
view the grounds for the truth of ‘A battle was fought at Waterloo’ is the present fact that a battle
was fought at Waterloo, which is not itself a battle. But while there surely is such a tensed fact or
state of affairs corresponding to the above statement, such a fact is not ultimate, but obtains
because a purely present-tense fact—a battle is being fought at Waterloo—did obtain, and the
ontological basis of that fact was a battle.
27
See M.J. Cresswell, ‘Modality and Mellor’s McTaggart’, Studia Logica 49 (1990): 163–70.
42 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

nothing is simply actual or merely possible, but actual in W and merely possible in W*.
But this leads to a vicious infinite regress, for we must now inquire whether W or W* is
actual. Since W is actual in W and W* is actual in W*, we must posit some hyper-actuality
in which W or W* is actual; but then the same question arises again for the actuality of
that hyper-actual world. The contradiction thus remains unrelieved.
The modal McTaggart’s Paradox can be formulated along Mellor’s lines by letting
Pe = ‘e is merely possible’ and Ae = ‘e is actual.’ The argument is that

6. Pe a ~Ae and Ae a ~Pe

7. Pe & Ae

Since (6) and (7) are incompatible, modal properties are unreal. The riposte is that e is
actual, but possibly is merely possible:

8. PPe & AAe

But this riposte does not work because these complex modal properties are also incom-
patible with each other, for example, PAAe and AAAe, so that a vicious infinite regress is
generated.
In response to the modal McTaggart’s Paradox, Le Poidevin adopts unhesitatingly the
actualist solution: ‘The doctrine that only the actual world is real avoids the modal
paradox just as the doctrine that only the present is real avoids McTaggart’s paradox.’28
He observes that the modal paradox only defeats someone who both accepts modal
realism and thinks that there is a non-relational distinction between actual and merely
possible. Parity of reasoning requires that McTaggart’s Paradox only defeats someone
who both accepts chronal realism and thinks that there is a non-relational distinction
between present and past or future.
This fact is instructive because it shows that hybrid A-B-theorists, like Quentin
Smith,29 are in real trouble in the face of McTaggart’s Paradox. While not gainsaying the
presentist’s refutation, Smith argues that McTaggart’s Paradox can be beaten without
abandoning a B-theoretic ontology or A-theoretic becoming. He maintains that McTaggart
assumed unnecessarily that the infinite regress of moments must involve a hierarchy of
levels, ‘that in order for a moment to be present it must occupy a higher level present
moment, so that the answer to the question “when does presentness inhere in the first level
moment?” is “at a second level moment which (is) present”.’30 But in Smith’s opinion, a
more economical answer would be ‘that “presentness inheres in the first level moment at
present”, this answer meaning that the inherence of presentness in the first level moment
is itself present, i.e. presentness not only inheres in the moment but also in its own
inherence in the moment.’31 Although a benign infinite regress of present inherences is

28
Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction, p. 35.
29
See Quentin Smith, ‘The Infinite Regress of Temporal Attributions’, Southern Journal of
Philosophy 24 (1986): 383–96; idem, ‘The Logical Structure of the Debate about McTaggart’s
Paradox’, Philosophy Research Archives 14 (1988–89): 371–9.
30
Smith, ‘Infinite Regress of Temporal Attributions’, p. 386.
31
Ibid. See also Smith, ‘Logical Structure’, pp. 373–4.
William Lane Craig 43

generated, this is unproblematic because one never transcends the single time dimension.
On Smith’s view, though all moments equally exist, only one is uniquely present at
present; all the rest are past or future at present (or, perhaps, present in the past or future).
The best sense I can make of Smith’s view is to say that while every time has the
property of being present at itself, only one time has the absolute property of being
present. Times which are not present are presently past or presently future, and only one
time is presently present. To prevent an infinite regress, we must take being presently
present to be equivalent to just being present. The absolute property of presentness moves
along the B-series, thereby constituting the flow of time. Because of the changing tense
determinations, there can be no one, complete description of reality, just as the presentist
maintains.
The problem with this solution is that the absolute property of presentness becomes
unintelligible or vacuous on such an account. Since every time exists and every time is
present when it exists, then it is wholly mysterious what more is added to it when it
becomes absolutely present. If to become present is not, as the presentist maintains, to
become real or existent, then what is it? I must confess that the notion of presentness on
such a theory is utterly opaque to me. It is as if one were to say that all possible worlds are
equally real (not merely as states of affairs, but as concrete realities), but that only one is
actual. The notion of what it is to be actual would then become vacuous. Similarly, unless
one means that moments of time become successively present in a hyper-time (which
Smith denies), then there just is no content left in asserting that each time, all of which are
equally real and each of which is present at itself, becomes successively present.
The modal and chronal paradoxes thus threaten us, not so much with contradiction as
with the evacuation of content from our concepts of actuality and presentness. The hybrid
actualist-realist has to say that although all worlds are equally real, only one is actual, and
the hybrid A-B-theorist has to say that although all times are equally real, only one is
present, both of which are unintelligible. To make these notions intelligible, a hyper-world
or hyper-time has to be posited in which one world is actual and one time present; but then
we are off on an infinite regress.
The question facing the proponent of McTaggart’s Paradox, then, is, given the close
analogy between modal and chronal realism, with what justification can one advocate
actualism with respect to possible worlds but reject presentism with respect to time? The
same sorts of argument lodged against temporal solipsism can be lodged against modal
solipsism; for example, that we must scotch quantified modal logic, deny relations like
trans-world identity, reduce worlds to conjunctions of propositions, and make non-modal
facts alone the basis of the truth of modal statements. The moves made by the serious
actualist to avoid these difficulties are paralleled by moves available to the presentist to
avoid temporal solipsism. The B-theorist thus faces a very serious tu quoque dilemma: if
McTaggart’s reasoning justifies chronal realism, then a parallel argument justifies modal
realism; if one escapes modal realism by embracing actualism, then a parallel escape route
is available through presentism; and if one raises objections to presentism based on
temporal solipsism, parallel objections arise with respect to actualism, objections to which
solutions available to the actualist are paralleled by solutions open to the presentist. In
short, it is gratuitous to accept a B-Theory of time on the grounds of McTaggart’s Paradox
without also embracing modal realism. It needs only to be added that those rare
individuals who, like David Lewis, consistently advocate both modal and chronal realism
44 McTaggart’s Paradox and Temporal Solipsism

find themselves saddled with a metaphysic which is, in the minds of most philosophers,
strikingly unappealing, entailing, as it does, that an individual possesses all his properties
essentially.32

IV. Conclusion

McTaggart’s Paradox presupposes that the reality of time entails a B-theoretic ontology
wedded with A-theoretic temporal becoming. All events in the actual world are equally
instantiated and existent, and temporal becoming consists in the spotlight of the present’s
moving across the series of events. Such a hybrid A-B-Theory leads, on pain of self-
contradiction, to an evacuation of content from the notion of presentness.
A proper construal of A-theoretic ontology and temporal becoming undercuts the
paradox. For if only present events exist, then there simply are no events which have the
determinations of pastness or futurity. To say that an event e is past or future is to assert
that either the statement ‘e occurred’ or ‘e will occur’ is true. Temporal becoming is thus
not a species of change, but is more like creation/annihilation in that there is no enduring
subject which sheds one temporal determination for another. McTaggart’s Paradox cannot
arise, since the only events there are are present events. Furthermore, presentism, properly
understood, does not imply the objectionable doctrines of temporal solipsism.
Finally, given the close analogy between chronal and modal realism, it is gratuitous to
embrace chronal realism on the basis of McTaggart’s reasoning while refusing to adopt
modal realism as well. If the philosopher of time wishes to adopt a B-Theory of time,
then, he will be well-advised to find other grounds than McTaggart’s misconceived
argument.

Atlanta, Georgia Received: May 1999

Revised: January 2000

32
See David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 93, 98, 137. For
a critique see Van Inwagen, ‘Indexicality and Actuality’, pp. 415–17; Plantinga, Nature of
Necessity, pp. 114–20.