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The B-theory of time, also called the "tenseless theory of time", is one of two positions regarding the temporal ordering of events in the philosophy of time.B-theorists argue that the flow of time is only a subjective illusion of human consciousness, that the past, present, and future are equally real, and that time is tenseless: temporal becoming is not an objective feature of reality.
Furthermore, while events acquire their A series determinations through a relation to something outside of time, their B series determinations hold between the events that constitutes the B series. This is the B series, and the philosophy that says all truths about time can be reduced to B series statements is the B-theory of time.
The question is not therefore whether time forms an A- or a B-series; the question is whether time forms both an A- and a B-series, or only a B-series. The proponents of the B-view of time typically respond by arguing that even if events do not change their positions in the B-series, it does not follow that there can be no change in the B-series.
In the B-theory, temporal passage and becoming are subjective and illusions of consciousness. Craig explains: [38] "On a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction.
Any sense we have of time's passage can be explained in terms of the B-theoretic distribution of content in the four-dimensional manifold. On his view, there is no absolute or pure temporal becoming. In other work, recently published, he explains how the pure manifold theory of time can account for the metaphysical possibility of time travel.
A flow-of-time theory with a strictly deterministic future, which nonetheless does not exist in the same sense as the present, would not satisfy common-sense intuitions about time. Some have argued that common-sense flow-of-time theories can be compatible with eternalism, for example John G. Cramer’s transactional interpretation. Kastner ...
This is contrasted with the B series, in which positions are ordered from earlier-than to later-than relations. Thus the A series represents the events in time in a moving relation (from future to present to past) to the temporally moving observer, whereas the B series orders the time events as in firm and fixed relations to other time events.
The thermal time hypothesis is a possible solution to the problem of time in classical and quantum theory as has been put forward by Carlo Rovelli and Alain Connes. Physical time flow is modeled as a fundamental property of the theory, a macroscopic feature of thermodynamical origin. [31] [32]