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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.
In the first mode, events are ordered as future, present, and past.Futurity and pastness allow of degrees, while the present does not. When we speak of time in this way, we are speaking in terms of a series of positions which run from the remote past through the recent past to the present, and from the present through the near future all the way to the remote future.
Of the definitions closest to those commonly used in the literature, the earliest was Thomson: x is a cross-sectional temporal part of y =df (∃T)[y and x exist through T & no part of x exists outside T & (∀t)(t is in T ⊃ (∀P)(y exactly occupies P at t ⊃ x exactly occupies P at t))]. [6]: 207
In philosophy, temporality refers to the idea of a linear progression of past, present, and future. The term is frequently used, however, in the context of critiques of commonly held ideas of linear time.
An Experiment with Time is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne (1875–1949) about his precognitive dreams and a theory of time which he later called "Serialism". First published in March 1927, the book was widely read.
Endurantism or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantist view, material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence, which goes with an A-theory of time .
The B-series defines a given event as earlier or later than another event, but does not assume an objective present, as in four-dimensionalism. Much of the contemporary literature in the metaphysics of time has been taken to spring forth from this distinction, and thus takes McTaggart's work as its starting point.
There is a grain of truth in this, but there is more to the C-series than this. Stripping the temporal features from the B-series only gives what the C- and B-series have minimally in common, notably the constituents of the series and the formal characteristics of being linear, asymmetric, and transitive. However, the C-series has features that ...