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Full Idea
Even questioning the passage of time may be self-defeating: can any question be meaningfully asked or understood without presuming the passage of time from the inception of the question to its conclusion?
Gist of Idea
How can we question the passage of time, if the question takes time to ask?
Source
Adrian Bardon (Brief History of the Philosophy of Time [2013], 4 'Pervasive')
Book Ref
Bardon,Adrian: 'Brief History of the Philosophy of Time' [OUP 2013], p.98
A Reaction
[He cites P.J. Zwart for this] We can at least, in B-series style, specify the starting and finishing times of the question, without talk of its passage. Nice point, though.
| 22956 | How can time exist, when it is composed of what has ceased to be and is yet to be? [Aristotle] |
| 5102 | If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist [Aristotle] |
| 1904 | Time must be unlimited, but past and present can't be non-existent, and can't be now, so time does not exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? [Augustine] |
| 19381 | The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham] |
| 2107 | No time exists except instants, and instants are not even a part of time, so time does not exist [Leibniz] |
| 12720 | Time doesn't exist, since its parts don't coexist [Leibniz] |
| 22936 | A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them! [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
| 4231 | Time involves change, only the A-series explains change, but it involves contradictions, so time is unreal [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
| 22900 | How can we question the passage of time, if the question takes time to ask? [Bardon] |
| 22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |