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Full Idea
McTaggart's proof of time's unreality: A-series positions (past, present and future) are mutually incompatible, so no event can exhibit more than one of them; but since A-series events change position, all events have all A-series posititions. Absurd!
Gist of Idea
A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them!
Source
report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 08 'McTaggart's'
Book Ref
Le Poidevin,Robin: 'Travels in Four Dimensions' [OUP 2003], p.131
A Reaction
I'm not convinced that this is any more contradictory than someone being married at one time and unmarried at another. No one is suggesting that an A-series event can be both past and future simultaneously.
Related Idea
Idea 22935 The B-series can be inferred from the A-series, but not the other way round [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
| 22628 | Substance has to exist, with no intrinsic qualities or relations [McTaggart] |
| 15200 | How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
| 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] |
| 22935 | The B-series can be inferred from the A-series, but not the other way round [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |
| 7802 | A-series uses past, present and future; B-series uses 'before' and 'after' [McTaggart, by Girle] |
| 4230 | A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true [McTaggart, by Lowe] |
| 14761 | Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart] |
| 8591 | There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart] |
| 2608 | For McTaggart time is seen either as fixed, or as relative to events [McTaggart, by Ayer] |
| 15199 | The B-series must depend on the A-series, because change must be explained [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin] |