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Full Idea
A-series expressions include words like 'today' and 'five weeks ago', and can be true at one time and false at another; B-series expressions are like 'simultaneously', and are always true, if true at all.
Clarification
These are two ways of seeing time
Gist of Idea
A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true
Source
report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.308
Book Ref
Lowe,E.J.: 'A Survey of Metaphysics' [OUP 2002], p.308
A Reaction
A-series gives time separate existence, where B-series time is purely relational. Intuition favours the A-series, but how fast do events travel against this fixed background?
| 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] |