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Full Idea
Some suspicion arises that time does not exist, since some of it has happened and does not exist, and some of it is in the future and does not yet exist. It appears impossible for anything that consists of things that do not exist to exist itself.
Gist of Idea
If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b34)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.102
A Reaction
This generates the popular paradox that Socrates cannot die, because no moment exists when his death could occur. It may be (as David Marshall has pointed out) that we do not experience the present, but only a vivid memory of the immediate past.
| 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] |