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Full Idea
It is universally admitted.... that there could be no time if nothing changed.
Gist of Idea
There could be no time if nothing changed
Source
J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927], II p.11), quoted by Sydney Shoemaker - Time Without Change p.49
Book Ref
Shoemaker,Sydney: 'Identity, Cause and Mind' [OUP 2003], p.49
A Reaction
This is set up alongside Aristotle (Idea 8590) to be attacked by Shoemaker. I think Shoemaker is right, and that the rejection of McTaggart's view is a key result in modern metaphysics.
Related Idea
Idea 8590 Time does not exist without change [Aristotle]
| 314 | Heavenly movements gave us the idea of time, and caused us to inquire about the heavens [Plato] |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| 5698 | We can only sense time by means of movement, or its absence [Lucretius] |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| 2101 | If everything in the universe happened a year earlier, there would be no discernible difference [Leibniz] |
| 5535 | That times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, so it is known by intuition, not analysis [Kant] |
| 5560 | The three modes of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity [Kant] |
| 8591 | There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart] |
| 21581 | We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell] |
| 22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
| 23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |