• No possibility of change on B-theory: how can events change?
  • (Events don't change, things do.)
• Pastness, presentness and futurity: these are properties or relations of events or moments.
  • If relations, then relations with what?
    • Other things in the series: No, because then there is no change.
    • Something outside the series? What could that be?
  • In any case, they are incompatible determinations.
  • But each event has each of them. It was future, is present, will be past.
    • But maybe this is not a contradiction. It was future, is present and will be past. "But this explanation involves a vicious circle. For it assumes the existence of time in order to account for the way in which moments are past, present and future. Time then must be pre-supposed to account for the A series. But we have already seen that the A series has to be assumed in order to account for time. Accordingly the A series has to be pre-supposed in order to account for the A series. And this is clearly a vicious circle."
      • Objection: It doesn't presuppose time to explain past, present and future. It uses time to show why there is no contradiction.
        • Dilemma: Either "Each event is past, present or future" uses "is" eternally, in which case we open ourselves for McTaggart's objection, or else it uses "is" tensedly, in which case "E is present" means E's being present is present, and vicious regress ensues.
          • (The presentist has a way out.)
    • Infinite regress ensues if we try to resolve the contradiction by saying that E is present relative to t1, past relative to t2, and future relative to t0. For which of these three times is present?
    • I think crucial to the idea is that the having of the temporal property is what grounds temporality.
    • What is this weird business of "removing a contradiction"?
• Anyway, the specious present shows our perceptions are mistaken.
• The C series survives the argument.
• A-theory versus presentism.

Compare McTaggart argument to the standard argument against endurantism.

Broad:

• History of event particles. Second order event particles: E's becoming present and then ceasing to be present. Need second time line. (p 278)
• Saddleback vs. sawtooth theories of specious present.

Smith:

• No need for new moments.
• Regress in analysis: virtuous.