ABSTRACT. In the “Unreality of Time”, McTaggart famously offers various, significant objections against the possibility of an A-series. After presenting his more famous puzzles, he offers a brief (and often overlooked) argument against an A-series view that would argue for the objective existence of past, present, and future based on the presence of experience, i.e., the specious present. The thrust of McTaggart’s argument against an A-series grounded on a specious present consists in his claiming that events of experience extend over varying durations. In claiming that a particular event can cease to be part of one person’s immediate experience while it remains part of another’s immediate experience, McTaggart notes that a paradox arises in which one and the same event is both past and present (according to the measure of experience). Accordingly, McTaggart denies that a specious present could ground an objective A-series. In the following paper, I consider McTaggart’s argument against the specious present account, and argue that an A-series theorist could maintain that the presence of experience (i.e., the specious present) could serve as the objective present, whether or not the presence of experience can extend over varying durations. pp. 101–112
Keywords: McTaggart, time, temporal, A-series, specious, experience