Phenomenology of A-Time

One of the central debates in current analytic philosophy of time is whether time consists only of relations of simultaneity, earlier and later (B-relations), or whether it also consists of properties of futurity, presentness and pastness (A-properties). If time consists only of B-relations, then all temporal determinations are permanent; if at anyone time it is the case that birth is later than Homer's birth, then it is ever after the case that Dante's birth is later than Homer's. The temporal position of Dante's birth vis a vis Homer's is permanently fixed. Moreover, if B-relations are the only temporal determinations possessed by events, then each event, regardless of when it occurs, is equally as real as each other event. Each event sustains B-relations to other events, and thus in respect of its temporal determinations is ontologically undistinguished from each other event. Why should Dante's birth be "more real" than Homer's just because it is later than it? But if time also consists of A-properties, then some events are ontologically distinguished by virtue of their temporal determinations; the events that are or exist in the tensed sense, the events that possess the A-property of present- ness, have a reality not possessed by other events. All other events are no longer (are past) or are not yet (are future), and in this respect are deprived of the being, the presentness, possessed by the events that are. The A-properties possessed by events are impermanent temporal determinations; if an event possesses a certain A-property at one time, then there is another time at which the event will not have that A-property but some other A-property instead. First an event is future, then it is present, and finally it is past. This shows that the issue between the defenders of the B-theory and the defenders of the A-theory is of fundamental ontological importance. But analytic philosophers discuss this issue ,almost exclusively in terms of the language we use to describe the temporal determinations of events. They engage in what Quine calls "semantic ascent", i.e., redirecting their concern from the "things themselves" to the words we use to describe things. Defenders of the A-theory argue that tensed sentences and their tokens, sentences containing tensed copulas like "is", "was" and "will be" and adverbs like "now" and "at present", are untranslatable or unanalyzable into tenseless sentences about B- related events, and therefore that the tensed copulas and ad- verbs refer to A-properties of events. Defenders of the B-theory argue that tensed sentences or their tokens are translatable or analyzable into tenseless sentences about B-related events, and hence that the tensed sentences or tokens refer only to B-related events. While this semantic ascent is not without its advantages, it seems to me that additional light can be thrown on this subject if it is approached from a nonlinguistic pbenomenologtcal perspective. This approach is all the more needed since this particular issue in the philosophy of time has not been explicitly addressed by any of the practitioners of "phenomenology" (in the wide sense), such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty .Indeed, phenomenologists have generally seemed to be unaware of the debate between the A-theorists and B-theorists. This issue has been a concern exclusively of analytic philosophers (with the exception perhaps of the early 2Oth century British Idealist John McTaggart.) [1]

In the following sections, I will point to a number of phenomenological facts that are pertinent to the debate. These facts all favor the A-theory. I shall make the case that the basic phenomenological truths about time simply cannot be accounted for by the B-theory .

There are three versions of the B-theory , one of which I / shall criticize in this section, the version which states that A-properties are reducible to B-relations between events and linguistic utterances. This version of the B-theory has been de- fended by Hans Reichenbach,[2] J.J.C. Smart,[3] Bernard Mayo,[4] Mil- ton Fisk,[5] Paul Fitzgerald,[6] and others. According to this doc- trine, the presentness of an event is not an irreducible A-property it possesses in addition to its B-relations; the presentness of an event is just its relation to a linguistic utterance of being simultaneous with it. The pastness of an event is just an event's relation to an utterance of being earlier than it, and an event's futurity is its relation to an utterance of being later than it. A- properties, accordingly, are not aspects of time distinguishable from B-relations; they are a certain class of B-relations, the class of B-relations that obtain between events and linguistic utterances.

If this theory were consistent with the phenomenological facts about time, it would be the case that for an event to appear to be present is for it to appear to be simultaneous with a linguistic utterance. But this is not what appears. Contra the linguistic thesis, there are many instances in which events appear to be present without there appearing to be any utterances simultaneous with the events in question. I am perceiving a cloud presently passing over the treetops, and during this perceptual experience no speech act is apprehended: I neither utter a sen- tence out loud nor to myself, and do not hear anybody else uttering a sentence. I am beholding the present event in a wordless silence. Moreover, I am neither reading nor writing any sentence.

It might be objected that these phenomenological facts show not that the linguistically reductive theory is wrong but merely that it is incomplete, that it accounts for the temporal awareness involved in our linguistic experience but not for the awareness involved in our nonlinguistic experience.

Two responses can be made to this. First, the proponents of this B-theory do not regard the linguistic thesis as a partially adequate reductive account of our seeming awareness of A-properties, but as sufficient to establish this reduction. For example, Smart first makes some linguistic observations like

When we say that the boat 'was upstream, is level, will be downstream,' we are saying that occasions on which the boat is upstream are earlier than this utterance, that the occasion on which it is level is simultaneous with this utterance, and that occasions on which it is downstream are later than this utterance.[7]

This shows how misleading it is to think of the pastness, presentness, and futurity of events as properties, even as relational properties.[8]

Not only do our nonlinguistic apprehensions of A-determinations show that such an account is insufficient to establish the requisite reduction, they also reveal that this account is wholly mistaken. For if in our nonlinguistic experiences we apprehend A-determinations and the apprehended A-determinations are not B-relations of events to linguistic utterances, then it follows quite simply that A-determinations are not these B-relations and cannot plausibly be said to be taken or rather mistaken to be such in our linguistic experiences. The phenomenological facts bear this out: if after wordlessly perceiving for a few seconds the cloud presently passing over the treetops, I utter (while the cloud continues to pass over the treetops) "The cloud is passing over the treetops", I do not cease to apprehend the presentness as a property of this event and begin apprehending it as a B- relation to the linguistic utterance; rather I continue to apprehend the presentness of the event while also discerning the said B-relation.

A second version of the B-theory reduces A-properties to B- relations of events to psychological occurrences like sensations or acts of awareness. Proponents of this version include, among others, Bertrand Russell,[9] Adolf Grunbaum,[10] and to an extent David Mellor,[11] who reduces A-properties to B-relations of events to utterances or acts of judging or thinking. This version of the B-theory seems on the face of it to be more consistent with our experience of time that does the linguistic version, for it coheres with the fact that we are always aware of A-proper- ties; while we are not always apprehending utterances of sentences, we are always undergoing some psychological experience. ("Always" should be taken to mean here "at every moment of our waking life".) However, this version runs into difficulties once the distinction between introspective or reflexive states of mind and extrospective or unreflexive states of mind is made. For proponents of this thesis, apprehending an A-determination requires a reflexive act of consciousness in which I turn my attention back onto myself and discern that my psychological experiences stand in some B-relation to some other event(s). Griinbaum writes for example that to be aware of an event as present one must be

conceptually aware of the following complex fact: that his having the ex- perience of the event coincides temporally with an awareness of the fact that he has it at all.[12]

Definitions such as these do not square with our many unreflextve awarenesses of events as present, past or future; I perceive the cloud to be passing at present over the treetops with- out at the same time reflexively grasping my own perceptual experiencing of the event. I am not attending to my perceiving but to that which I am perceiving: the cloud passing over the treetops. If somebody asks me, "What are you experiencing right now?" I may then reflect upon my perceptual state, but until then my attention is other-directed.

It is possible to modify the psychological thesis to say that I need not be at tent tonally aware of some B-relation between my experience and some other event, but need only be implicitly or marginally aware of it. And surely even in the unreflexive experience under discussion I am implicitly aware that my perceiving is simultaneous with the cloud passing over the tree- tops.

This may be granted, but it is still unsatisfactory. For I am explicitly and unreflexively aware that the cloud is presently passing over the treetops, and if I am only implicitly and reflexively aware of a B-relation between this event and my perceiving, this B-relation is ipso facto different from presentness. That which currently has a relational property of being an object of my explicit and unreflexive awareness is nonidentical with that which currently has a relational property of being an object merely of my implicit and reflexive awareness.

The third version of the B-theory reduces A-properties to dates, i.e. to B-relations of events to some historical event (such as Christ's birth) that serves as the origin or zero-point of a cal- ender system. This version is adopted by Russell in his early writings on time,[13] Nelson Goodman,[14] W.V.O. Quine, [15]Clifford E. Williams,[16] and others. According to this view, if at 2:00 p.m. E.S.T. on August 26, 1985 I apprehend an event to be present, I am apprehending the event to occur at 2:00 p.m. E.S.T. on August 26,1985.

This version of the B-theory overcomes both the problems with the linguistic version and the problems with the psychological version, for it neither reduces awarenesses of A-properties to awareness of linguistic utterances nor reduces them to reflexive awarenesses of psychical events. Clearly I can be unreflexively and nonlinguistically aware that the cloud passes over the treetops at 2:00 p.m. E.S.T. on August 26, 1985.

But is this what our awareness of A-properties amounts to? I think not, for I can very well be aware that the cloud is presently passing over the treetops, without knowing what o'clock it is, or whether it is August 25 or 26. Indeed, in cases of severe amnesia a person can be aware that an event is presently occurring without even knowing the century in which the event is located. In fact, in most cases of awareness of the A-properties of events, we are not aware of the dates of the events, either because we don't know the dates or because a knowledge of the dates is irrelevant to our involvement with the events. More- over, we can have correct beliefs about the A-properties of events at times when we have incorrect beliefs about their dates; I can at 2 p.m. E.S.T. correctly judge that the cloud is passing over the treetops at present while erroneously believing that it is passing over the treetops at 3 p.m. E.S.T.

I shall now present some phenomenological facts that are in- consistent with all three versions of the B-theory, the facts concerning the experienced causes of emotions.[17] At least some of our emotional reactions are elicited or caused by what we believe to be the case, and the kinds of belief that elicit these emotions differ from one kind of emotion to the next. The B-theory of time is inconsistent with these facts, for it is a consequence of this theory that different kinds of emotion are caused by the same kinds of belief.

Nostalgia and eagerness are different emotions and are caused by different beliefs. According to the A-theory of time, nostalgia is caused by the belief that some joyous or happy occasion is past (i.e. possesses an irreducible A-property of past- ness), and eagerness by the belief that such an occasion is future (i.e. possesses an irreducible A-property of futurity). A defender of the B-theory might try to explain this by saying that nostalgia is elicited by the belief that the happy occasion is earlier than the experience of the nostalgia and that eagerness is elicited by the belief that the happy occasion is later than the experience of the eagerness. But this attempted explanation is unsuccessful, for there is no difficulty in supposing that both of these beliefs are held at both of these times. At the time I experience nostalgia I not only believe the nostalgia to be later than the happy event but also the eagerness to be earlier than the event, and at the time I experience the eagerness I not only believe the happy event to be later than the eagerness but also (supposing I reasonably expect myself to be subsequently nostalgic) that the happy event is earlier than the nostalgia.

Referring to dates will not help the defender of the B-theory explain the difference in the causes of these emotions, for the belief on September 3, 1984 when eagerness is being felt that the happy event occurs on September 4, 1984 is also held on September 5, 1984, when nostalgia is being felt.

Nor will reference to linguistic utterances solve the problem, for if before the event I utter "The happy event is imminent" and believe that the happy event is later than my utterance of "The happy event is imminent" I will not be believing any- thing different than what I can reasonably be said to believe after the event.

The problem is that any facts about the B-relations of the event that I could believe before the event I could just as well believe afterwards, and vice versa, so if B-facts are the only kind it is impossible to explain the difference in belief that causes the different emotions of eagerness and nostalgia. This difference is explicable only if it is assumed that before the event I believe the event is future and that after the event I believe it is past.

It is conceivable that the defender of the B-theory may con- cede my point that his theory is inconsistent with the phenomenological facts, but claim that this is not detrimental to his theory since the phenomenological facts concern what merely appears to be the case and his theory is about time as it really is. The proponent of the B-theory may draw an analogy between A- properties and color-properties: Just as physical bodies appear to us to be colored, but really are not, so time appears to us to be A-dimensional, but really is not. Bodies as they really are possess only primary qualities, and time as it really is composed only of B-relations. Colors and the distinction among the future, present and past belong to the "manifest image of man-in-the- world" (W. Sellars) but not the "scientific image of man-in-the- world". Time as it really is is not known phenomenologically but only by science or a scientifically based philosophy.

A phenomenologist may respond to this objection in at least two ways. I shall call the first response that of the "phenomenological idealist", whom I define as follows.

The phenomenological idealist believes that the scientific realm no less than the manifest realm (the "life-world") is projected by or essentially dependent upon man. The realm of scientific entities is nothing real in itself but is a mere "theoretical construct" that is fashioned from the materials in the manifest realm, such that the latter realm is the foundation of the former. Accordingly, scientific time is not only as human-dependent and human-relative as manifest time, but is an abstract construct fashioned from the latter time. Given this, the phrase, "time as it really is" is more suitably applied to the original phenomenologically manifest time than to the derivative time of the sciences. It follows that time as it really is A-dimensional, inasmuch as manifest time is A-dimensional, and the B-theory accordingly is false or at least restricted to an abstract scientific image of real time.

The position underlying a response of this sort is approximately consistent with that of phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty , although of course they would not have expressed themselves in precisely this way and they did not use the phrase "phenomenological idealism" to characterize their position. The essential idea underlying this response is that (in Heidegger's way of putting it) "time produces itself only insofar as man is"[18] and that scientific time is "produced" derivatively from the time of prescientific being-in- the-world.

A second and considerably different response is also open to a phenomenologist. This second response is that of a "phenomenological realist", whom I characterize in this way:

The phenomenological realist holds that time and physical bodies exist nondependently upon and without being constituted, projected or produced by man. This time is studied by the sciences and is also manifest to us in prescientific experience. But there is no dimensional dissimilarity between time as scientifically known and time as it is phenomenologically manifest, or between time as it really is and time as it phenomenologically appears. Time really is A- and B-dimensional, and it is represented as such in the sciences and is manifest as such in prescientific experience. The task of the phenomenologist is to elucidate the A- and B-dimensionality of time as it intuitively appears, and the task of the scientist is to formulate and test hypotheses about this dimensionality in respect of its nonintuitively manifest features. Both approaches support the same conclusion, that the B-theory of time is inadequate to the (phenomenological or scientific) data.

The phenomenological realist position underlying this second response has not (to my knowledge) been defended by any , mainstream phenomenologist, but I have defended it at length in The Felt Meanings of the World.[19] The specific claim that the sciences represent time as both A- and B-dimensional has been defended in my "The Mind-Independence of Temporal Becoming".[20]

But it is not necessary to adopt the realist position I defend in order to be convinced by the phenomenological studies of time presented in sections 2-5. It follows from both the phenomenological idealist and realist positions that the phenomenological elucidation of the A-dimensionality of time reflects time as it really is and hence that the A-theory of time is to be preferred.[21]

[1] Cf. ].M.E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, Vol. 2; Cambridge, 1927. 144

[2] Hans Reichenbach, The Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York, 1947.

[3] Smart, The River of Time, Mind, 58 (1949) 483-494.

[4] Bernard Mayo, "Events and Language", in Philosophy and Analysis, ed. by M. Macdonald. Oxford. 1954.

[5] Milton Fisk, "A Pragmatic Account of Tenses", American Philosophical Quarterly, 18 (1971) 93-98.

[6] Paul Fitzgerald, "Nowness and the Understanding of Time", in PSA, ed. K. Schaffner and R. Cohen. Dordrecht, 1972.

[7] Smart, op. cit., p. 492.

[8] lbid., p. 493.

[9] Bertrand Russell, "On the Experience of Time", Monist 25 (1915) 212-233.

[10] Adolf GnJnbaum, Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes. Connecticut. 1967.

[11] David MelIor, Real Time. Cambridge, 1981

[12] Grunbaum, op. cit., p. 17.

[13] Bertrand Russell, "Critical Notice of Hugh Maccoll, Symbolic Logic and its Application", Mind 15 (1906) 255-260.

[14] Nelson Goodman, The St1Ucture of Appearance. Cambridge. 1965.

[15] W. V.O. Quine, Elementary Logic. Cambridge. 1980

[16] Clifford E. Williams, u'Now', Extensional Interchangeability and the Passage of Time", The Philosophical Forum ,5 (1974) 405-423.

[17] The subsequent discussion is a development of some suggestions made by A.N. Prior in uThank Goodness that's Over", Philosophy, 34 (1959) 12-17 and George N. Schlesinger in Aspects of Time. Indianapolis. 1980 (see esp. pp. 34-36).

[18] Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim. New York. 1961. See p. 71.

[19] Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of Feeling (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1986). By "phenomenologist" I mean anybody who practices the method of intuition (not necessarily Husserl's method of intuition) or who is usually associated with the so-called "phenomenological movement".

[20] Quentin Smith, 'The Mind-Independence of Temporal Becoming', Philosophical Studies, 47 (1985) 109-119.

[21] For some discussions of the A-theory /B-theory controversy that employ the analytic method of "semantic ascent", see Quentin Smith, "Sentences About Time", The Philosophical Quarterly, 37 (1987) 37-53; "Problems with the New Tenseless Theory of Time", Philosophical Studies, 52 (1987) 371-392; "The Impossibility of Token-Reflexive Analyses", Dialogue, 25 (1986) 757-760; and "Temporal Indexicals", Erkenntnis, forthcoming.