Subject to Time

In class, we talked about how we can tell whether we are in the past, present, or future. Since there is a lag between events and the perception of those events, it would be impossible for humans to realize the present if it actually existed. Even assuming that humans had immediate perception to the world of their senses, it could still be fallacious to claim that the moment of their current perception is an objective present.

In philosophy, two common paradigms of time are designated as the A-series and B-series. The A-series is a tensed theory of time, postulating an objective past, present, and future. In this construct, tenses such as ‘was’, ‘is’, and ‘will be’ reflect an objective temporal reality. The B-series purposes that there is no definite past, present, and future. According to B-theorists, there is merely a series of events which occur earlier and later than one another. Thus, tenses in ordinary language are merely used for convenience. For example, ‘Bob used to work as a lawyer’ simplifies the meaning of ‘Bob worked as a lawyer at an earlier time then the utterance of this sentence’ in order to communicate the idea easier.

Although the competition between these theories is largely a matter of semantics, the B-series seems to be a more accurate reflection of human knowledge about time than the A-series. Although people desire to see their current consciousness as the present, there is no way to tell whether their perspective parallels anything outside of themselves. Perhaps their future selves also currently exist in a different dimension. Perhaps their earlier selves are actively living in the temporal space typically referred to as past. Without an objective view of the temporal path, it is impossible to determine whether the moment we perceive to be present is actually unique in its illumination.

Outside of the constraints of human consciousness, there may not even be a linear progression from earlier to later. Throughout history, people have imagined that earlier events contextualize current events. Could it not be the case that later events create a context for current events? Even in our analysis of other people, it is just as easy to tell where people came from as where they are going. From a perspective outside of the time scale, it may be just as relevant to analyze life backwards as forwards. Could the one-dimensional construct of time be wrong altogether? Could each time-perceiving agent manifest their own construction of time? Does time even exist? Investigating time seems to lead to more questions than answers.