Craig, William Lane. The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination.

Copan, Paul

Synthese Library: Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, vol. 293. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. x + 287 pp. Cloth, $123.00 -- William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology (La Mirada, California). Quentin Smith considers him "one of the leading philosophers of time," and his impressive, exhaustive three volume series on God, time, relativity, and eternity clearly demonstrates this. As the first two volumes are devoted to the problem of time--examining whether a dynamic/tensed (A-theory) or static/tenseless (B-theory) view of time is correct--I review them back-to-back.

Section 1 of The Tensed Theory deals with "The Ineliminability of Tense" (chapters 1-5) while section 2 addresses "Arguments Against an A-Theory of Time" (chapters 6-7, which cover McTaggart's Paradox and the Myth of Passage, respectively). Chapter 1 explores the philosophy of language and its relation to time (tense, indexicals, and so forth). According to the A-theorist, tense is real in a metaphysical sense, not simply a feature of language (B-theory). Ordinary language usage genuinely and strikingly exhibits tense, and the B-theorist must somehow show that the tensed view of time (A-theory) must be self-contradictory and therefore false (p. 21); in the absence of such a proof, the best the B-theorist can do is show that tense is superfluous. Yet a tensed view of time ought to be accepted as true (that is, corresponding to the way the world is), as tensed sentences cannot be reduced to tenseless propositions without loss of meaning.

Chapter 2 examines the Old B-Theory of Language (advocated by Russell, Frege, Quine, Hans Reichenbach, J. J. Smart), which attempted to de-tense language (a) by replacing tensed expressions with appropriate dates and/or clock times (presumably without loss of meaning) or (b) by analyzing tensed expressions in terms of token reflexivity. The first strategy has widely been recognized as a failure; tense and indexicality are irreducible and essential to explain certain human thoughts and actions. Token reflexivity (translating tensed sentences into tenseless ones without loss of meaning) does not deliver what it promises; information is lost in translation, and tense again proves inescapable to motivate human action. Thus tense is not superfluous.

Chapter 3 discusses the New B-Theory of Language (most notably promoted by D. H. Mellor), which admits to the necessity of tensed language but denies any objectivity to tensed facts/events: they are still tenseless, and A-theorists have wrongly reified them. However, the New B-Theory is "logically defective" (p. 96) in that it, for example, fails to give any coherent account of truth conditions and confuses truth conditions with truth makers in tensed sentences.

Chapter 4 discusses theories of direct reference, examining the B-theorist's tu quoque argument in particular--namely, if "the A-theorist's arguments for the reality of tense are correct, then there must be spatially `tensed' facts as well, which no one will admit" (p. 97). However, this argument proves ineffectual as well, as tense proves inescapable both in language as well as in reality. This is borne out by our very experience of tense as properly and irreducibly basic (chapter 5); while this idea of properly basic belief (ably exposited by Alvin Plantinga) is prima facie rather than ultima facie, it stands up to Mellorian counterexamples or potential defeaters (for example, witnessing the alleged presentness of a supernova through a telescope), which Craig deftly rebuts. That said, belief in tense and temporal becoming as real is universal and enjoys the status of being an intrinsic defeater to speculative B-theoretical arguments.

Chapter 6 brings us to the objection to the A-theory known as McTaggart's Paradox, which seeks to show that an A-series of events is self-contradictory or leads to a vicious infinite regress of A-theoretic determinations. However, J. M. E. McTaggart's underlying metaphysic (events as substances and the assumption that if time is real, all events--including past and future ones--are equally real) and his misconstrual of absolute becoming raise serious objections to his view. Also in this chapter, Craig, a presentist (holding that "the only temporal items which exist are those which are present" [p. 208]), gives a very helpful discussion on presentness and existence.

The final chapter ("The Myth of Temporal Passage") examines a second objection, which turns out to be a misunderstanding of "the flow of time," which certain B-theorists claim that A-theorists hold. Among other arguments, presentists (A-theorists) reject a substantivalist view of time, denying a literal flow of time (p. 221); it is a mere metaphor for temporal becoming.

These two objections against the A-theory ultimately fail, and the ineliminability of tense from language and our rich, properly basic experience of tense offer prima facie warrant for an A-theory of time. Further examination of the B-theory, however, is necessary and thus taken up in the companion volume, The Tenseless Theory of Time.

In this book, though, Craig ably and rigorously argues for an A-theory of time, and The Tensed Theory of Time offers a comprehensive analysis and important advances on this particular theory of time.--Paul Copan, Trinity International University and RZIM.