MCTAGGART'S PARADOX AND THE INFINITE REGRESS OF TEMPORAL ATTRIBUTIONS: A REPLY TO SMITH

Abstract

In arecent article in this journal, Quentin Smith attempts to demonstrate the idea that presentness, pastness and futurity are properties does indeed entail an infinite regress, but that this regress is neither vicious nor constituted of tenseless predications. 1 Although I have no quarrel with his thesis that the regress is not constituted by tenseless predications, it is the main purpose of this paper to show that the regress is in fact vicious. I shall do this by arguing that Smith's way out of Paradox involves precisely that vicious infinite regress of temporal attributions his analysis sought to avoid. According to Smith, the paradox involved in McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time does not involve any contradiction in temporal attribution. Rather, it is McTaggart's own remarks about the infinite regress that are paradoxical, not the infinite regress! Why does he say that? McTaggart claims, correctly according to Smith, that the attribution of presentness, pastness and futurity leads to a contradiction unless they are attributed successively. Smith continues,