What is B-time?

Abstract

According to B-theorists, B-relations (‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’, see, e.g. Oaklander 2004: 24–25) constitute the reality of time. The B-relations are what distinguish our world from a timeless one. Yet our only awareness of the reality of time comes via our phenomenology of temporal passage. Why is this noteworthy? Our temporal phenomenology is mind-dependent and reflects no feature of reality. Epistemic access to the reality of time is, in fact, simply epistemic access to our own inner phenomenology. It doesn’t reflect the way reality is. Hence, we have no understanding of what ‘B-time’ is. There are three aspects to a B-theoretic account of mind-dependent temporal becoming: first, the sensation that each moment is ‘now’; second, the sensation of passage from one moment to the next and, third, the lack of perceptual awareness of times other than the present.2 To clarify the third point, at t1 we are only aware of our mental goings on at t1 we do not have cognitive access to our mental states at t2, t3, t4 etc. According to the B-theorist, each of these features of our experience is wholly mind-dependent. The conjunction of the following three claims I shall refer to as B-theoretic phenomenology.