Hugh Mellor on Time

Events happen in time. And time is essentially tensed: there is past, present, future. D.H. Mellor,  author of Real Time (and Real Time 2), suggests otherwise. In this podcast for Philosophy Bites he explains why time isn't tensed.

Listen to Hugh Mellor on Time

Free PDF files of two of Hugh Mellor's books are available here: The Matter of Chance and Matters of Metaphysics (a collection of 16 of his papers). Both are also available as books - see below.

Comments

[Jacob Hendrickson]

Mellor's argument easily falls into a transcendental egoism.

[Jacob Hendrickson]

It appears that Mellor is defending a Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus view of time, (ie "there is no such thing as the passage of time.") I don't know if it is anti Heideggerian, but maybe. I do think, however, that Wittgenstein would somehow find a place for the words "past, present, and future" in our existence.

[Matthew Jones]

I am a classical musician and am very aware of the manipulation of events in small scale perceptive time. I think fundamentally that things exist and are in motion. This allows for a "time" that is purely relative: time need not be a thing, but a perception. There is no need for a "flow of time" but a flow of things through space perceived in relation to other events. Those events which are periodic being the most readily impressive to humans and are thus our supposed "measure of time." I suggest that that idea that "things exist and move in space" gives rise to the same directionality of happenings as does the idea of "time's arrow" or flow.

[Sam]

thank you.