1. The same argument appeared earlier in Smart (1954), and as Webb (1977) observes, one can find this particular objection to a flowing time as far back as Kant. Not every philosopher finds this a meaningful objection. For example, Chris-tensen (1976) observes that the answer to how fast time is passing is just “one second per second” and makes it plain that he thinks not to understand this is to be dense. I don’t think that position is solid, and neither do others; Morris (1984) calls such a claim “as meaningful as defining the word cat by saying A cat is a cat.” In an amusing spoof on controversies in physics over matters that are essentially hypothetical conjecture at best, Kate Wilhelm has two scientists confront feach other at a conference in her story “O Homo; O Femina; O Tempora.” One claims to have shown that time is slowing down; the other says it is speeding up. Things get pretty hot for a while, but then the wife of one asks, “Will we experience anything differently? . . . Nine months will still seem like nine months.” With that settled, all concerned head for the conference center bar! A discussion of the self-referential nature of McTaggart’s infinite regression of times can be found in Löfgren (1984), including Gödel’s paradox of a time traveler meeting himself.
2. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences;RW Stuewer,1975
3. Quoted from The Philosophy of Rudolp Carnap ed. P.A. Schlipp, The Library of Living Philosophers (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1963), 37–38.
4. F.H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1897), 190.
5. J.N. Findlay, Philosophy 25 (1950): 346–347.