Abstract
Hugh Mellor’s Real Time II is an excellent book, for the following reasons. First it deals with an important and difficult philosophical problem, the passage, or apparent passage, of time. Second, Mellor is basically right. Mellor is a B-theorist, in the sense that he thinks that the B-facts, the facts that are not relative to a time, provide all the truthmakers we need. I was convinced that this must be right by reading D.C. William’s “The Myth of Passage” a long time ago, when I was in graduate school. But although I knew which side I was on, this conviction was based more on seeing problems for the A-theory, and thinking that the A-arguments weren’t very convincing, than on understanding how the B-theory could account for everything. And this is the third thing I like about Mellor’s book. As I read it, I really felt, for the first time, that I understood, or at least began to understand, how the B-theory not only must be right, but could be right.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Barwise, J. and Perry, J. (1983), Situations and Attitudes ( Cambridge, MA: Bradford-MIT Press).
Chalmers, D. (1996), The Conscious Mind ( New York: Oxford University Press).
Ewing, A.C. (1962), The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy ( New York: Collier Books).
Coburn, R. C. (1990), The Strangeness of the Ordinary: Problems and Issues in Contemporary Metaphysics ( Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield).
Jackson, F. (1986), “What Mary Didn’t Know,” Journal of Philosophy, LXXXIII: 291–295.
Mellor, H. (1998), Real Time II ( London: Routledge).
Perry, J. (1993), The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays ( New York: Oxford University Press).
Perry, J. (1997), “Indexicals and Demonstratives,” in Robert Hale and Crispin Wright (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Language ( Oxford: Blackwells Publishers Ltd. ): 586–612.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perry, J. (2001). Time, Consciousness and the Knowledge Argument. In: Oaklander, L.N. (eds) The Importance of Time. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3362-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3362-5_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5841-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3362-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive