April, 29, 2022, h. 16-18 CET

By and large, the intuitive notion that time passes, and that it does so in one direction, has been associated with a realist understanding of the gliding present (A-theories of time). It has been often argued that this notion is incoherent, and that it is either absent from or incompatible with a scientific understanding of physical reality. Deniers of the objective distinction between past, present and future (B-theorists) have thereby often subscribed to the view that the passage of time is illusory. Many philosophers and physicists attempted to mitigate this apparently absurd conclusion by making reference to observed asymmetries of processes in time, which provide us with a structural distinction between the past-to-future and the future-to-past directions. The aim of this talk is to argue that all of the above is misguided. I shall begin by hinting at a Cartesian argument in favour of the objective reality of passage (and of its direction). I shall then argue that standard attempts to reduce the apparent directionality of time to structural asymmetries of processes in time (e.g. the entropic asymmetry) are misguided. I further argue that this realist view of passage does not entail a realist view of A-determination. In particular, I argue that standard A-theories of time are just as incapable of accounting for the direction of time as standard B-theories are. Finally, I make some remarks about the alleged incompatibility of passage with the theory of relativity.

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