What is "Time"?

         My view on time before reading McTaggart's article was that time is the medium through which change happens. Without time, there would be no change in the universe. I also believed in the common idea that time can only "move forwards". With this belief, events could only ever happen, and then become past. There is no way for a past even to happen, and then become the future.

        While reading McTaggart's article, I did find some of my beliefs about time. For instance, the A series description says that events are either future, present, or past. This was definitely a part of what I felt time was. To me, events are anticipated, then happen, and finally they are remembered. So, the three stages of time from the A series fit well with my preconceptions about how time works.

        When McTaggart is discussing "the unreality of time," he is essentially stating that how humans currently perceive and describe time is fundamentally incorrect. If humans cannot describe time in a correct manner, then the concept of time itself must be false. McTaggart's support for this argument definitely surprised me. He shows that we as humans use the definition of past, present and future as the supporting evidence for the concepts of past, present, and future (McTaggart 469). Thus we usually use a circular argument in our description of time. I never considered how time is actually described until after reading this section of the article. As a result, this argument certainly makes me reconsider what "Time" actually refers to.