Parmenides advances four arguments against becoming. Two of these are sound. Plato's and Aristotle's attempt to refute them fail. They react to Parmenides' challenge by differentiating and grading being and existence. Thus they deviate from Parmenides' strict concept of existence which is the only reasonable one. What's wrong with Parmenides' train of thought is a decisive premise: that becoming is a transition from non-existence to existence. The reality of becoming can be maintained if this premise is given up. One has (...) to see that becoming is a purely temporal affair not involving existence and that existence is timeless. Time and existence are independent of each other. (shrink)

According to B-theorists, B-relations (‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’, see, e.g. Oaklander 2004: 24–25) constitute the reality of time. The B-relations are what distinguish our world from a timeless one. Yet our only awareness of the reality of time comes via our phenomenology of temporal passage. Why is this noteworthy? Our temporal phenomenology is mind-dependent and reflects no feature of reality. Epistemic access to the reality of time is, in fact, simply epistemic access to our own inner phenomenology. It doesn’t (...) reflect the way reality is. Hence, we have no understanding of what ‘B-time’ is. (shrink)