Abstract

Fine’s reformulation of McTaggart’s paradox may be the most important development in the philosophy of time in recent years. After reformulating this paradox as a contradiction among four principles, Fine identifies four possible theories that can avoid it. This paper focuses on two of them: standard realism and fragmentalism. Fine argues that one advantage of fragmentalism over standard realism is its ability to offer a better account of temporal passage. I argue that this argument fails. On the one hand, standard realism can adequately capture the passage of time by the primitive tense, but only if the tense is understood as describing the tensed way reality is constituted, rather than referring to tensed facts that constitute reality. It is this tensed constitution of reality that captures temporal passage. On the other hand, fragmentalism fails to account for temporal passage because, within its framework, the constitution of reality is fundamentally tenseless.