ABSTRACT
Analytic philosophers attempt to give an empirical account of both the changing present and the direction of time from earlier to later. Experience manifests both the A-and B-series, yet McTaggart’s argument raised doubts about how these series could exist. Analysts debate these ontological matters by way of the relationship of time to its linguistic representation. (We have already seen the purported error in McTaggart’s argument attributed to misleading uses of verbs.) More positively, analysts look to linguistic devices such as tense, and the analysis of the sense and reference of A-and B-series descriptions to test the coherence, correctness, and relations between these representations. We shall now examine some of this analysis of temporal language, some issues regarding the relation of time to existence, and then consider the experience of time.
