ABSTRACT
Like its ancestor, Real Time, this book is about such of the metaphysics of time as follows from settling the basis in reality of our distinctions between past, present and future. One way and another that covers most of time’s metaphysics, including the following questions. What makes a statement that something is past, present or future true or false? What is it to have the thoughts that such statements express, and why do we have them? How do we know when they are true: what tells us whether something is past, present or future? Why do we only ever act and have experiences in the present, affect what is future and see what is present or past? Could there be exceptions to this: could a time machine let us see the future or affect the past? What, even in time machines, makes everything outside us keep moving from our future to our past via our present, i.e. what makes time flow? What has the flow of time to do with change, why has it no spatial analogue, and what does this fact tell us about how time differs from space? All these questions will be answered in the course of settling the status of past, present and future.
