B-THEORY, FIXITY, AND FATALISM i

Joseph Diekemper Introduction One of the reasons that A-Theorists about time offer for rejecting the static B-Theory is that it cannot account for our experience of temporal becoming. They take this experience as evidence of a fundamental and objective feature of reality; and there has, of course, been a great deal of discussion and debate between Aand B-Theorists as to whether temporal experience really does provide such evidence. The abundance of discussion with respect to temporal becoming stands in contrast to another oft cited, though much less discussed, reason for rejecting the B-Theory, namely, its alleged implications for the common sense asymmetry between past and future. The B-Theory, in all of its different forms, not only postulates that time is static (as opposed to dynamic), but also that time is ontologically symmetrical: there is no ontological distinction between past and future. The A-Theoretic worry regarding this doctrine is that if the future participates in the same degree of existence as the past (and present), then how can the future be non-fixed and open? Or, more concretely, if the event of the Third World War exists eternally, then in what sense is that event— prior to its occurrence—not inexorable? ii