Talk:J. M. E. McTaggart

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LittD[edit]

The article in its present form states that McTaggart's LittD was honorary. I don't have ready access to the (non-linked) article mentioning the degree, but I'm pretty confident the degree was an earned higher doctorate. Does anyone have a way of confirming or disconfirming this? ~~garychartier

McTaggart received at least one honorary degree, though I'm uncertain as to whether the LittD was also honorary. In G. Lowes Dickinson's biography about the man, Dickinson remarks that "in the year 1902 he [i.e., McTaggart] became a D.Litt. of the University [by which Dickinson means Cambridge], and in 1911 was made an honorary LL.D. of St. Andrews." (ch. III, p. 50) Dickinson then goes on to say that "the only other outside honor I am aware of is that he was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1906." (ibid.) So, make of that what you will, I suppose. I think that I vaguely recall reading a source that was more specific in regard to the mentioned degree from Cambridge. In the next week or so, I'll try to check a few places I might've read about it. —Nick

POV in first paragraph[edit]

I trimmed the first paragraph back to statements of fact and a fairly uncontroversial evaluation. The previous version made high claims for McTaggart, which may or may not be true, but weren't supported by citations. Under "Influence", there's an insistence that McTaggart was a huge influence on analytic philosophy, although of course his work was rejected tout court by the analytic school and - with the exception of Dummett - is largely ignored. I haven't revised this right now, but I do have doubts about it.KD Tries Again 19:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)KD[reply]

RE McTaggart's "Influence": Mauro Donato notes in his Time And Reality (Bologna, 1995) that "Twentieth-century analytical philosophy of time is often portrayed as a battlefield radically divided into two camps [...] [championing respectively] the so-called A and B theory of time" (p 1); and further, p 2: "[...] the origin of the debate [...] is to be found in a celebrated and influential argument against the reality of time due to McTaggart [...]". The latter's contribution to the modern philosophical debate about the nature of time remains of fundamental importance. He can fairly be said to have founded the field. Also see for instance The Philosophy of Time, ed. Robin Le Poidevin & Murray MacBeath (Oxford Readings in Philosophy) (OUP, 1993), passim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.157.224.13 (talk) 00:27, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reference[edit]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mctaggart/index.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rsastry (talkcontribs) 13:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of influence[edit]

In the "Influence" section, it is claimed that "McTaggart's work retains interest to the historian of analytic philosophy despite being, in a very real sense, the product of an earlier age." How could the work be the product of an earlier age if time, as McTaggart asserts, is unreal?Lestrade (talk) 18:08, 15 August 2010 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

I really don't see your contention. Mctaggart's arguments, though influential to certain aspects of modern day philosophy, need not be accepted. In fact, his arguments against the reality of both the A and B-series in particular, seems to be, for the most part, explicitly rejected, though again that does not prevent his role in creating the divide that is the A-theorist and B-theorist debate today.99.234.246.112 (talk) 02:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry about Lestrade. He's trolling. — goethean 13:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When did McTaggart write The Nature of Existence?[edit]

The article mentions the work, but I don't see the year. --99.154.246.207 (talk) 00:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)--Coching (talk) 00:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on J. M. E. McTaggart. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 17:31, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:52, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]