ABSTRACT
A French nursery rhyme runs “L’eau est comme le temps: il coule, il coule, il coule.” If time really did flow, then, like a flowing river, it would also have a direction. But if the B-theory is true, time is not going anywhere: there is no moving “now”, no slippage into the past, no crystallization from mere possibility into present actuality. Every time and every event is equally real. But why does time seem to have a direction if it doesn’t? The B-theorist’s explanation will take this general form: time does not flow or pass, but there are nonetheless asymmetries to be found among the contents of time, the material and mental processes we know to exist, and it is these asymmetries that we mistake for temporal flow and that provide time with its apparent direction (cf. the passage from Williams in §3.8).
