A-Series/B-Series Compatibilism

Abstract

The preceding chapters made the case that perspectival contents are indispensible for accounts of human action, emotion, perception, normative behavior, computation, and information, and that they cannot be eliminated or replaced by aperspectival contents. One idea that has been widely held (and previously held by the author) is the idea that tensism is not compatible with the B-series conception of time. This chapter argues that competing accounts of tense—the A-series and the B-series—are in fact compatible. One can wed perspectival temporal contents to an aperspectival picture of the world without creating fatal philosophical puzzles. The solution, it is argued, is to deploy resources from the dynamic lexicon and understand that perspectival contents are not to be confused with their modes of expression.