Jeffrey Grupp

You can print the article, "The R-Theory of Time," through this link (click here), or you can get a printed book copy of the article mailed to you for under $8 (click here).

I gave the name “R-theory of time" to the Buddhist philosophy of time (and the Buddhist philosophy of atomism) in my 2005 article in The 'Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies because after studying the currently discussed non-Buddhist philosophies of time that have been offered to us by many physicists and analytic philosophers (these theories are discussed below), I found that they seemed to not agree as much as I thought theories of time should with the findings of quantum physicists. Rather, the non-Buddhist philosophies of time seemed to only be in agreement with relativistic physics, but not at all in agreement with quantum physics. But on the other hand, it seemed to me that the Buddhist philosophy of time agreed best with quantum theory, and thus I published an article about the Buddhist philosophy of time in order to try to show why.

The R-theory of time is a philosophical theory of time that has ancient Buddhist origins and also has surprising similarities with the observations of quantum physics. (There are many interesting similarities between Buddhist atomism and quantum mechanics, and between Buddhist philosophy in general and modern physics). The R-theory of time can be considered the analytic philosophy of time of Indian Buddhism. All of the issues to do with the R-theory of time and the contemporary philosophies of time are discussed in much proper detail in my 2005 article; and this page is just to serve as a simple introduction.

Besides myself, I only know of one other Western philosopher who has endorsed the R-theory, or something very similar to the R-theory (NYU professor Derek Parfit). Why haven't Western philosophers (philosophers in the Greek and European tradition) typically discussed and/or accepted the R-theory of time? The answer to this question is found if we consider what is typically called the problem of change. In simplest terms, the problem of change is this: how can an object remain itself through change? In other words, how is it that an apple remains itself if the apple changes? Is it the same apple or a different apple?

Philosophers have for thousands of years attempted to describe how entities change. This might seem like a simple task, and perhaps it is; but describing how things change leads to a very interesting issue: if an object changes, it ceases to be what it was, in order to be a different item. More technically, the problem can be put as follows: if object S changes from one state (S*) to another (S**), S* goes out of existence and S** comes into existence. Therefore, change involves items coming in and out of existence. This is, simply put, to describe things as flashing in and out of existence, or, as the Indian Buddhists describe it, it is to describe reality as involving staccato motion. Western philosophers have, in general, always rejected this simple logic: they have always rejected the philosophical position that objects can flash in and our of existence since this is not in agreement with our ordinary empirical experience of reality, where we do not see or experience objects doing this.

Western philosophers have two theories they turn to in attempting to describe how an item can remain itself through change: endurantism and perdurantism. (I attack both of these positions in my 2005 article on the R-theory of time, and also in my 2005 article on the philosophy of presentism [presentism is the philosophical position that only the present exists, and past and future do not exist]). But Buddhist philosophers from India (esp. approx 100 CE to 1000 CE) maintain that the problem of change is no problem at all,  and rather for change to occur, items must flash in and out of existence as just described above. For that reason, Western philosophers typically reject the R-theory of time because it does not correspond to sense information. But this is not so for Indian Buddhists, who maintain that atomic/fundamental reality is vibrating: flashing in and out of existence. Buddhists have maintained, rather, that if one attempts to simply describe change, we find that if there is change, then there are objects flashing in and out of existence since the "problem" of change indicates that an item cannot remain itself through change and the only way change can occur is if an item goes out of existence and a new item comes into existence.

The R-theory of time is a theory of time that is based on the Buddhist conceptualism and the Buddhist atomism of Dharmakirti and other Indian Buddhist philosophers, and its primary characteristics are as follows:

According to the R-theory of time: Reality is composed of Buddhist atoms that are durationless infinitesimal bits of energy, and thus which flash in and out of existence at a pace far too quick for ordinary empirical consciousness to be aware of.

To understand the R-theory, it will help us to spell out what the major philosophies of time are. In contemporary philosophy there has been a very active debate over the nature of time, especially in light of the big changes in physics since Einstein's revolutionary work There appear to be five major theories of time that have been developed, and which go by the names (1) Presentism or the Pure A-theory, (2) the A-theory of time, (3) the B-theory of time, (4) the Hybrid or AB-theory of time, and lastly, the oldest one of all, which is (5) the R-theory of time. There is no real agreement among philosophers (or physicists) around the world as to which theory is correct. My 2005 article on the R-theory of time is an attempt to show that the R-theory is the correct one. These theories can be more clearly described as follows:

1. Pure A-theory Theory of Time (non-Buddhist Presentism): Oaklander writes: "[A] version of the pure A-theory, known as "Presentism (philosophy of time) presentism", purports to avoid… the problem of change... According to presentism, only the present exists. Thus, it is not the case that, say, O is green and [then] O is red [if, for example, O is a tomato]." (Oaklander, L. Nathan. In Smith, Quentin, and Oaklander, L. Nathan. 1995. Time, Change, and Freedom. New York: Routledge. 2004, 27.)

2/3. A- and B-Theories of Time: the following passage from L. Nathan Oaklander sums up these two:

…[T]ime [involves] events strung out along a series united to one another by the relations of earlier than, later and simultaneity… The events in the temporal series are fixed in that they never change their position relative to each other… It has become customary to call the entire series of events spread out along  the time-line from earlier to later, the “B-series.” When viewed solely in terms of the B-series, time is thought of as static or unchanging for there is nothing about temporal relations between events that changes...

Time not only has a static aspect, it also has a transitory aspect. In addition to conceiving of time in terms of events standing in temporal relations, we also conceive of time and the events in time as moving or passing from the far future to the near future, from the hear future to the present, and then from present they recede into the more and more distant past… When events are ordered in terms of the notions of past, present, or future they form what is called an “A-series.” It should be noted, of course, that the A- and B-series are not really “two” different series of events, but the same series ordered in two different ways. (Oaklander 2004,Page 69)

4. AB-theory of Time: There are a few hybrid theories, as they are often called, and they are mixtures of the A- and B-theory.

5. R-theory of Time: This theory of time is the analytic philosophers in India (especially Indian Buddhist philosophers). The R-theory of time is a theory of time is known about by Western philosophers, but is typically rejected by them since they do not that the problem of change really shows that all objects of reality endlessly flash in and out of existence.

The R-theory is in some ways similar to the Western philosophies of time (the A-theory, B-theory, AB-theory, and Presentism/Pure A-theory) since the Western theories are all based on what to do about the "problem" of change.  The primary difference between the R-theory and these Western theories is that the R-theory denies that any object can remain itself through change, whereas all the Western theories do not deny this and they maintain that objects do remain themselves through change (for example, for the Western philosopher, if a chair loses a leg, it is still the same chair).  So, Buddhists accept that the problem of change shows us that reality is vibrating, but Western philosophers typically attempt to avoid the "problem" of change, showing that reality does not involve staccato motion. (I argue in my 2005 article that Western philosophers have not succeeded in this.) Therefore, reality, according to the A-theory, B-theory, AB-theory, and Pure A-theories of time can involve endurance or perdurance (these are theories that are well-developed by Western philosophers and which allege to explain how things persist through time and change, but there is no widespread consensus among philosophers yet as to of these is correct—endurantism or perdurantism), but according to the R-theory there is no endurance or perdurance, due to the fact that duration does not exist. (This means that the R-theory has similarities with the Western philosophy of presentism, but it is very different for reasons I give in my 2005 article.) While these details of the R-theory do not agree with ordinary empirical experience since humans ordinarily (believe they) see things like chairs and tables to persist through time, these details do seem to be to some degree in accord with the sub-atomic particles that make up reality, since these particles seem to flash in and out of existence—and such momentariness of quantum objects does seem to be describable in the way the R-theory describes time and reality (see the conclusion of my 2005 article).

If the R-theory is the correct theory of time, it has interesting implications for the philosophy of causation. In general, causation, as it is normally considered by Western philosophers (Leibniz, Aristotle, Russell, etc.), which is some sort of relation, interaction, or process between moments, does not exist. Rather, every moment is not caused by another moment, but is self-caused.