The problem about the past emerges, she continues, when we try to understand our talk about it by applying this model of language. We find that we cannot do it. ‘The name or thought of something past seems to point to its object in just the same way as the name or thought of any other actual thing; yet how can it, since its object does not exist?’[41] So we find ourselves forced, with Parmenides, to the absurd conclusion that it is an illusion to suppose that we can think about the past.
