Recently, philosophers with an interest in consciousness have turned their attention towards "fri... more Recently, philosophers with an interest in consciousness have turned their attention towards "fringe states of consciousness". Examples include dreams, trances, and meditative states. Teetering between wakefulness and non-consciousness, fringe states illuminate the limits and boundaries of consciousness. This paper aims to give a coherent
When we cook, by meticulously following a recipe, or adding a personal twist to it, we sometimes ... more When we cook, by meticulously following a recipe, or adding a personal twist to it, we sometimes care not only to (re-)produce a taste that we can enjoy, but also to give our food a certain aftertaste. This is not surprising, given that we ordinarily take aftertaste to be an important part of the gustatory experience as a whole, one which we seek out, and through which we evaluate what we eat and drink-at least in many cases. What is surprising is that aftertastes, from a psychological point of view, seem to be analogous to afterimages, and thus have little or no epistemic import. In this paper we tackle this puzzle, and argue that we are right in treating aftertastes seriously. The moral is that both from a metaphysical and an epistemic point of view aftertastes should be categorized differently from afterimages.
To ‘find one’s true self’ or to ‘reveal one’s true self’ are common enough expressions. But what ... more To ‘find one’s true self’ or to ‘reveal one’s true self’ are common enough expressions. But what do we really mean by the ‘true self’? Does it play an important explanatory role in understanding ourselves? The aim of this article is to shed light on the intuition that people have a true self—in contrast to their more readily perceptible “everyday self”—and to see whether we can give a clear philosophical account of it. When it comes to characterizing the true self on the basis of these, I argue, our intuitions point us in two directions. The first suggests that the true self expresses a person’s essential nature. The second focuses on our own role in creating and maintaining a true self. I argue that both suggestions fail. Although the idea of a true self does not lack intuitive appeal, it is neither conducive to a convincing account, nor does it advance a theoretical understanding of ourselves as persons.
Penultimate draft. Forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience, ed... more Penultimate draft. Forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience, ed. by Ian Phillips.
Introduction When thinking about time, we can distinguish two subjects: the nature of time and our experience of time. A theory of time should be able to accommodate the way we experience temporality. A viable account of temporal consciousness should be compatible with our best theory of time. This article investigates how presentism accounts for our experience of time. According to presentism, all and only present things exist. Presentists argue that their view is the most intuitive, capturing best what most people (pre-philosophically) think about time: you and I exist but the Roman Empire does not exist anymore, whereas the Olympic Games 2020 do not exist yet. Time passes: what is future will be present, what is present will be past and what is past was once present. Presentists not only claim to capture what most people think about time but also how we experience time. In particular, they claim that we all experience time as passing and that this is best explained by the fact that time really does pass. This gives presentism an intuitive advantage over other theories of time. Or so presentists say.
This might puzzle some. After all, change is the having of incompatible properties at different times, but since presentism only ever allows one time, the present time, one might wonder if and how presentists can account for change and change experiences. I will concentrate on the latter and focus on two Central Questions. CQ (1): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of change and duration? CQ (2): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of time as passing?
Before we consider these questions, however, we will have to look at a more general problem that arises for presentism and perceptual experience in §1. Since we only ever perceive what is already past, presentists owe us an explanation how to make sense of perceptual experience at all. Whether they succeed depends on the theory of perception adopted. From there, I will move on to temporal perception, providing a very brief overview of the debate on temporal perception in §2. §3-§5 aim to answer the Central Questions. Three accounts will be considered: anti-realism, retentionalism and extensionalism. Regarding CQ(1), I argue that the combination of presentism, an indirect theory of perception and retentionalism is most likely able to account for experiences of change, depending on a viable presentist account of causal relations. As for CQ(2), it turns out that none of the combinations considered can accommodate experiences of temporal passage in the sense relevant for presentists. The last section concludes with a short summary of the results of my investigation.
Is it the case that, in order to have a perceptual experience as of change, duration or any other... more Is it the case that, in order to have a perceptual experience as of change, duration or any other temporally extended occurrence at all, the duration of the experience itself must come apart from the apparent duration of what is experienced? I shall argue that such a view is at least coherent. I set out to deal with a range of arguments from the literature. Some of these arguments purport to show that it is not possible for the duration of experience to deviate from the apparent duration of its objects. Others argue that the durations do not have to come apart in order for us to experience temporally extended items. The largest part of the paper will be concerned with an objection from Ian Phillips (Phillips 2010);(Phillips 2014). The objection is interesting insofar as it is an argument from introspection. If it worked, it would give us a priori, non-empirical grounds for thinking that a cluster of views about temporal perception are wrong, or worse, impossible. As I will argue, though, the objection fails. Towards the end, I briefly explore the view that we have no introspective access at all to the duration of our experiences. I suggest that such a view may well be supported by some considerations about the phenomenal continuity of consciousness.
We develop a theory about the metaphysics of time and modality that combines the conceptual resou... more We develop a theory about the metaphysics of time and modality that combines the conceptual resources devised in recent sympathetic work on ontological pluralism (the thesis that there are fundamentally distinct kinds of being) with the thought that what is past, future, and merely possible is less real than what is present and actual (albeit real enough to serve as truthmakers for statements about the past, future, and merely possible). However, we also show that despite being a coherent, distinctive, and prima facie appealing position, the theory succumbs to what we call the “problem of mixed ontological status”. We conclude that the proponents of the theory can only evade these problems by developing ontological pluralism in a radically different way than it has been by its recent sympathizers.
Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed... more Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed so, arguing that their theory has a much better explanation for the fact that we all experience the passage of time: we experience time as passing because time really does pass. In this paper I expose and reject the argument behind the A-theorist’s claim. I argue that all parties have conceded far too easily that there is an experience that needs explaining in the first place. For what exactly is an experience of temporal passage? One natural thought is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing change, or in virtue of experiencing change as ‘dynamic’. Another is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing events as (successively) present. None of these experiences, I argue, amounts to an experience of passage. Although there might still be other ways to experience passage, A-theorists would have to provide us with a plausible candidate experience. If there is such an experience at all, it won’t be one that qualifies as what we intuitively take to be an experience of passage. The ‘intuitive advantage’, it seems, has dissolved in any case.
Abstract
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage an... more Abstract
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage and of the argument that we can know that time passes from experience. It brings two results:
(1) Temporal passage requires a non-eternalist theory of time and can only be coherently analysed in terms of absolute becoming.
(2) We cannot experience temporal passage, at least not in a way that allows us to infer that time really passes.
The dissertation is divided into two parts, where the first part, about the metaphysics of temporal passage, provides the basis for what is argued about the experience of temporal passage in the second part. Chapters two to four focus on McTaggart’s paradox and the question whether the notion of temporal passage is logically and metaphysically coherent. This is important for the continuation to part two of the thesis, for if passage was not a coherent notion, then any further debate as to whether or not we can know that time passes from experience would be redundant. Chapter three offers a novel reconstruction of McTaggart’s paradox as a vicious ontological regress of relational changes, providing a limited defence of McTaggart’s argument within the framework of an A-eternalist understanding of time and temporal passage. Chapter five suggests that the paradox can be avoided if passage is understood in terms of coming into existence simpliciter and going out of existence simpliciter, or ‘absolute becoming’, best accommodated within a presentist framework.
In the second part of the thesis I argue against a frequently found (but rarely explicitly analysed) argument, the ‘Argument from Experience’ (AfE), which states that we can infer from the experience of temporal passage that time really passes because the fact that time passes is the best explanation for having experiences of passage. Chapter six gives a formulation and analysis of AfE and evaluates possible objections. It is suggested that the best objection is to deny that we can have experiences of passage in the first place. Chapter seven specifies that for AfE to work, the content of an experience of passage must be best explained by the fact that time passes. It is then argued that this is only the case for perceptual experiences of events undergoing absolute becoming. The chapter also introduces the notion of ‘A-change’, which is constituted by events undergoing absolute becoming such that A-change occurs if and only if there is an event E1 (Fa at t1) which ceases to exist, and a qualitatively distinct event E2 (Ga at t2), coming into existence. Chapter eight applies these results to the debate of temporal perception: among the major accounts of temporal perception, is there (at least) one account that can accommodate perceptual experiences of A-change in a way that allows us to infer that there is A-change, and thus absolute becoming, i.e. passage? The answer I give is negative. Memory based accounts do not allow for experiences of A-change because they deny that we can have, strictly speaking, perceptual experiences of change in general. Retentional theories do not allow for experiences of A-change as A-change. In other words, given the retentional theory, we could not distinguish between experiences of A-change and experiences of B-change, where B-change merely requires qualitative variation of properties over time but not passage. The problem with the extensional theory of temporal perception is that it is metaphysically incompatible with presentism and therefore with absolute becoming. Two non-standard forms of presentism are explored that are, prima facie, compatible with the extensional theory, ‘Compound Presentism’ (taken from Barry Dainton) and ‘Simple Presentism’. Compound Presentism and Simple Presentism are both views according to which the present time is temporally extended. Compound Presentism turns out to be incoherent. Whether Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception cohere, depends on further commitments such as distributional properties. Setting these problems aside, it is argued that even if both, Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception were true, we could not perceptually represent absolute becoming. Chapter eight finishes with a response to two objections against my argument that we cannot experience temporal passage, one involving ‘high level properties’, and one involving ‘present-as-absent’ representation in experience. AfE fails because we either cannot experience temporal passage at all, or not in a way that allows us to infer that time passes from experience.
Recently, philosophers with an interest in consciousness have turned their attention towards "fri... more Recently, philosophers with an interest in consciousness have turned their attention towards "fringe states of consciousness". Examples include dreams, trances, and meditative states. Teetering between wakefulness and non-consciousness, fringe states illuminate the limits and boundaries of consciousness. This paper aims to give a coherent
When we cook, by meticulously following a recipe, or adding a personal twist to it, we sometimes ... more When we cook, by meticulously following a recipe, or adding a personal twist to it, we sometimes care not only to (re-)produce a taste that we can enjoy, but also to give our food a certain aftertaste. This is not surprising, given that we ordinarily take aftertaste to be an important part of the gustatory experience as a whole, one which we seek out, and through which we evaluate what we eat and drink-at least in many cases. What is surprising is that aftertastes, from a psychological point of view, seem to be analogous to afterimages, and thus have little or no epistemic import. In this paper we tackle this puzzle, and argue that we are right in treating aftertastes seriously. The moral is that both from a metaphysical and an epistemic point of view aftertastes should be categorized differently from afterimages.
To ‘find one’s true self’ or to ‘reveal one’s true self’ are common enough expressions. But what ... more To ‘find one’s true self’ or to ‘reveal one’s true self’ are common enough expressions. But what do we really mean by the ‘true self’? Does it play an important explanatory role in understanding ourselves? The aim of this article is to shed light on the intuition that people have a true self—in contrast to their more readily perceptible “everyday self”—and to see whether we can give a clear philosophical account of it. When it comes to characterizing the true self on the basis of these, I argue, our intuitions point us in two directions. The first suggests that the true self expresses a person’s essential nature. The second focuses on our own role in creating and maintaining a true self. I argue that both suggestions fail. Although the idea of a true self does not lack intuitive appeal, it is neither conducive to a convincing account, nor does it advance a theoretical understanding of ourselves as persons.
Penultimate draft. Forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience, ed... more Penultimate draft. Forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience, ed. by Ian Phillips.
Introduction When thinking about time, we can distinguish two subjects: the nature of time and our experience of time. A theory of time should be able to accommodate the way we experience temporality. A viable account of temporal consciousness should be compatible with our best theory of time. This article investigates how presentism accounts for our experience of time. According to presentism, all and only present things exist. Presentists argue that their view is the most intuitive, capturing best what most people (pre-philosophically) think about time: you and I exist but the Roman Empire does not exist anymore, whereas the Olympic Games 2020 do not exist yet. Time passes: what is future will be present, what is present will be past and what is past was once present. Presentists not only claim to capture what most people think about time but also how we experience time. In particular, they claim that we all experience time as passing and that this is best explained by the fact that time really does pass. This gives presentism an intuitive advantage over other theories of time. Or so presentists say.
This might puzzle some. After all, change is the having of incompatible properties at different times, but since presentism only ever allows one time, the present time, one might wonder if and how presentists can account for change and change experiences. I will concentrate on the latter and focus on two Central Questions. CQ (1): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of change and duration? CQ (2): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of time as passing?
Before we consider these questions, however, we will have to look at a more general problem that arises for presentism and perceptual experience in §1. Since we only ever perceive what is already past, presentists owe us an explanation how to make sense of perceptual experience at all. Whether they succeed depends on the theory of perception adopted. From there, I will move on to temporal perception, providing a very brief overview of the debate on temporal perception in §2. §3-§5 aim to answer the Central Questions. Three accounts will be considered: anti-realism, retentionalism and extensionalism. Regarding CQ(1), I argue that the combination of presentism, an indirect theory of perception and retentionalism is most likely able to account for experiences of change, depending on a viable presentist account of causal relations. As for CQ(2), it turns out that none of the combinations considered can accommodate experiences of temporal passage in the sense relevant for presentists. The last section concludes with a short summary of the results of my investigation.
Is it the case that, in order to have a perceptual experience as of change, duration or any other... more Is it the case that, in order to have a perceptual experience as of change, duration or any other temporally extended occurrence at all, the duration of the experience itself must come apart from the apparent duration of what is experienced? I shall argue that such a view is at least coherent. I set out to deal with a range of arguments from the literature. Some of these arguments purport to show that it is not possible for the duration of experience to deviate from the apparent duration of its objects. Others argue that the durations do not have to come apart in order for us to experience temporally extended items. The largest part of the paper will be concerned with an objection from Ian Phillips (Phillips 2010);(Phillips 2014). The objection is interesting insofar as it is an argument from introspection. If it worked, it would give us a priori, non-empirical grounds for thinking that a cluster of views about temporal perception are wrong, or worse, impossible. As I will argue, though, the objection fails. Towards the end, I briefly explore the view that we have no introspective access at all to the duration of our experiences. I suggest that such a view may well be supported by some considerations about the phenomenal continuity of consciousness.
We develop a theory about the metaphysics of time and modality that combines the conceptual resou... more We develop a theory about the metaphysics of time and modality that combines the conceptual resources devised in recent sympathetic work on ontological pluralism (the thesis that there are fundamentally distinct kinds of being) with the thought that what is past, future, and merely possible is less real than what is present and actual (albeit real enough to serve as truthmakers for statements about the past, future, and merely possible). However, we also show that despite being a coherent, distinctive, and prima facie appealing position, the theory succumbs to what we call the “problem of mixed ontological status”. We conclude that the proponents of the theory can only evade these problems by developing ontological pluralism in a radically different way than it has been by its recent sympathizers.
Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed... more Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed so, arguing that their theory has a much better explanation for the fact that we all experience the passage of time: we experience time as passing because time really does pass. In this paper I expose and reject the argument behind the A-theorist’s claim. I argue that all parties have conceded far too easily that there is an experience that needs explaining in the first place. For what exactly is an experience of temporal passage? One natural thought is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing change, or in virtue of experiencing change as ‘dynamic’. Another is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing events as (successively) present. None of these experiences, I argue, amounts to an experience of passage. Although there might still be other ways to experience passage, A-theorists would have to provide us with a plausible candidate experience. If there is such an experience at all, it won’t be one that qualifies as what we intuitively take to be an experience of passage. The ‘intuitive advantage’, it seems, has dissolved in any case.
Abstract
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage an... more Abstract
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage and of the argument that we can know that time passes from experience. It brings two results:
(1) Temporal passage requires a non-eternalist theory of time and can only be coherently analysed in terms of absolute becoming.
(2) We cannot experience temporal passage, at least not in a way that allows us to infer that time really passes.
The dissertation is divided into two parts, where the first part, about the metaphysics of temporal passage, provides the basis for what is argued about the experience of temporal passage in the second part. Chapters two to four focus on McTaggart’s paradox and the question whether the notion of temporal passage is logically and metaphysically coherent. This is important for the continuation to part two of the thesis, for if passage was not a coherent notion, then any further debate as to whether or not we can know that time passes from experience would be redundant. Chapter three offers a novel reconstruction of McTaggart’s paradox as a vicious ontological regress of relational changes, providing a limited defence of McTaggart’s argument within the framework of an A-eternalist understanding of time and temporal passage. Chapter five suggests that the paradox can be avoided if passage is understood in terms of coming into existence simpliciter and going out of existence simpliciter, or ‘absolute becoming’, best accommodated within a presentist framework.
In the second part of the thesis I argue against a frequently found (but rarely explicitly analysed) argument, the ‘Argument from Experience’ (AfE), which states that we can infer from the experience of temporal passage that time really passes because the fact that time passes is the best explanation for having experiences of passage. Chapter six gives a formulation and analysis of AfE and evaluates possible objections. It is suggested that the best objection is to deny that we can have experiences of passage in the first place. Chapter seven specifies that for AfE to work, the content of an experience of passage must be best explained by the fact that time passes. It is then argued that this is only the case for perceptual experiences of events undergoing absolute becoming. The chapter also introduces the notion of ‘A-change’, which is constituted by events undergoing absolute becoming such that A-change occurs if and only if there is an event E1 (Fa at t1) which ceases to exist, and a qualitatively distinct event E2 (Ga at t2), coming into existence. Chapter eight applies these results to the debate of temporal perception: among the major accounts of temporal perception, is there (at least) one account that can accommodate perceptual experiences of A-change in a way that allows us to infer that there is A-change, and thus absolute becoming, i.e. passage? The answer I give is negative. Memory based accounts do not allow for experiences of A-change because they deny that we can have, strictly speaking, perceptual experiences of change in general. Retentional theories do not allow for experiences of A-change as A-change. In other words, given the retentional theory, we could not distinguish between experiences of A-change and experiences of B-change, where B-change merely requires qualitative variation of properties over time but not passage. The problem with the extensional theory of temporal perception is that it is metaphysically incompatible with presentism and therefore with absolute becoming. Two non-standard forms of presentism are explored that are, prima facie, compatible with the extensional theory, ‘Compound Presentism’ (taken from Barry Dainton) and ‘Simple Presentism’. Compound Presentism and Simple Presentism are both views according to which the present time is temporally extended. Compound Presentism turns out to be incoherent. Whether Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception cohere, depends on further commitments such as distributional properties. Setting these problems aside, it is argued that even if both, Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception were true, we could not perceptually represent absolute becoming. Chapter eight finishes with a response to two objections against my argument that we cannot experience temporal passage, one involving ‘high level properties’, and one involving ‘present-as-absent’ representation in experience. AfE fails because we either cannot experience temporal passage at all, or not in a way that allows us to infer that time passes from experience.
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Introduction
When thinking about time, we can distinguish two subjects: the nature of time and our experience of time. A theory of time should be able to accommodate the way we experience temporality. A viable account of temporal consciousness should be compatible with our best theory of time. This article investigates how presentism accounts for our experience of time. According to presentism, all and only present things exist. Presentists argue that their view is the most intuitive, capturing best what most people (pre-philosophically) think about time: you and I exist but the Roman Empire does not exist anymore, whereas the Olympic Games 2020 do not exist yet. Time passes: what is future will be present, what is present will be past and what is past was once present. Presentists not only claim to capture what most people think about time but also how we experience time. In particular, they claim that we all experience time as passing and that this is best explained by the fact that time really does pass. This gives presentism an intuitive advantage over other theories of time. Or so presentists say.
This might puzzle some. After all, change is the having of incompatible properties at different times, but since presentism only ever allows one time, the present time, one might wonder if and how presentists can account for change and change experiences. I will concentrate on the latter and focus on two Central Questions.
CQ (1): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of change and duration?
CQ (2): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of time as passing?
Before we consider these questions, however, we will have to look at a more general problem that arises for presentism and perceptual experience in §1. Since we only ever perceive what is already past, presentists owe us an explanation how to make sense of perceptual experience at all. Whether they succeed depends on the theory of perception adopted. From there, I will move on to temporal perception, providing a very brief overview of the debate on temporal perception in §2. §3-§5 aim to answer the Central Questions. Three accounts will be considered: anti-realism, retentionalism and extensionalism. Regarding CQ(1), I argue that the combination of presentism, an indirect theory of perception and retentionalism is most likely able to account for experiences of change, depending on a viable presentist account of causal relations. As for CQ(2), it turns out that none of the combinations considered can accommodate experiences of temporal passage in the sense relevant for presentists. The last section concludes with a short summary of the results of my investigation.
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage and of the argument that we can know that time passes from experience. It brings two results:
(1) Temporal passage requires a non-eternalist theory of time and can only be coherently analysed in terms of absolute becoming.
(2) We cannot experience temporal passage, at least not in a way that allows us to infer that time really passes.
The dissertation is divided into two parts, where the first part, about the metaphysics of temporal passage, provides the basis for what is argued about the experience of temporal passage in the second part. Chapters two to four focus on McTaggart’s paradox and the question whether the notion of temporal passage is logically and metaphysically coherent. This is important for the continuation to part two of the thesis, for if passage was not a coherent notion, then any further debate as to whether or not we can know that time passes from experience would be redundant. Chapter three offers a novel reconstruction of McTaggart’s paradox as a vicious ontological regress of relational changes, providing a limited defence of McTaggart’s argument within the framework of an A-eternalist understanding of time and temporal passage. Chapter five suggests that the paradox can be avoided if passage is understood in terms of coming into existence simpliciter and going out of existence simpliciter, or ‘absolute becoming’, best accommodated within a presentist framework.
In the second part of the thesis I argue against a frequently found (but rarely explicitly analysed) argument, the ‘Argument from Experience’ (AfE), which states that we can infer from the experience of temporal passage that time really passes because the fact that time passes is the best explanation for having experiences of passage. Chapter six gives a formulation and analysis of AfE and evaluates possible objections. It is suggested that the best objection is to deny that we can have experiences of passage in the first place. Chapter seven specifies that for AfE to work, the content of an experience of passage must be best explained by the fact that time passes. It is then argued that this is only the case for perceptual experiences of events undergoing absolute becoming. The chapter also introduces the notion of ‘A-change’, which is constituted by events undergoing absolute becoming such that A-change occurs if and only if there is an event E1 (Fa at t1) which ceases to exist, and a qualitatively distinct event E2 (Ga at t2), coming into existence. Chapter eight applies these results to the debate of temporal perception: among the major accounts of temporal perception, is there (at least) one account that can accommodate perceptual experiences of A-change in a way that allows us to infer that there is A-change, and thus absolute becoming, i.e. passage? The answer I give is negative. Memory based accounts do not allow for experiences of A-change because they deny that we can have, strictly speaking, perceptual experiences of change in general. Retentional theories do not allow for experiences of A-change as A-change. In other words, given the retentional theory, we could not distinguish between experiences of A-change and experiences of B-change, where B-change merely requires qualitative variation of properties over time but not passage. The problem with the extensional theory of temporal perception is that it is metaphysically incompatible with presentism and therefore with absolute becoming. Two non-standard forms of presentism are explored that are, prima facie, compatible with the extensional theory, ‘Compound Presentism’ (taken from Barry Dainton) and ‘Simple Presentism’. Compound Presentism and Simple Presentism are both views according to which the present time is temporally extended. Compound Presentism turns out to be incoherent. Whether Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception cohere, depends on further commitments such as distributional properties. Setting these problems aside, it is argued that even if both, Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception were true, we could not perceptually represent absolute becoming. Chapter eight finishes with a response to two objections against my argument that we cannot experience temporal passage, one involving ‘high level properties’, and one involving ‘present-as-absent’ representation in experience. AfE fails because we either cannot experience temporal passage at all, or not in a way that allows us to infer that time passes from experience.
Introduction
When thinking about time, we can distinguish two subjects: the nature of time and our experience of time. A theory of time should be able to accommodate the way we experience temporality. A viable account of temporal consciousness should be compatible with our best theory of time. This article investigates how presentism accounts for our experience of time. According to presentism, all and only present things exist. Presentists argue that their view is the most intuitive, capturing best what most people (pre-philosophically) think about time: you and I exist but the Roman Empire does not exist anymore, whereas the Olympic Games 2020 do not exist yet. Time passes: what is future will be present, what is present will be past and what is past was once present. Presentists not only claim to capture what most people think about time but also how we experience time. In particular, they claim that we all experience time as passing and that this is best explained by the fact that time really does pass. This gives presentism an intuitive advantage over other theories of time. Or so presentists say.
This might puzzle some. After all, change is the having of incompatible properties at different times, but since presentism only ever allows one time, the present time, one might wonder if and how presentists can account for change and change experiences. I will concentrate on the latter and focus on two Central Questions.
CQ (1): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of change and duration?
CQ (2): Can presentism, given theory X of temporal perception, account for experiences of time as passing?
Before we consider these questions, however, we will have to look at a more general problem that arises for presentism and perceptual experience in §1. Since we only ever perceive what is already past, presentists owe us an explanation how to make sense of perceptual experience at all. Whether they succeed depends on the theory of perception adopted. From there, I will move on to temporal perception, providing a very brief overview of the debate on temporal perception in §2. §3-§5 aim to answer the Central Questions. Three accounts will be considered: anti-realism, retentionalism and extensionalism. Regarding CQ(1), I argue that the combination of presentism, an indirect theory of perception and retentionalism is most likely able to account for experiences of change, depending on a viable presentist account of causal relations. As for CQ(2), it turns out that none of the combinations considered can accommodate experiences of temporal passage in the sense relevant for presentists. The last section concludes with a short summary of the results of my investigation.
My dissertation offers an analysis of the notion of temporal passage and of the argument that we can know that time passes from experience. It brings two results:
(1) Temporal passage requires a non-eternalist theory of time and can only be coherently analysed in terms of absolute becoming.
(2) We cannot experience temporal passage, at least not in a way that allows us to infer that time really passes.
The dissertation is divided into two parts, where the first part, about the metaphysics of temporal passage, provides the basis for what is argued about the experience of temporal passage in the second part. Chapters two to four focus on McTaggart’s paradox and the question whether the notion of temporal passage is logically and metaphysically coherent. This is important for the continuation to part two of the thesis, for if passage was not a coherent notion, then any further debate as to whether or not we can know that time passes from experience would be redundant. Chapter three offers a novel reconstruction of McTaggart’s paradox as a vicious ontological regress of relational changes, providing a limited defence of McTaggart’s argument within the framework of an A-eternalist understanding of time and temporal passage. Chapter five suggests that the paradox can be avoided if passage is understood in terms of coming into existence simpliciter and going out of existence simpliciter, or ‘absolute becoming’, best accommodated within a presentist framework.
In the second part of the thesis I argue against a frequently found (but rarely explicitly analysed) argument, the ‘Argument from Experience’ (AfE), which states that we can infer from the experience of temporal passage that time really passes because the fact that time passes is the best explanation for having experiences of passage. Chapter six gives a formulation and analysis of AfE and evaluates possible objections. It is suggested that the best objection is to deny that we can have experiences of passage in the first place. Chapter seven specifies that for AfE to work, the content of an experience of passage must be best explained by the fact that time passes. It is then argued that this is only the case for perceptual experiences of events undergoing absolute becoming. The chapter also introduces the notion of ‘A-change’, which is constituted by events undergoing absolute becoming such that A-change occurs if and only if there is an event E1 (Fa at t1) which ceases to exist, and a qualitatively distinct event E2 (Ga at t2), coming into existence. Chapter eight applies these results to the debate of temporal perception: among the major accounts of temporal perception, is there (at least) one account that can accommodate perceptual experiences of A-change in a way that allows us to infer that there is A-change, and thus absolute becoming, i.e. passage? The answer I give is negative. Memory based accounts do not allow for experiences of A-change because they deny that we can have, strictly speaking, perceptual experiences of change in general. Retentional theories do not allow for experiences of A-change as A-change. In other words, given the retentional theory, we could not distinguish between experiences of A-change and experiences of B-change, where B-change merely requires qualitative variation of properties over time but not passage. The problem with the extensional theory of temporal perception is that it is metaphysically incompatible with presentism and therefore with absolute becoming. Two non-standard forms of presentism are explored that are, prima facie, compatible with the extensional theory, ‘Compound Presentism’ (taken from Barry Dainton) and ‘Simple Presentism’. Compound Presentism and Simple Presentism are both views according to which the present time is temporally extended. Compound Presentism turns out to be incoherent. Whether Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception cohere, depends on further commitments such as distributional properties. Setting these problems aside, it is argued that even if both, Simple Presentism and the extensional theory of temporal perception were true, we could not perceptually represent absolute becoming. Chapter eight finishes with a response to two objections against my argument that we cannot experience temporal passage, one involving ‘high level properties’, and one involving ‘present-as-absent’ representation in experience. AfE fails because we either cannot experience temporal passage at all, or not in a way that allows us to infer that time passes from experience.