The project of my dissertation was to advance the metaphysical debate about temporal passage, by relating it to debates about the perceptual experience of time and change. It seems true that we experience temporal passage, even if there is disagreement whether time actually passes, or what temporal passage consists in. This appears to give the defender of dynamic time an advantage in accounting for our experience. I challenge this by arguing that (...) no major account of temporal perception can accommodate experiences of temporal passage such that we could infer passage from them. This shows that static theories of time are at no disadvantage in accounting for the phenomenology of temporality. The conclusion has far reaching consequences: for instance, an important motivation for holding an A-theory of time is precisely the psychological intuition that we experience temporal passage. By undermining that intuition, I undermine the motivation for holding an A-theory. (shrink)

The age old conflict between logical analysis and phenomenological study revealed by different philosophical treatments of our experience of temporal passage are discussed in the present paper. Temporal passage is found to be problematic because philosophers entertain conflicting views regarding the status of the passage of time. As logical analyses prove temporal passage as unreal or illusory and phenomenological study of our experience of temporal passage considers it to be (...) a fundamental structure of our life, the conflict regarding the status of the passage of time emerges. In this paper our aim will be to explore gradually different logical analyses of our experience of temporal passage provided by philosophers of both classical India and the West on the one hand and also to discuss some of the phenomenological treatments of our experience of temporal passage provided by some continental philosophers to show the conflict between the results of these two philosophical treatments. Finally, we would like to state that since this conflict culminates into the conflict between reason and experience, it is not possible to resolve the conflict in the present life form in which both these categories have their distinctive roles to play. (shrink)

Several philosophers have suggested that certain aspects of people’s experience of agency partly explains why people tend to report that it seems to them, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. In turn, it has been suggested that people come to believe that time robustly passes on the basis of its seeming to them in experience that it does. We argue that what require explaining is not just that people report that it seems to them as (...) though time robustly passes, and that they believe that it does, but rather, the substantial variation (a) in people’s reports regarding whether it seems as though time robustly passes, and (b) their beliefs about whether time robustly passes. We empirically investigate the agentive explanation of (a), according to which variation in people’s agentive experiences explains variation in people’s reports regarding whether it seems to them as though time robustly passes. We also empirically investigate the experiential seeming explanation of belief, according to which variation in people’s beliefs about whether time robustly passes is explained by variation in their reports regarding whether it seems in experience as though time robustly passes. We found empirical support for the agentive explanation, but not for the experiential seeming explanation of passage beliefs. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

This paper explains the phenomena that compose the experience of the passage of time and argues that this experience represents the temporal direction of causal processes. The experience of the passage of time comprises several more specific experiences, namely: (1) the experience of continuously advancing to later times; (2) the observation of continuous change, both in the things around us and in ourselves; (3) the feeling of a lack of control over (1) and (...) (2); and (4) the experience of a number of phenomena that we describe as animated, dynamic, or flowing. The experience of passage is a causal process whose function is to promote survival and reproductive success by representing the temporal direction of causal processes (including itself). It does this primarily via the specious present, wherein later content is presented as more vivid than earlier content. The experience of passage is veridical and is compatible with either the B‐theory or the A‐theoretic views of time. (shrink)

This paper aims to determine whether we can locate temporal passage in a non-dynamical (block universe) world. In particular, we seek to determine both whether temporal passage can be located somewhere in our world if it is non-dynamical, and also to home in on where in such a world temporal passage can be located, if it can be located anywhere. We investigate this question by seeking to determine, across three experiments, whether the folk concept (...) of temporal passage can be satisfied in our world if it is non-dynamical, and, if it can, what sort of thing in our world satisfies that concept. In particular, we focus on the question of whether that concept (if satisfied) is satisfied by something mind-dependent or something mind-independent. In other words, we ask, is temporal passage something that is at least partially in the mind, or is it entirely external to the mind? We find, contrary to what is often assumed by dynamists and non-dynamists alike, that the folk concept of temporal passage is satisfied in our world conditional on it being non-dynamical, and that the concept is satisfied by something mind-independent. This provides further ammunition for recent deflationary accounts of temporal passage that attempt to locate passage somewhere in our non-dynamical world. (shrink)

A review of Simon Prosser's book Experiencing Time.

By “pantheism” I mean to pick out a model of God on which God is identical with the totality of existents constitutive of the universe. I assume that, on pantheism, God is an omnispatiotemporal mind who is identical with the universe. I assume that, given divine omnispatiotemporality, God knows everything that can be known in the universe. This includes having knowledge de se of the minds of every conscious creature. Hence, if God has knowledge de se of the minds of (...) every conscious creature, then divine omniscience implies omnisubjectivity. Assuming that eternalism is true, robust temporal passage is an illusion. But, conscious creatures, such as human persons, experience robust temporal passage. If God has the attribute of omnisubjectivity, then God experiences temporal passage. However, God also has a unified experience of the entire spatiotemporal continuum. God’s having these two perspectives creates a tension for pantheism given that God would seem to experience both temporal passage and an absence of temporal passage. I compare non-personal pantheism and personal pantheism and consider which one has better resources to answer the foregoing puzzle. I argue that personal pantheism is better equipped to address this problem than non-personal pantheism. (shrink)

In this essay I address the question of the reality of temporal passage through a discussion of some of the implications of Kant's reasoning concerning the necessary conditions of objective judgement. Some theorists have claimed that the attribution of non‐relational temporal properties to objects and events represents a conceptual confusion, or ‘category mistake’. By means of an examination of Kant's Second Analogy, and a comparison between that argument and Cassam's recent exploration of an argument regarding the necessity (...) of the conceptualisation of ourselves as spatially located, I draw out a consequence of Kant's argument: namely, that the representation of temporal becoming is a necessary condition of objective judgement and an a priori element in the representation of objects of experience. I finish by explaining why this would show that the attribution of temporal becoming to objects and events cannot be described as a category mistake. (shrink)

The antirealist position on temporal passage is that time exists but does not pass. Antirealists either claim that experiences of passage represent something that does not exist or that these experiences do not represent passage. This paper reconstructs and defends an argument for the reality of passage by Milič Čapek that is based on the idea of mental passage, the passage of experience itself. The belief that mental passage exists is introspectively (...) justified. This justification is not undermined by perceptual illusions and is also compatible with antirealist explanations of why the belief arises. Both physicalism and psychophysical dualism justify the premise that mental passage implies physical passage. Arguments by Huw Price and Simon Prosser purport to show that experiences do not represent physical passage. However, these arguments rely on thought experiments that presuppose the non-existence of mental passage, and therefore miss the fact that mental passage enables the representation of physical passage. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the (...) temporal belief hypothesis according to which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

This paper argues that the passage of time cannot be understood in a certain ‘objective’ manner: it is not something comprehensible as from no one and nowhen by means of generalizations over times, properties, subjects, events etc. This does not mean, however, that its reality should be denied, that we should lower our sights to explaining instead ‘the experience of time as passing’. Rather, time’s passage is to be elaborated within a metaphysics of time of a rather (...) different kind, one which might be presented as an articulation of being in time. (shrink)

Although many B-theorists do not think that our perceptual experience provides evidence that time passes, they accept that we at least seem to be aware of time’s passage. Consequently, they accept the burden of explaining away the appearance of passage. This paper discuss three arguments aiming to discharge this burden. The first two arguments allow that there is a distinctive phenomenology of passage, whereas the third argues that the belief in passage phenomenology is the result (...) of a cognitive error. None of the arguments succeeds. The first two rest on assumptions that the A-theorist has reasons to reject, in light of facts about the nature of conscious experience – facts concerning both its basis in physical and functional processes, and facts concerning its representation of duration. The third argument fails to provide a compelling account of the source of our belief in passage phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper considers one unique solution to the puzzle of temporal passage in the block universe. argues that, although a precise description of its workings is currently beyond our understanding, time really passes. After introducing Norton’s account, I argue that it both implies a counterintuitive relationship between the “now” and passage and that it leads to an unlikely relationship between our experience and reality. I then propose that, even if one is willing to accept these consequences, (...) there is reason to question whether Norton builds a convincing case for the claim that, since we are not able to find any of the identifying characteristics of an illusion in the case of temporal passage, the passage of time is not an illusion. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that people naïvely represent time as dynamical (i.e. as containing robust temporal passage). Yet many contemporary B-theorists deny that it seems to us, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. The question then arises as to why we represent time as dynamical if we do not have perceptual experiences which represent time as dynamical. We consider two hypotheses about why this might be: the temporally aperspectival replacement hypothesis and the moving open future hypothesis. (...) We then empirically test the moving open future hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, we represent the past as objectively fixed and the future open. And we represent that this objective openness moves as events that were open become fixed, such that in doing so, we represent a privileged moving present. We found no evidence for the moving open future hypothesis, which suggests that further investigation of the temporally aperspectival replacement hypothesis is called for. Our results also shed further light on our understanding of the respects in which we represent the future to be open, which, in turn, has implications for our theorising about the open future. (shrink)

This is an expanded and revised discussion of the argument briefly put forward in my 'A New Problem for the A-Theory of Time', where it is claimed that it is impossible to experience real temporal passage and that no such phenomenon exists. In the first half of the paper the premises of the argument are discussed in more detail than before. In the second half responses are given to several possible objections, none of which were addressed in (...) the earlier paper. There is also some discussion of some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon-Mitchell along with objections raised against them recently by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively. (shrink)

Abstract- Presentism And Temporal Experience Intuitively, we all believe that we experience change and the passage of time. Presentism prides itself as the most intuitive theory of time. However, a closer look at how we would experience temporality if presentism was true reveals that this is far from obvious. For if presentism was really so intuitive, then it would do justice to these intuitions. In the course of this article I examine how presentism fares when (...) combined with various leading theories of perception and temporal perception. I focused on two Central Questions. Can presentism, given theory X, account for experiences of change and duration? And can presentism, given theory X, account for experiences of time as passing? I argue that there is no possible combination which allows for an experience of time as passing. This result alone undermines the alleged intuitive advantage of presentism and with it the motivation for the view. Presentism, it remains safe to say, is not as intuitive a theory as its adherents like to portray it. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some aspects of the relation between temporal experience and the A versus B debate. To begin with, I provide an overview of the A versus B debate and, following Baron et al. (2015), distinguish between two B-theoretic responses to the A- theoretic argument from experience, veridicalism and illusionism. I then argue for veridicalism over illusionism, by examining our (putative) experiences as of presentness and as of time passing. I close with some remarks on the (...) relation between veridicalism and a deflationary view of the A versus B debate. I suggest that the deflationary view can provide further support for veridicalism. (shrink)

Experiences of motion and change are widely taken to have a ‘flow-like’ quality. Call this ‘temporal qualia’. Temporal qualia are commonly thought to be central to the question of whether time objectively passes: (1) passage realists take temporal passage to be necessary in order for us to have the temporal qualia we do; (2) passage antirealists typically concede that time appears to pass, as though our temporal qualia falsely represent time as passing. (...) I reject both claims and make the case that passage-talk plays no useful explanatory role with respect to temporal qualia, but rather obfuscates what the philosophical problem of temporal qualia is. I offer a ‘reductionist’ account of temporal qualia that makes no reference to the concept of passage and argue that it is well motivated by empirical studies in motion perception. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that most people unambiguously have a phenomenology as of time passing, and that this is a datum that philosophical theories must accommodate. Moreover, it has been assumed that the greater the extent to which people have said phenomenology, the more likely they are to endorse a dynamical theory of time. This paper is the first to empirically test these assumptions. Surprisingly, our results do not support either assumption. One experiment instead found the reverse (...) correlation: people were more likely to report having passage phenomenology if they endorsed a non-dynamical theory of time. Given that people do not have an unambiguous phenomenology as of time passing, we conclude that this is suggestive evidence in favor of veridical non-dynamism—the view that our phenomenology is veridical, and that it does not unambiguously represent that time passes. Instead, our phenomenology veridically has some quite different content. (shrink)

Defending the tenseless theory of time requires dealing adequately with the experience of temporal becoming. The issue centers on whether the defender of tenseless time can provide an adequate analysis of the presence of experience and the appropriateness of certain of our attitudes toward future and past events. By responding to a recent article, ‘Passage and the Presenee of Experience’, by H. Scott Hestevold, I shall attempt to show that adequate analysis of tenseless time is (...) possible. (shrink)

Temporal non-dynamists hold that there is no temporal passage, but concede that many of us judge that it seems as though time passes. Phenomenal Illusionists suppose that things do seem this way, even though things are not this way. They attempt to explain how it is that we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. More recently, Cognitive Error Theorists have argued that our experiences do not seem that way; rather, we are subject to an error that (...) leads us mistakenly to believe that our experiences seem that way. Cognitive Error Theory is a relatively new view and little has been said to explain why we make such an error, or where, in the cognitive architecture, such an error might creep in. In this paper we remedy this by offering a number of hypotheses about the source of error. In so doing we aim to show that Cognitive Error Theory is a plausible competitor to Phenomenal Illusion Theory. (shrink)

The well-known phenomenological argument draws metaphysical conclusions about time, specifically about change through time and the resulting passage or flow of time, from our temporal experience. The argument begins with the phenomenological premise that there is a class of properties which underlies our experience of time and change through time, and its conclusion is that these properties are not merely experienced but exemplified. I argue that the phenomenological argument is best served by the adoption of a (...) representational theory of perception. I then present a representational theory of temporal experience. (shrink)

Bergson’s influential discussion of durée—the concept at the heart of his dynamic view of time’s reality—emerges from an inquiry into the nature of temporal experience. In this chapter, I outline Bergson’s view of the non-inferential or immediate experience of time, and mark out the place of durée within his account. I underscore the relation between Bergson’s controversial argument concerning number and his view of temporal experience, and contrast Bergson’s notion of ‘immediate experience’ with immediacy (...) as typically understood in contemporary thought. Bergson’s view of the experience of time, I suggest, is a dual-aspect theory in which durée is accorded a fundamental role in relation to the temporal properties of succession, intervals, and simultaneity. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts denying that temporal passage is an objective feature of reality face an explanatory challenge with respect to why it appears to us as though time passes. Recently, two solutions have surfaced. Cognitive illusionism claims that people experience the passage of time due to their belief that time passes. Cognitive error theory claims that we do not experience the passage of time, but hold the belief that we do, which we have acquired through (...) making an inference from the prior belief that time passes. These approaches suppose that belief and passage experience are explanatorily connected, and they depend on the claims that people who experience the passage of time or at least believe that they do also believe that time passes. To test these claims, we probed the beliefs of populations of individuals with depression and schizotypy, thus conditions that are strongly associated with alterations in temporal phenomenology. Depression was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and schizotypy with the short Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE). While cognitive illusionism and inferentialist cognitive error theory would predict a strong association between BDI and O-LIFE scores and beliefs about time passage, our study found no such association. The experience of passage does not seem to be explanatorily connected to beliefs about the passage of time. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

I offer some responses to Prosser’s ‘Experiencing Time’, one of whose goals is to debunk a view of temporal experience somewhat prevalent in the metaphysics literature, which I call ‘Perceptualism’. According to Perceptualism: it is part of the content of perceptual experience that time passes in a metaphysically strong sense: the present has a metaphysically privileged status, and time passes in virtue of changes in which events this ‘objective present’ highlights, and moreover this gives us evidence in (...) favor of strong passage. Prosser argues that perception cannot be sensitive to whether the strong passage obtains, and therefore cannot represent strong passage in a way that gives us evidence of its truth. Although I accept this conclusion, I argue that Prosser’s argument for it is problematic. It threatens to over-generalize to rule out uncontroversial cases of perceptual knowledge, such as our knowledge that we live in a spatial world. Furthermore, a successful argument ruling out perceptual evidence for strong passage would have to give constraints on the theory/observation distinction of a kind not provided by Prosser’s discussion. I also comment on several other parts of the book. (shrink)

This book is the only contemporary, systematic study of the relationship of time and conscious experience. Peter K. Mclnerney examines three tightly interconnected issues: how we are able to be conscious of time and temporal entities, whether time exists independently of conscious experience, and whether the conscious experiencer exists in time in the same way that ordinary natural objects are thought to exist in time. Insight is drawn from the views of major phenomenological and existential thinkers on (...) these issues. Building on a detailed explication and critique of the views of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, Mclnerney develops and defends his own positions. He argues that a revised version of Husserl’s three-feature theory of time-consciousness provides the best explanation of our awareness of temporal features, but that an independently real time is necessary to explain our experience of temporal passage. He also shows that human existence has some special temporal features in addition to those it shares with other entities. Time-consciousness, the conscious exercise of powers, and personal identity through time require that any temporal part of human existence be defined by and "reach across" to earlier and later parts. (shrink)

Temporal passage is an irrefragable and ineliminable feature of our lived experience of time. In this essay, I argue that, regardless of whether one adopts a three-dimensional, A theory of time or a four-dimensional, B theory of time, the subject of lived experience of time has to be conceived of as something that stands outside of the physical order in order for the experience of temporal passage to actually occur. This implies the truth (...) of Dualism as the only account of mind that can accommodate the facts of the lived experience of time. (shrink)

This thesis engages with central debates on the nature of temporal experience, drawing upon the thought of Henri Bergson. Part one, comprising two chapters, critically explores two issues at the forefront of contemporary research on the experience of time. The first chapter examines attempts by B-theorists of time to address the manifest flow of temporal experience, arguing that these have been thus far unsuccessful. The second chapter focuses on recent articulations of the Process View of (...) temporal experience, according to which temporal experience itself has temporal structure. Recent varieties of the Process View, I argue, do not satisfactorily accommodate the experientially robust insight which provides the most powerful motivation for the position. This insight is captured by what I call the Experiential Process Thesis: we have a pre-reflective sense that our experience of change itself unfolds through time. Part two, comprising three chapters, brings to bear perspectives from Bergson's work on debates concerning temporal experience. The third chapter connects themes from the first two. I argue that Bergson's account of temporal experience provides resources for a successful articulation of the Process View, insofar as it can accommodate the Experiential Process Thesis. What allows us to give shape to the thesis, on Bergson's account, is the explanatory role ascribed to an experiential feature of qualitative flow, which Bergson terms durée. The fourth chapter discusses (i) the relation between memory and temporal experience, and (ii) the unity of experience over time. I suggest that Bergson's account cogently motivates a memory theory of temporal experience - which takes memory to be partially constitutive of immediate temporal experience - in contrast with a recent formulation of the memory account. I then argue that a view of experiential unity over time appealing to Bergson's durée is a theoretically parsimonious and phenomenologically attractive alternative to a number of proposals from the recent literature. In the fifth chapter, I focus on a frequently-discussed feature of 'continuous novelty' in temporal experience. I examine a suggestion from Bergson's work, according to which this aspect is paradigmatically found in a sub-class of agential experiences, namely experiences of creative agency. (shrink)

Does mere passage of time have causal powers ? Are properties like "being n days past" causally efficient ? A pervasive intuition among metaphysicians seems to be that they don't. Events and/or objects change, and they cause or are caused by other events and/or objects; but one does not see how just the mere passage of time could cause any difference in the world. In this paper, I shall discuss a case where it seems that mere passage (...) of time does have causal powers : Sydney Shoemaker's (1969) possible world where temporal vacua (allegedly) take place. I shall argue that Shoemaker's thought-experiment doesn't really aim at teaching us that there can be time without change, but rather that if such a scenario is plausible at all (as I think it is) it provides us with good reasons to think that mere passage of time can be directly causally efficient. (shrink)

We explore the role of episodic imagining in explaining why people both differentially report that it seems to them in experience as though time robustly passes, and why they differentially report that they believe that time does in fact robustly pass. We empirically investigate two hypotheses, the differential vividness hypothesis, and the mental time travel hypothesis. According to each of these, the degree to which people vividly episodically imagine past/future states of affairs influences their tendency to report that it (...) seems to them as though time robustly passes and to judge that time does robustly pass. According to the former, a greater degree of vividness will tend to increase the extent to which people make such reports, while according to the latter, it will tend to decrease the extent to which people make such reports. We found weak evidence in favour of the former hypothesis. We reflect on the implications of this finding for theorising about such reports. (shrink)

Our conscious experience seemingly involves the subjective sense or feeling of the passage of time. However, in recent years, several authors have denied that such an aspect or feature of experience can be found. If the experience of the flow of time exists, it remains elusive and intangible. My aim here is to try to pin it down. For this purpose, I will investigate acute disturbances of normal temporal experience that accompany deep meditative and (...) psychedelic states. I will argue that these experiences of altered temporality provide phenomenal contrast cases to ordinary passage phenomenology, allowing us to establish the existence of the latter and making it amenable to theorizing. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the notion that time passes, along with two major families of objections to this notion. The first kind of objection concerns the rate at which time passes; it has often been suggested that no coherent rate can be given. The alleged problems for the standard view, that time passes at one second per second, are discussed. A positive suggestion is then made for a way of making sense of the claim that time passes at one second per (...) second, based on the notion of ‘stretching’ properties such as ‘being future’ across a time series made up of events. The second family of objections concerns the experience of time passing. Two arguments are discussed, one of which concerns epistemological issues while the other concerns the intentionality of experience. Overall the arguments from experience weigh against the passage of time. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that (...) the B-theory clashes with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

The experience of temporal flow is, for many, the central—if not the only—reason for believing an A-theory of time. Recently, however, B-theorists have argued that experience does not, in fact, favor the A-theory. Call such an argument: a debunking argument. The goal of the present paper is to defend the A-theory against two prominent versions of the debunking argument.

In the philosophy of physics and philosophy of time there is a widely-extended thesis according to which our experience of the passage of time is unreal to the extent that it has no objective grounds in nature as described by our best physical theories. Particularly, as dynamical laws belonging to such theories are temporally symmetric, and they do not distinguish both time directions, the experienced temporal asymmetry turnouts to be illusory. In this paper, I shall argue that (...) we have sound reasons to cast doubts on such thesis. For the one thing, it is not so clear to me to what extent we really have experience of the passage of time. For another thing, it is highly questionable that our dynamical laws are temporally symmetric, and if so, that they were useful to argue against our assumed experience of the passage of time. (shrink)

I examine some recent claims put forward by L. A. Paul, Barry Dainton and Simon Prosser, to the effect that perceptual experiences of movement and change involve an (apparent) experience of ‘passage’, in the sense at issue in debates about the metaphysics of time. Paul, Dainton and Prosser all argue that this supposed feature of perceptual experience – call it a phenomenology of passage – is illusory, thereby defending the view that there is no such a (...) thing as passage, conceived of as a feature of mind-independent reality. I suggest that in fact there is no such phenomenology of passage in the first place. There is, however, a specific structural aspect of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences of movement and change that can explain how one might mistakenly come to the belief that such experiences do involve a phenomenology of passage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Temporal Registers in the Realist NovelIlya BernsteinIThere are two ways of thinking about time: in terms of sequences of events, and in terms of time-scales. In the first case, each event is conceived of as having a "before" and an "after": it is categorized as part of a sequence and distinguished from other events by its position in that sequence. In the second case, there is no "before" (...) and "after": events are conceived of as occupying different time-scales and distinguished from one another by being associated with durations of greater or lesser magnitude.1 Thus, the same situation may be categorized alternatively as an unfolding succession of events (event 1, event 2, event 3...) or as a progression of overlapping events on expanding time-scales (the second-event, the minute-event, the hour-event...). In what follows, I will argue that this distinction can shed light on narrative structure—as well as musical form—and that it has particularly interesting implications for literary realism.It may be claimed that this distinction between two ways of approaching time has been an explicit theme in the arts over the course of their history. Different musical forms, for instance, may be seen as being oriented toward one paradigm or the other. Thus, melody aesthetically suggests a sequential conception of time. Melodic forms are supposed to take listeners on a journey from point A to point B, by way of a succession of points in between. By contrast, a form such as the fugue addresses itself to discovering different degrees of density and intensity within the [End Page 173] same event, as it were. It adds layer upon layer, aesthetically dilating the event without moving away from it. The ideology of melody, we might say, thus leans toward a conception of time as a sequence, while the ideology of the fugue suggests a scaling notion of time.Echoes of the distinction between these two aesthetic alternatives may also be found in literature, as embodied in different approaches to narrative. Narrative, conceived of as a succession of episodes, suggests a sequential conception of time, oriented around a "before" and an "after." Yet within these parameters, a spectrum of tendencies may be identified. In some literary forms, the succession of episodes is organized to suggest the idea of a passage from one event to the next (Shakespearean drama, the realist novel), as the notions of "before" and "after" are projected onto ideas of past and future. In others, the succession of episodes represents the layer-by-layer assembly of some larger imaginative or conceptual construct (as is true, in different ways, of such texts as Plato's dialogues, the Divine Comedy, and any number of religious, philosophical, or allegorical narratives): "before" and "after" are interpreted not so much in terms of a past and a future, as in terms of premises and conclusions.Within this spectrum, the novel—and perhaps the realist novel in particular—would appear to be the literary form par excellence that embodies a sequential conception of time. It thematizes and dramatizes time's passage—the unknowability of the future and the irretrievability of the past—more exhaustively than any other narrative genre. Yet as I hope to show below, while the explicit themes of literary realism treat fictional events as a sequence (event 1, event 2, event 3...), its implicit organization is grounded in time-scales and directs readers' attention to differentiations among events taking place at different temporal registers (the sentence-event, the chapter-event, the novel-event...).III would like to begin exploring the theoretical distinction laid out above by going back to music and focusing on an empirical observation that has been made about a variety of musical forms. It has been pointed out that when people listen to a piece of music, they retain in their memory, at greater or lesser degrees of awareness, a certain segment of what they have just heard; this memory serves as a background for their perception of incoming sounds and as a frame of reference for their experience of them. Consequently, musical forms may be characterized, [End Page 174] compared, and distinguished from one another based... (shrink)

This paper reviews Hume's arguments concerning space and time in the second part of the first book of the _Treatise_. It is argued that Hume's views on the finite divisibility of our ideas of space and time and on space and time as manners of disposition are coherent and well-defended. The same cannot be said about his views on vacuum and the impossibility of temporal passage in the absence of change.

This essay explores the Chinese imagination and “logic” that construct both literal and figurative ways of ascending to heaven from the mythic or imaginary facts to the pragmatic and spiritual practice. Many Taoist philosophers and alchemists draw on figurative language and allegories to demonstrate abstract notions and wisdom. This figurative mediation is reminiscent of Plato’s approach in staging Socrates as a “teller of myth”. The present study thus resorts to the theory of the imaginary to better illuminate the underlying symbolism (...) and the universal imaginary in Chinese texts and thought. The Taoist imagination of celestial ascension evolves from the mythic figures, to the rhetorical figures of metaphysics, through to theoretical and literary alchemy. This imaginary actualization is possible through the spatial and temporal passages offered by mountain caves and animal rides. Cet article explore l’imaginaire et la « logique » qui construisent dans la pensée chinoise les moyens littéraux et figuratifs de monter au ciel, depuis les faits mythiques ou imaginaires jusqu’à la pratique spirituelle et pragmatique. De nombreux philosophes et alchimistes taoïstes s’appuient sur le langage figuratif et allégorique pour rendre compte de notions abstraites et de la sagesse. Cette médiation figurative n’est pas sans rappeler l’approche de Platon qui représente Socrate comme un « conteur de mythe ». La présente étude recourt ainsi à la théorie de l’imaginaire pour mieux éclairer le symbolisme sous-jacent et l’imaginaire universel dans les textes et la pensée chinoise. L’imagination taoïste de l’ascension céleste évolue à partir des figures mythiques, jusqu’aux figures rhétoriques de la métaphysique, via l’alchimie théorique et littéraire. Cette actualisation imaginaire est rendue possible par les passages spatio-temporels offerts par les grottes montagneuses et les montures animales. (shrink)

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

dynamics of power relations and resistance. It draws on the concept of multitemporality, which posits that different 'temporal regimes' — different experiences of time and different temporal constructions of past, present, and future — can coexist. Drawing on the work of K. Mannheim, H. Rosa, and M. Foucault, the article illustrates that power and resistance operate in different temporal regimes, perceive social change at different speeds, and have different attitudes towards the past and the future. The article (...) explores how the optics of multitemporality can serve resistance politics and have an emancipatory effect. Using Foucault's concepts of power and resistance, it describes specific multitemporal characteristics associated with power and resistance, such as power's tendency to slow down the passage of time and resistance's struggle against the determination of the future. The article considers how the temporal aspect helps power to maintain and strengthen its dominance, while enabling resistance to create alternative future scenarios. It emphasizes that resistance acts as a catalyst for social change and, drawing on the ideas of Foucault and Deleuze, underlines the primacy of resistance over power. It concludes that resistance not only seeks to outpace power in time, but represents a qualitatively different approach to time and history. (shrink)

In his book Objective Becoming (Skow 2015), Bradford Skow has offered a rich and systematic treatment of the passage of time. We learn much about what objective passage could and could not amount to from engaging with his careful work. Skow’s overall conclusion is that the ‘block universe’ deflationary theory of passage is stronger than any currently available version of the recently-popular moving spotlight theory of temporal passage. To help establish this conclusion, Skow provides a (...) taxonomy of theories of temporal passage, including some new and unfamiliar theories that he classifies as versions of the moving spotlight view. These new theories are worthy of further study; however, in this commentary I will argue that they suffer from some problems that render them uncongenial to committed believers in temporal passage (Sections 2–5). I’ll also make a few brief remarks about some other arguments in the book, concerning branching time (Section 6), relativistic presentness (Section 7), and temporal experience (Section 8). (shrink)

Temporal dynamists typically hold that it seems to us as though time robustly passes, and that its seeming so is explained by the fact that time does robustly pass. Temporal non-dynamists hold that time does not robustly pass. Some non-dynamists nevertheless hold that it seems as though it does: we have an illusory phenomenal state whose content represents robust passage. Call these phenomenal passage illusionists. Other non-dynamists argue that the phenomenal state in question is veridical, and (...) represents something other than robust passage. Call this the veridical passage-less view. This paper argues against in favour of the latter view over the former, by arguing that we should reject passage illusionism. (shrink)

The passage of time seems to be a fundamental aspect of experience. However, most descriptions of the passage of time itself are incompatible with the four-dimensional block universe model of space and time, in which time is extended like space, and all states of affairs exist equally and eternally in this varied tapestry of space and time. The tension between temporal passage and the block universe seems to leave one with the option of either abandoning (...) the block universe in favor of a metaphysics that can accommodate our experience, or holding that this experience of passage is illusory. I argue for a third option: that we have certain dynamic experiences, which lend themselves to the view that time passes, those dynamic experiences can be accounted for within the block universe model without any additional mechanism, and those dynamic experiences are not illusory, but veridical. (shrink)

A promising argument for divine timelessness is that temporal life is possessed only moment by moment, which is incompatible with the existence of a perfect being.Since the argument is based on the experience of time’s passage, it cannot be circumvented by appeal to a tenseless theory of time.Neither can the argument be subverted by appeals to a temporal deity’s possession of a specious present of infinite duration.Nonetheless, because the argument concerns one’s experience of time’s (...) class='Hi'>passage rather than the objective reality of temporal becoming itself, it is considerably weakened by the fact that an omniscient being possessing perfect memory and foreknowledge, need not find such experience to be an imperfection. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to (...) which what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self which is imagined either as moving through time, or as being stationary, with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist, with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

In this article, I will pursue three aims. First, I would like to demonstrate the non-transcendental character of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, namely, his claim that a strict division between a priori and a posteriori is an abstraction that derives from a more primordial unity that is given in our lived experience. I will criticize authors such as H. Dreyfus and T. Carman who treat the body and bodily character of our existence as a classical Kantian a priori that functions as (...) a condition of experience without itself being a part of the experience. The claim I would like to defend in this regard is that reflections on the conditions of our experience must themselves be a part of our experience. The second task is to show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of temporality helps him to avoid this strict division between a priori and a posteriori. Based on this, I will elucidate some of the most obscure passages of Phenomenology of Perception. Finally, I will claim that the notion of optimal grip can neither be explained by the reference to our body, as Carman claims, or to brains, organisms and their copings with the environment, as Dreyfus argues. Instead, I will claim that the maximal grip is rather a consolidation or intensification of the temporal ecstasy. (shrink)