Presentism and Temporal Experience

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

Awareness without Time

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 conceptualisation of deep meditative states, focussing in particular on phenomenal temporality during meditation. Advanced meditators overwhelmingly describe deep states of meditation as atemporal and timeless; however, they also report being continuously alert while meditating. I intend to give a coherent interpretation of this apparent contradiction. After introducing some candidate interpretations, I shall argue that during (deepest) meditation, the subject experiences ‘pure duration’ without temporal structure. This, I argue, explains best why meditators describe deep meditation as ongoing but timeless awareness. A central part of the paper will expand on an account of phenomenal duration without phenomenal succession. The conclusion points towards some further avenues of research

The experience of temporal passage

In this thesis I analyse the notion of temporal passage (the passage of time), our (alleged) experience of it, and whether we can come to know anything about temporal passage through experience. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part concerns the metaphysics of temporal passage. I argue that temporal passage is a logically coherent notion, as long as it is understood as a change in what exists (exists simpliciter) within a presentist framework. A core element of part one is my reconstruction of McTaggart’s (1908; 1927) infamous argument against temporal passage as a special case of the problem of change. I argue that McTaggart’s argument requires a view of time according to which all times exist (A-eternalism), and temporal passage as a qualitative change of terms in the time-series with regards to pastness, presentness and futurity (A-properties). I provide a limited defence of the paradox within McTaggart’s framework, where I interpret it as a regress of mutually dependent, merely relational changes. The regress I say is vicious, due to the dependencies between its different stages: every change in terms of A-properties involves the instantiation of mutually exclusive A-properties and must thus be qualified to different times, which must undergo the same kind of change. To maintain the dynamic of time while avoiding contradiction, none of these relational changes can occur without the next, where on each level of the regress the solution to the initial problem recreates the very same kind of problem. I then argue that temporal passage, understood as change in what exists simpliciter, or absolute becoming, avoids the paradox. This view is best accommodated by presentism, the view that only the present exists. The conclusion of part one is that temporal passage should be understood as absolute becoming of times within a presentist framework. In the second part of the thesis I argue against a frequently found (but rarely explicitly analysed) argument, which states that we can infer that time passes from experience because the fact that time passes is the best explanation for having experiences of temporal passage. I argue that the argument 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. I begin by discussing different types of experiences that are commonly mistaken for experiences of temporal passage: experiences of qualitative change and successive experiences of events as occurring now. I then argue that the only experience that could be best explained by the fact that time passes would be a perceptual experience of events undergoing absolute becoming. Whether we can perceptually represent the absolute becoming of events, or ‘A-change’, is then assessed in the light of three major accounts of temporal perception: the memory theory, the retentional theory and the extensional theory. None of those theories, I argue, can account for the required experience, at least not in the right way. The memory theory does not allow for experiences of A-change because it denies that we can have perceptual experiences of change in general. The retentional theory does not allow for experiences of A-change as A-change. The extensional theory proves to be incompatible with presentism and therefore with absolute becoming. I explore two non-standard forms of presentism that take the metaphysical present to be temporally extended (in different ways) and that are, for this reason, prima facie compatible with the extensional theory. One of these views turns out to be incoherent. Combined with the extensional theory, the other one does not allow us to perceptually represent absolute becoming either. Given all major theories of temporal perception, we cannot infer that time passes from experience. In the last section I defend my argument against two objections, one involving ‘high level properties’, and one involving ‘present-as-absent’ representation in experience. I conclude that we cannot infer from experience whether time passes or not

A Puzzle About Aftertaste

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

What Experience Cannot Teach Us About Time

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

Time, Modality, and the Unbearable Lightness of Being

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

Temporal Experience Workshop Question Two

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What is the relationship between time as represented in experience, the timing of the experiential act, and the timing of the neural realizer of the experience

Temporal Experience Workshop Question One

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What can we learn about the nature of time from the nature of ordinary experience