Hoerl and McCormack (H&M) risk misleading about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a privileged now-moment because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the now-moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to the now-moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now

Kenward, Ben

Pilling, Michael

English

Oxford Brookes University: RADAR

Kenward and Pilling commentary on Hoerl and McCormack  1  The now-moment is believed privileged because now is when happening is experienced 1 Commentary on BBS target article: Thinking in and about time, by Hoerl and McCormack 2 Ben Kenward and Michael Pilling 3 Oxford Brookes University 4 Department of Psychology, Headington Campus, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK 5 bkenward@brookes.ac.uk 6 mpilling@brookes.ac.uk 7  8 Accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19.01.19 9  10 Abstract 11 Hoerl and McCormack (H&M) risk misleading about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a 12 privileged now-moment because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the 13 now-moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to 14 the now-moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now. 15  16 Text 17 We agree with H&M that the naïve folk conception of time is paradoxical, particularly with respect 18 to the sense of a privileged now. However, we argue that, because H&M have placed little emphasis 19 on the subjective experience of the now-moment, they are likely to be wrong about the cognitive 20 underpinnings of the belief in a privileged now. We doubt that the belief in a privileged now arises 21 from an ancient cognitive system that represents the world without representing change, because the 22 conscious experience of the now-moment is inherently the experience of change. 23  24 A better model for the way humans think about time would not explain belief about temporal change 25 primarily only with respect to thoughts about the past and future. Instead, the model should 26 incorporate the variety of mechanisms for processing temporally dynamic stimuli that each present 27 different kinds of temporally dynamic experience to conscious awareness in the now-moment 28 (Montemayor & Wittmann, 2014; Muller & Nobre, 2014). Mental time-travel (Suddendorf & 29 Corballis, 2007), which H&M rely on completely to account for the naïve human idea of time, is 30 only one way in which humans relate to the passage of time. Yet it is arguably the least direct way 31 we experience time because it is normally experienced only as simulation. 32 Kenward and Pilling commentary on Hoerl and McCormack  2   33 A more direct way we experience time is through the flow inherent to the sense of the present 34 moment, which is a dynamic sense of events happening in the now, widely acknowledged within 35 discussions of the phenomenology of time (Gruber, Smith, & Block, 2018; Prosser, 2012). At any 36 given moment, there is not only (or not at all) a subjective representation of now as a snapshot with 37 no sense of change. There is a sense of flow; now is a single moment, but it is a moment 38 encompassing change. The dynamic nature of the conscious sense of now is revealed in widely used 39 phrases such as “stream of consciousness” and “what is happening now”. Readers unfamiliar with 40 the phenomenological literature are invited to introspect about their experience of existing in the 41 current moment. Even in a stimulus-poor environment, our experiences in the now-moment are 42 dynamic, including breathing or chains of thoughts. Perceptions in the now are frequently of 43 momentary dynamic events: a flash of light, a spoken word, a looming object. Many conscious 44 perceptions are meaningless outside the context of temporal dynamics. For example, the sense of 45 looming and other motion perceptions inherently relate to change (Gibson, 2014), and sound is 46 inherently a temporal phenomenon. 47  48 Besides the phenomenological or introspective analysis, various objective observations indicate that 49 the now-moment encompasses happening events rather than just a millisecond snap-shot. For 50 example, multiple events occurring within a time window (up to 300 ms depending on modality and 51 number of events) can be discriminated even though their order cannot be determined (Montemayor 52 & Wittmann, 2014), indicating that they were experienced as separate happenings within one 53 moment. Further evidence, for example from language perception, indicates that there are different 54 kinds of experience of now, with different aspects of dynamism (Poeppel, 2003; Wittmann, 2011). 55 The “simultaneous now” is suggested to last approximately 250 ms (still long enough to contain 56 events), whereas the “conscious now” lasts approximately 3 seconds (Montemayor & Wittmann, 57 2014).  58  59 Further evidence for the sense of events happening now comes from work on visual perception. 60 Suitably arranged dynamic stimuli together give rise to our sense of causality in the here and now 61 (Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000). In the same way that changes to the dynamic character of the stimuli 62 can abolish the sense of causality, disruptions to the temporal sequence can also remove the sense of 63 happening that is a cornerstone of the subjective sense of temporal flow (Gruber & Block, 2013). 64 Kenward and Pilling commentary on Hoerl and McCormack  3   65 There are numerous functional reasons why the experience of the now-moment must be more than a 66 millisecond snap-shot. Our perceptions are integrated with our actions (Pezzulo & Cisek, 2016), with 67 the consequence that our perception of the now-moment is one of the dynamic affordances currently 68 offered. In order to perform even the simplest goal-directed actions, short-term temporal dynamics 69 are taken into account (Gibson, 2014). 70  71 Interestingly, there is evidence that on the lowest levels of subconscious perception, stimulus 72 representations are in fact not dynamic, and perception rather takes the form of a series of discrete 73 static representations – this is even held to be plausible for auditory stimuli although sound is 74 inherently temporally dynamic (VanRullen, Zoefel, & Ilhan, 2014). The dynamic perceptions 75 reaching our awareness are therefore not necessarily veridical in the sense of arising directly from 76 the true dynamism of real events – rather, this is likely to represent a reconstruction (Gruber et al., 77 2018). However, the only thing that matters for our current argument is that the lowest levels of 78 perception subject to conscious awareness usually constitute dynamic representations. 79  80 We agree with H&M that there there is little evidence for mental time-travel in most non-human 81 animal species or in human infants. However, given the different ways of experiencing time, it’s 82 arguably inappropriate to dichotomise organisms according to ‘whether or not [their] model of the 83 world contains a temporal dimension’ (p. 14). Rather than the lack of evidence of mental time-travel 84 implying that such organisms have no representation of temporal change, it implies they may have 85 no representation of change except for the change happening in the current moment. In other words, 86 their representational time-line may be very short. 87  88 Given the dynamism of the experience of now, our counter-proposal for what makes now special in 89 naïve human belief is that now is the only time when events are experienced to happen. Of course, 90 events are also believed to have happened in the past and are expected to occur in the future, but 91 mental time-travel typically involves simulation rather than experience of those events. We argue 92 that our account is more parsimonious than H&M’s because their model implies a curious and 93 unsupported phenomenon: that people ignore their salient experience that things happen in the now-94 moment when they are thinking about what now actually is. 95 Kenward and Pilling commentary on Hoerl and McCormack  4   96 References 97 Gibson, J. J. (2014). The ecological approach to visual perception: classic edition: Psychology Press. 98 Gruber, R. P., & Block, R. A. (2013). The flow of time as a perceptual illusion. The Journal of Mind and 99 Behavior, 34(1), 91-100.  100 Gruber, R. P., Smith, R. P., & Block, R. A. (2018). The illusory flow and passage of time within 101 consciousness: A multidisciplinary analysis. Timing & Time Perception, 6(2), 125-153. 102 doi:10.1163/22134468-2018e001 103 Montemayor, C., & Wittmann, M. (2014). The varieties of presence: Hierarchical levels of 104 temporal integration. Timing & Time Perception, 2(3), 325-338. doi:10.1163/22134468-00002030 105 Muller, T., & Nobre, A. C. (2014). Perceiving the passage of time: neural possibilities. Annals of the New 106 York Academy of Sciences, 1326(1), 60-71. doi:10.1111/nyas.12545 107 Poeppel, D. (2003). The analysis of speech in different temporal integration windows: cerebral lateralization 108 as ‘asymmetric sampling in time’. Speech Communication, 41(1), 245-255. doi:10.1016/S0167-109 6393(02)00107-3 110 Prosser, S. (2012). Why does time seem to pass? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85(1), 92-116. 111 doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00445.x 112 Scholl, B. J., & Tremoulet, P. D. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 113 4(8), 299-309.  114 Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it 115 unique to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(3), 299-313.  116 VanRullen, R., Zoefel, B., & Ilhan, B. (2014). On the cyclic nature of perception in vision versus audition. 117 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369(1641), 20130214. 118 doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0214 119 Wittmann, M. (2011). Moments in time. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5(66). 120 doi:10.3389/fnint.2011.00066 121  122 

The now-moment is believed privileged because now is when happening is experienced: Commentary on BBS target article: Thinking in and about time, by Hoerl and McCormack

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The now-moment is believed privileged because now is when happening is experienced: Commentary on BBS target article: Thinking in and about time, by Hoerl and McCormack

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