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)

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective “sense of agency”. However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary action, but only the passive observation of a cause-effect sequence. (...) In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, have been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people’s causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding. (shrink)

Within the framework of 'Temporalities and the Urban Fabric: Co-Producing Liminal Spaces in Transitional Epochs,' this rigorous examination unravels the multilayered nuances of temporality and its intimate relationship with urban spaces in times of transition. The research delineates the intricate interplay between public exhibitions, urban realms, and socio-political paradigms, particularly within the dynamic settings of the metropolitan entities of Houston and Amsterdam. These cities, as epitomes of temporal urban flux, become fertile grounds for exploring the ephemeral essence of liminal (...) spaces and their transformative manifestations. By weaving together diverse academic domains – from Design Computation and Fabrication to Urban Communities and Spatial Justice – this study underscores the symbiotic fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Gamification within the broader canvas of urban temporalities. Crucially, the research accentuates the transformative potential of Extended Reality (XR) in augmenting the theoretical and methodological contours of urban studies within these transitional epochs. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently made some startling discoveries about temporal experience, and these discoveries have been drafted into philosophical service. We survey recent appeals to cognitive science in the philosophical debate over whether time objectively passes. Since this research is currently in its infancy, we identify some directions for future research.

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)

Common wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: Specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -- a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is (...) not to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities. (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)

Temporal experience and its radical alteration in schizophrenia have been one of the central objects of investigation in phenomenological psychopathology. Various phenomenologically oriented researchers have argued that the change in the mode of temporal experience present in schizophrenia can foreground its psychotic symptoms of delusion. This paper aims to further the development of such a phenomenological investigation by highlighting a much-neglected aspect of schizophrenic temporal experience, i.e., its non-emotional affective characteristic. In this paper, it denotes the type of an experience (...) wherein an afflicted individual experiences a pervasive pull or attraction coming from the past, present, and future. By employing Husserl’s account of affection, I argue that such an affectively prominent temporal experience is not yet another abnormality that happens to be present in schizophrenia. Instead, it is indicative of the core disturbance that underpins the schizophrenic temporal mode of experience. I identify such a disturbance as ‘affective modification dysfunction’ and employ it as a core concept with which I synthesize and organise heterogeneous components of schizophrenic temporal experience in their conceptual unity. For the sake of clear description, I organise those components into the following categories: 1.) Time Stop 2.) Ante-festum 3.) Déjà vu/vécu and 4.) Time Fragmentation. I conclude by demonstrating how approaching schizophrenic temporal experience from its affective dimension can further help us better understand its pre-psychotic phase known to precipitate schizophrenic primary delusion, i.e., delusional mood. (shrink)

There are many questions we can ask about temporal experience upon which cognitive science may shed light. In this entry I focus on the question of whether the cognitive sciences can shed light on whether our temporal experiences are experiences as of robust passage, or instead have some other content.

Global directional eliminativists deny that there is any global direction to time. This paper provides a way to understand everyday temporal assertions—assertions made outside the physics or metaphysics rooms, the truth of which appears to require that time has a global direction—on the assumption that global directional eliminativism is true.

This thesis presents a comprehensive examination of temporal ontology, addressing the fundamental question of whether the future exists. Through critical analysis of existing philosophical positions—presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory—this work identifies significant theoretical and empirical limitations that have created an intractable trilemma in contemporary temporal ontology. To resolve these issues, I propose Graduated Temporal Ontology (GTO), a novel theoretical framework that reconceptualizes temporal existence as a matter of degree rather than binary states. -/- GTO argues that the degree (...) of temporal existence is determined by four key factors: causal constraint, information content, quantum probability amplitudes, and scale of description. This framework successfully reconciles the apparent conflict between physical theories (particularly special relativity and quantum mechanics) and phenomenological experience, while providing empirically testable predictions about temporal cognition and neural processing. -/- The thesis demonstrates that GTO resolves classical problems in temporal ontology including the truth-maker problem, the reference problem, conflicts with special relativity, and the agency problem. Furthermore, it opens new avenues for empirical research in experimental philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The framework suggests that the future exists in degrees that vary with temporal distance, causal determination, and the scale of description, providing a more nuanced and scientifically grounded approach to temporal ontology than previous binary theories. (shrink)

Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view”. In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack”, equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach presents (...) an ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature. (shrink)

This paper identifies why previous radical empiricisms (Hume, Mill, Mach, phenomenalism) failed to achieve the complete subtractive epistemology that Experiential Empiricism (EE) accomplishes. All prior attempts removed external space and matter while retaining external time as an unexamined container. This temporal assumption provided an escape hatch through which metaphysical commitments returned. EE removes external temporality itself, treating past and future not as externally real dimensions but as present memory-experience and anticipation-experience. This move was unavailable to pre-Einstein thinkers who conceived (...) space and time as separate. Post-Einstein cultural absorption of spacetime unity enabled the recognition that burden of proof applies to temporal externality equally. This explains both why historical empiricisms produced limited dissolution of philosophical problems and why EE's systematic application generates novel resolutions across physics, consciousness studies, and ethics. The paper clarifies that this temporal move was always constitutive of EE rather than a later addition, accounting for communication failures in philosophical discourse where interlocutors assumed different scopes for "universal application of burden of proof.". (shrink)

I discuss the general form of arguments that profess to prove that the view that things endure in tensed time through causally produced change (the dynamic view) must be false because it involves contradictions. I argue that these arguments implicitly presuppose what has been called the temporal parity thesis, i.e. that all moments of time are equally existent and real, and that this thesis must be understood as the denial of the dynamic view. When this implicit premise is made explicit, (...) the arguments turn out to be either circular, they presuppose what they profess to prove, or mere demonstrations of the fact that the dynamic view is incompatible with its own negation. Furthermore, I discuss the metaphysical consequences of accepting the temporal parity thesis, arguing that it deprives us of the means to provide natural explanations to empirical phenomena. (shrink)

Contemporary relationships increasingly exhibit patterns of superficiality and premature termination despite human capacity for deep, enduring connection. This philosophical treatise extends the Value-Lifespan Equilibrium (VLE) framework from economic markets to human relationships, examining how temporal investment theory illuminates fundamental questions about human connection, commitment, and interpersonal flourishing. Drawing from Aristotelian virtue ethics, Levinas's ethics of the Other, and contemporary attachment theory, I develop the Relational Investment Equilibrium (RIE) framework—a philosophical model that treats relationships as temporal investments generating value through duration, (...) depth, and mutual recognition. The framework demonstrates how modern social structures incentivize "relational obsolescence"—the systematic devaluation of long-term connection in favor of disposable relationships. Through examination of commitment phobia, digital superficiality, and the commodification of human connection, this work argues that genuine human flourishing requires institutional and cultural transformation toward what I term "sustainable relationality." The philosophical contribution lies in reconceptualizing relationships not as static states but as dynamic temporal processes requiring investment, maintenance, and mutual commitment to generate their full value across the human lifespan. Building on my previous work establishing the VLE framework for material goods, this treatise reveals how the same temporal dynamics that govern product value apply to human relationships, while acknowledging the unique dimensions of understanding and being understood that distinguish human connection from economic exchange. (shrink)

In this paper I consider an objection that friends of the Metaphysic of Temporal Parts (MTP) press against other solutions to the problem of temporary intrinsics and turn it against the MTP itself. I do not argue that the MTP must be false, nor do I argue that there are no arguments in favor of the MTP. Rather, the conclusion I draw is conditional: if the MTP provides an adequate response to the problem of temporary intrinsics, then the MTP provides (...) no reason to reject our commonsense view of the nature of material objects. (shrink)

In humans, at least some of our ability to coordinate our actions with the timing of events in our world is due to our capacities for temporal cognition. However, controversy arises when we turn our attention to the animal world. In this paper, we will argue that apes, especially Taï Chimpanzees, are capable of genuine temporal cognition. That is, they are able to mentally represent and reason about time in cognition. We do this by developing a novel analysis of the (...) mental representation of time. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of (...) the immutable laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy? (shrink)

I assess a number of connected ideas about temporal experience that are introspectively plausible, but which I believe can be argued to be incorrect. These include the idea that temporal experiences are extended experiential processes, that they have an internal structure that in some way mirrors the structure of the apparent events they present, and the idea that time in experience is in some way represented by time itself. I explain how these ideas can be developed into more sharply defined (...) views, and then argue that these views are inconsistent with certain empirical facts about how time is represented in the brain. These facts instead support a kind of atomic view, on which temporal experiences are temporally unstructured atoms. (shrink)

The article presents Erwin W. Straus’ unpublished manuscript “Temporal Horizons” from 1952. In the paper, in addition to an extensive philosophical discussion with St. Augustine, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud, Straus elaborates on his idea of a unified view of temporal experience, comprising both the personal and the impersonal dimensions of time. The manuscript also contains an interview with a psychotic patient, which is supposed to exemplify Straus' core idea on the psychotic temporal experience, according to which the break of (...) the invisible bond between immanent or personal, and clock or impersonal time leads to a loss of a sense of reality. (shrink)

Temporal externalists argue that ascriptions of thought and utterance content can legitimately reflect contingent conceptual developments that are only settled after the time of utterance. While the view has been criticized for failing to accord with our “ordinary linguistic practices”, such criticisms (1) conflate our ordinary ascriptional practices with our more general beliefs about meaning, and (2) fail to distinguish epistemically from pragmatically motivated linguistic changes. Temporal externalism relates only to the former sort of changes, and the future usage relevant (...) to what we mean reflects reason-driven practices that are rational for us to defer to. (shrink)

Most philosophers believe that we have experiences as of temporally extended phenomena like change, motion, and succession. Almost all theories of time consciousness explain these temporal experiences by subscribing to the doctrine of the specious present, the idea that the contents of our experiences embrace temporally extended intervals of time and are presented as temporally structured. Against these theories, I argue that the doctrine is false and present a theory that does not require the notion of a specious present. Furthermore, (...) I argue that the different aspects of temporal experiences arise from different mechanisms operating separately. If the theory is true, then temporal experiences do not tell us anything special about the nature of consciousness and its temporal properties per se. (shrink)

The Temporal Cascade Hypothesis (TCH) is a falsifiable, non-standalone extension within Emergent Necessity Theory (ENT). TCH formalizes how recursive symbolic systems can degrade when symbolic pressure exceeds containment capacity over recursive intervals (not linear clock time). The model introduces rigorously defined variables for recursive pressure, symbolic entropy, containment dynamics, hysteresis, and memory effects. Eight collapse classes are specified with causal criteria, detection rules, and explicit falsification routes. The work avoids metaphysical claims and does not attempt to explain consciousness; it focuses (...) solely on structural conditions under which what might resemble “recursive coherence” becomes unsustainable. All simulations are reproducible with LaTeX-native figures, Language is kept strictly neural, assumptions are transparent, and every proposed mechanism can be contradicted by testable evidence. (shrink)

The concept of time has long been the subject of complex philosophical reflections and scientific research, which have interpreted it differently based on the starting question, context, and level of analysis of the system under investigation. In the present review, we first explore how time has been studied among different scientific fields such as physics, neuroscience, and bioecological sciences. We emphasize the fundamental role of an organism's ability to perceive the passage of time and dynamically adapt to its environment for (...) survival. Growth, reproduction, and communication processes are subject to spatiotemporal variability, and the sense of time allows organisms to structure their interactions, track past, and anticipate future events. Specifically, building on a relational and multilevel approach, this paper proposes an analysis of various aspects of the temporal dimension of plants—ranging from their growth and adaptation rates to behavioral strategies and modes of communication—culminating in a focused examination of research based on the kinematical analysis of plant movement. By adopting a comparative and critical approach, we raise several questions about the temporality of processes from different perspectives. Further insights into the timing of physiological and communication processes in plants will help to recognize the central role of temporality in life and to discover mechanisms, processes, and behavioral strategies that may be common (or similar) across species or unique (species-specific) for some organisms, both with and without nervous systems. (shrink)

-/- Este manifiesto establece los fundamentos de la Geopolítica Temporal como una evolución paradigmática dentro de la tradición geopolítica, integrando la variable temporal como dimensión complementaria —no sustitutiva— del análisis espacial clásico. Como demuestra la bibliografía emergente (Allan, 2018; Doshi, 2021; Zuboff, 2019), la batalla por el control del tiempo constituye el nuevo campo de batalla estratégico del siglo XXI. -/- Desarrollamos un marco teórico-metodológico que articula tres dimensiones temporales entrelazadas —Memoria (pasado), Velocidad (presente) y Prospectiva (futuro)—, demostrando su interdependencia (...) dialéctica y su determinación recíproca mediante ejemplos empíricos concretos extraídos de la literatura especializada. La propuesta se fundamenta en una doble herencia: la tradición geopolítica clásica y contemporánea (Mackinder, 1904; Spykman, 1944; Ó Tuathail, 1996) y las teorías críticas del tiempo social (Rosa, 2013; Virilio, 1977; Nowotny, 1994). -/- Introducimos el concepto de Soberanía Temporal como campo de batalla fundamental del siglo XXI, operacionalizable mediante un Índice de Soberanía Temporal (IST) metodológicamente robusto que incorpora métricas cuantificables adaptadas de la geopolítica económica y estratégica convencional. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, many philosophers in America thought that time should be taken seriously in one way or another. George P. Adams (1882-1961) argued that the past, present and future are all real but only the present is actual. I call this theory ‘actualist eternalism’. In this paper, I articulate his novel brand of eternalism as one piece of his metaphysical system and I explain how he argued for the view in light of the best explanations of temporal (...) experience and the present. I argue that his exploitation of analogies between time and modality offer some lessons for current debates about time such as the importance of providing a temporal epistemology. I also extract what I call the temporal boundary problem and argue that it gives rise to an unaddressed challenge for presentists and growing block theorists. (shrink)

Existential Realism (ER) establishes a foundational distinction between Existence (the indexical, present, and empirical) and Reality (the structural, informational causal manifold). This framework promises to navigate the longstanding deadlock between Presentism and Eternalism in the philosophy of time, but it introduces two critical ambiguities. First, the ontological status of the past: Does a past event cease to be real if its physical "traces" vanish due to entropy? Second, the ontological status of the future: Does assigning a "gradient of reality" based (...) on causal determinacy risk reducing reality to mere predictability (i.e. conflating ontology with epistemology)? This paper addresses both challenges by rigorously defining Reality as information within the causal manifold of the universe. It argues that the past is safeguarded through the concept of Scrambled Reality, which preserves an event’s reality as an irreducible informational residue even when observable traces fade. It further contends that the future’s gradient of being is an ontological gradient of potentiality, restricted only to fundamental indeterminacies (e.g. quantum collapses) rather than our epistemic uncertainty about classically deterministic chaos. In doing so, ER offers a coherent alternative to standard Presentism and Eternalism by affirming genuine temporal becoming and free will, without rendering the future a complete fiction. The result is a robust, non-reductionist theory of time that clearly distinguishes between ontology and epistemology in both temporal directions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTime-consciousness has long been a focus of research in phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. We advance and extend this tradition of research by focusing on the character of temporal experience under conditions of mania. Symptom scales and diagnostic criteria for mania are peppered with temporally inflected language: increased rate of speech, racing thoughts, flight-of-ideas, hyperactivity. But what is the underlying structure of temporal experience in manic episodes? We tackle this question using a strategically hybrid approach. We recover and reconstruct three hypotheses (...) regarding manic temporality that were advanced and modeled by two pioneers of clinical phenomenology: Eugène Minkowski and Ludwig Binswanger. We then test, critique, and refine these hypotheses using heterophenomenological methods in an interview-based study of persons with a history of bipolar and a current diagnosis of acute mania. Our conclusions support a central hypothesis due to Minkowski... (shrink)

This paper presents Pure Temporal Potentiality (PTP) — the fundamental ontological insight that reality is pure temporality as potentiality: ontorealis. Rather than treating time as a dimension within reality, PTP recognizes that time is reality itself, constituting the absolute ground of existence. This recognition emerges through rare ontological windows — transitions from absolute unconsciousness to awareness that reveal the primordial contrast between nothing and something. PTP offers a minimal yet comprehensive foundation for understanding emergence, consciousness, and the nature of (...) existence itself. (shrink)

This manifesto establishes the foundations of Temporal Geopolitics as a paradigmatic evolution within the geopolitical tradition, integrating the temporal variable as a complementary—not substitutive—dimension to classical spatial analysis. As evidenced by emerging scholarship (Allan, 2018; Doshi, 2021; Zuboff, 2019), the battle for control over time constitutes the new strategic battlefield of the 21st century. -/- We develop a theoretical-methodological framework that articulates three intertwined temporal dimensions—Memory (past), Velocity (present), and Prospectivity (future)—demonstrating their dialectical interdependence and reciprocal determination through concrete empirical (...) examples drawn from specialized literature. The proposal is grounded in a dual heritage: classical and contemporary geopolitical tradition (Mackinder, 1904; Spykman, 1944; Ó Tuathail, 1996) and critical theories of social time (Rosa, 2013; Virilio, 1977; Nowotny, 1994). -/- We introduce the concept of Temporal Sovereignty as a fundamental battlefield of the 21st century, operationalized through a methodologically robust Temporal Sovereignty Index (TSI) that incorporates quantifiable metrics adapted from conventional economic and strategic geopolitics. -/- . (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 that 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)

This paper argues that minimal selfhood is constituted by temporal skew—the asymmetrical structure of retention and protention uncovered by Husserl’s analyses of internal time-consciousness. Rather than emerging from equilibrium, recursive self-presence, or homeostatic regulation, selfhood arises from the irreducible imbalance between a fading past and an indeterminate future. The paper critiques symmetrical models found in contemporary phenomenology (Zahavi, Gallagher) and predictive processing theories, showing that these approaches obscure the constitutive instability and openness revealed by phenomenological description. Temporal skew is advanced (...) as the ontological ground of subjectivity, reshaping accounts of selfhood, embodiment, ethical responsibility, and political vulnerability. (shrink)

This paper argues that 'duality' accounts of time, as exemplified by Henri Bergson's, Edmund Husserl's, and John McTaggart's ideas, parallel the decomposition of temporal experience in depressive psychosis into objective and subjective dimensions of time. The paper also proposes to comprehend the full-fledged depressive temporal delusion, in which the subjective flow of time comes to a standstill, via the idea of a double orientation to reality characteristic of schizophrenic delusions. In the depressive temporal delusion a person claims that time is (...) not moving while simultaneously her cognitive orientation in temporal surroundings remains largely unaffected, hence the double orientation. The juxtaposition of temporal experience in depression with the temporal disorientation in dementia enables us to situate the depressive delusion regarding the flow of time in the middle of a proposed scale of the disintegration of normal temporal experience. (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)

The observable universe is unimaginably vast, stretching from the tiniest subatomic quark to clusters of galaxies billions of light years across. Yet as staggering as spatial vastness is, an even more mind-bending kind of vastness emerges when we consider different theories of time. Competing models of temporal reality propose wildly different ontologies – different answers to what exists in time – that make the physical scale of the cosmos seem almost modest by comparison. On one view, every moment of history (...) and future already exists in a grand timeless ensemble; on another, every quantum possibility gives birth to an entirely new universe, multiplying realities beyond comprehension. By contrast, a stricter view insists that only the fleeting present is real, pruning reality to a razor-thin slice of now (at great philosophical cost). A newly proposed middle path tries to reconcile these extremes, granting reality to past and future while refusing to multiply worlds without necessity. In what follows, we compare four influential views of time’s ontology and the temporal vastness they imply: the Block Universe (Eternalism), which treats all times as equally existent in a static “block” of spacetime; the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, which explodes the Block Universe into countless branching timelines for every quantum outcome; Presentism, which asserts that only the present moment exists; and Existential Realism (ER), a recent framework that offers a disciplined middle ground by distinguishing what exists (strictly present entities) from what is real (a broader causal and informational structure including past and future). We will see that each view carries profound ontological implications – from a universe densely populated with dinosaurs and future aliens, to a multiverse of near-infinite extent, to a vanishingly small ontology of just the now. After outlining each theory, we conclude with reflections on the epistemic humility warranted by such extraordinary ontologies, and consider whether a moderate view like ER can capture time’s reality without the ontological excesses of its rivals. (shrink)

This report highlights and explores four questions that arose from the workshop on temporal experience at the University of Toronto, May 20th and 21st, 2013.

It is not uncommon in time travel stories to find that the mechanism by which the time travel is achieved is not invented. A time traveller could journey to his/her own past and give the designs of the time travel machine to his/her earlier self as s/he was given the designs as a younger person. These designs never get thought up by anyone. Such a situation would conflict with the usual conception of the acquisition of knowledge. This situation is called (...) the Temporal Epistemic Anomaly and would arise if knowledge is gained at a time prior to the information in question being transmitted but is not discovered or invented at any time. This article examines the implications of information propagating around a causal chain that is closed in time (which is required to create the Anomaly) and whether this information need have a specific origin point. (shrink)

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?

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)

Our ascriptions of content to utterances in the past attribute to them a level of determinacy that extends beyond what could supervene upon the usage up to the time of those utterances. If one accepts the truth of such ascriptions, one can either (1) argue that subsequent use must be added to the supervenience base that determines the meaning of a term at a time, or (2) argue that such cases show that meaning does not supervene upon use at all. (...) The following will argue against authors such as Lance, Hawthorn and Ebbs that first of these options is the more promising of the two. However, maintaining the supervenience thesis ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as 'normative' in two important ways. The first (more familiar) way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between correct usage and actual usage. This first type of normativity is accepted by defenders of many more temporally restricted versions of the supervenience thesis, but the second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the supervenience base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can understand other commitments we are often taken to have about meaning, particularly the commitment to meaning being 'determinate', as practical commitments that structure our linguistic practices rather than theoretical commitment that merely describe such practices. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the part of ontology involving the rival positions of presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory. While this much is clear, it’s surprisingly difficult to elucidate the substance of the disagreement between presentists and eternalists. Certain events happened that are not happening now; what is it to disagree about whether these events exist? In spite of widespread suspicion concerning the status and methods of analytic metaphysics, skeptics’ doubts about this debate have not generally been heeded, neither by (...) metaphysicians, nor by philosophers of physics. This paper revisits the question in the light of prominent elucidation attempts from both camps. The upshot is that skeptics were right to be puzzled. The paper then explores a possible re-interpretation of positions in temporal ontology that links it to normative views about how we should live as temporal beings. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of Human State Field as a proposed framework for understanding how individuals perceive and experience time. We explore how various internal and external inputs affect this field, shaping subjective temporal experience. Our aim is to bridge the gap between the human cognitive sense of time and the concept of time as understood in physics. We begin by examining how people form familiarity with the notion of time and cognitively accept temporal phenomena. We then analyze how (...) the human experience of time connects to emotional and perceptual responses during brief episodes of daily life, thereby shaping one's broader experience of time. Central to our discussion are the notions of now and here, treated as perceptual anchors, and how these merge phenomenologically with physical representations of time. We also introduce the novel concepts of Time of Position and Time of Person, investigating how these dimensions interact and sometimes conflict within human experience. The framework aims to support a more integrated understanding of time that is consistent with both phenomenological insights and physical principles. This part concludes by exploring how different internal and external factors could affect the human state field, and in a follow-up study (Part II), we aim to mathematically model the dynamics of the Human State Field. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between human temporal intuition and block universe models. It proposes that certain intuitive experiences may be understood as traces of non-local temporal structures, suggesting that anticipation of future events can influence present perception. This conceptual work is presented as a preprint and independent exploration.

Current debate in the metaphysics of time ordinarily assumes that we should be realists about time. Recently, however, a number of physicists and philosophers of physics have proposed that time will play no role in a completed theory of quantum gravity. This paper defends fictionalism about temporal thought, on the supposition that our world is timeless. We argue that, in the face of timeless physical theories, realism about temporal thought is unsustainable: some kind of anti-realism must be adopted. We go (...) on to provide an argument against eliminativism about temporal thought. While it doesn't follow from this argument that fictionalism about temporal thought is true, we suggest that this nonetheless shows that fictionalism should be regarded as the preferred view. (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 requires 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. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

Not only is freedom a shared concern of Sartre and Schelling, which would not be anything particularly unique, but for both philosophers, freedom must be articulated out of an ontological ground, or within the confines of an ontological system. A contradiction nevertheless appears to arise regarding the “orientation” of Sartre and Schelling’s respective “ontologies of freedom”: the freedom of Sartre, reflecting a contemporary stoic-inspired doctrine, is directed toward the future, while for Schelling, with affinities to the temporal logic of psychoanalysis, (...) freedom is oriented toward the past. This article presents both Sartre and Schelling’s ontological reasoning out of which either a progressively oriented freedom (the freedom to negate the present in the name of future “possibles”) or a retrogressively oriented freedom (the freedom to determine the ground of the present out of an indefinite, a-temporal becoming), before attempting to resolve this contradiction in the temporality of freedom by examining the position and role of the negative (of negation, contradiction, or nothingness), as either secondary or primary, within the ontology of each respective philosopher. (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)

I spell out two theses, one shared by Kant and Heidegger, the other Kant’s alone: (1) there is a difference between “within-time-ness” (Innerzeitigkeit) and original or pure time (the temporal difference); (2) the temporal difference is articulated by a self-conscious act not bound by time. While each agrees that the “time-less” original or pure time has limits within which particular temporal determinations have their significance, Kant goes further in asserting that the pure ‘I’ must cognize the determinate boundaries of original (...) or pure time if objective cognition is to be possible. The ‘I’ thus rejects time as a horizon of its own significance. Understanding this argument suggests why Kant’s position is not as obviously susceptible to Heidegger’s criticism: not only does Kant positively argue that the ‘I’ is atemporal, but the content of this argument tells us why it is impossible for this understanding of the ‘I’ to result in a conception of it as ‘extant’ or a superadded representation in need of unification with temporality . Finally, it suggests that the dispute between Kant’s and Heidegger’s philosophical orientations rests not on the question of a lack of understanding of temporality, but on the question of how the ultimate conditions of intelligibility relate to their limits. (shrink)

In addressing the Lucretian symmetry problem, the temporal bias approach claims that death is bad because it deprives us of something about which it is rational to care (e.g., future pleasures), whereas prenatal nonexistence is not bad because it only deprives us of something about which it is rational to remain indifferent (e.g., past pleasures). In a recent contribution to the debate on this approach, Miguel and Santos argue that a late beginning can deprive us of a future pleasure. Their (...) argument is based on the claim that for birth or death to deprive a person of any value in life, the historically closest counterfactual situation that contains the value is such that the person begins to exist earlier or dies later. This is what they call the Historical Condition. However, the Historical Condition is untenable for several reasons. First, this condition substantially weakens the explanatory capacity of the deprivation account because it implies that most ordinary sorts of pleasures are not deprived by death. In addition, the Historical Condition is vulnerable to counterexamples. In particular, what they offer as a standard case of the deprivation of future pleasure due to a late beginning (what they call Seeing The Beatles), or some of its variants, can be used to falsify this condition. Finally, the Historical Condition is theoretically indefensible because it is based on a faulty analysis of deprivation. (shrink)

Melancholia is an attunement of despair and despondency that can involve radical disruptions to temporal experience. In this article, I extrapolate from the existing analyses of melancholic time to examine some of the important existential implications of these temporal disruptions. In particular, I focus on the way in which the desynchronization of melancholic time can complicate the melancholic’s relation to death and, consequently, to the meaning and significance of their life. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between death and demise, I argue (...) that melancholic time leaves the melancholic in an impossible state of existing, where they are both unable to live and unable to die. Turning to the role of the physician, I consider the significant role that clinical interventions might have in resynchronizing the melancholic with time and examine these ideas further through a case study on physician-assisted suicide. In so doing, I demonstrate that the desynchronization of melancholic time should indeed be understood as a matter of life and death. (shrink)