International Workshop
Time & Consciousness
31 August- 2 September 2022
Imperia, Italy
Time & Consciousness
31 August- 2 September 2022
Imperia, Italy
Conference Abstracts
TITLE: Kant on temporal consciousness, inner change, and mental life
Katharina Kraus
Notre Dame University, USA
ABSTRACT: Not only do we perceive objects in time, but we are also beings who exist in time ourselves. Our mode of being is essentially temporal: we experience our inner states of consciousness as changing in time, and our lives in general as passing from past to present to future. In this talk, drawing on Kant’s theory of time, consciousness, and the empirical self, I examine the temporality of human existence in three ways: first, and most fundamentally, in terms of the temporal constitution of inner (mental) states as they appear in consciousness; second, in terms of inner change as a causal series of mental states; and third, in terms of mental life as a whole striving toward a life goal or ideal.
TITLE: Time flows: Kant’s General Note on the Principles
Cord Friebe
University of Siegen
ABSTRACT: In his “General Note on the System of Principles”, added in the B-edition of the first Critique, Kant finally reflects about what he had done in the deduction of the principles – and plainly contradicts the main premises of the first and the second analogy of experience. Time flows, he now affirms, and therefore substance can no longer be the empirical representation of time; instead, one needs outer intuition since only space determines persistence. Also, everything within the inner sense flows, and hence empirical cognition of our own self is not fundamental but dependent on outer experience. Consequently, it was wrong to assume, as he did in the second analogy, that there are primarily two perceptions at different times that must somehow be connected; grasping the successive existence of our self in different perceptions requires outer intuition. As it seems, temporal extension – as opposed to spatial extension – cannot appear, for Kant, neither in outer experience of objective change nor in inner experience of subjective flow. Temporal properties can only be (mis-)represented in analogy to spatial properties.
TITLE: Keeping Projection in Mind
Adrian Bardon
Wake Forest University, USA
ABSTRACT: I suggest we should (re-)center projection as a framework concept for accounts of belief in dynamic temporal passage. The common understanding of projection in the philosophical context is usually limited to ‘feature projection’ (wherein aspects of sensory phenomenology are taken as objective features out in the world). A better understanding of projection includes both feature (or ‘direct’) projection and what I will be calling ‘indirect’ projection; the latter captures the essence of the most sophisticated deflationist accounts of belief in temporal passage. A benefit of this framework is to highlight the distinction between cognitive error theories and theories treating belief in passage as the product of some sort of illusion. There may also be some benefit to using the schema of direct/indirect projection in classifying narratives about temporal phenomenology.
TITLE: On the Shape of Visual Time
Thomas Sattig
University of Tübingen
ABSTRACT: What is the geometrical structure of visual time, as presented in our temporal visual experiences? Assuming that visual space is a three-dimensional system of location, it is natural to expect that the addition of visual time yields a four-dimensional system of location (4d). If visual space and time form a four-dimensional system of location, then we should have temporal experiences as of four-dimensional shapes. But we don’t. In response to this puzzle, it will be suggested that visual time is not a system of location. The notion of geometrical relativization will be introduced, and visual time will be conceived of as a system of geometrical relativization. This account earns its keep by solving the puzzle about shapes. The dimensionality of visual shapes in our temporal experiences can be explained in terms of properties of a hybrid system of temporally relativized three-dimensional space (r3d).
TITLE: Sources of Temporal ‘Motion’
Simon Prosser
University of St. Andrew
ABSTRACT: What are the sources of the belief that people, and perhaps other things, ‘move’ through time? I discuss some possibilities, all of which relate to experience in different ways, and tentatively suggest that they all contribute to the belief in temporal ‘motion’. The first concerns that fact that one feels as though one exists entirely in the present, yet one remembers having existed entirely at earlier times. This has already been discussed by several authors in the recent literature, but I shall add some further reflections. The second concerns a more immediate sense of oneself moving through time due to the retention of events in short-term memory whose degree of short-term pastness is represented as constantly changing. Finally, I use a spatial analogy to suggest a way to understand the difference between experiencing an object ‘moving’ through time and experiencing a succession of parts of a temporally extended object. My overall aim in discussing these proposals is to provide some of the conceptual clarification needed to help provide a focus for future empirical investigation.
TITLE: The flow of time and the flow of change
Giuliano Torrengo
Università Statale di Milano & Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
ABSTRACT: Time seems to be the “container” of both the events that we perceive, and our own experiences---be them perceptions, memories, imaginations, or thoughts. The things that we are experientially in contact with, and the experiences that we make of them---as our mental life in general---appear to be not only in the same river of time, but also in constant change. It is therefore tempting to think of our awareness of the passage of time as something that we have in virtue of being aware of the flow of change in which we are immersed. However, it is not trivial how this “reduction” can be realized, as many key questions concerning it appear to have no easy answer. Are we aware of the passage of time because we are aware of our own experiences changing, or because we are aware of the things we perceive as changing? How is the awareness of our perceptual experiences changing related to our awareness of our inner streams of consciousness, and how do they contribute to our awareness in the passage of time? I will argue that such questions cannot be settled but in arbitrary ways, and this suggests that we should be abandon the idea of reducing the experience of the flow of time to the experience of the flow of change.
TITLE: On the A Priori Determination of Time
Bianca Ancillotti
University of Leipzig
ABSTRACT: According to the doctrine Kant formulates in the Schematism, the categories appy to objects of possible experience by means of a third thing, a special kind of representation, that mediates between empirical intuitions and a priori concepts and constitutes the schema of the concept. For each category, Kant indicates a transcendental time-determination as its schema and characterises them as products of the transcendental productive imagination. In this talk, considering in particular the categories of substance and cause, whose schemata are, respectively, the persistence of the real in time and the succession of the manifold insofar as it is subject to a rule, I will take up the questions of what it means to determine time a priori, rather than empirically, what is the role of the imagination in the a priori determination of time, and to what extent it is something that we do blindly, rather than consciously.
TITLE: What is Special about Time. Kant on Inner Sense and the Temporal Transparency of Experience
Marcello Garibbo, University of Siegen/Torino
ABSTRACT: In the current debate about temporal consciousness, some authors have argued that the temporal properties of perceptual experiences are accessible from the first-person perspective of the experiencer. They claim that in perceiving changes unfolding over time, we are aware of our experiences as unfolding along those changes. Such an assumption implies that temporal properties are an exception to the so-called transparency of experience, the claim that only the properties of the objects of our experiences are accessible to us as experiencers. As Ian Phillips puts the point: “time is special. Temporal properties are the only properties manifestly shared by both the objects of experience and by experience itself. Experience, at least in its subjective aspect, is not colored or shaped; it does, however, manifestly have a temporal structure.” (Phillips 2014, 139; my emphasis). Drawing on some of Kant’s remarks on the role of spontaneity in perceptual experience, I suggest that the reason why time seems special in this sense has to do with our active involvement in perception. Manifest to the experiencer is not just a bare unfolding of her own experiences, but the manner in which she is actively engaged in them.
TITLE: Grounding Objective Temporal Order in Causality. A New Interpretation of Kant’s Second Analogy
Tobias Rosefeldt
Humboldt University, Berlin
ABSTRACT: In his (in)famous Second Analogy of Experience, Kant argues that there could not be such a thing as an objective temporal order in the world of our experience unless there were causal relations in that world. In my talk I will propose an interpretation of his argument for this claim that is based on the idea that (a) the objectivity of a temporal order of perceived contents of experience implies the truth of certain counterfactuals about the course of this experience, and that (b) these counterfactuals need truthmakers in the actual world. I will then argue that, given Kant’s idealism about time, these truthmakers can neither be facts about an objective temporal order of the perceived events, nor facts about time as the form of our intuition, nor facts about features that the things that we experience have in themselves, and that Kant takes facts about causal relations to be the only possible candidates left to play the role of such truthmakers.
TITLE: Experience and Temporal Existence of Objects, Events, and Processes
Dirk Franken
University of Heidelberg
ABSTRACT: We have experimental knowledge of both objects and events. But there is an interesting asymmetry between both cases. With respect to any object O, we are, at any time at which O exists, in the position to experientially know which object O is and to what kind it belongs; that is, we are in the position to experientially know O’s individual and general essence. The same is not true of events, however. Through the first moments of, say, a dinner party, one is not in the position to experientially know which dinner party takes place of whether it is at all the case that a dinner party takes place. This epistemic asymmetry has its ground in fundamentally different ways objects and events exist in time. For the former it is true that their general and individual essence is fixed entirely by what goes on at or before the moments at which they begin to exist. For the latter, however, no corresponding principle holds. Which (kind of) event takes place, typically depends on things going on after the initial moments of the event‘s existence.
This difference will be elucidated, and some of its epistemic and metaphysical implications will be unfolded. Finally, it will be suggested as a template for drawing another distinction that is notoriously hard to pin down: that between events and processes.
TITLE: The Limits of Process Philosophy and the Primacy of Substance
Thomas Crowther
University of Warwick
ABSTRACT: In recent work John Dupre and others have advocated for (what he calls) ‘process ontology’. As Dupre understands it, such a view involves the idea that ‘processes are ontologically prior to things’ and involves ‘the rejection of substance in favour of process’. It is not always easy to understand the nature of the revisionary project that Dupre is pursuing. I will argue that (at least if the concepts of process and substance he uses are those that have figured in traditional philosophical discussion), his arguments for this view ought to be resisted. Engagement with process philosophy, however, is an opportunity to reflect on what the commitments of a traditional ‘substance ontologist’ ought to be taken to be, specifically with respect to the relationship between primary substances and processes. I will identify an approach according to which primary substances and process or activity are interdependent categories, and according to which it is a mistake to attempt modes of reduction in either direction.
TITLE: The Temporal Aspect of Music: the Moment, the Structure and the Action
Giulia Lorenzi,
University of Warwick
ABSTRACT: Despite being an essential element of both music itself and its experience, the temporal dimension of musical pieces has not been largely investigated in philosophy. Levinson’s work in Music in The Moment (1997) stands out as an exception. Written with the intention to advocate for the non-expert listeners’ experience of music, namely the musical experience of all those people who cannot appreciate large scale structure in musical perception (p. ix), the book is inspired and informed by Gurney’s (1880) psychological work on perceiving music. Taking into account Gurney’s understanding of musical perception, Levinson constructs and argues for a view that he calls concatenationism which is essentially the idea that when we perceive music we do so perceiving a chunk of music after another: a phrase followed by another phrase, a motif linked to another motif, rather than hearing the large scale temporal structure.
While the idea seems appealing and intuitive, Levinson’s proposal faces some problems. A set of issues arises about the role of large temporal structures in musical perception. Is the perception of the large temporal structure really a matter of expertise? If so, how can knowledge of some sort impact on perception? Can people really directly perceive a structural element that is as long as an entire symphony? Or is it there something else at play? When we think about the musical chunks in this proposal, we are also left with another series of inquiries. How short can the chunk we are listening to be? A phrase, a motif or a theme often exceed the temporal length that the most welcoming theory in metaphysics of time would allow: the specious present (LePoidevin 2014). So, what does really inhabit our perception there? Do we actually perceive music at all?
In this talk, I want to suggest that a helpful way to tackle both corners of what I will call the “problem of length” is to think about the perceptual experience of music in active terms. Following O’Shaughnessy (2000) and Crowther (2009), I want to propose that we need to consider listening as a form of mental action to find a fulfilling way to both advocate for Levinson’s concatenationism and even propose a revision of the initial problem which generates it. Taking as a starting point that when we listen to music, we are performing a certain type of action then we are in the position to find a more defined role for knowledge and ability in our picture. On the other side, thinking about the present as the time in which we do something allows us to consider its extension and our relation with it from a different perspective (cf. Young 2022).
TITLE: The Temporal Perspective of a Time Traveller
Matthew Soteriou
King’s College, London
ABSTRACT: Discussions of time travel often appeal to a notion of ‘personal time’, which is contrasted with ‘external time’. As it is typically characterised, this notion of personal time is not a perspectival notion, insofar as it doesn’t apply specifically to things that occupy a temporal perspective. In this talk, I shall be outlining a distinct notion of personal time that is perspectival – a notion that is specific to the sort of conscious temporal perspective that is occupied by a subject who takes herself to be capable of travelling in time.
Roy Sorensen (2005, 2013) has argued that we do not have any practical concerns about external time. We instead care about personal time. We may not realise this, because in ordinary circumstances, personal time coincides with external time. I shall be arguing that although Sorensen is right to suggest that we care about personal time, rather than external time, the relevant notion of personal time that we care about is the perspectival notion of personal time that I outline. I go on to suggest that the self-conscious temporal perspective one actually occupies in ordinary circumstances is a reflexive perspective on a time-traveller. In occupying a self-conscious perspective, one occupies a perspective on oneself as something that can live the life of a time traveller – even if one can only travel in one direction. I consider how this bears on debates about whether we seem to experience the passage of time, and if so, what might explain the phenomenology of such experience.
TITLE: Experience in Time and the Passage View
Yaron Wolf
University of Utrecht
Contemporary discussion of temporal experience has seen extensive debate on two fronts: the experience of temporal passage or flow, and a debate on the temporal structure of experience. While connections between these two themes can be found in the work of historically influential figures (e.g., Husserl, Bergson), there has been little explicit discussion of the relation between these issues in recent philosophy of time and mind. In the talk, I make room for a position on which an experiential feature of temporal passage has explanatory significance as a structural feature of temporal experience.
I begin by discussing phenomenological support for an idea at the heart of 'extensional' models of change perception, the idea that temporal experience is progressive, i.e. that it unfolds in time. I examine recent criticism of the suggestion that we have straightforward introspective access to the temporal contours of experience. Remaining neutral with regards to straightforward access, I consider other factors based on phenomenological reflection that might endow views accommodating the progressive insight with intuitive advantage. I then expand upon the phenomenology associated with experience progressing or unfolding over time, arguing that recent 'holistic' articulations of the extensional view might fail to accommodate this phenomenology. I proceed to advance an alternative approach, the 'passage view', on which a feature of temporal passage possesses explanatory significance with regards to experienced succession.
TITLE: Thinking Time as tensed and extended using Bergson’s durée
Sonja Deppe
University of Erlangen
ABSTRACT: My Talk focuses on two aspects that I contend to be crucial features for understanding successive structure within our temporal experience, namely tense (and hence a changing ‘now’) and temporal extension. With regard to contemporary theoretical analysis of temporal experience, however, combining these aspects seems to pose a certain challenge. Even more, in the context of analytic time metaphysics following McTaggart tense and extension fall actually under the suspicion not to be consistent with each other. But how can two aspects that seem naturally embedded within our experience of time turn out to be incompatible on the theoretical level? I show the fundamental characteristic of Bergson’s durée, namely the concept of ‘Qualitative Multiplicity’, to open a new perspective on the issue: Being introduced as a qualitative and hence not countable or measurable feature, it enables an understanding of temporal extension that differs radically from spatial extension. Following this, we can understand Bergson’s durational realm of the conscious I as temporally extended in qualitative but not numerical respect – which, in turn, is unproblematically consistent with tense. I will make the structure of Bergson's conception even more clear by taking Time and Free Will seriously not only in terms of an analysis of experience of time but also as a metaphysical conception. We will see that this first book of Bergson offers an (at least structurally) interesting dualistic alternative to the ontological models of temporal reality from analytic Time Metaphysics: It combines the qualitatively extended durée of the conscious I with a radical presentism of the external world. However, a critical reflection of the latter mentioned will reveal that it is not problem-free to conceive any part of reality as merely tensed and not at all temporally extended. I conclude this to be a strong motivation for expanding further the idea of ‘Qualitative Multiplicity’.
TITLE: Peirce on Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
Gabriele Gava
University of Torino
ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes two short texts where Peirce sketches out an anti-skeptical argument inspired by Kant’s Refutation of Idealism. I first consider why Peirce found Kant’s argument interesting and promising, given that it is often regarded as problematic and unsuccessful. I will then briefly reconstruct Kant’s Refutation, highlighting its most problematic passages. Moreover, since Peirce’s own version of the argument relies on Kant’s views regarding the temporal structure of consciousness, I will explain how Peirce tackles this issue in “The Law of Mind.” Finally, I consider Peirce’s own anti-skeptical argument and examine whether and how it can be seen as appropriating Kant’s strategy.
TITLE: Dynamic snapshots and temporal phenomenology
Valtteri Arstila
University of Helsinki
ABSTRACT: The snapshot views of time-consciousness maintain that the contents of an episode of experiencing (i.e., a snapshot) appear confined to an instant, thus rejecting the doctrine of the specious present. A succession of snapshots forms the stream of consciousness. The dynamic models of the snapshot views hold that snapshots can include static and dynamic contents. Pure motion, the dynamic content related to motion experiences, is often exemplified by the waterfall illusion, a visual motion aftereffect. McKenna has criticized these models on two grounds. First, he argues that the waterfall illusion, or pure motion, does not afford an explanation of “normal” motion experiences. Second, he argues that motion experiences, which include motion aftereffects, are irrelevant to the issues concerning temporal phenomenology. More generally, the second critique illustrates a methodological error in how the dynamic models seek to explain temporal phenomenology. In my talk, I defend the dynamic models against McKenna’s criticism and explain how they account for experiences of various temporal phenomena.
TITLE: Phenomenology of Time Consciousness in the Age of E-memory
Federica Buongiorno
University of Florence
ABSTRACT In his “On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time” (1893-1917) (1991) Husserl claims that time-consciousness is the “most important and difficult of all phenomenological problems”: every experience has a temporal horizon, which is composed of separate, discrete now-moments that are nevertheless crossed by a meaning that unifies them. How to explain the paradox of time-flow, the unity of a duration made up by instants? In order to answer this question, we must investigate memory as a function of unity. This investigation is complicated nowadays by digital enhancements of our biological memory: “anyone who is active online generates a highly detailed, ever-expanding, and permanent digital biographical ‘memory’”, capable of recording where we go, the things we say, private meetings ecc. in increasing detail (Burkell, 2016). Our time-consciousness is gradually embedding electronic data-memories that record and store our individual and social activities artificially. With reference to Bernard Stiegler’s notion of tertiary memory, my aim is to investigate how our temporal-horizon is affected by this augmentation and what changes occur in our inner time-consciousness from a phenomenological point of view.
TITLE: Consciousness Without Time
Christoph Hoerl
Warwick University
ABSTRACT: A familiar trope in philosophical discussions about the difference between humans and non-human animals is that the latter are ‘stuck in time’ – or “fettered to the moment”, in Nietzsche’s phrase. I explore one way in which this thought might be further articulated, which grants that animals are more than just stimulus/response creatures, but nevertheless maintains that they lack the capacity to engage in reasoning about different times. I then consider what impact this has on their mental lives, especially when it comes to the perception of motion and the representation of objects not within their current sensory range.
Katharina Kraus
Notre Dame University, USA
ABSTRACT: Not only do we perceive objects in time, but we are also beings who exist in time ourselves. Our mode of being is essentially temporal: we experience our inner states of consciousness as changing in time, and our lives in general as passing from past to present to future. In this talk, drawing on Kant’s theory of time, consciousness, and the empirical self, I examine the temporality of human existence in three ways: first, and most fundamentally, in terms of the temporal constitution of inner (mental) states as they appear in consciousness; second, in terms of inner change as a causal series of mental states; and third, in terms of mental life as a whole striving toward a life goal or ideal.
TITLE: Time flows: Kant’s General Note on the Principles
Cord Friebe
University of Siegen
ABSTRACT: In his “General Note on the System of Principles”, added in the B-edition of the first Critique, Kant finally reflects about what he had done in the deduction of the principles – and plainly contradicts the main premises of the first and the second analogy of experience. Time flows, he now affirms, and therefore substance can no longer be the empirical representation of time; instead, one needs outer intuition since only space determines persistence. Also, everything within the inner sense flows, and hence empirical cognition of our own self is not fundamental but dependent on outer experience. Consequently, it was wrong to assume, as he did in the second analogy, that there are primarily two perceptions at different times that must somehow be connected; grasping the successive existence of our self in different perceptions requires outer intuition. As it seems, temporal extension – as opposed to spatial extension – cannot appear, for Kant, neither in outer experience of objective change nor in inner experience of subjective flow. Temporal properties can only be (mis-)represented in analogy to spatial properties.
TITLE: Keeping Projection in Mind
Adrian Bardon
Wake Forest University, USA
ABSTRACT: I suggest we should (re-)center projection as a framework concept for accounts of belief in dynamic temporal passage. The common understanding of projection in the philosophical context is usually limited to ‘feature projection’ (wherein aspects of sensory phenomenology are taken as objective features out in the world). A better understanding of projection includes both feature (or ‘direct’) projection and what I will be calling ‘indirect’ projection; the latter captures the essence of the most sophisticated deflationist accounts of belief in temporal passage. A benefit of this framework is to highlight the distinction between cognitive error theories and theories treating belief in passage as the product of some sort of illusion. There may also be some benefit to using the schema of direct/indirect projection in classifying narratives about temporal phenomenology.
TITLE: On the Shape of Visual Time
Thomas Sattig
University of Tübingen
ABSTRACT: What is the geometrical structure of visual time, as presented in our temporal visual experiences? Assuming that visual space is a three-dimensional system of location, it is natural to expect that the addition of visual time yields a four-dimensional system of location (4d). If visual space and time form a four-dimensional system of location, then we should have temporal experiences as of four-dimensional shapes. But we don’t. In response to this puzzle, it will be suggested that visual time is not a system of location. The notion of geometrical relativization will be introduced, and visual time will be conceived of as a system of geometrical relativization. This account earns its keep by solving the puzzle about shapes. The dimensionality of visual shapes in our temporal experiences can be explained in terms of properties of a hybrid system of temporally relativized three-dimensional space (r3d).
TITLE: Sources of Temporal ‘Motion’
Simon Prosser
University of St. Andrew
ABSTRACT: What are the sources of the belief that people, and perhaps other things, ‘move’ through time? I discuss some possibilities, all of which relate to experience in different ways, and tentatively suggest that they all contribute to the belief in temporal ‘motion’. The first concerns that fact that one feels as though one exists entirely in the present, yet one remembers having existed entirely at earlier times. This has already been discussed by several authors in the recent literature, but I shall add some further reflections. The second concerns a more immediate sense of oneself moving through time due to the retention of events in short-term memory whose degree of short-term pastness is represented as constantly changing. Finally, I use a spatial analogy to suggest a way to understand the difference between experiencing an object ‘moving’ through time and experiencing a succession of parts of a temporally extended object. My overall aim in discussing these proposals is to provide some of the conceptual clarification needed to help provide a focus for future empirical investigation.
TITLE: The flow of time and the flow of change
Giuliano Torrengo
Università Statale di Milano & Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
ABSTRACT: Time seems to be the “container” of both the events that we perceive, and our own experiences---be them perceptions, memories, imaginations, or thoughts. The things that we are experientially in contact with, and the experiences that we make of them---as our mental life in general---appear to be not only in the same river of time, but also in constant change. It is therefore tempting to think of our awareness of the passage of time as something that we have in virtue of being aware of the flow of change in which we are immersed. However, it is not trivial how this “reduction” can be realized, as many key questions concerning it appear to have no easy answer. Are we aware of the passage of time because we are aware of our own experiences changing, or because we are aware of the things we perceive as changing? How is the awareness of our perceptual experiences changing related to our awareness of our inner streams of consciousness, and how do they contribute to our awareness in the passage of time? I will argue that such questions cannot be settled but in arbitrary ways, and this suggests that we should be abandon the idea of reducing the experience of the flow of time to the experience of the flow of change.
TITLE: On the A Priori Determination of Time
Bianca Ancillotti
University of Leipzig
ABSTRACT: According to the doctrine Kant formulates in the Schematism, the categories appy to objects of possible experience by means of a third thing, a special kind of representation, that mediates between empirical intuitions and a priori concepts and constitutes the schema of the concept. For each category, Kant indicates a transcendental time-determination as its schema and characterises them as products of the transcendental productive imagination. In this talk, considering in particular the categories of substance and cause, whose schemata are, respectively, the persistence of the real in time and the succession of the manifold insofar as it is subject to a rule, I will take up the questions of what it means to determine time a priori, rather than empirically, what is the role of the imagination in the a priori determination of time, and to what extent it is something that we do blindly, rather than consciously.
TITLE: What is Special about Time. Kant on Inner Sense and the Temporal Transparency of Experience
Marcello Garibbo, University of Siegen/Torino
ABSTRACT: In the current debate about temporal consciousness, some authors have argued that the temporal properties of perceptual experiences are accessible from the first-person perspective of the experiencer. They claim that in perceiving changes unfolding over time, we are aware of our experiences as unfolding along those changes. Such an assumption implies that temporal properties are an exception to the so-called transparency of experience, the claim that only the properties of the objects of our experiences are accessible to us as experiencers. As Ian Phillips puts the point: “time is special. Temporal properties are the only properties manifestly shared by both the objects of experience and by experience itself. Experience, at least in its subjective aspect, is not colored or shaped; it does, however, manifestly have a temporal structure.” (Phillips 2014, 139; my emphasis). Drawing on some of Kant’s remarks on the role of spontaneity in perceptual experience, I suggest that the reason why time seems special in this sense has to do with our active involvement in perception. Manifest to the experiencer is not just a bare unfolding of her own experiences, but the manner in which she is actively engaged in them.
TITLE: Grounding Objective Temporal Order in Causality. A New Interpretation of Kant’s Second Analogy
Tobias Rosefeldt
Humboldt University, Berlin
ABSTRACT: In his (in)famous Second Analogy of Experience, Kant argues that there could not be such a thing as an objective temporal order in the world of our experience unless there were causal relations in that world. In my talk I will propose an interpretation of his argument for this claim that is based on the idea that (a) the objectivity of a temporal order of perceived contents of experience implies the truth of certain counterfactuals about the course of this experience, and that (b) these counterfactuals need truthmakers in the actual world. I will then argue that, given Kant’s idealism about time, these truthmakers can neither be facts about an objective temporal order of the perceived events, nor facts about time as the form of our intuition, nor facts about features that the things that we experience have in themselves, and that Kant takes facts about causal relations to be the only possible candidates left to play the role of such truthmakers.
TITLE: Experience and Temporal Existence of Objects, Events, and Processes
Dirk Franken
University of Heidelberg
ABSTRACT: We have experimental knowledge of both objects and events. But there is an interesting asymmetry between both cases. With respect to any object O, we are, at any time at which O exists, in the position to experientially know which object O is and to what kind it belongs; that is, we are in the position to experientially know O’s individual and general essence. The same is not true of events, however. Through the first moments of, say, a dinner party, one is not in the position to experientially know which dinner party takes place of whether it is at all the case that a dinner party takes place. This epistemic asymmetry has its ground in fundamentally different ways objects and events exist in time. For the former it is true that their general and individual essence is fixed entirely by what goes on at or before the moments at which they begin to exist. For the latter, however, no corresponding principle holds. Which (kind of) event takes place, typically depends on things going on after the initial moments of the event‘s existence.
This difference will be elucidated, and some of its epistemic and metaphysical implications will be unfolded. Finally, it will be suggested as a template for drawing another distinction that is notoriously hard to pin down: that between events and processes.
TITLE: The Limits of Process Philosophy and the Primacy of Substance
Thomas Crowther
University of Warwick
ABSTRACT: In recent work John Dupre and others have advocated for (what he calls) ‘process ontology’. As Dupre understands it, such a view involves the idea that ‘processes are ontologically prior to things’ and involves ‘the rejection of substance in favour of process’. It is not always easy to understand the nature of the revisionary project that Dupre is pursuing. I will argue that (at least if the concepts of process and substance he uses are those that have figured in traditional philosophical discussion), his arguments for this view ought to be resisted. Engagement with process philosophy, however, is an opportunity to reflect on what the commitments of a traditional ‘substance ontologist’ ought to be taken to be, specifically with respect to the relationship between primary substances and processes. I will identify an approach according to which primary substances and process or activity are interdependent categories, and according to which it is a mistake to attempt modes of reduction in either direction.
TITLE: The Temporal Aspect of Music: the Moment, the Structure and the Action
Giulia Lorenzi,
University of Warwick
ABSTRACT: Despite being an essential element of both music itself and its experience, the temporal dimension of musical pieces has not been largely investigated in philosophy. Levinson’s work in Music in The Moment (1997) stands out as an exception. Written with the intention to advocate for the non-expert listeners’ experience of music, namely the musical experience of all those people who cannot appreciate large scale structure in musical perception (p. ix), the book is inspired and informed by Gurney’s (1880) psychological work on perceiving music. Taking into account Gurney’s understanding of musical perception, Levinson constructs and argues for a view that he calls concatenationism which is essentially the idea that when we perceive music we do so perceiving a chunk of music after another: a phrase followed by another phrase, a motif linked to another motif, rather than hearing the large scale temporal structure.
While the idea seems appealing and intuitive, Levinson’s proposal faces some problems. A set of issues arises about the role of large temporal structures in musical perception. Is the perception of the large temporal structure really a matter of expertise? If so, how can knowledge of some sort impact on perception? Can people really directly perceive a structural element that is as long as an entire symphony? Or is it there something else at play? When we think about the musical chunks in this proposal, we are also left with another series of inquiries. How short can the chunk we are listening to be? A phrase, a motif or a theme often exceed the temporal length that the most welcoming theory in metaphysics of time would allow: the specious present (LePoidevin 2014). So, what does really inhabit our perception there? Do we actually perceive music at all?
In this talk, I want to suggest that a helpful way to tackle both corners of what I will call the “problem of length” is to think about the perceptual experience of music in active terms. Following O’Shaughnessy (2000) and Crowther (2009), I want to propose that we need to consider listening as a form of mental action to find a fulfilling way to both advocate for Levinson’s concatenationism and even propose a revision of the initial problem which generates it. Taking as a starting point that when we listen to music, we are performing a certain type of action then we are in the position to find a more defined role for knowledge and ability in our picture. On the other side, thinking about the present as the time in which we do something allows us to consider its extension and our relation with it from a different perspective (cf. Young 2022).
TITLE: The Temporal Perspective of a Time Traveller
Matthew Soteriou
King’s College, London
ABSTRACT: Discussions of time travel often appeal to a notion of ‘personal time’, which is contrasted with ‘external time’. As it is typically characterised, this notion of personal time is not a perspectival notion, insofar as it doesn’t apply specifically to things that occupy a temporal perspective. In this talk, I shall be outlining a distinct notion of personal time that is perspectival – a notion that is specific to the sort of conscious temporal perspective that is occupied by a subject who takes herself to be capable of travelling in time.
Roy Sorensen (2005, 2013) has argued that we do not have any practical concerns about external time. We instead care about personal time. We may not realise this, because in ordinary circumstances, personal time coincides with external time. I shall be arguing that although Sorensen is right to suggest that we care about personal time, rather than external time, the relevant notion of personal time that we care about is the perspectival notion of personal time that I outline. I go on to suggest that the self-conscious temporal perspective one actually occupies in ordinary circumstances is a reflexive perspective on a time-traveller. In occupying a self-conscious perspective, one occupies a perspective on oneself as something that can live the life of a time traveller – even if one can only travel in one direction. I consider how this bears on debates about whether we seem to experience the passage of time, and if so, what might explain the phenomenology of such experience.
TITLE: Experience in Time and the Passage View
Yaron Wolf
University of Utrecht
Contemporary discussion of temporal experience has seen extensive debate on two fronts: the experience of temporal passage or flow, and a debate on the temporal structure of experience. While connections between these two themes can be found in the work of historically influential figures (e.g., Husserl, Bergson), there has been little explicit discussion of the relation between these issues in recent philosophy of time and mind. In the talk, I make room for a position on which an experiential feature of temporal passage has explanatory significance as a structural feature of temporal experience.
I begin by discussing phenomenological support for an idea at the heart of 'extensional' models of change perception, the idea that temporal experience is progressive, i.e. that it unfolds in time. I examine recent criticism of the suggestion that we have straightforward introspective access to the temporal contours of experience. Remaining neutral with regards to straightforward access, I consider other factors based on phenomenological reflection that might endow views accommodating the progressive insight with intuitive advantage. I then expand upon the phenomenology associated with experience progressing or unfolding over time, arguing that recent 'holistic' articulations of the extensional view might fail to accommodate this phenomenology. I proceed to advance an alternative approach, the 'passage view', on which a feature of temporal passage possesses explanatory significance with regards to experienced succession.
TITLE: Thinking Time as tensed and extended using Bergson’s durée
Sonja Deppe
University of Erlangen
ABSTRACT: My Talk focuses on two aspects that I contend to be crucial features for understanding successive structure within our temporal experience, namely tense (and hence a changing ‘now’) and temporal extension. With regard to contemporary theoretical analysis of temporal experience, however, combining these aspects seems to pose a certain challenge. Even more, in the context of analytic time metaphysics following McTaggart tense and extension fall actually under the suspicion not to be consistent with each other. But how can two aspects that seem naturally embedded within our experience of time turn out to be incompatible on the theoretical level? I show the fundamental characteristic of Bergson’s durée, namely the concept of ‘Qualitative Multiplicity’, to open a new perspective on the issue: Being introduced as a qualitative and hence not countable or measurable feature, it enables an understanding of temporal extension that differs radically from spatial extension. Following this, we can understand Bergson’s durational realm of the conscious I as temporally extended in qualitative but not numerical respect – which, in turn, is unproblematically consistent with tense. I will make the structure of Bergson's conception even more clear by taking Time and Free Will seriously not only in terms of an analysis of experience of time but also as a metaphysical conception. We will see that this first book of Bergson offers an (at least structurally) interesting dualistic alternative to the ontological models of temporal reality from analytic Time Metaphysics: It combines the qualitatively extended durée of the conscious I with a radical presentism of the external world. However, a critical reflection of the latter mentioned will reveal that it is not problem-free to conceive any part of reality as merely tensed and not at all temporally extended. I conclude this to be a strong motivation for expanding further the idea of ‘Qualitative Multiplicity’.
TITLE: Peirce on Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
Gabriele Gava
University of Torino
ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes two short texts where Peirce sketches out an anti-skeptical argument inspired by Kant’s Refutation of Idealism. I first consider why Peirce found Kant’s argument interesting and promising, given that it is often regarded as problematic and unsuccessful. I will then briefly reconstruct Kant’s Refutation, highlighting its most problematic passages. Moreover, since Peirce’s own version of the argument relies on Kant’s views regarding the temporal structure of consciousness, I will explain how Peirce tackles this issue in “The Law of Mind.” Finally, I consider Peirce’s own anti-skeptical argument and examine whether and how it can be seen as appropriating Kant’s strategy.
TITLE: Dynamic snapshots and temporal phenomenology
Valtteri Arstila
University of Helsinki
ABSTRACT: The snapshot views of time-consciousness maintain that the contents of an episode of experiencing (i.e., a snapshot) appear confined to an instant, thus rejecting the doctrine of the specious present. A succession of snapshots forms the stream of consciousness. The dynamic models of the snapshot views hold that snapshots can include static and dynamic contents. Pure motion, the dynamic content related to motion experiences, is often exemplified by the waterfall illusion, a visual motion aftereffect. McKenna has criticized these models on two grounds. First, he argues that the waterfall illusion, or pure motion, does not afford an explanation of “normal” motion experiences. Second, he argues that motion experiences, which include motion aftereffects, are irrelevant to the issues concerning temporal phenomenology. More generally, the second critique illustrates a methodological error in how the dynamic models seek to explain temporal phenomenology. In my talk, I defend the dynamic models against McKenna’s criticism and explain how they account for experiences of various temporal phenomena.
TITLE: Phenomenology of Time Consciousness in the Age of E-memory
Federica Buongiorno
University of Florence
ABSTRACT In his “On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time” (1893-1917) (1991) Husserl claims that time-consciousness is the “most important and difficult of all phenomenological problems”: every experience has a temporal horizon, which is composed of separate, discrete now-moments that are nevertheless crossed by a meaning that unifies them. How to explain the paradox of time-flow, the unity of a duration made up by instants? In order to answer this question, we must investigate memory as a function of unity. This investigation is complicated nowadays by digital enhancements of our biological memory: “anyone who is active online generates a highly detailed, ever-expanding, and permanent digital biographical ‘memory’”, capable of recording where we go, the things we say, private meetings ecc. in increasing detail (Burkell, 2016). Our time-consciousness is gradually embedding electronic data-memories that record and store our individual and social activities artificially. With reference to Bernard Stiegler’s notion of tertiary memory, my aim is to investigate how our temporal-horizon is affected by this augmentation and what changes occur in our inner time-consciousness from a phenomenological point of view.
TITLE: Consciousness Without Time
Christoph Hoerl
Warwick University
ABSTRACT: A familiar trope in philosophical discussions about the difference between humans and non-human animals is that the latter are ‘stuck in time’ – or “fettered to the moment”, in Nietzsche’s phrase. I explore one way in which this thought might be further articulated, which grants that animals are more than just stimulus/response creatures, but nevertheless maintains that they lack the capacity to engage in reasoning about different times. I then consider what impact this has on their mental lives, especially when it comes to the perception of motion and the representation of objects not within their current sensory range.