Aspects of Time, Misc

There are two kinds of time-bias: near-bias and future-bias. While philosophers typically hold that near-bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future-bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been levelled against both near-bias and future-bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this paper we investigate whether there are forms of arbitrariness that are common to both kinds (...) of preferences, and hence whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections both to near-bias and future-bias. If there are, then this might go some way towards undermining normative hybridism and to defending a thorough-going time-neutralism. (shrink)

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias; another is future-bias. Philosophical theorising about these biases often proceeds on two assumptions. First, that the two biases are independent: that they are explained by different factors (the independence assumption). Second, that there is a normative asymmetry between the two biases: one is rationally impermissible (near-bias) and the other rationally permissible (future-bias). The former assumption at least partly feeds into the latter: if the two biases were not explained by (...) different factors, then it would be less plausible that their normative statuses differ. This paper investigates the independence assumption and finds it unwarranted. In light of this, we argue, there is reason to question the normative asymmetry assumption. (shrink)

For a book symposium in Disputatio on Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz's Nothing to Come.

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates the contention that the folk concept of time is a functional concept: a concept according to which time is whatever plays a certain functional role or roles. This hypothesis could explain why, in previous research, surprisingly large percentages of participants judge that there is time at worlds that contain no one-dimensional substructure of ordered instants. If it seems to participants that even in those worlds the relevant functional role is played, then this could explain why they (...) judge that there is time in those worlds. While our experiment supported the finding that participants are reticent to judge that there is no time, actually, we found no evidence that this is because they deploy a functionalist concept, at least of the kind proposed in recent research. Our findings are, however, consistent with the folk deploying a much more minimal functionalist concept according to which time is just whatever it is—regardless of its nature—that plays the role of grounding our temporal phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to two problems with Kant's claim that transcendental freedom is timeless. The problems are that this causes conceptual difficulties and fails to vindicate important parts of our moral practices. I then put forward three ways in which we can respond to these charges on Kant's behalf. The first is to defend Kant's claim that transcendental freedom occurs outside of time. The second is to reject this claim, but try to maintain transcendental idealism. And the third is (...) to reject both Kant's claim about the timelessness of freedom and also transcendental idealism itself. (shrink)

‘Past vacillators’ believe that what was once the case may change over time. This has obvious applications to the possibility of changing the past via time travel. ‘Future vacillators’ believe that some things will happen and yet, later, will not. Further to issues in time travel, future vacillation has applications when it comes to ‘Geachian’ views about the open future. This paper argues that if you deny that the ‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’ relations are converses of one another then (...) you can develop metaphysical systems underpinning the possibility of such vacillation. (shrink)

In philosophical logic and metaphysics there is a long-standing debate around the most appropriate structures to represent indeterministic scenarios concerning the future. We reconstruct here such a debate in a computational setting, focusing on the fundamental difference between moment-based and history-based structures. Our presentation is centered around two versions of an indeterministic scenario in which a programmer wants a machine to perform a given task at some point after a specified time. One of the two versions includes an assumption about (...) the future behaviour of the machine that cannot be encoded in any programming instruction; such version has models over history-based structures but no model over a moment-based structure. Therefore, our work adds a new stance to the debate: moment-based structures can be said to rule out certain indeterministic scenarios that are computationally unfeasible. (shrink)

The inference that things do not matter because they will end is a source of despair for reflective people that features in literature, popular culture, and philosophy. Are there sound arguments in support of the inference? I first review three arguments that have been put forward in the existing philosophical literature and consider the objections that can be made against them. While the objections appear persuasive, these arguments do not exhaust the plausible justifications for the inference. Drawing on examples from (...) philosophy and literature, I introduce two previously undiscussed time-bias arguments in support of the inference that seem to be psychologically powerful. I conclude, however, that the time-bias arguments are also unsound. They involve an inconsistent shift between a temporally neutral and a temporally biased perspective on how the passage of time affects what matters. However the inconsistency is resolved, the conclusion does not follow. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Philosophers working on time-biases assume that people are hedonically biased toward the future. A hedonically future-biased agent prefers pleasurable experiences to be future instead of past, and painful experiences to be past instead of future. Philosophers further predict that this bias is strong enough to apply to unequal payoffs: people often prefer less pleasurable future experiences to more pleasurable past ones, and more painful past experiences to less painful future ones. In addition, philosophers have predicted that future-bias is restricted to (...) first-person preferences, and that people’s third-person preferences are time-neutral. Philosophers disagree vigorously about the normative status of these preferences—i.e., they disagree about whether first-person future-bias is rationally permissible. Time-neutralists, for example, have appealed to the predicted asymmetry between first- and third-person preferences to argue for the rational impermissibility of future-bias. We empirically tested these predictions, and found that while people do prefer more past pain to less future pain, they do not prefer less future pleasure to more past pleasure. This was so in both first and third-person conditions. This suggests that future-bias is typically non-absolute, and is more easily outweighed in the case of positive events. We connect this result to the normative debate over future-bias. (shrink)

Susanne Langer’s idea of the primary apparition of music involves a dichotomy between two kinds of temporality: ‘felt time’ and ‘clock time’. For Langer, musical time is exclusively felt time, and in this sense, music is ‘time made audible’. However, Langer also postulates a ‘strong suspension thesis’: the swallowing up of clock time in the illusion of felt time. In this essay, we take issue with the ‘strong suspension thesis’, its philosophic foundation and its implications. We argue that this thesis (...) is overstated and misdirecting insofar as it purports to describe what we experience when we hear music with understanding, and that it rests on a contested presupposition concerning the conceptual primacy of memory-time. (shrink)

The past is deeply important to many of us. But our concern about history can seem puzzling and needs justification. After all, the past cannot be changed: we can help the living needy, but the tears we shed for the long dead victims of past tragedies help no one. Attempts to justify our concern about history typically take one of two opposing forms. It is assumed either that such concern must be justified in instrumental or otherwise self-centered and present-centered terms (...) or that our interest in history must be utterly disinterested and pursued for its own sake. But neither approach can fully explain, or justify, our concern about the past. I propose a third approach, on which the past matters because it contains much that is of value—all those past people and the things they did or had endured—and this value calls for our fitting response. In short: the significance of the past is past significance. (shrink)

Will it rain tomorrow? Will there be a sea battle tomorrow? Will my death be painful? Wondering about the future plays a central role in our cognitive lives. It is integral to our inquiries, our planning, our hopes, and our fears. The aim of this paper is to consider various accounts of future contingents and the implications that they have for wondering about the future. I argue that reflecting on the nature of wondering about the future supports an Ockhamist account (...) of future contingents according to which many of them are true. Alternative accounts which maintain that no future contingents are true, either by claiming that they are all false or by claiming that they are neither true nor false, face difficulties concerning why it is appropriate to wonder about them. Reflecting on wondering in general, and wondering about the future in particular, suggests that in wondering how the future will go, we implicitly assume that there is a determinate fact of the matter. After presenting an attractive account of interrogative attitudes that has been recently proposed by Jane Friedman and outlining some norms governing wondering, I argue that all accounts of future contingents except Ockhamism face difficulties concerning why it is appropriate to wonder about them. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new kind of explanation that we describe as ‘purely theoretical’. We first present an example, E, of what we take to be a case of purely theoretical explanation. We then show that the explanation we have in mind does not fit neatly into any of the existing categories of explanation. We take this to give us prima facie motivation for thinking that purely theoretical explanation is a distinctive kind of explanation. We then argue that it can (...) earn its keep via application to two existing literatures: the literature on how we explain the truth of true negative existential propositions and the literature on how we explain the truth of true propositions about the past. We reply to some possible concerns regarding the introduction of purely theoretical explanations. We conclude that there is nothing obviously wrong with them and explore the ramifications for particular debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

There have been very few studies of the Daoist conception of time in either the West or the East. The only explicit study on this topic in the English literature is David Chai’s (2014). Chai maintains that “human measured time” manifested in myriad things in the Daoist universe is merely a mental construction, whereas the authentic time is cosmological time, which consists of neither an A-series (which is ordered by non-reducible pastness, presentness, and futurity) nor a B-series (which is ordered (...) by earlier-than relations) but something without order and directionality. In this paper, I start with Daoist texts (i.e., Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi) about fundamental reality and time. I then explain and analyze Chai’s interpretations of these texts. Lastly, I argue that Chai’s interpretations violate an important Daoist principle. In addition, the idea that human measured time is merely a mental construction is not the best available interpretation of the texts. (shrink)

The influential apoha theory of concept formation of the seventh-century Buddhist Dharmakīrti stands as a philosophically powerful articulation of how language could work in the absence of real universals. In brief, Dharmakīrti argues that concepts are constructed through a goaloriented process that delimits the content of an experience by ignoring whatever does not conform to one's conditioned expectations. There are no real similarities that ground this process. Rather, a concept is merely what's left over once one has glossed over enough (...) of the differences between elements of one's awareness that one can judge the remainder to have the same effects as what one... (shrink)

This book is written to provide a comprehensive view of time from natural science point of view mainly. The understanding and insight presented here about time is both consolidation and “correction” of present views about time, as envisaged by the author. Critical opinions are expressed on the theories of relativity, time reversal and like cosmic and nuclear phenomenon. The absence of a universal mathematical time is stressed and presented. Time is viewed consequently and not cause of natural scientific processes or (...) systems. Time is also further classified as classical, quantum and cosmic times and equated with energy transformation and phase change of matter. Measurement of time and keeping of time are discussed. Discussion on time and mind gives an ancient Indian insight clubbed with concept of time as energy-transformation. This book is highly observational and analytical. -/- With these ideas about time, time and mind and their inter-relation, time-conscious and time transcendent states of mind are discussed making use of the Upanishads and Vedanta. -/- There is no final say about nature of time either by philosophers or scientists till now. Concept of time seems ever-evolving and fresh generations, both from philosophy and science provide fresh insight of time in respective fields. -/- Thus this book presents a fresh perspective of physical and psychological times and time sense; and time-consciousness and time-conscious states of mind. Time-transcendence is also discussed. -/- Wish scholars, philosophers, scientists and general public find this book interesting and helps to renew their ideas and insight of time and presentation of this understanding and insight enthuses them. (shrink)

In this article, I will be focusing specifically on cryopreservation and two of the American biotechnomedical tenets introduced by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John in their technocratic model of medicine: the “body as machine” and “death as defeat.” These axioms are embraced by both the biotechnomedical establishment as well as the cryopreservation communities when they discuss the future of humankind. In particular, I will be focusing on the political economy of cryopreservation as an embodiment of American neoliberalism—as well as (...) a Durkheimian death ritual—in the twenty-first century. Finally, I will theorize on a future populated by human beings from “the past” and the implications and consequences that may be caused by contemporary humans experiencing a temporal shift from traveling in deep time vis-à-vis cryopreservation. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено питанню культури часу в тибетському буддизмі. Як об’єкт дослідження обрано вчення про час – Калачакру та його традицію текстів. Проведено спробу культурологічного аналізу впливу доктрини Колеса Часу на всі сфери життя традиційної буддійської спільноти тибетського походження, зокрема прояви цього впливу у науковій думці, релігійній практиці, мистецтві. Акцентовано увагу на спільному ядрі буддійської та бонської версії походження вчення; складено хронологічну послідовність виникнення базових текстів і коментарів, виділено основні етапи поширення вчення; проведено огляд структури концепту часу та її кореляцію з (...) календарною культурою, що уособлює мала буддійська наука «чорних» і «білих» розрахунків. Як ілюстрацію практичного застосування Калачакри презентовано основні тексти із розрахунків традиційної тибетської астрології. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a problem for the realist with respect to the institutional sphere, and suggest a solution. Roughly, the problem lies in a contradiction that arises as soon as institutional contexts are allowed to influence the institutional profile of objects and events not only in the present, but also in the past. If such “retroactive enactments” are effective, in order to avoid contradiction the realist seems to have to accept the unpleasant conclusion that institutions can create a (...) past that has never been present. I will defend a solution which involves a distinction between temporal and atemporal types of institutional kinds that has, I maintain, independent interest. (shrink)

Across a wide range of cultural forms, including philosophy, cultural theory, literature and art, the figure of the clock has drawn suspicion, censure and outright hostility. In contrast, even while maps have been shown to be complicit with forms of domination, they are also widely recognised as tools that can be critically reworked in the service of more liberatory ends. This paper seeks to counteract the tendency to see clocks in this way, arguing that they have many more interesting possibilities (...) than they are usually given credit for. An analysis of approaches to clocks in continental philosophy critiques the way they have too often been dismissed as unworthy of further analysis, and argues that this dismissal is based upon an inadequate understanding of how clocks operate. Seeking to move towards more critical and curious approaches, the paper draws inspiration from critical cartography in order to call for the development of a ‘critical horology’ which would emphasise both the fundamentally political nature of clocks, and the potential for designing them otherwise. A discussion of temporal design provides a range of examples of how clocks might open up new horizons within the politics of time. (shrink)

The grounding objection to presentism rests on two premises: (i) every true proposition P has a truthmaker T, and (ii) some claims about the future and past are obviously true. However, if the future and past do not exist, there can be no truthmakers for future and past tensed expressions. Presentists tend not to challenge the premises of the objection. Instead they argue that the present contains all the truthmakers we need. Presentists should challenge the premises instead. First, finding truthmakers (...) in the present only results in the postulation of implausible and/or ethereal entities that ultimately fail to solve the grounding objection. Second, no manifestly absurd consequences follow from accepting the lack of truth-values for tensed expressions. Third, the grounding objection does not just require the assumption that for every truth there is a truthmaker, but also that for every truthmaker there is a truth. I show how one can deny the latter without denying the former. (shrink)

Scientific philosophy is that which is informed by science. It uses exact tools such as logic and mathematics and provides a framework for scientific activity to solve more general questions about nature, the language we use to describe it, and the knowledge we obtain thanks to it. Many of the scientific philosophy theories can be proven and evaluated using scientific evidence. In this paper, I focus on showing how several classical philosophy topics, such as the nature of space and time (...) or the dimensionality of the future, can be addressed philosophically using the tools from current astrophysics research and, in particular, from the study of black holes and gravitational waves. (shrink)

I describe a thought experiment in which an agent must choose between suffering a greater pain in the past or a lesser pain in the future. This case demonstrates that the ‘temporal value asymmetry’ – our disposition to attribute greater significance to future pleasures and pains than to past – can have consequences for the rationality of actions as well as attitudes. This fact, I argue, blocks attempts to vindicate the temporal value asymmetry as a useful heuristic tied to the (...) asymmetry of causation. Since the two standard arguments for the rationality of the temporal value asymmetry appeal to causal asymmetry and the passage of time respectively, the failure of the causal asymmetry explanation suggests that the B-theory, which rejects temporal passage, has substantial revisionary implications concerning our attitudes toward past and future experience. (shrink)

In recent European philosophy, and especially in Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, and Badiou, the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary, or between normality and “event,” has played a very prominent role. In the present paper, I raise a challenge to this distinction, a challenge inspired by Deleuze’s conception of repetition and difference. Is it not the case that every occurrence in some ways reproduces and in some ways deviates from the past, such that nothing is entirely extraordinary and nothing completely (...) normal? The purpose of the paper is to examine whether the ordinary/extraordinary distinction—or the notion of event, respectively—can be defended against this challenge, i.e., whether it can be given a rigorous definition. Drawing on and departing from the named philosophers, I show that there are three alternative responses—the route of subjective experience, of transcendence, and of negation—and assess their respective merits. (shrink)

Each of us experiences two conflicting attitudes towards time. On the one hand, we all, at least to some degree, look ahead towards the future. On the other hand, we sometimes feel like we ought to live in the present, without this concern about the future. Derek Parfit claims that we would be happier if we lacked our focus on the future: we would not be sad when good things were in the past, we could take life’s pleasures as they (...) come, and we would have fewer reasons to regret aging and death. Given his emphasis on the future as a philosophical problem, Kierkegaard seems especially challenged by Parfit’s claims. I argue that a response to Parfit’s challenges can be found in Kierkegaard’s discourses on the lily of the field and the bird of the air. Though not often read philosophically, these discourses also contribute to Kierkegaard’s philosophy of time. They can provide readers of Kierkegaard with a response to Parfit’s challenges by proffering a way to care for the future while living in the present. To defend this thesis, my first chapter recounts Parfit’s challenges and extant responses by readers of Kierkegaard to them. Chapters Two and Three develop Kierkegaard’s metaphysics of time by working through The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments. The former chapter emphasizes Kierkegaard’s focus on the eschatological future while showing how Kierkegaard can contribute to contemporary debates within the philosophy of time. The latter considers Kierkegaard’s Christology and Trinitarian theology by working through Kierkegaard’s understanding of the past event of the incarnation. The fourth and fifth chapters discuss the ethical implications of Kierkegaard’s metaphysics of time through readings of Christian Discourses and Works of Love. Chapter Four contains my account of the attitude towards time Kierkegaard exhorts us to adopt: facing away from the future and towards the work we are called to do in the present. Chapter Five concludes by discussing the implications of this account for the ways we hope for and love our neighbors. (shrink)

John Ellis McTaggart defended an idealistic view of time in the tradition of Hegel and Bradley. His famous paper makes two independent claims (McTaggart1908): First, time is a complex conception with two different logical roots. Second, time is unreal. To reject the second claim seems to commit to the first one, i.e., to a pluralistic account of time. We compare McTaggarts views to the most important concepts of time investigated in physics, neurobiology, and philosophical phenomenology. They indicate that a unique, (...) reductionist account of time is far from being plausible, even though too many conceptions of time may seem unsatisfactory from an ontological point of view. (shrink)

In this paper I present a problem for the conventionalist regarding temporal metrics, and I defend an objectivist position on the ground of its explanatory force. Roughly, the conventionalist has it that there is no fact of the matter with respect to the truth or falsity of judgments of the kind “event e1 lasted as long as event e2”, while the objectivist thinks that they are grounded in objective features of space-time. I argue that, by positing grounds for judgments of (...) relative temporal length, the objectivist gains an explanatory force that the conventionalist position lacks. (shrink)

What might early Buddhist teachings offer neuroscience and how might neuroscience inform contemporary Buddhism? Both early Buddhist teachings and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the conditioning of our cognitive apparatus and brain plays a role in agency that may be either efficacious or non-efficacious. Both consider internal time to play a central role in the efficacy of agency. Buddhism offers an approach that promises to increase the efficacy of agency. This approach is found in five early Buddhist teachings that are re-interpreted (...) here with a view to explaining how they might be understood as a dynamic basis for ‘participatory will’ in the context of existing free will debates and the neuroscientific work of Patrick Haggard. These perspectives offer Buddhism and neuroscience a basis for informing each other as the shared themes of: cognition is dynamic and complex/aggregate based, being dynamic, cognition lacks a fixed basis of efficacy, and efficacy of cognition may be achieved by an understanding of the concept of dynamic: as harmony and efficiency and by means of Buddha-warranted processes that involve internal time. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that our concept of time is a functional concept. We argue that our concept of time is such that time is whatever it is that plays the time role, and we spell out what we take the time role to consist in. We evaluate this proposal against a number of other analyses of our concept of time, and argue that it better explains various features of our dispositions as speakers and our practices as agents.

Research on temporal comparison has shown that people dissociate themselves from their past to attain a positive self view. Social comparison research has demonstrated that the distinctness of contextually activated information determines whether a recalled self exerts assimilation or contrast effects on the current self. However, hardly any study addressed individual differences. Also, very little is known about whether the ease or difficulty to date past events and experiences influences current self-judgments. We present a new scale capturing the degree of (...) the current self time extension. Three studies support the notion that temporal self-extension determines how past selves are accessed and processed, regarding both the abstractness with which self-knowledge is retrieved and the experienced temporal distance to the past. These findings have important implications for temporal as well as social comparison processes. (shrink)

Zur Aufklärung der vielschichtigen Beziehungen zwischen Lebenswelt und Physik diskutiere ich die für die beiden Erfahrungsweisen jeweils typischen Konzeptualisierungen von Zeit. Nach einer Einleitung beginne ich mit der Analyse der subjektiven und objektiven lebensweltlichen Zeitformen. Anschließend erörtere ich im dritten Abschnitt das Verhältnis von lebensweltlichen und physikalischen Elementen der Weltzeit. Vier physikalische Zeitverständnisse stelle ich in ihrer Differenz zur lebensweltlichen Auffassung im vierten Abschnitt dar. Historisch hat sich die generelle Tendenz zur Vergrößerung dieser Differenz fortgesetzt, ohne dass schon Instanzen zur (...) Vermittlung der divergierenden Begriffe entstanden wären. Vor diesem Hintergrund plädiere ich im abschließenden Teil für eine plurale Begrifflichkeit. (shrink)

The central issue here concerns whether Being as explored by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time is constituted spatiotemporally. As such this project has two interlinked objectives. One objective is to supply conceptually plausible answers to Heidegger’s unanswered questions regarding the temporality of Being, which he raised at the very end of Being and Time. In response I argue that each individual human being is constituted as a Space-Time-Event-Motion (STEM) containment-field embodied entity. Heidegger situates Dasein (human existence) in a temporal (...) stream moving towards the nothingness of death but all the while separating being and time as two distinct phenomena rather than coexistent. I demonstrate why this was a crucial error in Heidegger’s thinking. The second objective deals with the sense of authentic being developed by Heidegger. The spatiotemporal nature of one’s life for Heidegger is understood from the standpoint of Being-in-the-world, as an engaged participant, coexistent with the world, so that contextually it is through this engagement in recognition of this facticity or thrownness that one comes to recognise one’s own authentic self. Somewhat problematic is the coexistent phenomenological recognition that one does not live in isolation and as such one may question what of the contingent, constraining and influencing factors that shape one’s sense of self particularly against the backdrop of self-other relations. This project is situated methodologically within Process Philosophy, and it is from this perspective that draws attention to the role of human agency in which individuals are spatiotemporally construed in terms of Space-Time-Event-Motion (STEM) entities. (shrink)

In the final chapter of his book, The View from Nowhere , the American philosopher, Thomas Nagel, writes as follows about death: We do not regard the period before we were born in the same way we regard the prospect of death, yet most of the things that can be said about death are equally true of the former. Lucretius thought this showed that it was a mistake to regard death as an evil. But I believe it is an example (...) of a more general future-past asymmetry... [Derek] Parfit has explored the asymmetry in connection with other values such as... pain. The fact that a pain is in prospect rather than in the past has a very great effect on our attitude toward it, and this effect cannot be regarded as irrational... [the former asymmetry] can't be accounted for in terms of some other difference between past and future nonexistence, any more than the asymmetry in the case of pain can be accounted for in terms of some other differences between past and future pains, which makes the latter worse than the former. Nagel is maintaining in this quote that it is rational for a person to view pains which he is apt to experience in the future in a manner different from the way in which he views pains which he has experienced in the past. Nagel is saying that it is rational for a person to think of his future pains as more undesirable than his past ones. And Nagel claims that there is a similar asymmetry between a rational person's attitude towards a past in which he did not exist and a time in the future when he will not exist. In Nagel's view, just as a rational person will think of pains which he will experience as more undesirable than pains which he had in the past, he will think of his not existing in the future as much more undesirable than his not having existed in the past. (shrink)

The Emergic Cognitive Model (ECM) is a unified computational model of visual filling-in based on the Emergic Network architecture. The Emergic Network was designed to help realize systems undergoing continuous change. In this thesis, eight different filling-in phenomena are demonstrated under a regime of continuous eye movement (and under static eye conditions as well). -/- ECM indirectly demonstrates the power of unification inherent with Emergic Networks when cognition is decomposed according to finer-grained functions supporting change. These can interact to raise (...) additional emergent behaviours via cognitive re-use, hence the Emergic prefix throughout. Nevertheless, the model is robust and parameter free. Differential re-use occurs in the nature of model interaction with a particular testing paradigm. -/- ECM has a novel decomposition due to the requirements of handling motion and of supporting unified modelling via finer functional grains. The breadth of phenomenal behaviour covered is largely to lend credence to our novel decomposition. -/- The Emergic Network architecture is a hybrid between classical connectionism and classical computationalism that facilitates the construction of unified cognitive models. It helps cutting up of functionalism into finer-grains distributed over space (by harnessing massive recurrence) and over time (by harnessing continuous change), yet simplifies by using standard computer code to focus on the interaction of information flows. Thus while the structure of the network looks neurocentric, the dynamics are best understood in flowcentric terms. Surprisingly, dynamic system analysis (as usually understood) is not involved. An Emergic Network is engineered much like straightforward software or hardware systems that deal with continuously varying inputs. Ultimately, this thesis addresses the problem of reduction and induction over complex systems, and the Emergic Network architecture is merely a tool to assist in this epistemic endeavour. -/- ECM is strictly a sensory model and apart from perception, yet it is informed by phenomenology. It addresses the attribution problem of how much of a phenomenon is best explained at a sensory level of analysis, rather than at a perceptual one. As the causal information flows are stable under eye movement, we hypothesize that they are the locus of consciousness, howsoever it is ultimately realized. (shrink)

One of Julian Barbour’s main aims is to solve the problem of time that appears in quantum geometrodynamics (QG). QG involves the application of canonical quantization procedure to the Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity. The problem of time arises because the quantization of the Hamiltonian constraint results in an equation that has no explicit time parameter. Thus, it appears that the resulting equation, as apparently timeless, cannot describe evolution of quantum states. Barbour attempts to resolve the problem by allegedly eliminating (...) time from his interpretation of QG. In order to evaluate the efficacy of his solution, it is necessary to ascertain in what sense time has been eliminated from his theory. I proceed to do so by developing a form of conceptual analysis that is applicable to the concept of time in physical theories and applying this analysis to Barbour’s account. (shrink)

This article argues that the causal loops that occur in some time-travel scenarios and in certain solutions of the theory of relativity are no more mysterious than the infinitely descending causal chains familiar from Newtonian mechanics.

The publication of Frege’s Begriffsschrift in 1879 forever altered the landscape for many Western philosophers. Here, Sebastian Rödl traces how the Fregean influence, written all over the development and present state of analytic philosophy, led into an unholy alliance of an empiricist conception of sensibility with an inferentialist conception of thought. -/- According to Rödl, Wittgenstein responded to the implosion of Frege’s principle that the nature of thought consists in its inferential order, but his Philosophical Investigations shied away from offering (...) an alternative. Rödl takes up the challenge by turning to Kant and Aristotle as ancestors of this tradition, and in doing so identifies its unacknowledged question: the relation of judgment and truth to time. Rödl finds in the thought of these two men the answer he urges us to consider: the temporal and the sensible, and the atemporal and the intelligible, are aspects of one reality and cannot be understood independently of one another. In demonstrating that an investigation into the categories of the temporal can be undertaken as a contribution to logic, Rödl seeks to transform simultaneously our philosophical understanding of both logic and time. (shrink)

This paper provides a tense analysis of the future marker in a future/nonfuture system drawing data from Rukai. By examining its interaction with negation, aspectual markers and modals, this study argues that the future marker in a future/nonfuture system can be a real tense.

Godel's and Tarski's theorems were inspired by paradoxes: the Richard paradox, the Liar. Godel, in the 1951 Gibbs lecture argued from his metatheoretical results for a metaphysical claim: the impossibility of reducing, both, mathematics to the knowable by the human mind and the human mind to a finite machine (e.g. the brain). So Godel reasoned indirectly from paradoxes for metaphysical theses. I present four metaphysical theses concerning mechanism, reductive physicalism and time for the only purpose of suggesting how it could (...) be argued for them directly from paradoxical sentences. (shrink)

G. H. von Wright proposed that a temporal interval exemplifies a real contradiction if at least one part of any division of this interval involves the presence of contradictorily related (though non-simultaneous) states. In connection with intervals, two negations must be discerned: 'does not hold at an interval' and 'fails throughout an interval'. Von Wright did not distinguish the two. As a consequence, he made a mistake in indicating how to use his logical symbolism to express the notion of real (...) contradiction. The present paper aims to reconstruct and philosophically motivate von Wright's argument for the possibility of real contradictions. (shrink)

A construção de “existe” como um predicado de primeiraordem ou real é defendida contra a ortodoxia prevalente.

This volume presents selected essays from the 13th triennial conference of the International Society for the Study of Time: "Time: Limits and Constraints.