The aim of this paper is to show that the A-theorist's argument from experience is undermined by a commitment to ‘experiential punctivism' - the view that instantaneous experiences are metaphysically prior to durative ones. The experiences to which the A-theorist's argument appeals are those of processual events. For these experiences to constitute perceptions of temporal passage it would be necessary to perceive such processes qua processes; but, if experiential punctivism were true, this would be impossible. We could only ever perceive (...) those processes qua temporal variation, which merely amounts to an awareness of change as described by the B-theory. If there is such a phenomenon as the passing of time, it could not be an object of our experience. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on temporal experience offers generic models that are often assumed to apply to all sensory modalities. I show that the models serve as broad frameworks in which different aspects of cognitive science can be slotted and, thus, are beneficial to furthering research programs in embodied music cognition. Here I discuss a particular feature of temporal experience that plays a key role in such philosophical work: a distinction between the experience of succession and the mere succession of experiences. (...) I question the presupposition that there is such an evident, clear distinction and suggest that, instead, how the distinction is drawn is context-dependent. After suggesting a way to modify the philosophical models of temporal experience to accommodate this contextdependency, I illustrate that these models can fruitfully incorporate features of research projects in embodied musical cognition. To do so I supplement a modified retentionalist model with aspects of recent work that links bodily movement with musical perception (Godøy, 2006; 2010a; Jensenius, Wanderley, Godøy, and Leman, 2010). The resulting model is shown to facilitate novel hypotheses, refine the notion of context-dependency and point towards means of extending the philosophical model and an existent research program. (shrink)