Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the (...) manipulation of mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

Cryopreservation of human embryos remains, in many jurisdictions, a critical component of the use of the technology of in vitro fertilisation in assisted reproduction. However, although the reasons for the freezing of reproductive material—such as cost effectiveness and reducing risks of IVF—are a constant across jurisdictions, the desirable length of storage remains subject to ongoing regulatory debate. Internationally embryo storage limits are variable. This article features data from a recent Australian research project which explores individual attitudes, desires and understandings of (...) law of IVF patients who had or who have embryos in storage. This article uses interviews from the study to argue that storage limits, like any apparently neutral regulatory tool, apply unequally causing unintended physical, mental and emotional harm—particularly to women. This analysis of storage limits exposes the interaction of time, science and law to create, apply and enforce norms and practices of ‘natural’ embryo storage, suggesting that the imposition of inflexible legislative restrictions upon embryo storage are socially contingent and value laden rather than ‘natural’ or ‘scientific’. This outcome has relevance to wider debates over assisted reproduction policies, suggesting that legal frameworks should adopt more flexibility in application to the patients who use this technology. (shrink)

Positing representations and operations on them as a way of explaining behavior was one of the major innovations of the cognitive revolution. Neuroscience and biology more generally also employ representations in explaining how organisms function and coordinate their behavior with the world around them. In discussions of the nature of representation, theorists commonly differentiate between the vehicles of representation and their content—what they denote. Many contentious debates in cognitive science, such as those pitting neural network models against symbol processing accounts, (...) have focused on the types of vehicles proposed for mental representation and whether they have the appropriate structure to succeed in bearing their contents. Philosophers, in contrast, have focused their debates on content and the particular way in which vehicles might bear content—that is, the process of representing rather than the format of representations. I will offer a novel answer to the question of how it is that a representation has content by focusing on the architecture of representation. My proposal is that representations occur in a particular type of mechanism—one in which a control system regulates a plant—and that we can gain traction on cognitive systems of representation by considering how this works in physical systems more generally. (shrink)

It is platitudinous to say that whenever we try to read some ancient text or interpret some theory distant in space and/or time, we employ contemporary tools of analysis, contemporary techniques of modeling. Even while building theories, theoreticians (philosophers and scientists alike) are found to take help from the technology of the time. Aristotle, for example, had a wax-tablet view of memory. Leibniz used the model of a clock to explain the harmonious universe. Freud used a hydraulic model of (...) the flow of libido, and the telephone switchboard model guided psychologists while they were theorizing on intelligence. Nearer to our time, we have seen physicists explaining the structure of an atom by the model of the .. (shrink)

This article examines the role of time as a methodological tool and pathological focus of clinical psychiatry and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. Contextualizing ‘psychopathologies of time’ developed by practitioners in Europe and North America with reference to the temporal theories implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of durée, it illuminates how depression, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aphasia were understood to be symptomatic of an altered or disturbed (...) ‘time-sense’. Drawing upon a model of temporal synthesis whereby in healthy individuals, a subjective temporal sense ( Ichzeit, durée, or personal lifetime) was perceived and understood in relation to objective time frameworks ( Weltzeit, clock-time, or quantitative time models like historical chronology), clinicians argued that mentally ill patients were unable to synthesize Ichzeit and Weltzeit, using variations in this disturbance to define specific pathological conditions. (shrink)

Previous research has reported that ethical values of business students are lower than those of their peers in other majors. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a self-selection bias with respect to ethical values exists among students enrolled as business majors when compared with students planning to enter the engineering profession. Engineering students are exposed to a similar technical orientation in academic curricula and also supply the market for managers.A survey instrument was administered to 195 students enrolled (...) in undergraduate business and engineering programs and a graduate business program. The research instrument measured how business and engineering students perceive their own ethical beliefs and actions and how they perceived the ethical beliefs and actions of their peers. (shrink)

O artigo traz resultados de uma investigação de mestrado que teve por objetivo pesquisar as concepções de um grupo de professores a respeito das funções que os mesmos exercem frente à sociedade contemporânea. Partiu-se da premissa de que suas concepções guardam relação com suas práticas educativas e pedagógicas. Trata-se de uma pesquisa desenvolvida na perspectiva qualitativa, com cinquenta e um professores que atuam em seis escolas estaduais da cidade de Ponta Grossa-PR. Elegeu-se como aporte teórico autores que tratam da formação (...) de professores e da profissão docente, como Freire, Imbernón, Ens e Behrens, Tozetto, Sacristán e Tedesco. Os dados foram coletados por meio de questionários, categorizados e analisados seguindo os pressupostos na Análise de Conteúdo. Três categorias foram configuradas a partir de significantes presentes nas respostas dos professores participantes: Categoria I – Professor como um sujeito transformador: educação em uma forma ampla, Categoria II – Professor como profissional do conhecimento, e Categoria III – Professor enquanto sujeito que desempenha vários papéis sociais. Essas categorias nos possibilitaram inferir que as concepções dos professores em relação ao seu papel na sociedade contemporânea vão além da função social da escola, pois centram-se primeiramente na figura de um profissional transformador do mundo; seguida da noção de profissional do conhecimento e, por fim, da ideia de um profissional que desempenha vários papéis sociais. A pesquisa também apontou uma necessária redefinição da profissão docente para que os professores assumam novas competências profissionais na contemporaneidade. Palavras-chave: Profissão docente. Função dos professores. Sociedade contemporânea. Concepções. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to introduce Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences’ thematic issue on disordered temporalities. The authors begin by discussing the main reason for the neglect of temporal experience in present-day psychiatric nosologies, mainly, its reduction to clock time. Methodological challenges facing research on temporal experience include addressing the felt sense of time, its structure, and its pre-reflective aspects in the life-world setting. In the second part, the paper covers the contributions to the thematic issue concerning (...) temporal experience in anxiety, depression, mania, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, and in recovery from psychosis. The authors argue in favor of integrative and cross-disciplinary approaches. In conclusion, they present time as a significant aspect of human suffering. (shrink)

In ‘Kant's Refutation of Idealism’ (Noûs, 47), I defend a version of the Refutation, pioneered by Paul Guyer inKant and the Claims of Knowledge, whose core idea is that the only way that one can know the order of one's own past experiences, except in certain rare cases, is by correlating them with the successive states of perceived external objects that caused the experiences. Andrew Chignell has offered a probing critique of my reconstruction of Kant's argument (Philosophical Quarterly, 60), and (...) I have responded (Philosophical Quarterly, 61). In a rebuttal of my response, Chignell raises three new objections (Philosophical Quarterly, 61). My purpose in this paper is to reply to these. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass (...) states of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

It is widely held in contemporary philosophy of mind that states with underived representational content are ipso facto psychological states. This view—the Content View—underlies a number of interesting philosophical projects, such as the attempt to pick out a psychological level of explanation, to demarcate genuinely psychological from non-psychological states, and to limn the class of states with phenomenal character. The most detailed and influential theories of underived representation in philosophy are the tracking theories developed by Fodor, Dretske, Millikan and others. (...) Tracking theorists initially hoped to ‘naturalize’ underived representation by showing that although it is distinctively psychological it is not irreducibly so, yet they ended up developing theories of representation that by their own lights don’t pick out a distinctively psychological phenomenon at all. Burge sets out to develop a theory of underived representation that does pick out a distinctively psychological phenomenon. His theory promises to vindicate the Content View and the various philosophical projects that depend on it. In this paper I argue that Burge’s theory dementalizes representation for the same reason tracking theories do: These theories hold that representations are states with underived accuracy conditions, yet such states are found in all sorts of mindless systems, like plants. (shrink)

Voluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological (RPs). With spontaneous acts involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins at about200 ms. Control experiments, in which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of any perceived event.

The question of how to conceive and represent the context of work is explored from the theoretical perspective of distributed cognition. It is argued that to understand the office work context we need to go beyond tracking superficial physical attributes such as who or what is where and when and consider the state of digital resources, people’s concepts, task state, social relations, and the local work culture, to name a few. In analyzing an office more deeply, three concepts are especially (...) helpful: entry points, action landscapes, and coordinating mechanisms. An entry point is a structure or cue that represents an invitation to enter an information space or office task. An activity landscape is part mental construct and part physical; it is the space users interactively construct out of the resources they find when trying to accomplish a task. A coordinating mechanism is an artifact, such as a schedule or clock, or an environmental structure such as the layout of papers to be signed, which helps a user manage the complexity of his task. Using these three concepts we can abstract away from many of the surface attributes of work context and define the deep structure of a setting—the invariant structure that many office settings share. A long-term challenge for context-aware computing is to operationalize these analytic concepts. (shrink)

Duration distortions familiar from trauma present an apparent counterexample to what we might call the naive view of duration perception. I argue that such distortions constitute a counterexample to naiveté only on the assumption that we perceive duration absolutely. This assumption can seem mandatory if we think of the alternative, relative view as limiting our awareness to the relative durations of perceptually presented events. However, once we recognize the constant presence of a stream of non-perceptual conscious mental activity, we (...) can provide an attractive, purely relative account of temporal distortions quite consistent with the naive view. I also consider (and reject) a second empirical challenge to the naive view arising from the so-called ‘oddball effect’. I conclude by tentatively pointing to further empirical data, traditionally accounted for in terms of an internal clock model of timing, which, I suggest, may be understood more illuminatingly by appeal to the idea that we perceive duration in part relative to concurrent non-perceptual mental activity. (shrink)

The influence of imagery on perception depends on the content of the mental image. Sixty-three students responded to the location of the 2 hands of a clock while visualizing the correct or an incorrect clock. Reaction time was shorter with valid cueing. Could this have resulted from visual acquisition strategies such as planning visual saccades or shifting covert attention? No. in this study, a crucial control condition made participants look at rather than visualize the cue. Acquisition strategies (...) should have affected equally both types of cueing, but we observed that the effect of the visual cue was smaller and limited to a particular subcase in which one expects visual acquisition strategies. Thus, what matters is the similarity of the content of the mental image with the visual scene. In addition, an interaction involving the hand used for responding supports the notion that composite imagery is lateralized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical ExperienceDavid BakerHarold E. Fiske, Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical Experience. (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).Building on several earlier publications on music and the mind (1990, 1993, 1996, 2004), Harold Fiske offers Understanding Musical Understanding. This is a well-referenced piece that outlines the thinking of various authors (for example, Crowder, (...) 19931; Huron, 2006;2 Snyder, 20073). Furthermore, as Fiske meticulously constructs his case, it draws in psychologists such as Carl Seashore and philosophers like Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer. All this suggests an author of great expertise and wide appeal.Fiske begins to build his argument by discussing musical cognition in terms of ‘time’ (Chapter 2) and ‘shape’ (Chapter 3) returning to these themes in greater detail in Chapter 6. It may seem axiomatic that music is perceived structurally and through time. Yet, as the author mentions, the capacity for someone to designate musical form is no way in which to illustrate systematically the workings of musical understanding. This happens swiftly and unceasingly in the course of a person’s musical encounter. It is commonplace, too, for musicians and listeners to allude to visual imagery and shape when describing music (for example, ‘high [End Page 204] and low pitches,’ ‘a texture that is dense or thin,’ or ‘an angular melody’). Fiske contributes a plausible explanation of musical shape:... the perceived shape of music can only be the outcome of a construction (not reconstruction or ‘copy’) calculated on the part of the neural network mechanisms… The ‘reality’ of a musical-auditory image is likely a result of imposing a three-dimensioned visual perspective on an inherently unstructured (invisible, tasteless, intangible, and otherwise unknowable) transitory experience. This is the only means the brain has for making sense of a sound event. What it seems to do is: identify relevant cues, piece the cues together into patterns that can be retained (in the echoic memory) long enough for brain mechanisms to examine and create the sense that we can ‘look’ at music by invoking principles borrowed from vision, and then creating the impression of an auditory ‘object.’ The ‘object’ seems complete and multidimensioned but is, however, only remotely related to what we hear during the slit-like limitations of the perceptual ‘now.’(p. 56).Nonetheless, the manner in which we communicate musical perception with terms borrowed from vision does not inconclusively evidence the same mechanisms of human thought on receiving visual or, on the other hand, musical stimuli. Use of such language may only represent an opportune mode of expressing phenomena to which we have no dedicated vocabulary. Fiske argues that musical understanding is part of the human organism’s genetically-inherited capacity to construe (rapidly invent) patterns from sonic stimuli thus making sense of temporal experience. This process, he argues, is part of the brain’s facility to determine quickly the source, kind and meaning of stimuli for the organism’s immediate safety and survival; the mental processes involved are regulated by ‘brain time’ as opposed to ‘clock time.’ Brain time is “... a rapid, micro-temporal, flexible-variable scheme...” (p. 8) in contrast to pre- and externally-determined ‘clock time.’Musical memory is addressed in Chapter 4 in tandem with ‘pattern constructs.’ Pattern constructs, Fiske explains, are ‘chunks’ of learned musical experience encoded in ‘brain time’ as multi-dimensional, unidirectional entities (p. 63). There is evidence of the ‘inner replay’ of learned events such as these.4 Incoming musical information is perceived, though, according to the listener’s cognitive context, and perhaps retroactively linked for ‘best fit’ rather than being ‘measured’ against fixed expectations and pre-established contextual information, say, about genre. The degree of ‘best fit’ either confirms or modifies assumed context. An important point Fiske makes, then, is that “... a misfit... between incoming information and the presumed context” evidences learning (p. 84).5 Since a ‘misfit’ triggers modifications to the cognitive context by which a person discerns music, it enriches his or her musical knowledge and understanding. [End Page 205] Consequently, Fiske sets a challenge for music education: “... how [do we] design teaching... (shrink)

We present a scenario describing how time emerges in the framework of weak quantum theory. In a process similar to the emergence of time in quantum cosmology, time arises after an epistemic split of an undivided unus mundus as a quality of the individual conscious mind. Synchronization with matter and other mental systems is achieved by entanglement correlations. In the course of its operationalization, time loses its original quality and the time of physics as measured by clocks appears. avoided/explicated.

Occasionally, people are called upon to estimate probabilities after an event has occurred. In hindsight, was this an outcome we could have expected? Could things easily have turned out differently? One strategy for performing post hoc probability judgements would be to mentally turn the clock back and reconstruct one's expectations before the event. But if asked about the probability of an alternative, counterfactual outcome, a simpler strategy is available, based on this outcome's perceived closeness to what actually happened. The (...) article presents five studies exploring the relationship between counterfactual closeness and counterfactual probability. The first study indicates that post hoc probabilities typically refer to the counterfactual rather than the factual outcome. Studies 2-5 show that physical, temporal, or conceptual proximity play a decisive role for post hoc probability assessments of counterfactual events. When margins are narrow, the probabilities of, for instance, winning a match (when losing), and of losing (when actually winning) may even be rated higher than the corresponding probabilities of what really happened. Closeness is also more often referred to, and rated to be a better reason for believing there is a ''good chance" of the counterfactual rather than of the factual result occurring. Finally, the closeness of the alternative outcome in success and failure stories is shown to be significantly correlated to its rated probability. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass (...) states of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The first solid bit of argumentation you get in Plato's Phaedo goes something like this: Whatever comes to be, comes to be from its opposite. If at a certain time t a given thing a begins to be F, before that time t it must have been non-F. Wherever a pair of predicates, F and G, are genuine contradictories; where, that is, they stand to each other in the same relation as F stands in to non-F; it is necessarily true (...) that if a began to be F at t before then a was G. The only trouble comes from the difficulty of finding substitutes for F and G that people will allow to be genuine contradictories. It the butter began to be soft at four o'clock, we may suggest, before four it was hard. A tiresome opponent will retort that there is a state in which butter cannot properly be called either hard or soft. We try again: If Ann began to be asleep at eight, before eight she was awake; if my shirt became dirty on Tuesday, before Tuesday it was clean; if Bonzo died last week, before last week he was alive. And when the advocate of the borderline state reminds us of the various twilight areas of consciousness or cleanliness, we are reduced to legislation: “asleep” shall henceforth apply to every mental state short of complete wakefulness, “alive” to every condition of the body before the onset of putrefaction, “clean” to every shirt incapable of producing a certain measurable discoloration in the water in which it is washed. “Let F and G be contradictories”, we still guardedly maintain: “then if a comes to be F at time t, before time t a was G”. (shrink)

While philosophers have, for centuries, pondered upon the relation between mind and brain, neuroscientists have only recently been able to explore the connection analytically — to peer inside the black box. This ability stems from recent advances in technology and emerging neuroimaging modalities. It is now possible not only to produce remarkably detailed images of the brain’s structure (i.e. anatomical imaging) but also to capture images of the physiology associated with mental processes (i.e. functional imaging). We are able to (...) see how specific regions of the brain ‘light up’ when activities such as reading this book are performed, and how our neurons and their elaborate cast of supporting cells organize and coordinate their tasks. As demonstrated in the other chapters of this book, the mapping of the human mind (mostly by measuring regional changes in blood flow, initially by positron emission tomography (PET) and recently by functional magnetic resonance imaging or (fMRI)) has provided insight into the functional neuroanatomy of neuropsychiatric diseases. Amazingly, the idea that regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) is related intimately to brain function goes back more than a century. As is often the case in science, this idea was initially the result of unexpected observations. The Italian physiologist Angelo Mosso first expressed the idea while studying pulsations of the living human brain that keep pace with the heartbeat (Mosso, 1881). These brain pulsations can be observed on the surface of the fontanelles in newborn children. Mosso believed that they reflected blood flow to the brain. He observed similar pulsations in an adult with a post-traumatic skull defect over the frontal lobes. While studying this subject, a peasant named Bertino, Mosso observed a sudden increase in the magnitude of the ‘brain’s heart-beats’ when the church bells signalled 12 o’clock, the time for a required prayer. The changes in brain pulsations occurred independently of any change in pulsations in the forearm.. (shrink)

The first solid bit of argumentation you get in Plato's Phaedo goes something like this: Whatever comes to be, comes to be from its opposite . If at a certain time t a given thing a begins to be F , before that time t it must have been non- F . Wherever a pair of predicates, F and G , are genuine contradictories; where, that is, they stand to each other in the same relation as F stands in to (...) non- F ; it is necessarily true that if a began to be F at t before then a was G . The only trouble comes from the difficulty of finding substitutes for F and G that people will allow to be genuine contradictories. It the butter began to be soft at four o'clock, we may suggest, before four it was hard. A tiresome opponent will retort that there is a state in which butter cannot properly be called either hard or soft. We try again: If Ann began to be asleep at eight, before eight she was awake; if my shirt became dirty on Tuesday, before Tuesday it was clean; if Bonzo died last week, before last week he was alive. And when the advocate of the borderline state reminds us of the various twilight areas of consciousness or cleanliness, we are reduced to legislation: “asleep” shall henceforth apply to every mental state short of complete wakefulness, “alive” to every condition of the body before the onset of putrefaction, “clean” to every shirt incapable of producing a certain measurable discoloration in the water in which it is washed. “Let F and G be contradictories”, we still guardedly maintain: “then if a comes to be F at time t , before time t a was G ”. (shrink)

The kappa effect is a well-reported phenomenon in which spatial distance between discrete stimuli affects the perception of temporal distance demarcated by the corresponding stimuli. Here, we report a new phenomenon that we propose to designate as the lexical kappa effect in which word distance, a non-magnitude relationship of discrete stimuli that exists in the lexical space of the mental lexicon, affects the perception of temporal distance. A temporal bisection task was used to assess the subjective perception of the (...) time interval demarcated by two successively presented words. Word distance was manipulated by varying the semantic or phonological similarity between the two words. Results showed that the temporal distance between the two words was perceived to be shorter when the corresponding two words were lexically closer. We explain this effect within the internal clock framework by assuming faster detection of the word that terminated timing when it is preceded by a semantically or phonologically similar word. (shrink)

This thesis presents a novel theory of temporal experience. While time as measured by the clock is a perennially popular topic, the time of experience remains relatively neglected and poorly understood despite its centrality to our existence. This thesis therefore sets out to address the following questions: 1) How should we characterize experiential time and the experienced present? 2) How might such distinctively temporal experience arise in the first place? While the first of these is a “what is it (...) like” question, and thus in the realm of phenomenological analysis, the second is ostensibly closer to the realm of scientific inquiry in that it concerns an empirical phenomenon. The goal of this thesis is to synthesize plausible answers to both of these questions. As to the first question, there is already a lively debate ongoing in the philosophy of mind between various camps, each offering what they see as the most plausible analysis of the phenomenology of time. Regarding the second, there is an interdisciplinary investigation of mechanisms at various levels of abstraction, notably the levels of neurophysiology and information processing. This thesis proposes, among other contentions, that the time of experience is best characterized by a combination of retentional and extensional phenomenological analyses. This means the actual temporal extension of experience and its correlates determines, to some degree, the felt temporal character of experience. At the same time, perhaps the greater part of temporal phenomenology is determined by content: mental processes can be about temporal properties in addition to their primary contents and the way they are so partially determines the temporal character of experience as well. This analysis dovetails nicely with contemporary theories of consciousness that maintain the brain is fundamentally a complex predictive engine actively and adaptively guiding behavior. The thesis thus represents a multi-level framework for understanding the experience of time and the mechanisms underpinning it. It is my hope this perspective advances the debate on time-consciousness and can guide further work towards understanding this most fundamental aspect of our lives. (shrink)

Riassunto: Le “distorsioni” temporali paiono riguardare l’agentività umana in tutte le proprie manifestazioni. Da una prospettiva strutturale, l’azione si manifesta come un intreccio di processi che fondamentalmente comprende la formulazione di un’intenzione, l’esecuzione di un movimento e infine il processamento di un feedback che include gli effetti dell’azione. Lo studio dell’agentività umana ha incontrato molti ostacoli dovuti principalmente alla complessità dei processi mentali che accompagnano azioni specifiche. E tuttavia studi recenti hanno gettato luce sui processi mentali sottostanti l’azione. In questo (...) articolo intendo sostenere che, lungi dall’essere “distorsioni” temporali, le discrepanze tra tempo soggettivo e tempo oggettivo mostrano più profonde modalità soggettive inconsce di costituzione del tempo, che aggirano l’indagine scientifica e puntano direttamente alla costituzione fenomenologica di una rappresentazione del mondo coerente e dotata di significato, che non può essere ulteriormente ridotta mediante il riferimento al tempo oggettivo. Parole chiave: Soggettività; Tempo; Agentività; Distorsioni temporali; Esperienza Temporal Distorsions and Consciousness of Intentional Action: Temporal “distortions” seem to affect human agency in all its manifestations. From a structural point of view, action manifests itself as a plot of processes that essentially include the formulation of an intention, the execution of a motion, and, finally, processing feedback including the effects of the action. The study of human agency has encountered several obstacles which are mainly due to the complexity of mental processes that accompany specific actions. Yet recent studies have shed light on the mental processes underlying action. In my paper I argue that, far from being temporal “distortions”, mismatches between subjective time and objective time indicate deeper unconscious subjective modes of in-forming time, which bypass scientific exploration and point directly to the phenomenological constitution of a consistent and meaningful representation of the world, which cannot be further reduced by referring to clock time. Keywords: Subjectivity; Time; Agency; Temporal Distorsions; Experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crispin Sartwell SUBSTANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE: A THEORY OF POETRY Jean-Paul Sartre once said that what distinguishes the writer of poetry from the writer of prose is that the poet "considers words as things and not as signs."1 I think that this claim embodies a deep insight into the nature of poetry, and I want to develop it into a reasonably precise account of what poetry is. The immediate problem (...) that arises from Sartre's view is that it seems mysterious how anyone could regard words as objects without being fundamentally confused. For it is clear that Sartre thinks that the poet regards words as material objects. But a word, or a sequence of words such as a poem, is not a material object. A word or a poem can appear in many places at the same time; it can be inscribed, read, recited, or mentally traversed. The poem "itself" is not identical with any of these particular manifestations. I can burn my copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, but I cannot burn Shakespeare's sonnets; a poem is, in the phrase of Arthur Danto, "logically incombustible."2 Shakespeare's manuscript is lost; the sonnets live on. My recitation of a poem ends, say, at three o'clock, but the poem itself does not cease to exist at three o'clock. If identical objects cannot have divergent properties, then the poem is not identical with any of its particular manifestations. Nor can we identify a poem as the scattered, diffuse object consisting of all its inscriptions or recitations; to do so would be to identify the poem with a (perhaps massive) repetition of itself. A sonnet has fourteen lines, but the set of all the inscriptions ofShakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 246-259 Crispin Sartwell247 day" is an item with an extraordinarily large number oflines. The poem itself does not grow as the set of its inscriptions grows. The poem, to repeat, is not a material object; rather, it is that which all the manifestations of it have in common; it is the structure or sequence which all the inscriptions and recitations share in virtue of which they are inscriptions and recitations of the poem. Now I do not intend to tackle the ontological problems surrounding poetry in any full-fledged way; to do so would strand us in extremely rugged metaphysical terrain. The ontological status of a poem might be in some ways analogous to the ontological status of a number, a property, and other purportedly "abstract" objects. And one cannot distinguish works ofpoetry from works ofprose (and, again, the project here is to make such a distinction) ontologically. Moby Dick is logically incombustible, as are, discouragingly enough, government reports. I propose, then, to adopt a familiar way of talking about the poem itself in distinction from its inscriptions, recitations, and mental traversais; I shall term a poem a type of which there are tokens. The tokens are the inscriptions, recitations, and so forth; the type is what these inscriptions and recitations have in common. The type/token terminology was first adopted by Peirce, and has been taken up by Wollheim, among many others.3 In itself, such terminology does little to disperse various ontological problems, but I am going to proceed in the touching faith that such puzzles can eventually be solved, because the theory of poetry I will develop depends on some such distinction being made out. And though the theory could perhaps be reconstructed even on a fairly thoroughgoing nominalism, I am going to treat poems as abstract entities, because as far as I can see, nominalism of the type endorsed by Nelson Goodman, for example, introduces more difficulties than it solves. Goodman identifies inscriptions ofa poem (for example) as items which display sameness ofspelling, which, relative to a system of notation, correspond exactly with regard to the sequence of letters, spaces, and punctuation marks.4 Among other things, this makes poetry (or any linguistic item) impossible to translate into different languages; it even makes it impossible to update, say, The Canterbury Tales into contemporary spelling. Now in fact there are severe and special translation problems... (shrink)

My paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to categorize the different strands in the criticism of development. In the second part, I discuss the values which could give a sound direction to development.I distinguish five different kinds of criticism.- First, the Marxist inspired approach. Development is seen as the result of imperialism, the satellization of a periphery around and for the benefit of a center or a class in a center.- Second, the criticism of (...) the extreme left. According to it, development no longer has either subjects or ends. The anonymous industrial system feeds on itself.- Third, the Greens' criticism. Ecological considerations are becoming more and more intractable limits to development.- A fourth kind of criticism is the culturalist one : development tends to suppress the originalities of the world's different cultures.- Fifth, some critics reject the technical mastery of the universe and seek a more convivial and more receptive attitude. The two last criticisms are still more radical. But we cannot turn the clock back, our only choice is to limit and repair the damage development has already done. We must redirect it, not refuse it. In the second part of my paper, I indicate the direction develop- ment should take : an utilitarian direction, that is to say, a maximization of collective utilities within a plan. But I stress three shortcomings of such an approach which need to be corrected by entrenched funda- mental rights.- First, utilitarianism aims at collective benefit but can be blind to the distribution of costs and to the rights of persons and minorities.- Second, planning inevitably ignores those ends whose beneficial consequences cannot be factored in. For example, the health of the elderly is a dead end whereas the health of the labour force of the future is desirable for the stream of benefits it promises.- Third, our values change, so planning has to be a process of constant revision. A democratic process, founded on and protected by fundamental rights can counter these three shortcomings.- First, defending each person's rights is a way to limit sacrifices imposed on individuals in the name of a collective good or development.- Second, rights of association and political expression for the poorest ensure that they have a say in choosing social policies.- Third, the respect of each person's fundamental rights is an ultimate end and gives a sense of direction to all social policies. (shrink)

This is a book about time--about one's own journey through it and, more important, about enlarging the pleasure one takes in that journey. It's about memory of the past, hope and fear for the future, and how they color, for better and for worse, one's experience of the present. Ultimately, it's a book about freedom--freedom from despair of the clock, of the aging body, of the seeming waste of one's daily routine, the freedom that comes with acceptance and appreciation (...) of the human dimensions of time and of the place of each passing moment on life's bounteous continuum. For Robert Grudin, living is an art, and cultivating a creative partnership with time is one of the keys to mastering it. In a series of wise, witty, and playful meditations, he suggests that happiness lies not in the effort to conquer time but rather in learning "to bend to its curve," in hearing its music and learning to dance to it. Grudin offers practical advice and mental exercises designed to help the reader use time more effectively, but this is no ordinary self-help book. It is instead a kind of wisdom literature, a guide to life, a feast for the mind and for the spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Let Me Pay Taxes!Alessia MinicozziThe first memory I have of knowing that I was different was when I was five years old and a caseworker entered my house to verify that I existed.At the age of one and a half, I was diagnosed with a chronic disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Type II (SMA). This left me in need of constant care and, at times, hospitalizations. My whole life, (...) I’ve been confined to a wheelchair, and the disease has always affected me profoundly, on a physical and mental level. I have limited range of motion and strength in my arms, muscle weakness affects my speech and breathing, and, like a monkey on my back, SMA has been a constant reminder of my fragility and mortality.In order to comply with Pennsylvania’s disability requirements, a state–appointed caseworker had to make regular home visits to make sure my needs were being met under my parents’ care and that my parents were not lying about my medical needs. These visits would leave me confused and annoyed. I still remember the events that took place the first time a caseworker entered my house and the emotional impact it had on me.The time read 8:09 a.m. on my white clock radio. I wore my favorite pink satin nightgown. My mother came to lift me out of bed and enclose me in my robe. She whispered in my ear that a gentleman was here to meet me—he’d arrived early—and he wanted to ask me some questions. As my mother carried me down the flight of stairs and sat me in my wheelchair, I felt the man’s eyes on our every move. This strange man sat with a scrutinizing look and asked me if I live in this house and do I normally wake up so late? I quickly turned to my [End Page 210] mother and gave her a perplexed stare. Why was this person here at all, and what right did he have to inquire about me like this?Later, my mother would explain that the man was there to make sure that she was not lying when she asked the government for money to care for me. I endured countless visits from that caseworker over many years. Finally, I asked my mother, “When is this man going to stop visiting me and asking me the same questions?” She looked at me and tenderly replied that when my father finished his residency program, then we would have enough money to pay for all my care. I accepted this response and continued playing with my Barbie. Two years later, my father completed his residency program and the visits from the caseworker stopped.In eighth grade, I left an all disabled school and enrolled in a mainstream public school, which seemed odd to me. I asked my parents why the change in schools? My parents explained that they will not live forever and in order for me to live outside an institution, I will need a salary that is above average to pay for personal care. They went on to explain that the only way to accomplish this goal is to succeed in school and to perform better than everyone else. They informed me that because I use a wheelchair, prospective employers will view me as daunting and they may be less likely to hire me. They stressed that the only way to stand out above other non–disabled candidates is to excel in an academic environment. Mom and Dad have always ended the conversation by reassuring me that as long as they are alive, they will make sure I accomplish everything I set out to achieve and that I never feel alone.Since that conversation over twenty years ago, I had only one goal in mind: employment. The possibility of being institutionalized has always been my motivation for persevering through late nights of writing papers and studying for exams. As promised, my parents were the ones who proofread my papers and stayed up with me in order to help me to bed once I was done. When I graduated from the University of... (shrink)

The clock hypothesis of relativity theory equates the proper time experienced by a point particle along a timelike curve with the length of that curve as determined by the metric. Is it possible to prove that particular types of clocks satisfy the clock hypothesis, thus genuinely measure proper time, at least approximately? Because most real clocks would be enormously complicated to study in this connection, focusing attention on an idealized light clock is attractive. The present paper extends (...) and generalized partial results along these lines with a theorem showing that, for any timelike curve in any spacetime, there is a light clock that measures the curve’s length as accurately and regularly as one wishes. (shrink)

Cellular circadian clocks represent ancient anticipatory systems which co‐evolved with the first cells to safeguard their survival. Cyanobacteria represent one of the most ancient cells, having essentially invented photosynthesis together with redox‐based cellular circadian clocks some 2.7 billion years ago. Bioelectricity phenomena, based on redox homeostasis associated electron transfers in membranes and within protein complexes inserted in excitable membranes, play important roles, not only in the cellular circadian clocks and in anesthetics‐sensitive cellular sentience (awareness of environment), but also in the (...) coupling of single cells into tissues and organs of unitary multicellular organisms. This integration of cellular circadian clocks with cellular basis of sentience is an essential feature of the cognitive CBC‐Clock basis of cellular life. (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)

Somites are transient structures which represent the most overt segmental feature of the vertebrate embryo. The strict temporal regulation of somitogenesis is of critical developmental importance since many segmental structures adopt a periodicity based on that of the somites. Until recently, the mechanisms underlying the periodicity of somitogenesis were largely unknown. Based on the oscillations of c-hairy1 and lunatic fringe RNA, we now have evidence for an intrinsic segmentation clock in presomitic cells. Translation of this temporal periodicity into a (...) spatial periodicity, through somite formation, requires Notch signaling. While the Hox genes are certainly involved, it remains unknown how the metameric vertebrate axis becomes regionalized along the antero–posterior (AP) dimension into the occipital, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral domains. We discuss the implications of cell division as a clock mechanism underlying the regionalization of somites and their derivatives along the AP axis. Possible links between the segmentation clock and axial regionalization are also discussed. (shrink)

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis, and for the operational meaning of the metric field.

During the last decade, children have shown an increasing need for mental wellbeing interventions due to their anxiety and depression issues, which the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. Socially Assistive Robotics have been shown to have a great potential to support children with mental wellbeing-related issues. However, understanding how robots can be used to aid the measurement of these issues is still an open challenge. This paper presents a narrative review of child-robot interaction (cHRI) papers (IEEE ROMAN proceedings from (...) 2016–2021 and keyword-based article search using Google Scholar) to investigate the open challenges and potential knowledge gaps in the evaluation of mental wellbeing or the assessment of factors affecting mental wellbeing in children. We exploited the SPIDER framework to search for the key elements for the inclusion of relevant studies. Findings from this work (10 screened papers in total) investigate the challenges in cHRI studies about mental wellbeing by categorising the current research in terms of robot-related factors (robot autonomy and type of robot), protocol-related factors (experiment purpose, tasks, participants and user sensing) and data related factors (analysis and findings). The main contribution of this work is to highlight the potential opportunities for cHRI researchers to carry out measurements concerning children’s mental wellbeing. (shrink)

This paper aims at tracking down, by looking at late medieval and early modern discussions over the ontological status of artifacts, the main steps of the process through which nature became theorized on a mechanistic model in the early 17th century. The adopted methodology consists in examining how inventions such as mechanical clocks and automata forced philosophers to modify traditional criteria based on an intrinsic principle of motion and rest for defining natural beings. The paper studies different strategies designed in (...) the transitional period 1300–1600 for making these inventions compatible with classical definitions of nature and artifacts. In the first part of the paper, it is shown that, even if virtually all medieval philosophers acknowledged an ontological distinction between artifacts and natural beings, these different strategies demonstrate a growing concern about the consistency of the art/nature distinction. The next part of the paper studies how mechanical clocks, even before the Scientific Revolution, served as theoretical models for applying mechanistic views to different objects (be they cosmological, physical or biological). The epistemological function of clocks appears to stem from different factors (like the specific manufacturing of late medieval clocks as well as the evolution of 16th-century mechanics) that are listed in this second part of the paper. These factors, combined with the definitional issues raised by automata, explain that clocks became the symbol of a new approach to natural philosophy, characterized by the collapse of the art/nature distinction and the “mechanization of nature”. (shrink)

Circalunar clocks, which allow organisms to time reproduction to lunar phase, have been experimentally proven but are still not understood at the molecular level. Currently, a new generation of researchers with new tools is setting out to fill this gap. Our essay provides an overview of classic experiments on circalunar clocks. From the unpublished work of the late D. Neumann we also present a novel phase response curve for a circalunar clock. These experiments highlight avenues for molecular work and (...) call for rigor in setting up and analyzing the logistically complex experiments on circalunar clocks. Re‐evaluating classic experiments, we propose that (1) circalunar clocks in different organisms will have divergent mechanisms and physiological bases, (2) they may have properties very different from the well‐studied circadian clocks and (3) they may have close mechanistic and molecular relations to seasonal rhythms and diapause. (shrink)

1. Introduction. The germ of the clock paradox was contained in Einstein's fundamental paper on the special theory of relativity, where he declares that the retardation of a moving clock “still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide.” This remark soon gave rise to a criticism which was to play a prominent role in the discussions of the consistency of the theory (...) of relativity. It was charged that this theory allows the paradoxical conclusion that at the instant of the return of a moving clock U1 to its point of departure A, the time shown by Ul is both earlier and later than the corresponding reading of a clock U2 which has remained stationary at A during U1's journey. Critics based this contention on the following assumptions, for which they claimed the sanction of relativity: The relative motion of U1 and U2 is such that the kinematic process seen by an observer on one of these clocks is of the same character as that seen by an observer on the other, and this symmetry allows each of these two clocks to be used as a reference frame from which to describe the motion of the other, and there is reciprocity between these two reference frames such that in each of them, the moving clock must be slow upon returning to the stationary one. (shrink)

Adrian Heathcote and I agree that a stopped clock does not show—as the adage has it—the right time twice a day, but he thinks, as I do not, that it does show what time it stopped. To think that it does is to treat the position of its hands as evidence of its stopping at the time it did. Add to the justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge the requirement that the evidence on the basis of which the believer is justified (...) be evidence of what is believed in this sense, and you have the long-sought fourth condition to block Gettier cases. I argue that requiring that one’s evidence be evidence in this sense is incompatible with the fallibilism on which Gettier cases are predicated. (shrink)

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis (and, in particular, a recent purported proof thereof for light clocks), and for the operational meaning of the metric field. 1Introduction 2Fletcher's Theorem 2.1Maudlin on the clock hypothesis in special relativity 2.2Fletcher’s result in special relativity 2.3Fletcher’s theorem in general relativity (...) 3Electromagnetism and the Geometrical-Optical Limit 3.1Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetime 3.2The geometrical-optical limit 3.3Rotating spacetimes 3.4Aren’t Gödel spacetimes unphysical? 4The Clock Hypothesis and Chronogeometry 4.1Natural and mathematical observations 4.2Clock registry discord 4.3Chronogeometry 5Conclusion. (shrink)

There are a number of problematic features within the current treatment of time in physical theories, including the “timelessness” of the Universe as encapsulated by the Wheeler–DeWitt equation. This paper considers one particular investigation into resolving this issue; a conditional probability interpretation that was first proposed by Page and Wooters. Those authors addressed the apparent timelessness by subdividing a faux Universe into two entangled parts, “the clock” and “the remainder of the Universe”, and then synchronizing the effective dynamics of (...) the two subsystems by way of conditional probabilities. The current treatment focuses on the possibility of using a realistic clock system; namely, a coherent-state description of a damped harmonic oscillator. This clock proves to be consistent with the conditional probability interpretation; in particular, a standard evolution operator is identified with the position of the clock playing the role of time for the rest of the Universe. Restrictions on the damping factor are determined and, perhaps contrary to expectations, the optimal choice of clock is not necessarily one of minimal damping. (shrink)

Daylight is the primary cue used by circadian clocks to entrain to the day/night cycle so as to synchronize physiological processes with periodic environmental changes induced by Earth rotation.However, the temporal daylight pattern is not the same every day due to erratic weather fluctuations or regular seasonal changes. Then, how do circadian clocks operate properly in varying weather and seasons? In this paper, we discuss the strategy unveiled by recent studies of the circadian clock of Ostreococcus tauri, the smallest (...) free‐living eukaryotic organism. It combines mechanisms controlling light inputs and clock sensitivity, shaping both the dynamics of the core circadian oscillator and its forcing by light so as to ensure stable and precise synchronization in all weather and seasons.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays: Another place, another timer: Marine species and the rhythms of life Abstract. (shrink)