This chapter summarizes Husserl's phenomenology of time consciousness and situates it in the larger context of late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century considerations about the psychology of temporal experience. Then, in an attempt to place it in a more contemporary context, it suggests an enactive interpretation of this phenomenology, first by extending Husserl's analysis of consciousness to bodily action, and, second, by considering the rethinking of the notion of primal impression suggested by Husserl himself. The intrinsic temporality, found (...) in bodily movement and action, manifests itself at both the sub‐personal and the personal levels of analysis. For Husserl, only because there is a Präsenzzeit, a temporally extended conscious act, can there be something like a specious present, a temporally extended sensed content. (shrink)

This article suggests that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex offers an important contribution to a feminist phenomenology of temporality. In contrast to readings of The Second Sex that focus on the notion of “becoming” as the main claim about the relation between “woman” and time, this article suggests that Beauvoir's discussion of temporality in volume II of The Second Sex shows that Beauvoir understands the temporality of waiting, or a passive present, to be an underlying (...) structure of women's existence and subordination. Accordingly, I argue that Beauvoir does not see “woman” as a mere becoming, as that which unfolds in time, but instead understands becoming a woman to be realized as lived time. As such, Beauvoir's account shows that gender and temporality are deeply entangled, and thus she challenges the classic phenomenological account of temporality as a general, given structure of human existence. More specifically, I argue that her account shows how a particular experience of time is an underlying structure of sexual objectification, a claim that expands on the feminist phenomenological claim that a particular relation to space becomes a way in which women take up and negotiate their own subordination and objectification. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenological structures of the homo temporalis filtered through Augustine's illuminating, if unsystematic, insights on temporality and the imago Dei. It situates such a phenomenological interpretation of the Augustinian self in view of current interpretations that polarize or split the Augustinian self into an either/or scheme—either an “interior” self or an “exterior” self. Given this imbalance, the article suggests that a phenomenological evaluation of Augustine brings to light how interior and exterior spheres are deeply integrated. The (...) article elaborates this position by contending that the self's temporal streaming within the exterior world‐horizon is inescapable because it reflects basic constituents of a self created by God which is nevertheless capable of contemplating a God who transcends time. This seeming paradox is resolved by recourse to what is described as the “double entry” of the self. The temporal streaming of the self in the world‐horizon is porous to the eternal inwardly ; the eternal entry is thus interior and analyzable in terms of a non‐reflective self‐awareness on display in Augustine's De Trinitate; and finally Augustine's understanding of the temporality of faith indicates how the self of faith can be lived in light of Heidegger's emphasis on the future and Husserl's emphasis on the past. (shrink)

Although the dream narrative, of (bio)logical necessity, originates with the dreamer, s/he typically does not know this. For the dreamer, the dream world is the real world. In this article I argue that this nightly misattribution is best explained in terms of the concept of mental ownership (e.g., Albahari, 2006; Klein, 2015a; Lane, 2012). Specifically, the exogenous nature of the dream narrative is the result of an individual assuming perspectival, but not personal, ownership of content s/he authored (i.e., “The content (...) in my head is not mine. Therefore it must be peripherally perceived”). Situating explanation within a theoretical space designed to address questions pertaining to the experienced origins of conscious content has a number of salutatory consequences. For example, it promotes predictive fecundity by bringing to light empirical generalizations whose presence otherwise might have gone unnoticed (e.g., the severely limited role of mental time travel within the dream narrative). -/- . (shrink)

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the (...) current Realism versus Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation. (shrink)

Many methodologies for systematic study of lived experience have been proposed in recent decades. These methods are typically calibrated in terms of the depth and complexity of data collection, and whether they consider reports on pre-reflective experience admissible. Even though it has been shown that lived experience occurs at different timescales (elementary, integrative, narrative), contemporary methods tend to focus on momentary experience. We trace the focus on momentary experience to the current cultural milieu and attitudes in the history of psychology. (...) We point out the need for studying temporally extended experiences in the field of psychopathology. We propose that lived experiences at different timescales are nested within each other and that this principle can be used to organize data collected with qualitative methods for the study of experience. We suggest that temporally extended experiences occur at the narrative level of description (i.e. they consist of experiential reports and sense-making). (shrink)

The paper’s authors are composers operating within the field of experimental music. Their music is created from the use of limited materials placed into repetitive structures involving cyclic pitch patterns and sustained tone textures. This reductive approach to composition provides a fertile area for discussions of temporality, as the music functions outside of standard teleological narrative structures thereby prompting more varied subjective temporal experiences for listeners. The paper will take as its starting point the experience of the listener, rather (...) than the musical score, enhancing discussions from Thomas Clifton’s Music as Heard.1 This angle is particularly relevant when discussing minimal works, as the score does not give an indication to what the auditory experience will be, it simply acts as what pianist Philip Thomas describes as a ‘prescription for action’ for the performers.2 Drawing particularly upon work on the temporal experience by Merleau-Ponty, the paper discusses how phenomenological approaches can provide effective insight into the experience of sustained tone and repetitive music. By discussing notions of retention and protention, the two composers will explore how this permeates their compositional approach, particularly in relation to the use of repetition, examining the different types of musical materials used by the composers and how this affects the temporalities experienced upon performance. Points of similarity and variance between the two outlooks are explored in detail, providing an in-depth discussion as to how attitudes towards temporality can result in nuanced differences in output. Fundamental essences are clarified and discussed in relation to other composers’ work, and in particular American composer James Tenney’s work in applying a phenomenological model upon the listening experience is considered alongside the central discussion. The results of this investigation provide both clear artistic statements on the role of phenomenological thought in the creative process, and also tentative starting points for further discussion on experiential temporalities in minimal and experimental musics. (shrink)

Sartre fits fully within the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Husserl, although he somewhat reelaborates it in an original way, on the basis of Heidegger’s philosophy, with the aim of outlining, in a first stage of his thoughts dating back to the publication of Being and Nothingness, the features stemming from his peculiar atheistic existentialism. Subsequently, in the mature stage of his intellectual itinerary, Sartre will attempt to combine the existentialist ideas with the basic principles of Marxism, a synthesis that will (...) create important works such as Search for a Method and Critique of Dialectical Reason. This chapter analyses time from the phenomenological perspective of the Sartrean ontology of temporality. This analysis allows to conceive the typically human “existential time” as a permanent existence out of oneself. For this purpose, we will retrace the fundamentals of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology outlined in his most important work of 1943, Being and Nothingness, focusing in particular on the structures of consciousness understood as “être-pour-soi”, i.e. the conditions of man’s “absolute freedom”, which Sartre refers to when he shows the one “pour-soi” as the being who is pure nothingness. (shrink)

The paper presents the phenomenological conception of bodily perception as a possible therapeutic model for treating melancholic depression. At the beginning, it discusses some key concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis: instinct, memory, perception, narcissism and melancholia. Next, the Freudian theory of melancholia is compared with studies of phenomenological psychopathology. It is investigated how melancholia is based on the division of temporal relations. Finally, the main problem of the paper is investigated: can the structure of perception and its constitutive openness toward the (...) future represent a theoretical model for therapeutic practices designed to treat melancholic depression? (shrink)

This article attempts to link the notion of absolute ego as the ultimate subjectivity of consciousness in continental tradition with a phenomenology of Mathematical Continuum as this term is generally established following Cantor’s pioneering ideas on the properties and cardinalities of sets. My motivation stems mainly from the inherent ambiguities underlying the nature and properties of this fundamental mathematical notion which, in my view, cannot be resolved in principle by the analytical means of any formal language not even by (...) the addition of any new axioms to a consistent first-order axiomatical system such as the Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory. In this phenomenologically motivated approach I deal, to some extent, with the undecidability of a fundamental statement about the cardinality of Continuum inside ZFC theory, namely the Continuum Hypothesis, and also with the underlying root of Gödel’s first incompleteness result.Este artigo procura conectar a noção de ego absoluto enquanto subjetividade última da consciência na tradição continental com a fenomenologia da matemática do contínuo tal como este termo foi estabelecido seguindo as idéias pioneiras de Cantor sobre as propriedades e cardinalidade de conjuntos. Minha motivação deriva basicamente das ambigüidades subjacentes à natureza e propriedades desta noção matemática fundamental as quais, no meu entender, não podem, em princípio, ser resolvidas pelos meios analíticos de qualquer linguagem formal e nem mesmo pela adição de novos axiomas a um sistema axiomático consistente de primeira ordem como a teoria de conjuntos de Zermelo Fraenkel . Neste tratamento fenomenológica-mente motivado eu lido em certa medida com a indecidibilidade de uma tese fundamental sobre a cardinalidade do contínuo em ZFC, a saber, a Hipótese do Contínuo, e também com aquilo que está na base do primeiro resultado de incompletude de Gödel. (shrink)

The literature on time perception is discussed. This is done with reference both to the ''cognitive-timer'' model for time estimation and to the subjective experience of apparent duration. Three assumptions underlying the model are scrutinized. I stress the strong interplay among attention, arousal, and time perception, which is at the base of the cognitive-timer model. It is suggested that a multiplicative function of two key components (the number of subjective time units and their size) should predict apparent duration. Implications for (...) other cognitive domains are drawn, and in particular an analogy is suggested between apparent duration and apparent movement. (shrink)

In this article I consider how the problem of social (intersubjective) cognition relates to time-consciousness. In the first part, I briefly introduce Husserl’s account of intersubjective cognition. I discuss the concept of empathy (Einfühlung) and its relation with time-consciousness. I argue that empathy is based on pre-reflective awareness of the other’s harmony of behaviour. In the second part, I distinguish pre-reflective (passive) and reflective (active) empathy and consider recent empirical research in the field of social cognition. I argue that these (...) levels of empathy are related with different levels of intersubjective temporality. By the intersubjective temporality I do not understand being in the same moment of objective time (so called clock time) but rather the shared experience of time and sharing temporal structure of actions. In the final part, I gather my considerations together and propose a general three-level framework of intersubjective temporality. (shrink)

In first personal accounts of the experience of grief, it is often described as disrupting the experience of time. This aspect of the experience has gained more attention in recent discussions, but it may nonetheless strike some as puzzling. Grieving subjects do, after all, still perceptually experience motion, change, and succession, and they are typically capable of orienting themselves in time and accurately estimating durations. As such, it is not immediately obvious how we ought understand the claim that grief disrupts (...) the experience of time. In the present discussion I suggest that we can shed light on this aspect of the experience of grief by distinguishing between three temporal perspectives that experiencing (human) subjects typically occupy: the perceptual, the agential, and the narrative. Appeal to these three temporal perspectives helps to clarify the phenomenology of grief; it reveals a way in which grief can disrupt the experience of time; and it can also help us to analyse pre-existing issues in the literature on grief. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can be internally (...) fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

People suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) do things they do not want to do, and/or they think things they do not want to think. In about 10 percent of OCD patients, none of the available treatment options is effective. A small group of these patients is currently being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Deep brain stimulation involves the implantation of electrodes in the brain. These electrodes give a continuous electrical pulse to the brain area in which they are implanted. (...) It turns out that patients may experience profound changes as a result of DBS treatment. It is not just the symptoms that change; patients rather seem to experience a different way of being in the world. These global effects are insufficiently captured by traditional psychiatric scales, which mainly consist of behavioural measures of the severity of the symptoms. In this article we aim to capture the changes in the patients’ phenomenology and make sense of the broad range of changes they report. For that we introduce an enactive, affordance-based model that fleshes out the dynamic interactions between person and world in four aspects. The first aspect is the patients’ experience of the world. We propose to specify the patients’ world in terms of a field of affordances, with the three dimensions of broadness of scope (‘width’ of the field), temporal horizon (‘depth’), and relevance of the perceived affordances (‘height’). The second aspect is the person-side of the interaction, that is, the patients’ self-experience, notably their moods and feelings. Thirdly, we point to the different characteristics of the way in which patients relate to the world. And lastly, the existential stance refers to the stance that patients take towards the changes they experience: the second-order evaluative relation to their interactions and themselves. With our model we intend to specify the notion of being in the world in order to do justice to the phenomenological effects of DBS treatment. (shrink)

After a long period of neglect, the phenomenology of action has recently regained its place in the agenda of philosophers and scientists alike. The recent explosion of interest in the topic highlights its complexity. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework allowing for a more precise characterization of the many facets of the phenomenology of agency, of how they are related and of their possible sources. The key assumption guiding this attempt is that the (...) processes through which the phenomenology of action is generated and the processes involved in the specification and control of action are strongly interconnected. I argue in favor of a three-tiered dynamic model of intention, link it to an expanded version of the internal model theory of action control and specification, and use this theoretical framework to guide an analysis of the contents, possible sources and temporal course of complementary aspects of the phenomenology of action. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack claim that the temporal updating system only represents the world as present. This generates puzzles regarding the phenomenology of temporal experience. We argue that recent models of reinforcement learning suggest that temporal updating must have a minimal temporal structure; and we suggest that this helps to clarify what it means to experience the world as temporally structured.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and a large (...) body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape. In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements, which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness. (shrink)

Scholars such as Renaud Barbara and Bernhard Waldenfels and Regula Giuliani have emphasized time’s central role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and Michael Kelly has shown how the Phenomenology’s “Temporality” chapter already broaches his later ontological concerns. I deepen our understanding of this temporal–ontological nexus by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s temporal ontology in fact erupts even earlier in the Phenomenology, as an underlying theme that unifies part two, on “The Perceived World,” as leading into the “Temporality” chapter. I do (...) this via a close study of the chapter, “The Thing and the Natural World,” first explicating some profound but easily overlooked points about time implied in Merleau-Ponty’s initial remarks on the constancy of form and size. I then closely analyze his study of color constancy in relation to his central source, David Katz’s The World of Colour, to show how color leads him to conceptualize things as what I call “time-things”—and more generally to conceptualize things, the world, and nature, as being in such a way that temporality is ingredient in their being. This leads to some implications for his temporal ontology. (shrink)

The article covers Erwin W. Straus’ views on the problem of time and temporal experience in the context of psychopathology. Beside Straus’ published scholarship, including his papers dealing exclusively with the subject of time, the sources utilized in this essay comprise several of Straus’ unpublished manuscripts on temporality, with the primary focus on the 1952 manuscript Temporal Horizons, which is discussed in greater detail and subsequently published for the first time in this journal. In the first part of the (...) article, the author introduces what he considers to be the central tension of the whole of Straus’ work on the issue of time, namely, the tension stemming from a dualistic account of time with its personal and impersonal dimensions. Interpretative developments of this tension are followed covering Straus’ early German works and his late American scholarship. The author presents Straus’ way of overcoming the dualistic account of time and his arguments in favour of what is termed here the “unified view of time”. Of critical importance for the unified view is Straus’ concept of “today”, which is extensively commented upon. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on the psychopathological consequences of the unified view as seen by Straus. A clear-cut boundary between a normal and a psychotic experience of time is supposed to lie in breaking the bond between the personal and the impersonal orders of time, leading to a fundamental estrangement. This view, it is claimed, is already present in a nutshell in Straus’ earliest work, and is elaborated upon later. In conclusion, both the merits and the weaknesses of Straus’ account of temporality are presented. A major advantage is that Straus abstains from a dualistic conception of time and reappraises the often-devalued clock time. A fundamental drawback is that Straus does not venture to explore the pathological varieties of temporal experience and fails to specify the acknowledged differences between, on the one hand, psychotic elements in depressive disorders, and, on the other hand, such elements in schizophrenic disturbances. (shrink)

This essay comprises a first phenomenological semiotics of ChatGPT. I analyse how we experience the language signs generated by that AI. This task is accomplished in two steps. First, I introduce a conceptual scaffolding for the project, by introducing core tenets of Husserl's semiotics. Second, I mould Husserl's theory to develop my phenomenology of the passive and active consciousness of the language signs composed by ChatGPT. On the one hand, by discussing temporality, I demonstrate that ChatGPT can passively (...) demand me to understand its signs. On the other hand, I show that a conflict arises between active and passive consciousness when reading ChatGPT. While I actively know that there is no communicating subject, I still passively experience these signs as made by another. I argue that it is this conflict which lends ChatGPT its 'magical' character. I conclude by showing how these observations can inform future regulation of AI models. (shrink)

This chapter offers a overview of Shadworth Hodgson's account of experience as fundamentally temporal, an account that was deeply influential on thinkers such as William James and which prefigures the phenomenology of Husserl in many ways. I highlight eight key features that are characteristic of Hodgson's account, and how they hang together to provide a coherent overall picture of experience and knowledge. Hodgson's account is then compared to Husserl's, and I argue that Hodgson's account offers a better target for (...) projects such as neurophenomenology than does Husserl's. Hodgson's account is historically important as a culmination of a certain trajectory of British Empiricist thought. It offers a substantive alternative for how to think about temporality and experience in contemporary discussions, not just of the present moment but of the relationship between experience and knowledge more broadly. (shrink)

The temporally immediate transcendence of space through the use of the telephone creates a bi-localized space of interaction. Unique structures of spatial experience are constituted through the intending of spatial sectors in telephonic conversation. In the first section of this paper, six eidetic variations are presented that establish the various ways in which environmental sectors are intended through the intersubjective space of the telephonic medium. The telos of these descriptions is to characterize changes in social praxis that have been made (...) available with the inclusion in the life-world of the telephone as a typical tool. In the second section, a constitutive analysis is undertaken in order to investigate how empty intentions are brought to fulfillment in the telephonic conversational thematizations of environmental sectors. Telephone space involves a modified we-relationship through which meaning-intentions are intersubjectively synthesized, yet from bi-local environmental standpoints. The intersubjective achievements concerning projects grounded within the immediacy of telephonic transcendence create a unique structure of meaning-fulfillment. (shrink)

People have experienced many forms of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis. For this study, we collected a rich corpus of reports on the multifaceted experiences of disorientation during the pandemic. In this paper, we study the resulting corpus using a descriptive approach. We identify six emerging themes: temporal rift; temporal vertigo; impoverished time; tunnel vision; spatial and social scaffolding of time; suspended time. We offer a phenomenological analysis of each of the themes. Based on the phenomenological analysis, we draw (...) a key distinction between episodic and existential forms of temporal disorientation, and we argue that the Covid-19 crisis is best conceptualised as a period of suspended time. (shrink)

The nature of temporal experience is typically explained in one of a small number of ways, most are versions of either retentionalism or extensionalism. After describing these, I make a distinction between two kinds of temporal character that could structure temporal experience: A-ish contents are those that present events as structured in past/present/future terms, and B-ish contents are those that present events as structured in earlier-than/later-than/simultaneous-with relations. There are a few exceptions, but most of the literature ignores this distinction, and (...) silently assumes temporal experience is A-ish. I then argue that temporal character is not scale invariant, but rather that temporal experience is A-ish at larger scales, and B-ish at smaller scales. I then point out that this scale non-invariance opens the possibility of hybrid views. I clarify my own view as a hybrid view, according to which temporal experience is B-ish at small scales – and at this scale my trajectory estimation model applies – but A-ish at larger scales, and at the larger scale my TEM does not apply. I then motivate this hybrid position by first defending it against arguments that have tried to show that the TEM is untenable. Since the hybrid view has TEM as its small-scale component, it must address this objection. I then put pressure on the main alternative account, extentionalism, by showing that its proponents have not adequately dealt with the problem of temporal illusions. The result is a new theory motivated by i) explaining its virtues, ii) showing that objections to it can be met, and iii) showing that objections to its main competitors have not been met. (shrink)

The ideas presented in this edition were originally presented as lectures that were given between 1904-1910 during which Husserl explored the terrain of consciousness in light of its temporality.

My research in phenomenology and existentialism has always been drawn, through a deconstructive lens-piece, to the significance and key importance of the issue of temporality – that, indeed, consciousness [Bewusstsein], Being-there [Dasein], and Being-for-itself [Être-pour-soi] are other names for the articulation of time. The horizon of Temporality could be said to refer to the absolute horizon of all horizons of Being. In the following essay on the spacing of temporal articulation , I examine some of the ways (...) in which phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction have radicalized the treatment and conceptualization of time in contemporary philosophy. The principal focus is on how they have successfully exposed the kinds of aporia that infect the popular model in which time is expressed as a linear succession of 'discrete' moments. The importance of the analyses undertaken by Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, lies in the way in which their 'horizonal' approach to time shows how the 'now,' far from being a discrete moment or extensionless point, is intrinsically 'spanned.' This represents much more than a mere reiteration of the. (shrink)

In the “Temporality” chapter of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty refers to the Kantian notion of “self-affection.” The subject has an affective self-relation through time because the subject is of time. Merleau-Ponty shows that it is crucial that self-affection is not understood as an immediate self-coincidence. According to him, the idea of an immediate self-possession renders self-relation impossible. Instead, temporal self-relation should be understood as a paradox of connection and difference: the contact of the self to itself always also (...) implies distance. The temporal subject is not transparent to itself but has a connection to its past and its future through the temporal thickness of the present. (shrink)

The last century has been marked by numerous discussions about the concept of the temporality of the -Now-. The most essential elements of the topic of the -Now- are presented in atemporal analysis (and beyond) of <I>lebendige Gegenwart. In the author's analysis this notion is the core of phenomenology and a derivative phenomenologisation of the constitution of time. The first part of the book is dedicated to the necessary reconstruction of the category of the -Now-, the second treats (...) about the atemporality of the -Now-, the third one is an additional reference to Husserlian deepest transcendental reduction: the -Now- as being freed from temporality. Furthermore, the author compares his thoughts to the ideas and to the concept of the -modalization of the consciousness- that is present in the post-Husserlian temporalities.". (shrink)

The A-theory and the B-theory advance competing claims about how time is grounded. The A-theory says that A-facts are more fundamental in grounding time than are B-facts, and the B-theory says the reverse. We argue that whichever theory is true of the actual world is also true of all possible worlds containing time. We do this by arguing that time is uniquely groundable: however time is actually grounded, it is necessarily grounded in that way. It follows that if either the (...) A-theory or the B-theory is actually false, then it is necessarily false. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest that multiple event properties contribute to shape the phenomenology of episodic future thoughts, but the specific role of each property is not yet fully understood. This study shows that different phenomenological features are predicted by distinct event properties. The vividness of an episodic future thought largely depends on the familiarity of its constitutive elements , while the visual perspective adopted is instead related to the temporal distance of the imagined event. Cognitive feelings such as the sense (...) of pre-experiencing the future depend on sensory–perceptual qualities, and are further modulated by the personal importance attributed to the event. These findings suggest that the essence of episodic future thought—the sensation of mentally visiting one’s personal future—lies, in part, in the relevance of imagined events with respect to personal goals. (shrink)

In view of the primacy assigned to the 'present' in traditional metaphysics, in terms of the ways in which questions about existence are expressed, the following discussion takes the question of the temporalizing of the present as its theme. This involves unravelling the historical traces of the thought of the present as a finite, closed, objective point of a successive continuum of discrete moments (a real oscillation between the now and the not-now) by returning to the phenomenological sense of the (...) present as the stretching out of an opening – the 'living Present' (lebendige Gegenwart) – which bears its continuity of presence and non-presence within itself (without restriction to linearity). The transition itself suggests something like a quantum-leap and, in another sense, it also extends beyond the bounds of this simile (and the discontinuity that is implied) by evoking the image of a 'twist' or a 'turn.’ In order to grasp the significance of this turn we shall first examine – re turn to – its main obstacle: the concept of time as a linear and corpuscular continuum. The traditional model of time as a succession of 'now-points' (a notion that 1 still infects discourse on temporality) has always undermined our understanding of 'presence' as that which maintains itself (abides) through succession. In effect, presence must be 'maintained' [maintenant] within the 'now.' Yet, if the 'now' is constantly shifting into non-being through its replacement by a new 'now' then presence must be infused with its own negation and a certain discontinuity. How is it possible, then, to speak of the 'persistence' of 'identity' as something unitary (simultaneous with itself) existing through plurality and successive fragmentation into non-being? Furthermore, in reference to motion, what is entailed in the possibility of experiencing the transition of a selfsame (particular) object from one spatial location to another: how is it that the object 'endures' through its spatial and temporal transition? Since antiquity the question of simultaneity has been taken for granted – generally being consigned to mere spatial models.. (shrink)

The project of my dissertation was to advance the metaphysical debate about temporal passage, by relating it to debates about the perceptual experience of time and change. It seems true that we experience temporal passage, even if there is disagreement whether time actually passes, or what temporal passage consists in. This appears to give the defender of dynamic time an advantage in accounting for our experience. I challenge this by arguing that no major account of temporal perception can accommodate experiences (...) of temporal passage such that we could infer passage from them. This shows that static theories of time are at no disadvantage in accounting for the phenomenology of temporality. The conclusion has far reaching consequences: for instance, an important motivation for holding an A-theory of time is precisely the psychological intuition that we experience temporal passage. By undermining that intuition, I undermine the motivation for holding an A-theory. (shrink)

The A-theory and the B-theory advance competing claims about how time is grounded. The A-theory says that A-facts are more fundamental in grounding time than are B-facts, and the B-theory says the reverse. We argue that whichever theory is true of the actual world is also true of all possible worlds containing time. We do this by arguing that time is uniquely groundable: however time is actually grounded, it is necessarily grounded in that way. It follows that if either the (...) A-theory or the B-theory is actually false, then it is necessarily false. (shrink)

We discuss the three dominant models of the phenomenological literature pertaining to temporal consciousness, namely the cinematic, the retentional, and the extensional model. This is first done by presenting the distinction between acts and contents of consciousness and the assumptions underlying the different models concerning both the extendedness and duration of these two components. Secondly, we elaborate on the consequences related to whether a perspective of direct or indirect realism about temporal perceptions is assumed. Finally, we review some relevant findings (...) from the psychology and neuroscience of temporality in order to decide which of the three models of time consciousness is better confirmed from an empirical viewpoint. Depending on the time scale, all three models of temporal consciousness might apply. We specifically argue in favor of an extensional model of time consciousness for the experienced present where the acts and contents of consciousness are both extended. The retentional model might apply to longer time intervals covered by working memory. In addition, a predictive component is highlighted as decisive for an understanding of temporality. (shrink)

Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience, a structured interview that can be used by researchers and clinicians without a comprehensive phenomenological background to explore abnormal time experiences in persons with abnormal mental conditions regardless of their diagnosis. When extensive data gathered by this scale are available, it will be possible to delineate well-defined anomalous lived temporality profiles for (...) each psychopathological disorder. This instrument may also prove useful for clinicians by providing a more refined assessment of relevant psychopathological symptoms and an in-depth understanding of the patient’s abnormal behaviour as related to specific types of time experience. In the first part of the article, we provide a brief overview of the phenomenological concept of temporality, including pre-phenomenal and phenomenal time, synthesis, conation and synchronization, and of abnormal time experiences in persons affected by psychopathological conditions. In the following part, we describe the basic structure of the interview that comprises seven categories corresponding to the abnormal features of lived temporality: anomalies of synchrony, of time structure, of implicit time flow, of explicit time flow, and anomalous experiences of the past, the present and the future. The paper also includes a section on administration and scoring of the TATE scale, the complete interview and a Likert table for quantifying the frequency, intensity and interference with daily life of the phenomena explored. (shrink)

Over the past years, the intersubjective dimension of psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, has gained increasing phenomenological attention. Psychopathologists and philosophers have developed ideas on how the social aspects of psychotic symptoms and experiences could be understood, in particular in their relation to the ipseity disturbance model, namely the idea that schizophrenia is essentially a disorder of the minimal self. Although the exact characteristics of the ipseity disorder hypothesis can differ from author to author, emphasizing certain phenomenological aspects like temporality (...) or embodiment... (shrink)

One of the central debates in current analytic philosophy of time is whether time consists only of relations of simultaneity, earlier and later (B-relations), or whether it also consists of properties of futurity, presentness and pastness (A-properties). If time consists only of B-relations, then all temporal determinations are permanent; if at anyone time it is the case that birth is later than Homer's birth, then it is ever after the case that Dante's birth is later than Homer's. The temporal position (...) of Dante's birth vis a vis Homer's is permanently fixed. Moreover, if B-relations are the only temporal determinations possessed by events, then each event, regardless of when it occurs, is equally as real as each other event. Each event sustains B-relations to other events, and thus in respect of its temporal determinations is ontologically undistinguished from each other event. Why should Dante's birth be "more real" than Homer's just because it is later than it? But if time also consists of A-properties, then some events are ontologically distinguished by virtue of their temporal determinations; the events that are or exist in the tensed sense, the events that possess the A-property of present- ness, have a reality not possessed by other events. All other events are no longer (are past) or are not yet (are future), and in this respect are deprived of the being, the presentness, possessed by the events that are. The A-properties possessed by events are impermanent temporal determinations; if an event possesses a certain A-property at one time, then there is another time at which the event will not have that A-property but some other A-property instead. First an event is future, then it is present, and finally it is past. This shows that the issue between the defenders of the B-theory and the defenders of the A-theory is of fundamental ontological importance. But analytic philosophers discuss this issue ,almost exclusively in terms of the language we use to describe the temporal determinations of events. They engage in what Quine calls "semantic ascent", i.e., redirecting their concern from the "things themselves" to the words we use to describe things. Defenders of the A-theory argue that tensed sentences and their tokens, sentences containing tensed copulas like "is", "was" and "will be" and adverbs like "now" and "at present", are untranslatable or unanalyzable into tenseless sentences about B- related events, and therefore that the tensed copulas and ad- verbs refer to A-properties of events. Defenders of the B-theory argue that tensed sentences or their tokens are translatable or analyzable into tenseless sentences about B-related events, and hence that the tensed sentences or tokens refer only to B-related events. While this semantic ascent is not without its advantages, it seems to me that additional light can be thrown on this subject if it is approached from a nonlinguistic phenomenological perspective. This approach is all the more needed since this particular issue in the philosophy of time has not been explicitly addressed by any of the practitioners of "phenomenology" (in the wide sense), such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty .Indeed, phenomenologists have generally seemed to be unaware of the debate between the A-theorists and B-theorists. This issue has been a concern exclusively of analytic philosophers (with the exception perhaps of the early 20th century British Idealist John McTaggart.) In this paper, I will point to a number of phenomenological facts that are pertinent to the debate. These facts all favor the A-theory. I shall make the case that the basic phenomenological truths about time simply cannot be accounted for by the B-theory . (shrink)