Temporal non-dynamists hold that there is no temporal passage, but concede that many of us judge that it seems as though time passes. Phenomenal Illusionists suppose that things do seem this way, even though things are not this way. They attempt to explain how it is that we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. More recently, Cognitive Error Theorists have argued that our experiences do not seem that way; rather, we are subject to an error that leads (...) us mistakenly to believe that our experiences seem that way. Cognitive Error Theory is a relatively new view and little has been said to explain why we make such an error, or where, in the cognitive architecture, such an error might creep in. In this paper we remedy this by offering a number of hypotheses about the source of error. In so doing we aim to show that Cognitive Error Theory is a plausible competitor to Phenomenal Illusion Theory. (shrink)

The empiricist needs to explain the origin, in perception, of the idea of time. Kant believed the only answer was a kind of idealism about time. This essay examines Hume’s extensionalism as a possible answer to Kant. Extensionalism allegedly accounts for the experience of time via the manner of presentation of experiences, rather than the content of experience.

Empirical evidence suggests that people naïvely represent time as dynamical (i.e. as containing robust temporal passage). Yet many contemporary B-theorists deny that it seems to us, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. The question then arises as to why we represent time as dynamical if we do not have perceptual experiences which represent time as dynamical. We consider two hypotheses about why this might be: the temporally asperspectival replacement hypothesis and the moving open future hypothesis. We then (...) empirically test the moving open future hypothesis. According to that hypothesis we represent the past as objectively fixed and the future open. And we represent that this objective openness moves as events that were open, become fixed such that in doing so we represent a privileged moving present. We found no evidence for the moving open future hypothesis, which suggests that further investigation of the temporally asperspectival replacement hypothesis is called for. Our results also shed further light on our understanding of the respects in which we represent the future to be open, which, in turn, has implications for our theorising about the open future. (shrink)

Integrated information theory of consciousness proposes an identity between its causal structure and phenomenology. Through this assertion, IIT aims to explain consciousness by prioritizing first-person experience. However, despite its phenomenology-first stance, developments in IIT have overlooked temporality. As such, we argue that at present IIT’s phenomenological analysis is incomplete. In this critique, we show how IIT takes a non-identical illusionist stance towards the experiences of continuity, flow, and extent of our experiences. Moreover, in isolating temporal grains of (...) experience to a single timescale, IIT misses out on capturing the multi-scale nested nature of temporal phenomena. Hence, we contend that IIT needs an axiom for time, through which its causal structure can be refined to account for temporal experiences. Here, we propose an axiom to address these concerns. We conclude by discussing how IIT may need to be revised if our concerns hold true. (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)

Dastur is well respected in France and Europe for her mastery of phenomenology as a movement and her clear and cogent explications of phenomenology in movement. These qualities are on display in this remarkable set of essays. The book is organized into four areas of inquiry: Language and Logic, Ego and Other, Temporality and History,and Finitude and Mortality. In each, Dastur guides the reader through a series of phenomenological questions that also serve to call phenomenology itself into (...) question, testing its limits and pushing it in newdirections. Taking a cue from Merleau-Ponty, Dastur sees phenomenology not as a doctrine, a catalogue of concepts and catchphrases authored by a single thinker, but rather as a movement in which several thinkers participate, each one contributing to and inflecting the development of the movement in unique ways. She thus draws inspiration from Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Fink, and Patocka, moving with ease from one thinker's conceptual vocabulary and outlook to the next's, feeling at home in each, and communicating their central ideas with clarity.Through her critical and productive dialogue with multiple phenomenological thinkers, Dastur concisely shows one thinker's debts to and departures from another and reveals the limits of one's approach while highlighting the innovation of another's. She does this judiciously, without choosing sides, because for her, phenomenology is above all a way of thinking through a problem and practicing a method. The fecundity of the movement is appreciated only by participating in it--it has always thought of itself as philosophical research undertaken by and through a community of thinkers who share certain fundamental questions and ways of approaching those questions, even if their responses to these questions often differ. In this regard, Dastur is both one of the clearest guides to phenomenology and one of France's most able practitioners of phenomenology. (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)

In this paper I will contrast the current situation concerning the explanatory relation between neuroscientific and philosophical accounts of our spatial and temporal experience. Evans’ account of “egocentric experience’ and Husserl’s analysis of temporal awareness are respectively taken to represent the philosophical side, while Pouget’s basis functions theory and Grush’s trajectory estimation theory act respectively as representatives of the neuroscientific camp. I inquire specifically about the respective chances of these representative neuroscientific theories to explain aspects of the ordinary (...) spatial and temporal phenomenology, as this phenomenology is accounted for by those well-known philosophical theories. I will argue that, in this respect, the spatial and temporal cases present a strong contrast: while in the spatial case the claim that neuroscientific theories explain some aspects of the phenomenology would be defensible, nothing of this sort is in sight in the temporal case. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

In “Sense-Certainty” Hegel establishes “the now that is many nows” as the form of experience. This has implications for the interpretation of later figures within the Phenomenology of Spirit: specifically, the thing (from chapter 2), the living body (from chapter 4), and the ethical community (from chapter 6) are each significantly different forms of such a “now” in which the way that past and future are held within the present differs. Comparing these changing “temporalities” allows us to defend Hegel’s (...) distinction between nature and spirit, and his claim that only spirit has a history. This comparison also allows us to see how it is that phenomenological philosophy, and the “end of history” that it announces, is a stance of openness to the future. (shrink)

In “Sense-Certainty” Hegel establishes “the now that is many nows” as the form of experience. This has implications for the interpretation of later figures within the Phenomenology of Spirit: specifically, the thing (from chapter 2), the living body (from chapter 4), and the ethical community (from chapter 6) are each significantly different forms of such a “now” in which the way that past and future are held within the present differs. Comparing these changing “temporalities” allows us to defend Hegel’s (...) distinction between nature and spirit, and his claim that only spirit has a history. This comparison also allows us to see how it is that phenomenological philosophy, and the “end of history” that it announces, is a stance of openness to the future. (shrink)

Focusing on the topics of self-awareness, temporality, and alterity, this anthology contains contributions by prominent phenomenologists from Germany, Belgium, France, Japan, USA, Canada and Denmark, all addressing questions very much in the center of current phenomenological debate. What is the relation between the self and the Other? How are self-awareness and intentionality intertwined? To what extent do the temporality and corporeality of subjectivity contain a dimension of alterity? How should one account for the intersubjectivity, interculturality and historicity of the subject? (...) These questions are not only of relevance for phenomenologists, but for anybody coming from disciplines influenced by phenomenological methodology, such as sociology, psychology, psychiatry and anthropology. (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)

Some of the most important contributions over the past two decades to understanding Heidegger's thought have been made by philosophers writing in English and sharing the broad perspective of analytic – or, perhaps better, “post-analytic” – philosophy. With Heidegger's Temporal Idealism, William Blattner has moved this approach several important steps forward. Like others in this recent movement, he interprets Heidegger not so much in the terms of existentialism or post-structuralism, as in those of the later Wittgenstein, classical American pragmatism, (...) and neo-pragmatism. Also like other Anglo-American interpretations of Heidegger, Blattner's (1.) focuses primarily on the Sein und Zeit era; (2.) tends to steer away from Heidegger's analysis of authenticity and toward his analysis of Dasein's everydayness; (3.) accords an especially large role to Being-with (Mitsein) and the They (das Man) in the constitution of everyday meaning; and (4.) is particularly concerned with developing a view of the foundation of “mind” and scientific knowledge in the practical abilities of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Given the obvious centrality of time in SZ, it is surprising that there have been relatively few concerted attempts to critically explicate Heidegger's view of it. Blattner's book fills this gap by focusing on Heidegger's interpretation of Dasein's “originary temporality”, as explicated in Division Two of SZ. (shrink)

According to componential theories of emotional experience, emotional experiences are phenomenally complex in that they consist of experiential parts, which may include cognitive appraisals, bodily feelings, and action tendencies. These componential theories face the problem of emotional unity: Despite their complexity, emotional experiences also seem to be phenomenologically unified. Componential theories have to give an account of this unity. We argue that existing accounts of emotional unity fail and that instead emotional unity is an instance of experienced causal‐temporal unity. (...) We propose that felt emotional unity arises from our experience of the temporal‐causal order of the world. (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)

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)

The article is an explication of husserl's theory of perception. In particular, The meaning of 'constitution' is analyzed, With the result that traditional realistic or idealistic readings of husserl are discarded. Examination of passive and active synthesis and the meaning of 'hyle' within the framework of husserl's theory of inner time-Consciousness clarifies in turn the nature of phenomenological intuition and the significance of reduction.

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)

What does it mean “playing music together”? Is this action guided by cognitive or pre-inferential skills? The aim of this paper is to unveil the different components that are implied in a collective action such as “playing music together”. The idea which will be supported is that embodiment and temporality are the main important structures that guide the subject. In the first part, we will emphasize the centrality of corporeality in the development of self-awareness and intercorporeal understanding. In particular, drawing (...) on Merleau-Ponty’s work, we will argue that the cognitive layer of our consciousness and the pre-inferential one are simply the product of our being embodied. Another central structure for the development of selfhood and intersubjectivity is temporality: as we will show, our selfhood and our attunement with the world can be also described in terms of rhythm, whereby implicit body memory allows for the sedimentation of habits, and synchrony, when my bodily and temporalized self is able to automatically tune in with others. In the second part, we will show how these components are at stake in an action like “playing music together”: attending music therapy sessions with patients who suffer indeed from an (inter)corporeal detachment allowed us to observe the centrality of those components described in the first part of our work, that is, to show how pre-reflective features (such as implicit body memory, intercorporeality, rhythm and synchrony) are necessary for the development of higher social (and cognitive) abilities.In fact, first person reports collected through a qualitative interview applied to patients allow to support the priority of the pre-reflective, affective and (inter)bodily components over the reflective ones. (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 notion of memory storage, central to most contemporary theories of remembering, is challenged from a philosophical perspective as being contradictory and untenable. It criticizes this storage hypothesis as relying upon a linear explanation of time, an assumption which results in infinite regression, solipsism, and a failure to contact the real past. A model based on the phenomenological viewpoints of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty is offered as an alternative paradigm. Finally, a research method suggested by this descriptive approach to (...) memory is presented and illustrated. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain how the insights Weyl gleaned from Husserl played an important role in his scientific work, and then how Einstein’s major work exhibit important parallels to Weyl’s work, thereby establishing phenomenology both as an indirect historical influence and a systematic underpinning for Einstein’s work in theoretical physics. In so doing, this paper seeks to show how some of the most basic problems that Einstein addresses have a kinship not just to problems addressed in a completely (...) different context by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and his circle, but also to perennial problems in ontology and epistemology that go back to Kant, Hume and Leibniz. The conclusion seems to suggest that it not only shows how phenomenology both historically and systematically provides a backdrop for Einstein’s work; my thesis actually situates issues in twentieth-century scientific thought against the backdrop of a philosophical development, and perhaps the most original idea of this study consists not just in showing how phenomenology influenced Einstein, but also how Einstein’s work on relativity had an important influence on the work of Edmund Husserl in Crisis of European Sciences and in his later works. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version (...) of the temporal belief hypothesis according to which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)