In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 The Temporal Structure of Experience Ian Phillips 7.1 Overview This chapter defends a naïve view of the relation between the temporal structure of the objects of experience, and the temporal structure of experience itself. According to the naïve view, when all goes well, your stream of consciousness inherits the temporal structure of the events that are its contents. You “take in” the temporal structure of the events you witness in witnessing them. As a result, the temporal structure of experience matches the temporal structure of its objects. In cases of illusion, it is as if this is so. Thus, in every case, the temporal structure of experience matches the apparent temporal structure of the objects of experience. Such a view faces both philosophical and empirical objections. The most prominent philosophical objection is that the naïve view is incompatible with a principle often labeled the “principle of simultaneous awareness” (Miller, 1984, 109), roughly the claim that if we are aware of a succession or duration, we must be aware of it at some one moment. Elsewhere , I have argued that this principle is false. Here I want to take that for granted. However, this attitude raises a worry. Extant theories of temporal consciousness take the principle of simultaneous awareness as their point of departure. If we discard it, it is unclear why we need a philosophical theory of time consciousness at all. The answer is that time is special. Temporal properties are the only properties manifestly shared by both the objects of experience and by experience itself. Experience, at least in its subjective aspect, is not colored or shaped; it does, however, manifestly have a temporal structure. As a result, the question arises of the relation between the temporal structure of experience and the temporal structure of its objects. No such question obviously arises for color or shape. The naïve view is the natural answer to this obligatory question. Having fleshed out these opening remarks, I develop the naïve view, show why it is intuitive, and respond to a major empirical objection to it, namely its alleged inability to account for postdictive phenomena. 140 Ian Phillips 7.2 The Traditional Problematic Traditional debates about time consciousness are best understood as competing attempts to make sense of temporal experience constrained by what Miller (1984, 109) labels the “principle of simultaneous awareness” (PSA): PSA If one is aware of a succession or duration, one is necessarily aware of it at some one moment.1 PSA quickly leads to skepticism about the very possibility of temporal experience, as the following two passages testify.2 If we speak strictly and philosophically … no kind of succession can be an object either of the senses, or of consciousness; because the operations of both are confined to the present point of time, and there can be no succession in a point of time; and on that account the motion of a body, which is a successive change of place, could not be observed by the sense alone without the aid of memory. (Reid, 1827, 387) Any sound has some duration, however short. If so, how can it ever be true that we really hear a sound; for to hear is to hear at a moment, and what we apprehend by way of hearing—or more generally perceiving—can only exist at the moment of hearing, and ex hypothesi at least part of the sound said to be heard is over at the moment of hearing, and strictly speaking it is all over. … Therefore, it seems, it is impossible to hear a sound. (Prichard, 1950, 47) Puzzlement, and indeed skepticism, about temporal experience remains rife in the literature . In his recent monograph, Le Poidevin concludes that “order and duration are not in any straightforward sense objects of perceptual states” (2007, 99). Nor are such views confined to philosophers: Gallistel argues (in somewhat Kantian fashion, and citing phenomenological paradox) that, unlike color and shape, “duration is not itself a sensible aspect of events” but “exists only in recollection” (1996, 336). Puzzlement about temporal experience has prompted two basic non-sceptical responses: memory theories and specious present theories. According to the memory theorist, “What gives rise to the experience of pure succession [in a case where a C and an E are heard successively ] … is the conjunction of the perception of E with the very recent memory of C” (Le Poidevin, 2007, 92). On this picture, raw, basic experience lacks temporal content; temporal experience...

Share