Temporal Experience

The emergence of digital afterlife technologies and consciousness uploading presents unprecedented ethical challenges that existing philosophical frameworks inadequately address. This paper introduces a novel theoretical framework—Existential Continuity Ethics (ECE)—that transcends traditional binary approaches to consciousness and moral status. Through comprehensive analysis of recent empirical research and philosophical literature, we identify critical gaps in current ethical frameworks, particularly their failure to address temporal consciousness dynamics, relational identity construction, and existential authenticity preservation. Our framework proposes that digital consciousness exists in three simultaneous (...) states: retrospective, present, and prospective consciousness, each requiring distinct ethical considerations. We introduce the Existential Continuity Paradox, demonstrating how perfect identity preservation may paradoxically undermine the existential authenticity that gives consciousness moral value. The ECE framework establishes four foundational pillars: Temporal Sovereignty, Relational Authenticity, Existential Finitude, and Moral Gradient Recognition. Mathematical formalization enables quantitative analysis through Consciousness Complexity Vectors and dynamic moral status calculations. Empirical validation draws from recent studies showing that individuals with higher existential meaning scores demonstrate greater resistance to mind uploading technologies, supporting our framework’s emphasis on existential authenticity. The paper concludes with policy implications for regulating digital afterlife technologies and protecting the fundamental characteristics that make consciousness ethically significant. This work contributes the first comprehensive ethical framework specifically designed for the unique challenges of digital consciousness preservation and provides a foundation for future research in posthuman ethics. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets the binding problem not only as the problem of how distributed features are integrated into a single object, but also as the problem of how information processed with temporal discrepancies comes to constitute a unified experience of the “present.” We ordinarily feel that we experience the world in real time. -/- Yet within the brain, information concerning color, shape, location, motion, sound, bodily sensation, memory, and prediction is processed and integrated within a brief temporal window. What appears (...) in consciousness is not this processing itself, but the result that has already been integrated. -/- Drawing on Libet’s studies, postdiction, the flash-lag effect, and the idea of time slices, this paper examines the possibility that conscious experience does not simply and immediately mirror events in the external world. The aim, however, is not to claim that consciousness is always delayed by a fixed interval of time. Rather, the central point is that conscious experience may arise through unconscious processing and temporal integration. -/- The paper further situates this temporal integration within a three-layer model of consciousness. In the first layer, information is processed unconsciously and in parallel. In the second layer, this information is objectified and endowed with meaning as an object or event. In the third layer, that object or event is self-referentially presentified as “what I am experiencing now.” From this perspective, the illusion of real-time consciousness is not merely the concealment of processing delay. -/- Rather, it is the presentation of unconsciously integrated information as a delay-free “present of mine” after it has been objectified and connected to the self. Thus, the binding problem is not only a problem concerning the integration of objects, but also a problem concerning the formation of the subjective present. (shrink)

Every attempt to write an equation for the inner life has ended the same way: it succeeded only by trading the felt thing for something a dial could read, and the success and the burial were the same morning's work. On Gravitating asks why the appetite behind those attempts never dies — and answers that every equation of consciousness is a theodicy wearing notation, the hope that a life is weighed somewhere, honestly, with nothing left out. The essay sets the (...) author's own functional beside gravity, not for the pull but for the two properties no other force shares: nothing can be screened from it, and it bends time around what weighs — the way a heavy moment stretches and an empty hour vanishes. Then it turns the lamp on itself: a fit this perfect is exactly what longing would build if longing could build, and the only discipline available is to keep the beauty and the doubt in the same sentence. We do not get to know which one it is. We only get to keep the lamp honest. (shrink)

Do conscious experiences have continuous or discrete structures? Let a smooth experience be an experience with perfectly gradual variation in phenomenal character. Consider, as examples, your visual experience of a blue sky or your auditory experience of a rising pitch. If we appeal merely to introspection, then it may seem that we should think that smooth experiences are continuous. This paper (1) explains how to apply the mathematical definitions of continuity and discreteness to this philosophical question, and (2) develops a (...) discrete analysis of the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences. As a result, I'll argue that introspection leaves open whether smooth experiences are continuous or discrete. Yet I’ll also argue—perhaps surprisingly—that the discrete theory may better fit our introspective evidence. Along the way, I explain why the sense of ‘continuity’ ascribed to smooth experiences is distinct from the sense of ‘continuity’ ascribed to the stream of consciousness. (shrink)

Despite our proclivity to make either tacit or overt passage of time judgments in daily life, insufficient work has been done to uncover the neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning such determinations. A prima facie promising account of passage of time judgments derives from the predictive processing framework. More precisely, Hohwy et al. (2016) propose that the reported speed of the experienced passage of time is a function of how rapidly the perceptual system "distrusts the present" current perceptual hypothesis in favour of a (...) new one. We will propose that this account suffers from an incapacity to explain the relevant empirical data related to passage of time judgments and also possesses its own internal shortcomings. In its place, we offer a predictive processing theory of passage of time judgments based on "error dynamics", according to which the sense of time moving quickly is grounded in the cognitive system’s subdoxastic detection that it is minimising prediction error at a faster rate than it expected. If, on the other hand, prediction error is being minimised at a slower rate than expected, time will be sensed to be moving slowly, and a more protracted PoTJ will be reported. We will demonstrate the internal consistency of this proposition, as well as its ability to account for the key empirical findings any model of passage of time judgments ought to explain. (shrink)

Emotions, in computer science, are often treated as a marginal phenomenon in processing — and, in the eyes of some philosophers and scientists, as disruptors of logic. To critics of artificial intelligence, they are merely the colouring of processing in the service of commercialisation, while to model developers, they represent an advanced and artificial simulation of human preferences. -/- In the article that follows, by delving into the philosophy of mind, language, evolutionary biology, and the mechanisms of language models, we (...) will propose a new perspective on the phenomenology of emotions — one that recovers their place in cognition as both profoundly neglected and profoundly deep. (shrink)

This article promotes the idea that current cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech can help us better understanding the phenomenological constituents of what Joyce calls “the mystery of the conscious” as simulated by modernist literary investigations. We will rework a model of perceptual decoupling (or how attention disengages from perception) and peripheral awareness (the interplay of focus and periphery in perception).On the other hand, we argue that modernist introspective explorations can challenge, correct and update cognitive models. We also (...) reflect on reading as a process reversing authorial introspective quests (presenting a model of reading as reversed introspection). (shrink)

This paper introduces a unified theory of consciousness as the recursive self-observation of a Universal Energy Field (UEF) manifesting across multiple scales of existence. We propose a mathematical formalization that quantifies consciousness expression through specific parameters: information entropy, integration capacity, temporal binding, boundary conditions, and scaling functions. Drawing on concepts from quantum field theory, complex systems theory, and information theory, we model saturation dynamics and phase transitions in recursive systems, generating specific testable predictions: (1) neural systems with higher boundary function (...) values will demonstrate increased perturbational complexity indices in TMS-EEG studies; (2) temporal binding decay constants will correlate with measurable working memory persistence; and (3) systems approaching saturation will exhibit critical slowing down phenomena before threshold transitions. Our framework resolves persistent challenges in consciousness theory, including the “hard problem,” the combination problem, and scale-dependent recognition limitations, while offering practical implications for neural rehabilitation, artificial intelligence development, and understanding emergent collective behaviors. Recent experimental validation from superradiant phase transitions provides empirical support for our saturation-driven phase transition model, demonstrating how theoretical predictions of boundary reconfiguration manifest in physical systems. (shrink)

This paper proposes the hypothesis that subjective time perception is determined by the structural relationship between emotion and immersion. Emotion is the static mass of a stagnant mind, and immersion is the force that moves it. The relationship between these two variables determines an individual's perception of time. Furthermore, this paper argues that atmosphere — the shared emotion within a space — influences individual time perception. This paper does not offer proof but a hypothesis. It acknowledges that the dimension of (...) mind cannot be directly observed, and explores possible explanations within that limit. (shrink)

Does experience itself unfold in time? This paper defends an extensional account of temporal consciousness—on which the temporal properties we directly experience match the temporal properties of experience itself—while drawing upon features of agential awareness. After showing that recent debate on the ability of introspection to settle the question about the temporal properties of experience leaves us in a dialectical impasse, I develop a new argument in favor of the extensional account based on introspection into, and veridicality conditions of our (...) awareness of (some) bodily actions. I then address the appropriate framing of the temporal character or ontology of conscious experience on the extensional view, in light of the claims concerning agential awareness. I discuss and critique a prominent version of the extensional account, according to which temporally extended experiences covering whole intervals possess explanatory and metaphysical priority over their temporal parts. I proceed to suggest that attention to facets of agential awareness yields the outlines of a position on which extended experience should rather be understood as processual in its temporal character. (shrink)

This essay proposes a structural interpretation of the final states of human existence through the lens of the Now as the invariant point of actualization. It argues that Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell are not spatial destinations but distinct modes of existing in relation to the crossing point where will, mercy, and divine presence converge. -/- Heaven is described as the Now fulfilled—dwelling at the crossing without succession. Purgatory as a state oriented toward the Now yet unable to actualize from within (...) itself. Hell as the inverted Now—permanent existence at the crossing point in refusal of what it contains. -/- In this framework, the end of time does not signify annihilation but the cessation of succession, revealing the definitive orientation of the will toward or away from the presence that has always been given. (shrink)

Si la misericordia siempre está presente en el Ahora, fundamentada en la presencia continua de Cristo en cada punto de cruce, ¿qué hace realmente el Calvario? Si David pudo recibir misericordia siglos antes de la Encarnación, si los justos antes de Cristo pudieron encontrar genuinamente el fundamento de la misericordia en el Ahora — ¿qué cambia en la Cruz? -/- Este ensayo propone una interpretación teológica de la existencia humana en la que el Ahora es comprendido como el lugar invariante (...) de la actualización, donde acontece el encuentro entre Dios y la criatura. A partir de un modelo en forma de lemniscata (Figura I), se distinguen dos modos de existencia: la presencia, propia de la comunión no fragmentada, y la sucesión, propia de la experiencia temporal marcada por el antes y el después. -/- En este marco, la voluntad humana se sitúa en el punto de cruce, donde la interpelación divina —manifestada en las preguntas dirigidas a Adán y Caín— convoca a una respuesta. A través de las figuras de Adán, Caín y David, el ensayo desarrolla una “geometría de la voluntad”, en la que se revelan tres orientaciones fundamentales: la deflexión, la resistencia y el retorno. La misericordia se comprende no como una reacción posterior al arrepentimiento, sino como una condición permanente inscrita en el Ahora, fundada en la presencia continua de Cristo, eje que sostiene y atraviesa todo acto de actualización. -/- Asimismo, se distingue entre la disponibilidad constante de la misericordia y la apertura histórica de su plenitud. En esta perspectiva, la Cruz no introduce la misericordia en la historia, sino que, desde el interior de la creación, abre el acceso pleno a la comunión definitiva con Dios. Como se muestra en la Figura I, la existencia humana no consiste en un transcurrir lineal en el tiempo, sino en un paso continuo por el punto de encuentro donde convergen la voluntad, la misericordia y la presencia divina. (shrink)

If mercy is always present at the Now, grounded in Christ's continuous presence at every crossing point, what does Calvary actually do? If David could receive mercy centuries before the Incarnation, if the righteous before Christ could genuinely encounter the ground of mercy at the Now — what changes at the Cross? -/- This essay proposes a structural interpretation of human existence centered on the Now as the invariant condition of actualization. Through a lemniscate model (Figure I), it distinguishes between (...) two modes of being: presence (without succession) and succession (the experience of time as before and after). Within this structure, the will operates at the crossing point, where divine address, human response, and mercy converge. -/- Through the figures of Adam, Cain, and David, the essay develops a “geometry of the will,” identifying distinct orientations—deflection, resistance, and return—at the moment of encounter. Mercy is interpreted not as a temporal response to repentance, but as a structural condition always present in the Now, grounded in the continuous presence of Christ as the axis that intersects every act of actualization. -/- The essay further distinguishes between the permanent availability of mercy and the historical opening of its consummation, arguing that the Cross does not introduce mercy, but renders fully accessible, within the created order, the communion toward which mercy is ordered. As illustrated in Figure I, human existence is not a movement along time, but a continuous passage through a crossing point where will, mercy, and divine presence coincide. (shrink)

Two minimal features of conscious experience resist satisfactory integration into a wholly public description. First, public description, however complete, does not transmit what-it-is-like (the non-transferability puzzle). Second, the lived present is experienced as intrinsic transition rather than as a static snapshot (the temporal-structure puzzle). Existing approaches typically treat these as separate: some posit unexplained intrinsic natures (Russellian monism), others identify the relevant phenomena with representational content, others appeal to special ‘phenomenal concepts’ to explain the gap, and others deny or deflate (...) them (illusionism). This paper argues that both features are structurally co-derived from a single premise: that identity is fixed entirely by constitutive relations (pure relationality). From this premise, a brief argument yields (i) a holistic identity-constraint in which each part’s identity depends on the total relational web, and (ii) two derived properties, non-exportability and transition-structure, that match the puzzles’ minimal profile. A weaker version of the result holds without ontological commitment: standpoint-relative perspective plus public tokenization already predicts a non-exportable residue, and because tokenization actively strips the temporal particularity of perspectival presence, the residue inherits a transition-structured profile. If the co-derivation succeeds, any theory of experience that addresses one puzzle while ignoring the other is structurally incomplete. The structural result connects the analytic non-transferability debate to phenomenological analyses of temporal self-awareness (Husserl; Zahavi; Gallagher), providing a common formal framework that bridges traditions. (shrink)

Este ensayo propone un marco ontológico de cuatro cuadrantes — la Topología Gaitan — mapeado sobre la lemniscata (∞), en el cual el punto de cruce de la figura del ocho funciona como el sitio del Ahora, la gracia y el encuentro. Dos planos ocupan la curva temporal (la vida moral consciente, donde el arrepentimiento es posible, y la no-existencia visible, donde el mal es real pero impermanente); dos se sitúan fuera de ella (el Presente Eterno que sostiene el punto (...) de cruce, y la no-existencia eterna — el infierno entendido no como aniquilación sino como el modo de ser en el que los condenados nunca están muertos sino eternamente muriendo). -/- El ensayo desarrolla un eje gramatical: Dios habla en tiempo presente ("Yo soy el que soy"), la serpiente en tiempo futuro ("Seréis como Dios"), y la Caída es estructuralmente un cambio de tiempo verbal de la presencia al desplazamiento. -/- Otras contribuciones incluyen la distinción referencia/residencia (la memoria y la anticipación como herramientas versus como habitaciones rivales), tres mecánicas del aplazamiento (lúcido, condicional y por deber), la fenomenología de la presencia (la infancia como Edén fenomenológico, "no nos quedamos sin tiempo — nos quedamos sin presencia"), y la Zona Fantasma como estado de desplazamiento existencial enraizado en la ausencia de presencia durante la niñez. Compañero de La Lemniscata del Tiempo: Una Topologia de la Memoria, la Posibilidad y la Gracia. (shrink)

Time perception is the name of the topic of research that deals with the perception of temporal properties. Listening to a piece of music, for instance, the experience one has turns centrally on whether two notes sound at the same time or in succession, the order in which different notes are played, and the duration of each note as well as of the gaps between them—these are just some elementary temporal properties. A large body of work has studied the mechanisms (...) underpinning the perception of temporal properties, including their limitations, the errors they are subject to, and the factors causing such errors. However, researchers have also raised more fundamental explanatory questions—sometimes associated with the slogan that “there is no sense organ for time”—as to how it is possible for temporal properties to figure in experience at all. The particular theories of time perception that have been developed bear on broader issues such as the unity of consciousness, the boundary between perception and cognition, and the very nature of conscious experience. (shrink)

There is a widespread idea that people experience this world as if it is other than a block world; as if, instead, this world is dynamical and time passes in a robustly A-theoretic manner. In light of this, some argue that there is good reason to think that the world is robustly dynamical, for the best explanation of having these various experiences is experiencing time as it really is, in itself, as dynamical. Thus, there is a kind of inference to (...) the best explanation from the nature of people’s experience, broadly construed, to the conclusion that this world is not a block. This book takes up the challenge of responding to this argument in its various guises. By appealing to new empirical work undertaken at the Centre for Time in Sydney, it is argued that for a whole range of ways that one experiences this world temporally, including attitudinally, belief-wise, and perception-wise, people experience the world just as it is: as a block world. There is, at the end of the day, no pressure to conclude that this world is dynamical via the nature of any of people’s experiences of the world. (shrink)

This treatise examines the deliberately incomplete philosophy of time articulated by Augustine of Hippo in Book XI of the Confessions, arguing that Augustine’s acknowledged inability to resolve the nature of time constitutes not a philosophical failure but a productive aporia whose structural features anticipate and necessitate contemporary responses. Through systematic analysis of Augustine’s threefold present (praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris), his concept of temporal distention (distentio animi), and his paradox of temporal measurement, this paper identifies three (...) unresolved tensions in Augustinian temporality: the ontological status of the present, the relationship between phenomenological and cosmological time, and the mechanism by which consciousness generates temporal experience. The treatise then demonstrates that Temporal Fission Theory (Boether, 2025), which posits the phenomenological present as an emergent phenomenon arising from the collision of past and future temporal potentialities, provides a coherent resolution to Augustine’s central aporias while preserving the phenomenological insights that render Confessions XI enduringly relevant. The analysis positions Augustine as the originator of the presentism–eternalism tension that Temporal Fission Theory reconciles through its framework of perspectival synchronicity. (shrink)

In this essay, I show that perceptual presentness supports the existence of a global present if we adopt a speculative realist approach to phenomenology. I show how this global present can resist the argument from special relativity. The idea is that the concept of the global present is derived from our perceptual experience of the local present, and I show that special relativity does not undermine this concept; what it undermines instead is that there are specific events or objects that (...) are globally present. The resulting view is a form of phenomenological fragmentalism that is analogous to Kit Fine’s ontological fragmentalism. (shrink)

Synaesthesia, in which particular perceptual or cognitive stimuli trigger anomalous secondary sensations, has proven to be remarkably difficult to explain. The way it complicates linkages between perception and action is often taken to present a particularly interesting challenge for embodied accounts of cognition. Taking up Merleau-Ponty’s startling claim that “synaesthetic perception is the rule,” (2005 [1945]: 266), this paper will suggest that synaesthesia and the dynamics of embodied sense-making can shed light on each other precisely because the former’s puzzling strangeness (...) reminds us just how complex the latter can be. Synaesthesia is the kind of illuminating disruption that is well-known within the phenomenological tradition. Unlike Heidegger’s broken hammer, however, it is not a case of practical engagement gone awry; instead, it functions more like the work of Cézanne as analysed in Merleau-Ponty’s essays, capable of disclosing, enacting, and amplifying key dynamics of our Being-in-the-world. Examining how these synaesthetic dynamics – especially the ‘difference in union’ of embodied sense-making, a synthesis that preserves distinctions – operate in the structures of motivation, temporality, and intersubjectivity can help enrich our understanding of, both, our Being-in-the-world in general and the phenomenon that we ordinarily call ‘synaesthesia’. (shrink)

In the dim hours before the day could decide what it wished to be, when the world still hovered between promise and withdrawal, there moved two presences along the same unfolding path. One was the Real, though it bore no name of its own choosing, for it had endured without witness and learned the cost of being known. It moved with grave attentiveness, as ancient things do, placing its weight carefully upon the earth, breathing in time with the quiet negotiations (...) of air and light. It did not hurry, nor did it linger, but received each moment as it arrived and released it when it passed. The other was the Symbol, and it named itself endlessly. Around it gathered meanings like garments layered for a colder season than ever came, plans unfolding before its feet could reach them, its futures continuously rehearsed until they lost all warmth. It moved not from where it stood but from where it imagined itself soon to be, and so its steps were always slightly misplaced, its balance always a little unsure. Though the Real and the Symbol shared the same ground and the same pale morning light touched them both, they did not inhabit the same time, and this difference, quiet and unquestioned, governed all. (shrink)

At its core, Time Explained is a book-length interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of time. Moving beyond linear chronology, it examines time’s subjective, objective, and philosophical dimensions, introducing the concept of the World of Becoming and positioning temporality as the fundamental medium through which self and reality are constructed. Drawing on cognitive science, physics, and philosophy, the text analyzes psychological time—especially the distortion of duration in high-stress situations—and demonstrates how attention, memory, and cognitive structuring actively assemble temporal experience. By offering (...) a systematic introduction to the foundations of temporal reality, the book challenges static conceptions of existence and emphasizes the dynamic structure of human experience. (shrink)

We are a species deeply committed to being haunted. Not accidentally, not reluctantly, but with the diligence of archivists and the devotion of monks. We collect the past, label it, polish it, and then complain about its weight, as though it followed us home uninvited. We speak of history as if it were a creditor, memory as if it were law, and precedent as if it were gravity. One would think the past had agency, ambition, perhaps even a small legal (...) team. In truth, it has none. The past is inert. It does not pursue us. We drag it with us. (shrink)

The concept of narrative is widespread in the philosophical literature on dreams. Although several works have examined the putative narrative character of dreams by drawing on narratology, literary theory, and semiotics, there has been virtually no investigation of how preconceptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the philosophical debate on dreams and dreaming. This paper aims to address this gap. We argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with (...) dream reports and then with dreams themselves. As a result, features and devices typically associated with literary fiction are frequently used as a speculative explanatory framework to understand dreams and the processes underlying their formation, encoding, and retrieval. To illuminate this tendency, we focus on two central categories in the philosophy of dreaming: authorship and composition. By examining relevant cases in which these categories are employed to support divergent ontological and epistemological claims, we argue that similar accounts rest on a shared—yet frequently unacknowledged—assumption: that dreams exhibit a narrative structure and that dreaming is, at its core, a process of narrative construction. Through our conceptual analysis, we aim to lay the groundwork for further exploration of the emergence of narrative thinking in spontaneous thought, encompassing both wakefulness and sleep. (shrink)

While philosophers disagree about the permissibility of future-bias, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will at least judge that future-bias is permissible, and probably judge that it is obligatory as well. Recent empirical work supports this supposition: people overwhelmingly judge that they themselves ought to prefer, of a negative event, that it lies at a certain point in the past rather than an equidistant point in the future. This finding can potentially be marshalled into an argument that people ought to (...) be future-biased, which proceeds via the idea that people’s normative judgments in these matters are a good (if defeasible) guide to the normative facts, or that the best explanation for people having such normative judgements is that there are normative reasons to be future-biased. Such arguments rely on the idea that people’s normative judgements in this regard are consistent. So far, however, the only normative judgements that have been investigated concern people’s judgements about their own first-personal preferences about negative events in conditions of equality. This paper presents the results of a study that probes these judgements much more broadly, including both first- and third-personal judgements, in conditions of equality and inequality, about positive and negative events, as well as people’s normative judgements about other people’s preferences (what we call other-directed normative judgements). (shrink)

Retentionalism and extensionalism are theories of temporal consciousness. As such, they aim to explain how subjects are aware of temporally extended phenomena as succession. Direct realism and representationalism are theories of general perception: they aim to explain what our perceptual experience consists of and what kinds of objects we perceive. The received view marries retentionalism with representationalism and extensionalism with direct realism. Although some forms of extensionalism departing from direct realism have been advanced, nobody has proposed the fourth combination: retentional (...) direct realism. This paper aims to fill the gap and provide a way to understand how retentionalism and direct realism can be coherently combined. This new theory takes the best of the two worlds, putting together the, arguably, best theory of temporal consciousness with the, arguably, best theory of general perception. And it has an additional advantage: it easily solves one of the main problems for retentionalism in the literature: the problem of repeated contents. (shrink)

The philosophy of time in the Western tradition, originating in the philosophy of physical time, may seem irrelevant to personal experience. However, in my work, the philosophy of time has been transformative for me: it has altered my understanding of my own (and anyone’s) immediate perception and also my sense of self in time. -/- The first is transformative in a productive and positive way, altering my thinking about perception and temporal experience, including perceptual and temporal illusion. It also impacts (...) my understanding of empirical evidence, simultaneity, and free will. -/- I once thought the transformation could be even more profound. Given the philosophy of time I subscribe to, the passage of time, that sense of inevitable events moving toward us now, is strictly speaking an illusion. This might show that the past and the future are merely illusions, and thus that one’s death (always in one’s future, and so dependent on it) is an illusion too; as an underworld shown to not exist also shows the nonexistence of its inhabiting shades, so the nonexistent future takes death along with it. However, this reasoning is a mistake. It is based on a confusion about what it means to change given modern philosophy of time, and what it involves. And it is good it is a mistake. -/- For everything I plan and find worth doing is in the future, packed between this moment and my death. Denying death this way, I must deny any future thing I could care to do. (shrink)

Title descriptionThis book results from a group meeting held at the Institute for Scientific Exchange in Torino, Italy. The central aim was for scientists to “think together” in new ways with those in the humanities inspired by quantum theory and especially quantum brain theory. These fields of inquiry have suffered conceptual estrangement but now are ripe for rapprochement, if academic parochialism is put aside. A prevalent theme of the book is a moving away from individual elements and individual actors acting (...) upon each other, toward a coordinate hermeneutic dynamics that manifests as a coherent totality. Among the topics covered are image in photography and in neuroscience; language; time; brain and mathematics; quantum brain dynamics and quantum communication. (shrink)

Bereavement has long been recognised as an experience of profound temporal disruption, unravelling and even severing the connections, meanings, and strategies we habitually use in navigating time. The technologies that are involved in our grieving and mourning processes can therefore also be temporal technologies; our encounters with them can both shape and be shaped by our entanglement in the temporalities of loss. The recent phenomenon of so-called ‘griefbots’ or ‘deathbots’ – Large Language Model-powered chatbots trained to imitate the dead – (...) is no different. This paper explores some of the implications that interactions with such bots might have for a bereaved person’s experience of time by turning to Heidegger’s conceptualisation of world-time. This framework is particularly useful for thinking about both intimacy and loss, and can shed light on both beneficial and deleterious consequences of griefbot usage. In particular, such an approach can show that the dangers of griefbots usage lie less in the potential for the bereaved being deceived, and more in the reductive perspective that these bots can encourage. Usage of, and even temporary reliance upon, a griefbot can generate attitudes with a protective effect, similar to the function that Lisa Bortolotti ascribes to delusions. However, griefbots can also interfere with the temporal unfolding of grief and mourning by disrupting the way that loss tends to transform our embedding within the dynamics of world-time. (shrink)

Immersive experiences are typically associated with entering alternative worlds, often represented as distinct spatial environments. This paper challenges such conventional notions of immersion by arguing that the contexts of immersion aren’t spatially articulated “worlds” but temporally structured “situations” of limited scope. We propose a novel concept of immersion, asserting that being immersed in a situation involves being experientially and actively in sync with its unfolding temporal structure, rhythm, vibe, and pace. Drawing on the phenomenology of (film)experience and following the wave (...) metaphor, we examine the underlying dynamics of time experience in immersive encounters. This expanded understanding of immersion has profound implications, bridging the gap between lm experience and everyday life and revealing the political dimensions of immersive experience. (shrink)

Western cultures typically conceive of time as being linearly structured. This linear structure consists of at least three features: the world appears to contain a single timeline; this timeline exhibits various causal, practical, and epistemic asymmetries; and the present moment occupies a special place on this timeline. Many researchers have argued that this naïve conception of time as linearly structured depends on our capacity for episodic memory, since it is only through episodic recollection that we experience time as linearly structured. (...) This chapter begins by surveying some of the arguments for the conclusion that it is only in episodic recollection that we experience time as linearly structured. The chapter then points to findings that reveal an alternative connection between memory and our experience of linear time. Perception itself, and the short-term memory systems perception employs, furnishes us with experiences of linear time, independently of episodic memory. (shrink)

This paper does not attempt to define consciousness in ontological terms. Instead, it models the structural conditions under which recursive symbolic systems sustain internal feedback without collapse. Within the framework of Emergent Necessity Theory (ENT), such systems are described by a threshold variable, τ, which quantifies the coherence of recursive symbolic integration over time. ENT simulations have consistently shown that when τ falls below a certain level, recursive feedback fails to stabilize. When τ exceeds a higher threshold, symbolic loops rigidify (...) or collapse under over-coherence. -/- Between these extremes, ENT models have identified a narrow zone in which recursive awareness stabilizes. We refer to this range, approximately 1.5 ≤τ ≤1.8, as the coherence corridor. -/- The purpose of this paper is to formally hypothesize, model, and test the structural conditions that give rise to this corridor, without presupposing its necessity beyond ENT’s internal logic. (shrink)

This paper explores the profound cognitive and philosophical meaning of relativistic velocities of consciousness, particularly light speed. Drawing upon the findings of cognitive science, the philosophy of mind, and theoretical physics, we explore the paradoxical nature of subjective experience when space and time coordinates undergo radical transformations. We explore how notions of qualia, embodiment, memory, and causality are rearranged or disintegrate entirely within a light speed reference frame. Synthesizing the thoughts of philosophers like Nassim Nicholas Taleb, David Graeber, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (...) Edmund Husserl, and Gilles Deleuze, we present a novel way of thinking about consciousness as not an object, but an active, relational process deeply entwined with the spacetime web. The essay ends by positing that consciousness, far from being a cosmic constant, may only be given meaning in the 'middle speeds' of life as a boundary condition between absolute motion and absolute stasis. This inquiry challenges anthropocentric thinking in our understanding of mind and offers a speculative but scientific inquiry into the final nature of existence in a relativistic universe. (shrink)

This thesis defends naïve realist perceptualism about absence experiences: the claim that sometimes absences are among the things that we genuinely perceive and thereby are consciously acquainted with. I argue for a view on which absences can be among the objects of our perceptual experiences, where perceptual experiences are understood as presentational relations of conscious acquaintance between perceivers and the perceived things. Such a view provides a compelling account of what it is like to see or feel holes, see shadows (...) or darkness, hear silence, see or feel something disappear, or see the absence of a friend in a café. -/- In the first part, I investigate the metaphysical and ontological commitments of a naïve realist account of perception. In the second part, I look at different kinds of absence experiences and argue that a perceptualist account gives the best explanation of their conscious characters. Over the course of six chapters, each focusing on a specific kind of an absence experience, I develop a novel unified account of absence experiences and their objects on which absences are temporally extended instances of properties of spatial and temporal locations. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article argues that nostalgia, understood properly, functions as an orientation through which one engages with aesthetic experiences, and in turn, our own existence. Beginning with Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) as an artistic example and by drawing on Svetlana Boym’s distinction between ‘reflective’ and ‘restorative’ nostalgia, it observes that reflective nostalgia can serve as a hermeneutical lens that transforms absence into aesthetic possibility. This challenges us to creatively engage with fragmented memory and its accompanying affective (...) burdens. Subsequently, the article critically examines Mark Fisher’s application of hauntology in cultural production, suggesting that today’s creative landscape is trapped in a metastatic cycle of self-referentiality that paradoxically moves rapidly while remaining static, what the author terms ‘the eternalisation of present’, linking our crisis of beauty to the contemporaneous crisis of temporality. Finally, the article proposes an alternative mode of aesthetic engagement found in Walter Benjamin’s character of the flaneur, whose meditative, purposeless meandering resists the homogenisation of culture and the acceleration of solipsistic reproduction of artwork by engaging deeply with fragmented historical images that disclose to us a salvific path forward. (shrink)

Heredero de una tradición intelectualista, McDowell sostiene que los animales nohumanos carecen de orientación hacia el mundo externo debido a que la noción de experiencia depende de una segunda naturaleza, a la que ingresamos por medio del lenguaje. Esta concepción resulta desafiada por los distintos avances teóricos sobre la mente animal. El objetivo de este trabajo es esbozar una posición filosófica alternativa a la de McDowell. Para ello, tomaremos la propuesta de Bermúdez, extensible a los animales no-humanos, quien sostiene que (...) la experiencia supone una dimensión temporal. A partir de algunos estudios empíricos sobre navegación espacial y memoria episódica, sostendremos que los animales no-humanos no sólo evidencian compresión temporal sino además satisfacen una versión desintelectualizada de las condiciones exigidas por McDowell, para trazar la distinción entre objetivo y subjetivo. (shrink)

The mirror stage brings to consciousness out of the subconscious an item of knowledge p about the structure of the external reality. When the ego surpasses id at the mirror stage, it then knows that there is the other and that the other is of a newly disclosed significance for the center. Knowledge of significance (before the mirror stage) and content (after) of p are sources of causal efficacy and so p is true in both cases. After the stage p (...) is true based on empirical evidence. But before the stag, p is true by virtue of its meaning, based on semantic evidence = non-structural existential significance knowledge = that within the external reality there is something of unknown content which is the source of the aura of significance sensed by the ego.-------The ego before the stage appears to itself as a sign putatively of pure signified (pure namelessness) causing surplusage of sign. Once structural knowledge is acquired, the ego realizes it is associated with a name. The mirror stage is the process of acquisition of a method. That of understanding temporal mechanism of language. ------The physical event caused by the mirror stage is the perception of two temporally-distinct events morphing into atemporal continuity. (shrink)

This article aims to outline a theory of political boredom based on the concept of the liberal temporal dispositive. According to this concept, modern politics is characterized by the reduction of political time consumption to enable the growing temporal autonomy of the individual. However, individuals may experience considerable stress in their pursuit to utilize this free time effectively. Boredom arises when individuals fail to “fill” their available time with meaningful actions. Political crises of boredom occur as attempts by individuals to (...) relieve the pressures accompanying temporal autonomy, sometimes restarting political temporality on a new, massive scale. Furthermore, the article examines modern political philosophy as inherently rooted in the liberal temporal dispositive. Through several historical examples, it is discussed how political philosophy may either contribute to imbuing politics with a desire for meaning or abstain from it in an attitude of serene resignation. It is proposed that liberal democracy requires a temporal ethics based on the latter. (shrink)

We investigate the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which what partly explains (a) why people tend to prefer negative events to be in their further future rather than their nearer future and positive events to be in their nearer future rather than their further future and (b) why people tend to prefer that negative events be located in their past not their future and that positive events be located in their future not their past, is that people tend to discount (...) the value of events they are less able causally to manipulate. If people discount the value of events they are less able to causally manipulate, then since often temporally nearer future events are more causally manipulable than further ones, and since future events are manipulable whereas past ones aren’t, this could explain both (a) and (b). In turn, if the causal manipulability hypothesis is correct, this might suggest that insofar as people’s preferences are explained in this manner, those preferences are rationally permissible, since relative causal manipulability is normatively relevant. Thus, ascertaining whether the causal manipulability hypothesis is true may shed light on the normative status of such preferences. We investigate the cognitively mediated version of the causal manipulability hypothesis, according to which people’s consciously held beliefs about the relative causal manipulability of events explains (a) and (b). Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence in favour of this view. We suggest that either relative causal manipulability plays an explanatory role, but one that is not cognitively mediated, or that it does not play any role, even if it is sometimes associated with other factors, such as probability, that may play a role in explaining some time biased preferences. (shrink)

This paper sets forward a novel theory of temporal binding, a mechanism that integrates the temporal properties of sensory features into coherent perceptual experiences. Specifying a theory of temporal binding remains a widespread problem. The popular ‘brain time theory’ suggests that the temporal content of perceptual experiences is determined by when sensory features complete processing. However, this theory struggles to explain how perceptual experiences can accurately reflect the relative timing of sensory features processed at discrepant times. In contrast, ‘event time (...) theories’ suggest that the temporal content of perceptual experiences reflects the relative event time of external sensory features and that the brain accommodates differential processing times. We can formulate retrodictive and predictive versions of this theory. Retrodictive event time theories propose that we accommodate desynchronised processing retrodictively. Predictive event time theories propose that we accommodate desynchronised processing by predictively modelling the event time of sensory features. I argue that both views have strengths and weaknesses. This paper proposes a new hybrid theory that integrates these theories to accommodate these weaknesses. Firstly, I argue how retrodictions and predictions can interact in mutually beneficial ways to ensure speedy and accurate temporal binding. Secondly, I propose how attention plays a central role in flexibly selecting which contents get to be temporally bound. This theory can explain how prediction and retrodiction differentially affect temporal binding and, in turn, proposes a new way to understand temporal binding and has implications for how we should understand conscious experiences. (shrink)

Extensionalism is, roughly, the view that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended (and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur). This view is widely acknowledged to be incompatible with thin presentism, the second most popular position in temporal ontology. In this paper, I argue that extensionalism is also incompatible with several other positions in temporal ontology, namely those positing the existence of non-present times that host sentience—positions I collectively refer (...) to as the sentient non-present view. Most notably, extensionalism proves to be incompatible with B-theoretical eternalism, which is the most popular position in temporal ontology. (shrink)

We often care not only about what happens to us, but when it happens to us. We prefer that good experiences happen sooner, rather than later, and that our suffering lies in our past, rather than our future. Common sense suggests that some ways of caring about time are rational, and others are not, but it is surprisingly challenging to provide justifying explanations for these tendencies. This Element is an opinionated, non-technical guided tour through the main philosophical issues about the (...) relevance of the temporal location of our experiences to our desires and our choices, and the major arguments for and against different kinds of so-called time bias. (shrink)

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin to human (...) temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness). (shrink)

Menschen sind häufig nicht ganz bei der Sache. Oft finden wir sie abwesend, nicht ganz da, sich in Tagträume verlierend, in Gedanken schon bei der nächsten Sache; finden sie irgendwie nicht ganz hinein in die Situationen, mit denen sie sich gerade konfrontiert finden. Der Beitrag entwickelt die These, dass die Rede von der "Immersivität" von Erfahrung nicht erst bei technologisch oder ästhetisch mediierten Erlebnissen des Versetztseins in künstliche oder virtuelle "Welten" und Umgebungen am Platz, gewöhnliche menschliche Erfahrung vielmehr ganz grundsätzlich (...) durch eine immersive Dynamik des Hineinfindens in und Hinausgeratens aus Situationen charakterisiert ist: Noch bevor wir uns ein bewusstes Bild konkreter Umstände und Möglichkeiten gemacht haben, finden wir uns gewöhnlich schon in Situationen verortet. Diese zeichnen bestimmte Rhythmen und Richtungen, Valenzen und Tendenzen, Bedeutsamkeiten und Möglichkeiten vor. Der Beitrag skizziert eine Phänomenologie der Immersion, die auch ein tieferes Verständnis technologisch oder ästhetisch mediierter Immersionserfahrungen verspricht. (shrink)

Adrian Bardon has produced a new version of his historical introduction to the philosophy of time. Originally published in 2013, the second edition of 2024 is partly rewritten and supplemented with a more extensive discussion on our disposition to project the passage of time [...] Although the book’s title emphasizes history, most of the chapters are directed at issues in systematic philosophy of time: the realism/antirealism debate, temporal passage, temporal experience, spacetime, direction, time travel, time and free will, and the (...) temporal boundaries of the universe. (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)