[SydPhil] Time, Temporal Experience, and Temporal Representation Workshop @ the University of Sydney, Centre for Time - all welcome!

[Kristie Miller]

Time, Temporal Experience, and Temporal Representation

 Tuesday Nov 1, 2022

 In the Centre for Time Room (Main Quad, next to my office).

 ZOOM URL:

 https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89945950192?pwd=SkJCZ0kyNnpEeW1mWnNleFVYWTJSQT09

 9.00-10.15

 Against Two-faced Eternalism

Giovanni Merlo (Geneva)

 Nowadays, many advocates of Metaphysical Eternalism – the view that there aren’t any temporary facts – embrace Psychological Temporalism – the view that there are temporal propositions. On the resulting combination – call it Two-faced Eternalism (TFE) – temporal propositions are something of a psychological ‘free lunch’: they play the role that propositions are traditionally supposed to play as objects of various psychological attitudes but there aren’t any facts ‘out there’ making them true or false simpliciter. Instead of trying to argue that TFE is incoherent, false, or objectionably revisionary, I shall argue that it is not a rationally tenable position. My argument starts from the observation that, for at least a large class of temporal propositions that, according to TFE, we can (and sometimes should) believe, believing the proposition rationally commits one to believing in the existence of the corresponding fact. Now, either the notion of ‘fact’ that is relevant to this observation is the same as the notion of ‘fact’ that figures in the formulation of Metaphysical Eternalism, or it isn’t. If it is, TFE implies that there is a large class of propositions we can (and sometimes should) believe such that believing any of them commits us to disbelieving Metaphysical Eternalism, hence TFE itself. If it isn’t, TFE can be shown to imply something equally problematic – namely, that there is a large class of propositions we can (and sometimes should) believe such that believing any of them commits us to a view that closely resembles, and shares all the alleged problems of, the denial of Metaphysical Eternalism, hence of TFE itself. Either way, TFE is an unlikely place for metaphysicians to plant their stakes.  

10.15-11.30

AFRO-POLYCHRONISM: THE ENTANGLEMENT OF AFRICAN TIME AND UBUNTU

Dr Aïda C. Terblanché-Greeff  North-West University, South Africa.

Cultural values are characteristically prescriptive, normative, and evaluative of individuals’ affect, behaviour, and cognition, indicating that cultural values relate to morality. One such cultural value is time orientation, which is often categorised on a spectrum as monochronism vs polychronism. I focus on polychronism, represented thoroughly in academic literature as a universal cultural value predominantly formulated from a Western paradigm. Unsurprisingly, limited attention is allocated to different variations of polychronism based on distinct cultures. I argue that time orientation as a cultural value is not universal and is context-specific and nuanced. Supportively, research indicates that a cultural group from three Setswana communities in South Africa is predominantly categorised as polychronic when considering their African time orientation. Nonetheless, polychronism describes African time orientation only partially and overlooks the unique collectivistic cultural traits of Ubuntu which focuses on the interconnectedness between individuals as per the African maxim “I am, because we are”. In this talk, I will introduce the neologism Afro-polychronism as an amalgamation of African time and Ubuntu by unpacking its components. I argue that aspects of African time and Ubuntu are reciprocal and entangled under the concept of Afro-polychronism.

 11.30-12.45

 Perceptual Illusionism about Temporal Passage

Brigitte Everett, The University of Sydney

Illusionism about temporal passage, once the default position for B-theorists, is the view that we have illusory perceptual experiences as of temporal passage. An increasingly popular alternative B-theoretical view, deflationism, involves the denial of the claim that we have any perceptual experiences as of temporal passage. The rising popularity of deflationism is perhaps partly due to recent objections levelled against the illusionist. One important objection to the view, the intelligibility problem, tasks the B-theorist with making intelligible how one could believe that we have experiences as of some phenomenon that does not exist. In other words, the thought is that the illusionist must explain exactly what the content of their belief that we have experiences as of temporal passage is. On behalf of the illusionist, I explore a couple of solutions to this problem. One involves denying that there is a problem, and another is a new way of cashing out the content of the illusionist belief. I discuss some disadvantages of each view, but claim that both options at least make illusionism about temporal passage intelligible.

 12.45-2.00 LUNCH

 2.00-3.15

 Against Hard Presentism, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Past Tense Truths

 Anthony Bigg, University of Sydney 

 Abstract: Presentism faces a well-known truthmaker objection. Roughly, the objection states that an ontology of exclusively present objects and events is insufficient to provide the required grounding for past tense truths – truths such as it was the case that Hannibal crossed the Alps or it was the case one hour ago that you were eating toast. Surprisingly, and undeterred by common sense, some presentists have responded to this argument by denying that there are any past tense truths at all (and hence, they deny that there are any ungrounded past tense truths). This view is known as ‘Hard Presentism’. In this talk, I interrogate the viability of the Hard Presentist response to the truthmaker argument and ultimately find it wanting. Depending on what Hard presentists say about the alethic status of futuretense propositions, I argue that Hard Presentism either (i) collapses into eternalism and is inconsistent with time passing, (ii) fails in its attempt to undermine the truthmaker argument or (iii) entails a contradiction. In light of these considerations, no one should be a Hard Presentist. Thus, presentists looking to respond to the truthmaker argument need to look elsewhere for a solution.  

3.15-4.30

On the Impossibility of Past Genesis on the GB

Shira Yechimovitz Tel Aviv University and the University of Sydney

One does not simply become past. One must be present first. In this talk I will borrow the term past genesis from Forbes (2015) and use it in an inclusive way, as an umbrella term to any scenario in which things come into existence as past, without going through being present first. Forbes rightfully argues that the impossibility of past genesis is one of the features of our experience of passage that all dynamic views of time should be able to account for. A dynamic view of time is any metaphysics of time that characterizes passage as ontological change. I will take the Growing Block view as my study case, and discuss three different ways in which past genesis may manifest in a GB world: (i) The Eternal Past; (ii) “Squeezing in” Past Genesis; (iii) The Becoming of Temporally Extended Slices. I will consider each of them in turn, and examine the issues they bring about. My goal is to see whether or not the GB theorist can make the case that all instances of past genesis are metaphysically impossible in a GB world

 

Professor Kristie Miller
ARC Future Fellow
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room S213, A 14 Main Quad

kristie.miller at sydney.edu.au
kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Ph: +612 9036 9663
https://www.kristiemiller.net 
https://www.centrefortime.org






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