[SydPhil] Time and the Everyman Workshop @ the Centre for Time August 30

[Kristie Miller]

The Centre for Time is holding an informal one day workshop on August 30.

Details are below. Everyone is welcome. 



Time and the Everyman
 
August 30, 2014
 
N 494, The University of Sydney
 
10-11.30 Rasmus Pedersen
 
Title: Other-directed Mental Time Travel
 
Abstract: This paper posits a mental capacity I call other-directed mental time travel (ODMTT). I define ODMTT as a representational capacity that is essential for engaging in a type of mindreading that involves representing complex temporal relations of another person’s past, present, and future to temporally contextualize one’s understanding of their mental states. I claim that ODMTT springs from the interaction of MTT and mindreading and that engaging in ODMTT essentially is the act of deploying our mental time travel (MTT) capacities, a self-directed cognitive capacity, in an other-directed manner. We can think of ODMTT as something that follows more or less directly our capacities of MTT and mindreading. Previous proposals that link MTT and mindreading either discuss their common neurophysiological basis without describing how this influences cognitive skills or suggest that mindreading depends on MTT, a claim that lacks substantial evidence. Instead, this paper aims to offer a new construct—ODMTT—that systematises the mentalising activities that rely on the interaction between mindreading and MTT. I take this construct to have novel explanatory value which can guide future research. For example, one must appeal to ODMTT to explain how we engage in a sophisticated kind of narrative empathy. This is because, I argue, such empathising relies on temporal contextualising the other person’s mental states relative to episodic aspects of that person’s past and future. More broadly, I argue that ODMTT enables us to engage in more accurate mindreading, vivid perspective-taking, precise reasoning about the causal origin of another’s mental states, and fairer judgments about the reasons underlying other’s behaviours. As such ODMTT structures a range of social cognitive abilities that lie at the intersection of MTT and mindreading, in turn delivering practical and theoretical insights that call for new experimental evidence and can guide future social cognition research.
 
11.30-1.00 Kristie Miller
 
 
Title: Doing Naturalistic Philosophy of Time
 
 
Abstract
 
In this paper I aim to exemplify a certain sort of naturalistic approach to the philosophy of time. The particular aspect of philosophy of time I take up is the idea both that we report having experiences as of time (robustly) passing, and that we believe that time robustly pass. In this paper I do two things.
 
First, I outline a bunch of recent studies (much of them through the Centre for Time) that probe people’s reports regarding their experiences of time, and their beliefs about the nature of time. On the basis of this I argue that, contrary to what is often supposed, (by dynamists and non-dynamists alike), what requires explanation is *not* that people report that it seems to them in experience as though time robustly passes, or that they report believing that time does robustly pass. Rather, what requires explaining is that there is significant variation in reports in this regard. 
 
This changes the explanatory landscape. It has often been held (by dynamists and non-dynamists alike) that it seems to us as though time robustly passes, and that as a consequence people tend to believe that it does, and that it is this seeming that requires explanation. Further,  it has been argued  that the simplest explanation of our having this seeming is that time does robustly pass, and that this gives us a reason to endorse dynamism over non-dynamism. 
 
I argue that these empirical results suggest, to the contrary, that this is not what requires explaining, and, in fact, this variation in reports presents an explanatory challenge for dynamists and non-dynamists alike. 
 
In the service of providing an explanation of these reports I go on to  consider four possible explanations for this variation. The first is what I call the open future explanation, which appeals to the idea that people differentially believe that the future is open (in some way or other) and in virtue of that come to believe that time robustly passes and to report that this is how things seem. Second, I consider persisting-self explanations, according to which differences in people’s beliefs about, or experiences of, the self persisting, explain why they come to believe that time robustly passes and to report that this is how things seem. Third, I consider agentive explanations, according to which people differentially experience themselves agentively, and this explains differences in reports regarding its seeming as though time passes, and people’s beliefs that it does. Fourth, I consider the episodic vividness explanation according to which differences in the vividness of episodic imagining of past/future events explains why people differentially report that it seems as though time passes and that they believe it does. 
 
I present new empirical evidence we collected regarding all four proposals. I will then go on to argue (time permitting!) that in fact it is the non-dynamist who has the better explanation.
 
1.00-2.15 LUNCH
 
2.15-3.45 Anthony Bigg 
 
Title: Why I am a Presentist
 
Abstract: In this talk, I give a psycho-biographical account of why I am a presentist. That account is roughly as follows. On the basis of introspection, I have some knowledge of both the phenomenal experiences that I do have, and that I do not have. Call this cluster of experiences, “E”. (In this context, E includes things like seeing a chair, being appeared to green-ly, feeling warm and the like. It doesn’t include anything like a sense of temporal passage or “whoosh”. This is because it is not logically possible to have an experience of temporal passage or “whoosh”). However, neither four-dimensional worms, nor multi-located three-dimensional objects (or temporally extended simples) could have a phenomenal life that is even remotely like E. So I am definitely a time bound three-dimensional stage. But in addition to being a stage, something numerically identical to me existed yesterday. All of this is only possible if presentism is true, or so I say. Therefore, I am a presentist.
 
 
 
3.45-5.15 Kristen Stone
 
 
Title: 
How can our perception and experience of time further human consciousness 
 
Abstract: 
Less of an abstract and more of an experience, we will use this time to go through Gebser's structures of consciousness (Archaic, Magical, Mythical, Mental-Rational) and into a kaleidoscopic discussion of how the group has experienced integral consciousness in everyday life. Specifically, we will explore timelessness & timefulness; integral consciousness & time; time as present-origin; and time & transformation -- all primary concepts in Gebser's book, The Ever-present Origin.
 
 


Professor Kristie Miller
Chair of Discipline,
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Humanities,
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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