Online research in philosophy

Introduction Ordinary experience seems both to take place in time and to concern things that happen in time. This seemingly simple fact is the starting ...

Consciousness exists in time, but time is also to be found within consciousness: we are directly aware of both persistence and change, at least over short intervals. On reflection this can seem baffling. How is it possible for us to be immediately aware of phenomena which are not (strictly speaking) present? What must consciousness be like for this to be possible? In _Stream of Consciousness_ I argued that influential accounts of phenomenal temporality along the lines developed by Broad and Husserl were fundamentally flawed, and proposed a quite different account: the overlap model. While recognizing that the latter has merits, Gallagher argues that it too is fundamentally flawed; he also takes issue with some of my claims concerning Broad and Husserl. My reply comes in three main parts. I start by clarifying my use of certain terms, in particular _realism_ and _anti-realism_ as applied to theories of phenomenal temporality in general, and the accounts of Broad and Husserl in particular. I then turn to Gallagher.

It is argued that a subject who has an experience as of succession can have this experience at a time, or over a period of time, during which there occurs in him no succession of conscious mental states at all. Various metaphysical implications of this conclusion are explored. One premise of the main argument is that every experience is an experience as of succession. This implies that we cannot understand phenomenal temporality as a relation among experiences, but only as a primitive feature of experience, or else as something analyzable into wholly non-phenomenal terms.

This is a study of the nature of time. In it, redeploying an argument first presented by McTaggart, the author argues that although time itself is real, tense is not. He accounts for the appearance of the reality of tense - our sense of the passage of time, and the fact that our experience occurs in the present - by showing how time is indispensable as a condition of action. Time itself is further analysed, and Dr Mellor gives answers to most of the metaphysical questions it provokes, concerning the relation of time to space, the dissection of time, and its relation to change and causation.

Starting from the special theory of relativity it is argued that the structure of an experience is extended over time, making experience dynamic rather than static. The paper describes and explains what is meant by phenomenal parts and outlines opposing positions on the experience of time. Time according to he special theory of relativity is defined and the possibility of static experience shown to be implausible, leading to the conclusion that experience is dynamic. Some implications of this for the relationship of phenomenology to the physical world are considered.

Normally, when we notice a change taking place, our conscious experience has a corresponding quality of phenomenal change . Here it is argued that one’s experience can have this quality at or during a time when there is no change in which phenomenal properties one instantiates. This undermines a number of otherwise forceful arguments against leading metaphysical theories of change, but also requires these theories to construe change as a secondary quality, akin to color.

Consciousness exists in time, but time is also to be found within consciousness: we are directly aware of both persistence and change, at least over short intervals. On reflection this can seem baffling. How is it possible for us to be immediately aware of phenomena which are not (strictly speaking) present? What must consciousness be like for this to be possible? In Stream of Consciousness I argued that influential accounts of phenomenal temporality along the lines developed by Broad and Husserl were fundamentally flawed, and proposed a quite different account: the overlap model. While recognizing that the latter has merits, Gallagher argues that it too is fundamentally flawed; he also takes issue with some of my claims concerning Broad and Husserl. My reply comes in three main parts. I start by clarifying my use of certain terms, in particular realism and anti-realism as applied to theories of phenomenal temporality in general, and the accounts of Broad and Husserl in particular. I then turn to Gallagher’s main criticisms of the overlap theory. Gallagher argues that the theory is sunk by a problem with ongoing contents, that if our experience possessed the structures I ascribe to it, we would be aware of..

In this paper I argue that a recently discovered set of visual illusions sheds new light on the nature of time consciousness. In particular, I argue that these illusions put strong pressure on a view I call Temporal Atomism that otherwise might have seemed quite attractive. According to temporal atomism if you were to fix which non-temporal properties are experienced as well as the temporal properties of your experience itself, you would also have fixed which temporal properties are experienced. While it has been claimed before that views like temporal atomism are confused, and face conceptual as well as empirical problems, my argument based on the newly discovered illusions provides a new and more straightforward challenge: temporal atomism either has to give up its crucial motivations, or it can not even so much as make sense of the content of the subject’s visual experience. I end with brief suggestions concerning how the results of this paper bears on further philosophical debates about time consciousness, change blindness, and the role of attention in perceptual experience.

Stream of Consciousness is about the phenomenology of conscious experience. Barry Dainton shows us that stream of consciousness is not a mosaic of discrete fragments of experience, but rather an interconnected flowing whole. Through a deep probing into the nature of awareness, introspection, phenomenal space and time consciousness, Dainton offers a truly original understanding of the nature of consciousness.

In ordinary conscious experience, consciousness of time seems to be ubiquitous. For example, we seem to be directly aware of change, movement, and succession across brief temporal intervals. How is this possible? Many different models of temporal consciousness have been proposed. Some philosophers have argued that consciousness is confined to a momentary interval and that we are not in fact directly aware of change. Others have argued that although consciousness itself is momentary, we are nevertheless conscious of change. Still others have argued that consciousness is itself extended in time. In this entry, the motivations and merits of these and other positions will be expounded and assessed.