Abstract
Extensionalist theories of the specious present suggest that every perceptual experience is extended in time for a short while, such that they are co-extensive in time with the time experienced in them. Thus, there can be no experience of time, unless the experience itself is extended in time. Accordingly, there must be something that unites the temporal parts of a perceptual experience into temporally extended wholes. I call this the “glue-problem for extensionalism”. In this paper I suggest three desiderata that an extensionalist theory should meet in order to solve the glue-problem. I also distinguish between different versions of extensionalism, and argue that none of them can solve the glue-problem without violating at least one desideratum.
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Notes
For an important exception, see Tye (2003), who hold that the entire stream of consciousness is phenomenaall unified.
Phillips reiterates the same position in a later work: “When it comes to experience, it is significant stretches, not instants, that are explanatorily and metaphysically fundamental. In other words, the key claim required to make sense of temporal experience is not merely that experience is extended through time, but rather that there are certain durations of experience that are explanatorily or metaphysically prior to their temporal subparts.” (Phillips 2014, p. 149f).
In Armstrong (1997) he also includes among external relations something he calls “the alling or totalling relation”. (1997:199) This is the relation an aggregate bear to the total of all objects of a certain kind. All electrons for example bear the totalling relation to the property of being all electrons there is.
For a similar distinction, see Prosser (2016, p. 152f). Prosser suggests that Phillips holism can be cashed out in either a relational account or in an intrinsic account. On the relational account, two parts belong to the same specious present if they are related in some way. Prosser dismiss this view since purely spatiotemporal relations cannot unite the parts. My argument is as we have seen slightly different, since I also consider—and dismiss—other kinds of relations.
For a similar point, see Prosser (2016, p. 153f). Prosser argues that Phillips account is incoherent with respect to temporal illusions. He asks us to consider the kind of temporal illusions where the felt location of a tap on the arm depends on the preceding and succeeding experiences. If someone first experiences five taps in a row on the same location on the arm, then the fifth tap is experienced as being located at the same place as the other taps. If, however, the experience is followed by five taps in a different spot, then, under certain circumstances, the perceiver experiences the taps as located at ten different positions on the arm. Let us assume that the first five taps together with a preceding time of no tactile experiences form one specious present and the sequence of ten taps form a second specious present. If the fifth tap is a part of both specious presents, then the tap is experienced as located in a different spot in the first specious present than in the second. So extensionalism cannot account for this kind of illusions without leading to contradictions. (Prosser 2016, p. 153f).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Ingvar Johansson, Kristoffer Sundberg, Christer Svennerlind and my two anonymous referees for valuable comments on a previous version of the paper.
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Almäng, J. A problem for extensional theories of time-consciousness. Synthese 199, 14865–14880 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03446-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03446-4