Abstract
The doctrine of the specious present that we perceive or, at least, seem to perceive a period of time is often taken to be an obvious claim about perception. Yet, it also seems just as commonly rejected as being incoherent. In this paper, following a distinction between three conceptions of the specious present, it is argued that the incoherence is due to hidden metaphysical assumptions about perception and time. For those who do not hold such assumptions, so long as we are clear about what the doctrine is really saying, we can make perfect sense of the specious present doctrine.
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Notes
This issue is primarily targeted at philosophers of mind and metaphysicians, particularly metaphysicians of time, within analytic (or, perhaps more accurately, western and rationalist) philosophy. An anonymous referee has noted that some of the concepts behind it may not be appropriate in other traditions, e.g., in phenomenology (as lived or embodied experience) or in Asian philosophy. Thus, this should be considered an issue of concern to those philosophers working in the first tradition and not necessarily in the others.
Indeed, although Le Poidevin refers to this conception as the “specious present” in his 2004, that it does not appear specious is something he recognizes in his 2007.
Kelly’s own discussion of perceived change is part of his work on time-consciousness, consciousness of time beyond the perception or experience of the present, e.g., the passage of time, the past, the future (Kelly illustrates by the example of listening to an opera singer holding a note for a long time; ibid, p. 208).
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Kelly’s work is inspired by the work on time-consciousness by the phenomenologist Husserl, who provides an extensive examination of time-consciousness (notably, the most commonly-known The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (Husserl 1991) but also elsewhere, e.g., his Bernau Manuscripts and C-Manuscripts, as discussed in Lohmar and Yamaguchi 2010).
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It is not clear that Husserl ever refers directly to a ‘specious’ present; however, he does discuss the difference between a ‘rough’ and ‘fine’ present and their relations to perception (Husserl 1991, Sect. 16, pp. 40–42). According to one commentator at least, this idea of the ‘rough’ present is what we perceive and it is something like the specious present (Pockett 2003). If so, in the context of this paper, we have this question: Would Husserl’s understanding of the ‘rough now’ fall under one of the conceptions of the specious present in this paper?
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Not being (in any way) on expert on Husserl’s overall project, I do not wish to interpret Husserl too freely on this matter. However, perhaps this can be said: if Husserl is concerned with phenomenology, and if phenomenology concerns how the world seems to us (independent of how it might actually be), then Husserl’s concerns about the phenomenology of time concern how time seems to us, as well as the way things and events appear to us in time.
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If this is right, Husserl would not necessarily be concerned with how they are independent of such appearances (except perhaps by how things are might be constrained by their appearance). Thus, if he discusses a specious present, i.e., a ‘rough now’, a durational now, especially one that we perceive, it will be something apparent; it will not be something that is not apparent. Given the three conceptions above, Husserl’s conception of the specious present would fall under the third.
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However, I am aware a great deal of interpretation and assumption is involved in coming to this conclusion. It may be that Husserl would not agree with any of these interpretations or, indeed, any of the concepts of time employed in their description (whatever the coherence of such concepts to the description of the specious present, i.e., the topic of this paper). So, I leave the work to others to consider more thoroughly the relationship between the specious present and Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness.
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For an examination of Husserl’s view on time-consciousness from the same tradition as this paper, see Dainton 2000 (this work also outlines Dainton’s own general account of time-consciousness, overlap theory, as a response to issues with both Husserl and Broad’s views on time-consciousness).
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For discussions on Dainton’s analysis of Husserl, particularly by phenomenologists, e.g., Gallagher (2003), Dainton (2003), Grush (op.cit.), Zahavi (2007), Gallagher and Zahavi (2008).
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Broad’s description falls under the third conception of the specious present, i.e., as (or at least apparently) immediately experienced change. What has interested many philosophers, however, is how Broad analyses and explains this appearance. However, the main concern here is with the description and conception rather than explanation; for this reason, and reasons of space, I put discussion of Broad’s explanation aside here. For further discussion, see, e.g., Broad (1923, 1938), Mabbot (1951), Mundle (1958), Plumer (1985), Dainton (2000), Le Poidevin (2007), Kelly (op.cit.); Grush (op.cit.).
However, along with the specious present, Broad also considered the concept of time itself. Notably, he is attributed with advancing a growing block conception of time: the past and present are equally real, like eternalism, but the future is unreal, like presentism; genuine change is a ‘pure becoming’ of previously unreal future events as they become real present events (Broad (op.cit.); Loizou (op.cit.), Dainton (2000, 2001), Tooley (2000)).
The growing block has been taken to be an alternative view to the usual conceptions in the metaphysical divides, i.e., an alternative to both A-theory and B-theory, to both eternalism and presentism. So, when considering the specious present, must the growing block be considered in addition to these other conceptions? Here is how I suggest we include it.
The growing block view shares its conception of (a) the past and present with eternalism and (b) the future with presentism. Thus, what is said about those other positions applies to the growing block theory; respectively, we apply to the growing block theory (a) what eternalism says about the specious present and the past and present and (b) what presentism says about the specious present and the future.
Kelly asks: how can we perceive the past, or worse the future when what is past no longer exists and what is future has yet to occur? (Kelly, op.cit.; for a similar point, see Perrett, 1999, p. 98). As stated, this objection misses the point of this conception of the specious present. The objection concerns what we actually perceive but this conception concerns what we appear to perceive. Still, the issue may be translated into phenomenological terms to be “how can what we perceive seem to be past or future if what appears past or future does not seem to exist?”—a version of the more general issue.
Mundle (1954, p. 48)
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Robin Le Poidevin, Maria Kon and two anonymous reviewers for extensive and thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. This paper was completed during a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Irish Research Council of the Humanities and the Social Sciences (IRCHSS), held at University College Cork.
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Power, S.E. The Metaphysics of the ‘Specious’ Present. Erkenn 77, 121–132 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9287-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9287-x