Human languages typically employ a variety of spatial metaphors for time (e.g., “I'm looking forward to the weekend”). The metaphorical grounding of time in space is also evident in gesture. The gestures that are performed when talking about time bolster the view that people sometimes think about regions of time as if they were locations in space. However, almost nothing is known about the development of metaphorical gestures for time, despite keen interest in the origins (...) of space–time metaphors. In this study, we examined the gestures that English‐speaking 6‐to‐7‐year‐olds, 9‐to‐11‐year‐olds, 13‐to‐15‐year‐olds, and adults produced when talking about time. Participants were asked to explain the difference between pairs of temporal adverbs (e.g., “tomorrow” versus “yesterday”) and to use their hands while doing so. There was a gradual increase across age groups in the propensity to produce spatial metaphorical gestures when talking about time. However, even a substantial majority of 6‐to‐7‐year‐old children produced a spatial gesture on at least one occasion. Overall, participants produced fewer gestures in the sagittal (front‐back) axis than in the lateral (left‐right) axis, and this was particularly true for the youngest children and adolescents. Gestures that were incongruent with the prevailing norms of space–time mappings among English speakers (leftward and backward for past; rightward and forward for future) gradually decreased with increasing age. This was true for both the lateral and sagittal axis. This study highlights the importance of metaphoricity in children's understanding of time. It also suggests that, by 6 to 7 years of age, culturally determined representations of time have a strong influence on children's spatial metaphorical gestures. (shrink)

The paper studies the logic TL(NBox+-wC) – logic of discrete linear time with current time point clusters. Its language uses modalities Diamond+ (possible in future) and Diamond- (possible in past) and special temporal operations, – Box+w (weakly necessary in future) and Box-w (weakly necessary in past). We proceed by developing an algorithm recognizing theorems of TL(NBox+-wC), so we prove that TL(NBox+-wC) is decidable. The algorithm is based on reduction of formulas to inference rules and converting the rules in (...) special reduced normal form, and, then, on checking validity of such rules in models of singleexponential size in the rules. Also we consider the admissibility problem for TL(NBox+-wC) and show how to reduce the problem for admissibility to the decidability of TL(NBox+-wC) itself using definable universal modalities. (shrink)

This paper deals with a number of technical achievements that are instrumental for a dis-solution of the so-called "Hole Argument" in general relativity. Such achievements include: 1) the analysis of the "Hole" phenomenology in strict connection with the Hamiltonian treatment of the initial value problem. The work is carried through in metric gravity for the class of Christoudoulou-Klainermann space-times, in which the temporal evolution is ruled by the "weak" ADM energy; 2) a re-interpretation of "active" diffeomorphisms as "passive and metric-dependent" (...) dynamical symmetries of Einstein's equations, a re-interpretation which enables to disclose their (up to now unknown) connection to gauge transformations on-shell; understanding such connection also enlightens the real content of the Hole Argument or, better, dis-solves it together with its alleged "indeterminism"; 3) the utilization of the Bergmann-Komar "intrinsic pseudo-coordinates", defined as suitable functionals of the Weyl curvature scalars, as tools for a peculiar gauge-fixing to the super-hamiltonian and super-momentum constraints; 4) the consequent construction of a "physical atlas" of 4-coordinate systems for the 4-dimensional "mathematical" manifold, in terms of the highly non-local degrees of freedom of the gravitational field (its four independent "Dirac observables"). Such construction embodies the "physical individuation" of the points of space-time as "point-events", independently of the presence of matter, and associates a "non-commutative structure" to each gauge fixing or four-dimensional coordinate system; 5) a clarification of the multiple definition given by Peter Bergmann of the concept of "(Bergmann) observable" in general relativity. This clarification leads to the proposal of a "main conjecture" asserting the existence of i) special Dirac's observables which are also Bergmann's observables, ii) gauge variables that are coordinate independent (namely they behave like the tetradic scalar fields of the Newman-Penrose formalism). A by-product of this achievements is the falsification of a recently advanced argument asserting the absence of (any kind of) "change" in the observable quantities of general relativity. 6) a clarification of the physical role of Dirac and gauge variables as their being related to "tidal-like" and "inertial-like" effects, respectively. This clarification is mainly due to the fact that, unlike the standard formulations of the equivalence principle, the Hamiltonian formalism allows to define notion of "force" in general relativity in a natural way; 7) a proposal showing how the physical individuation of point-events could in principle be implemented as an experimental setup and protocol leading to a "standard of space-time" more or less like atomic clocks define standards of time. We conclude that, besides being operationally essential for building measuring apparatuses for the gravitational field, the role of matter in the non-vacuum gravitational case is also that of "participating directly" in the individuation process, being involved in the determination of the Dirac observables. This circumstance leads naturally to a peculiar new kind of "structuralist" view of the general-relativistic concept of space-time, a view that embodies some elements of both the traditional "absolutist" and "relational" conceptions. In the end, space-time point-events maintain a "peculiar sort of objectivity". Some hints following from our approach for the quantum gravity programme are also given. (shrink)

"The last remnant of physical objectivity of space-time" is disclosed, beyond the Leibniz equivalence, in the case of a continuous family of spatially non-compact models of general relativity. The physical individuation of point-events is furnished by the intrinsic degrees of freedom of the gravitational field, (viz, the "Dirac observables") that represent - as it were - the "ontic" part of the metric field. The physical role of the "epistemic" part (viz. the "gauge" variables) is likewise clarified. At the end, (...) a peculiar four-dimensional "holistic and structuralist" view of space-time emerges which includes elements common to the tradition of both substantivalism and relationism. The observables of our models undergo real "temporal change" and thereby provide a counter-example to the thesis of the "frozen-time" picture of evolution. (shrink)

Background: Multiple studies have shown that people who have experienced a serious health problem such as an injury tend to overrate the quality of health they had before that event. The main objective of this study was to test whether the phenomenon of respondents overrating their past health can also be observed in people from the general population. A second aim was to test whether habitual optimism is indeed focused on events in the future.Method: A representatively selected community sample from (...) Leipzig, Germany was examined. Respondents were asked to assess their current health, their past health, and their expected future health on a 0–100 scale. In addition, the study participants completed several questionnaires on specific aspects of physical and mental health.Results: Respondents of all age groups assessed their health as having been better in the past than it was at present. Moreover, they also assessed their earlier state of health more positively than people 5 years younger did their current state. Habitual optimism was associated with respondents having more positive expectations of how healthy they will be in 5 years time, but the correlation with their assessments of their current health was nearly as high.Conclusion: Highly positive scores of retrospectively assessed health among people who have experienced a health problem cannot totally be accounted for by a response to that health problem. (shrink)

Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way round? The universe began with the Big Bang - will it end with a `Big Crunch'? Now in paperback, this book presents an innovative and controversial view of time and contemporary physics. Price urges physicists, philosophers, and anyone who has ever pondered the paradoxes of time to look at the world from a fresh perspective, and throws fascinating (...) new light on some of the great mysteries of the universe. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (...) (3-modal) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

Mandarin speakers, like most other language speakers around the world, use spatial terms to talk about time. However, the direction of their mental temporal representation along the front-back axis remains controversial because they use the spatial term “front” to refer to both earlier times and the future. Although the linguistic distinction between time- and ego-reference-point spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin suggests a promising clarification of the above controversy, there is little empirical evidence verifying this distinction. In this study, Mandarin (...) speakers’ time- and ego-reference-point temporal representations on three axes were separately examined through two tasks. In a time-reference-point task, Mandarin speakers judged whether the time point of the second picture was earlier or later than the time point of the first picture, while in an ego-reference-point task, they judged whether an event or phase had happened in the past or would happen in the future. The results indicate that Mandarin speakers construe an earlier-times-in-front-of-later-times temporal sequence and adopt the front-to-the-future orientation. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the temporal structures that are appropriate to study the notion of point of view. When we analyze the points of view and their structure, it seems clear that we must take into account the time t in which a point of view is attributed to a subject. A two-dimensional temporal logic which combines a modal dimension for possibilities and a temporal one for the flow of time, offers a clear view of the (...) temporary location of a point of view. In this logic, we have histories, thanks to the temporal dimension, and evaluation is in two indices, time and history. These stories can be seen as different scenarios, providing a clear advantage when applying to the analysis of the notion of point of view. The conclusion is that, in order to give a proper approach for the notion of point of view, all these aspects should be combined. (shrink)

When I agreed to lecture to-night I stipulated that I might be allowed to interpret the subject announced so as to let my treatment relate less to the subject in general than to some particular aspects which happen to have been interesting me lately. Professor Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans have given to the world brilliant accounts of the present position of physics in relation to mathematics and philosophy. What I have to say bears to their writings, (...) the humble relation of an example to a piece of book-work, or of an application of a theorem to the theorem itself. (shrink)

When I agreed to lecture to-night I stipulated that I might be allowed to interpret the subject announced so as to let my treatment relate less to the subject in general than to some particular aspects which happen to have been interesting me lately. Professor Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans have given to the world brilliant accounts of the present position of physics in relation to mathematics and philosophy. What I have to say bears to their writings, (...) the humble relation of an example to a piece of book-work, or of an application of a theorem to the theorem itself. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the work of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard “The Point of View for My Work as an Author” which is the most complete statement on the topic of his use of pseudonyms. The purpose of the article is to reveal the meaning of “The Point of View” for the study of the thinker’s creativity, to identify and discuss work-related problems. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of the cre­ation and publication (...) of “The Point of View”. The interpretations of pseudonymity in “The Point of View” and “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” are compared, the dif­ference between the goals and circumstances of the creation of works is considered. The reasons why Kierkegaard postponed the publication of “The Point of View” and never published it are analyzed. In the second part of the article the content of “The Point of View” is considered. Kierkegaard's interpretation of authorship and re­lated problems are analyzed. Kierkegaard connects his interpretation with the modern crisis of Christianity and shows that in these conditions a direct message about Chris­tianity is impossible. A religious author who carries out indirect communication ap­pears as a new religious type. The formation of these views of the thinker and their sig­nificance in the context of his epoch are discussed. The author of the article shows that the last part of “The Point of View” is in contradiction with its first part. Next, the criti­cism of “The Point of View” is considered. The author concludes that the skeptical atti­tude towards the content of the work is fair, but it is more aimed at destroying ideas about the possible integrity of Kierkegaard’s work and is influenced by Derrida’s doc­trine of deconstruction. The contradiction between the parts of “The Point of View” may be a consequence of Kierkegaard’s religious views and his communicative strat­egy. Arguments are made in favor of a positive attitude to the work and problems are formulated, work on which will help clarify the topic of pseudonymity. The author con­cludes that “The Point of View” is an important source through which we can trace the change in Kierkegaard’s attitude to his work. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the temporal content of perceptual experience. It argues that we must recognize the existence of temporal perceptions, i.e., perceptions the content of which cannot be spelled out simply by looking at what is the case at an isolated instant. Acts of apprehension can cover a succession of events. However, a subject who has such perceptions can fall short of having a concept of time. Similar arguments have been put forward to show that a subject (...) who has spatial perceptions can fall short of having a concept of space. In both cases, it is the fact that perception is from a point of view which stands in the way of it constituting an exercise of a concept of how things are objectively. However, the paper also shows that the way in which perception is perspectival takes a different form in each of the two cases. (shrink)

There are two familiar, contemporary responses to this question. The theist says that the question has an answer and that this answer is that God caused spacetime to begin to exist. The standard response of the atheist is to say that there is no answer to this question; spacetime’s beginning to exist is a brute fact or has no explanation. This standard atheist response seems to give theism a prima facie theoretical superiority to atheism; theists offer a detailed explanatory hypothesis (...) about why spacetime begins to exists, and standard atheists are content to leave spacetime’s beginning to exist unexplained. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can (...) happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

A review of Huw Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point.

Measuring time is expressing temporal relationships between objects in terms of spatial relationships with the aid of geometric points, straight lines and clocks. The concepts, point and line, are abstracted from the concrete substratum of sensory experience. This process of abstraction is integrated with the psychological processes which go on within an observer who is reading a clock. The analysis of clock-reading from a psychological point of view points up the necessity to differentiate between two modalities of (...) time: objective time, or, time relationships between objects and which can be expressed in terms of space with point, line and clock; and subjective time, or, the time structure of the human individual in which region point and line are irrelevant concepts. From this irrelevance of point and line it follows that subjective time cannot be measured. (shrink)

Combining ideas of perceptual psychologists J.J. Gibson and J.E. Cutting, moving on to answer the arguments of the "Naysayers" against autonomous and artistic meaning in photographs.

A historians account of a past action must take into account the agent's point of view, and that point of view may differ radically from that of the historian. This difference of points of view, I argue may extend to the very place and time of the action in question. In this paper, by exploring the spatial and temporal aspects of action, agency, and description of past action, I try to describe the interplay of points of view (...) between historian and historical agent. Because of these differences, actions may be embedded in radically different realities for agent and historian, different conceptions, of the spatially and temporally real. This is especially true of time: an action may have a very different future for the agent from the future it has in retrospect. These discrepancies, I claim, do not constitute an obstacle that can be overcome, but are structural features of the relation between description and action. This is because they are merely extensions into a particular domain of certain features of relations between persons. I try to show that these features also have implication for the concepts of narrative and of counterfactual history. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the A-theorist's argument from experience is undermined by a commitment to ‘experiential punctivism' - the view that instantaneous experiences are metaphysically prior to durative ones. The experiences to which the A-theorist's argument appeals are those of processual events. For these experiences to constitute perceptions of temporal passage it would be necessary to perceive such processes qua processes; but, if experiential punctivism were true, this would be impossible. We could only ever perceive (...) those processes qua temporal variation, which merely amounts to an awareness of change as described by the B-theory. If there is such a phenomenon as the passing of time, it could not be an object of our experience. (shrink)

In the present paper the relation between objective and subjective time is studied from a neutral non-dualist perspective Adoption of the relational concept of time leads to fundamental problems of time measurement of the uniformity of time measures, and of a native measure of duration in subjective experience. Experimental data on discrimination and reproduction of time intervals are reviewed and relevant models of internal time representations are discussed. Special attention is given to the 'dual (...) klepsydra model' (DKM)and to the outstanding properties of the reproduction func- tion yielded by the DKM Time scales generated by a DKM-based reproduction mechanisms are studied It is shown that such 'klepsydraic clocks' generate time measures which are non-uniform with respect to objective time yet internally consistent within an ensemble of such clocks and in this sense 'quasi-uniform' . Competing concepts of subjective time and modeling principles of internal time representation are briefly discussed Some interesting parallels be- tween our psychophysical approach and E.A. Milne's treatment of the problem of uniform time are drawn in the Appendix. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Galilean Transformations and Galilean Invariants A Brief Preliminary: Why Worry? Lorentz Invariance: Collapse Theories Lorentz Invariance: Hyperplane Dependence Lorentz Invariance: Non‐Collapse Theories Choose Your Poison.

In Ludwig Wittgenstein—A Cultural Point of View, William James DeAngelis examines Oswald Spengler's influence on Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein's views on the inexpressibility of religion in language. He connects the two subjects through Spengler's views on cultural decline. DeAngelis faces numerous challenges in his research, not least of which is the relative absence of references to Spengler in Wittgenstein's writings. Although Wittgenstein includes Spengler among those whose thinking he seizes upon with enthusiasm for his work of clarification, he never cites him (...) directly, and it would be difficult to find an author whose style is more dramatically opposed to his own. With the exception of a few parenthetical references in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein equates Spengler's views with distortion and a dogmatism that is to be avoided. DeAngelis avoids these difficulties by only occasionally concerning himself with "the directly expressed content of Wittgenstein's later philosophy" . He views the Investigations as a latent philosophy of culture with a "Spenglerian valence" , and asserts that Wittgenstein's cultural purposes are all. (shrink)

According to Chomsky, creativity is a critical property of human language, particularly the aspect of ?the creative use of language? concerning the appropriateness to a situation. How language can be creative but appropriate to a situation is an unsolvable mystery from the Chomskyan point of view. We propose that language appropriateness can be explained by considering the role of the human capacity for Mental Time Travel at its foundation, together with social and ecological intelligences within a triadic language-grounding system. (...) Our proposal is based on the change of perspective from the analysis of individual sentences to the flux of speech in which the temporal dimension of language is much more relevant. (shrink)

This book focuses on the fascinating connection between Wittgenstein and Oswald Spengler and in particular the acknowledged influence of Spengler's Decline of the West. His book shows in meticulous detail how Spengler's dark conception of an ongoing cultural decline resonated deeply for Wittgenstein and influenced his later work. In so doing, the work takes into account discussions of these matters by major commentators such as Malcolm, Von Wright, Cavell, Winch, and Clack among others. A noteworthy feature of this book is (...) its attempt to link Wittgenstein's cultural concerns with his views on religion and religious language. DeAngelis offers a fresh and original interpretation of the latter. (shrink)

The collection focuses on meaning change as a topic of interdisciplinary research.

Concepts such as “symbolism” and “symbolic cognition” often remain unspecified in discussions the symbolic capacities of earlier hominins. In this paper, I use conceptual tools from phenomenology to reflect on the origins of early symbolic cognition. In particular, I discuss the possible early use of pointing gestures around the time of the earliest known stone tool industries. I argue that unlike more basic social acts such as expression, gaze following, and attention-getters, which are used by extant non-human great apes, (...) communicative pointing involves key elements that are characteristic of symbolic cognition. In particular, it involves “third order intentionality” as well as “shared practice horizons”: shared frameworks of understanding which are required for the interpretation of communicative acts whose meaning is not codified indexically or iconically in the signaling behavior. In the final part, I briefly review some indications for the use of pointing gestures around the time of the Lomekwian and Oldowan industries, as a way to sustain cooperation and possibly learning by instruction. It is suggested that pointing is more complex than is standardly acknowledged, and that it may have been an important communicative act for Early Stone Age hominins in transitioning to more fully symbolic speech capacities. (shrink)

This paper examines the importance of aspirations as reference points in a multi-period decision-making context. After stating their personal aspiration level, 172 individuals made six sequential decisions among risky prospects as part of a choice experiment. The results show that individuals make different risky-choices in a multi-period compared to a single-period setting. In particular, individuals’ aspiration level is their main reference point during the early stages of decision-making, while their starting status (wealth level at the start of the experiment) (...) becomes the central reference point during the later stages of their multi-period decision-making. (shrink)