On Explaining Temporally Asymmetric Experiences

ABSTRACT

Ismael aims for an understanding of the nature of an embedded perspective of agents in a world. If successful, this would explain a cluster of ways in which from an embedded perspective, we experience the world in an array of temporally asymmetric ways. Moreover, these are ways that have led many philosophers to rather metaphysically inflationary views about the nature of time, according to which time itself really is dynamical, and is characterized by the movement of an objectively (i.e., non-perspectival) present. Ismael aims to explain these features of our experience without positing any such metaphysical picture. She argues that there are constraints which prevent us from taking this Olympian conception of the world and our place in it, and that these, jointly, explain why we experience the world in these temporally asymmetric ways. We take up two related questions. First, what it would mean to say that these constraints are not merely epistemic, and second, how far these constraints get us in explaining why we experience the world in these ways.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We say apparent here, since at least in some cases it is disputed whether there is indeed any such phenomenology.

This is especially true when we consider the phenomenology of flow or temporal passage. While many B-theorists have supposed there to be such a phenomenology (see Dainton 2011, 2012) Le Poidevin (2007) and Paul (2010), plenty have denied this, including Braddon-Mitchell (2013) Hoerl (2014), Prosser (2016) Miller, Holcombe and Latham (2020), Sattig (2019) Miller (2019), Deng (2013) and Bardon (2013). Of course, all these latter authors agree that in some deflationary sense, one that is consistent with our world lacking robust passage, we do indeed have a phenomenology as of flow.

2 If such a thing were possible.

3 In case you think it’s analytic that a record is past-directed.

4 See Braddon-Mitchell, (ms)

5 We already know that non-philosophers report quite different levels of agreement to claims about whether time seems to them to pass (see Latham, Miller and Norton 2020). We also know that people report having different views about whether the future is open in various ways. See Hodroj, Latham, Lee-Tory, and Miller (forthcoming) and Latham and Miller (ms).