Simon Prosser

A New Problem for the A‐theory of Time

I offer a new approach to the increasingly convoluted debate between the A- and B-theories of time (the ‘tensed’ and ‘tenseless’ theories). It is often assumed that the B-theory faces more difficulties than the A-theory in explaining the apparently tensed features of temporal experience. I argue that the A-theory cannot explain these features at all, because on any physicalist or supervenience theory of the mind, in which the nature of experience is fixed by the physical state of the world, the tensed properties of time posited by the A-theory could play no role in shaping temporal experience. It follows that the A-theory is false; even a priori arguments for it fail, because they still require the tensed vocabulary which is used to describe temporal experience.

Affordances and Phenomenal Character in Spatial Perception

According to intentionalism the phenomenal character (“what it’s like”) of a conscious experience is determined wholly by its representational content. In its strongest forms intentionalism offers the tantalizing prospect of a reduction of phenomenal character to representational content. Arguments based on Twin Earth-like scenarios have shown, however, that if phenomenal character supervenes on the internal configuration of the subject then it cannot be reduced to wide representational content.1 Consequently, most intentionalists have now divided into two main camps. Phenomenal externalists accept the reduction of phenomenal character to wide representational content but deny the supervenience of phenomenal character on the internal configuration of the subject.2 By contrast, phenomenal internalists accept the supervenience of phenomenal character on the internal configuration of the subject but hold that the representational content that determines the phenomenal character of an experience (known as its phenomenal content) is narrowly individuated. Existing phenomenal internalist theories have, however, been unable to specify the relevant narrow content without ineliminable reference to the phenomenal character of the experience. Such theories therefore abandon the reduction of phenomenal character to representational content. Both options have significant drawbacks. Phenomenal externalism is often found implausible because of the extent to which it requires loosening the connection between conscious states and brain states. On the other hand, insofar as it is nonreductive, phenomenal internalism is a weaker and thus less interesting claim than a reductive theory (which is not to say that it is of no interest at all). In any case, I shall

Immunity to error through misidentification: what does it tell us about the de se?

One role for immunity to error through misidentification in a philosophical discussion is as an object of investigation in its own right. One begins effortlessly enough with some examples, such as the following seminal one of Wittgenstein’s. After an accident, feeling a pain in my arm, I might see a clearly broken arm by my side, assume that this arm is my own arm, and on that basis judge “My arm is broken” or “I have a broken arm”. If the broken arm is in fact my neighbour’s, I will have made a somewhat limited kind of error that it is fairly natural to call an “error through misidentification”. By contrast, if I judge “I have tooth-ache”, in the normal way, my judgment seems immune to that kind of error.

Temporal metaphysics in z-land

John Perry has argued that language, thought and experience often contain unarticulated constituents. I argue that this idea holds the key to explaining away the intuitive appeal of the A-theory of time and the endurance theory of persistence. The A-theory has seemed intuitively appealing because the nature of temporal experience makes it natural for us to use one-place predicates like past to deal with what are really two-place relations, one of whose constituents is unarticulated. The endurance view can be treated in a similar way; the temporal boundaries of temporal parts of objects are unarticulated in experience and this makes it seem that the very same entity exists at different times.

Rethinking the Specious Present

In this chapter I shall argue that despite its current popularity the doctrine of the specious present, or at least every current version of it, should be rejected.1 In its place I propose two different accounts, which deal with experiences of two different kinds of change. The first is what I shall call the dynamic snapshot theory, which accounts for the way we experience continuous changes such as motion and other motion-like phenomena. The second account deals with the way we experience discontinuous changes, those for which there is no finite rate of change. In defending both accounts, but especially the latter, I shall argue that much of the current debate implicitly presupposes a problematic Cartesian view about the nature of conscious experience. If this view is rejected – as I think it should be – then a different kind of account emerges that avoids commitment both to the specious present and to its main current rival, the cinematic view.