Philosophers have long struggled to understand our perceptual experience of temporal properties such as succession, persistence and change. Indeed, strikingly, a number have felt compelled to deny that we enjoy such experience. Philosophical puzzlement arises as a consequence of assuming that, if one experiences succession or temporal structure at all, then one experiences it at a moment. The two leading types of theory of temporal awareness—specious present theories and memory theories—are best understood as attempts to explain (...) how temporal awareness is possible within the constraints of this principle. I argue that the principle is false. Neither theory of temporal awareness can be made workable unless it is rejected. Our experience of temporal phenomena cannot be understood if we attempt to break experience down into instantaneous slices. In order to understand the perception of temporal properties we must look beyond the instant. (shrink)

According to presentism, everything that exists is present. According to the truthmaker principle, for every true proposition there is a truthmaker – an entity that suffices for the truth of that proposition. According to realism about the past, there are true propositions about the past. Together these claims necessitate presently existing truthmakers for truths about the past (presentist truthmakers). Cameron (2010) argues that temporal distributional properties (TDPs) can play the role of presentist truthmakers. Corkum (2014) argues that they (...) cannot. I argue against Corkum’s objections. In §2, I introduce and outline the motivation for TDPs. In §3, I show that unless TDPs are stipulated to be fundamental, as Cameron does, they can be reduced to temporal non–distributional properties, which are unable to play the role of presentist truthmakers. In §4, I argue against Corkum’s two objections to Cameron’s stipulation. Corkum’s first objection is that Cameron has no grounds on which to stipulate that TDPs are fundamental, and that the reducibility of TDPs to temporal non–distributional properties (as discussed in §3) shows that they are not. I argue that the burden of proof is not on Cameron to argue that TDPs are fundamental, but on Corkum to argue that they are not, and that to argue from the reducibility of TDPs to their non–fundamentality is to beg the question against Cameron: the reduction is only possible once their non–fundamentality is assumed. Corkum’s second objection is that if Cameron is allowed to stipulate that TDPs are fundamental in order to escape objections, then Bigelow's (1996) account is allowed to make the same move, rendering Cameron’s account redundant. I argue that the cases are asymmetric: the alternative account faces a legitimate objection whilst Cameron’s account does not. (shrink)

This paper proposes a semantic description of the linear step-like temporal multi-agent logic with the universal modality \(\mathcal{LTK}.sl_U\) based on the idea of non-reflexive non-transitive nature of time. We proved a finite model property and projective unification for this logic.

The paper develops an objection to the extensional model of time consciousness—the view that temporally extended events or processes, and their temporal properties, can be directly perceived as such. Importantly, following James, advocates of the extensional model typically insist that whole experiences of temporal relations between non-simultaneous events are distinct from mere successions of their temporal parts. This means, presumably, that there ought to be some feature(s) differentiating the former from the latter. I try to show (...) why the extensional models offers no credible ground for positing such a difference. (shrink)

We seem to experience a world abounding with events that exhibit dynamic temporal structure; birds flying, children laughing, rain dripping from an eave, melodies unfolding, etc. Seeing objects in motion, hearing and communicating with sound, and feeling oneself move are such common everyday experiences that one is unlikely to question whether humans are capable of perceiving temporal properties and relations. Despite appearing pre-theoretically uncontroversial, there are longstanding and contentious debates concerning the structure of such experience, how (...) class='Hi'>temporal perception works, and even whether the perception of change, motion, and succession is possible. The overarching goal of my project is to develop a comprehensive model of temporal perception that does justice to the apparent phenomenology, explains how perception functions to represent temporally structured targets, and generates empirically-informed hypotheses for how such perception is neuro-cognitively realized. I also defend my model against the challenges of anti-realist competitors whom deny the possibility of perceiving temporal relations between non-simultaneous events. (shrink)

Most philosophers believe that we have experiences as of temporally extended phenomena like change, motion, and succession. Almost all theories of time consciousness explain these temporal experiences by subscribing to the doctrine of the specious present, the idea that the contents of our experiences embrace temporally extended intervals of time and are presented as temporally structured. Against these theories, I argue that the doctrine is false and present a theory that does not require the notion of a specious present. (...) Furthermore, I argue that the different aspects of temporal experiences arise from different mechanisms operating separately. If the theory is true, then temporal experiences do not tell us anything special about the nature of consciousness and its temporal properties per se. (shrink)

The Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale measures judgements of life satisfaction using 15 items, according to three temporal dimensions: past, present, and future. However, only seven studies have looked at the psychometric properties of the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale, and this has been individually across vastly different countries and cultures, and with different populations, such as undergraduate students, adults, and older adults. In addition, these studies have highlighted issues regarding the replicability of the validity of (...) the scale structure and optimal number of items. In this study we use a large international and multicultural sample from the International Wellbeing Study and investigate the scale structure of the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale, resulting in the recommendation that a shortened 12-item version provides a better model fit compared to the original 15-item version. More in-depth correlates with aspects of wellbeing and illbeing, in relation to past, present, and future life satisfaction, are also presented than have been previously, which found positive correlations between the temporal dimensions of the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale and wellbeing, as well as negative correlations with illbeing measures. (shrink)

Temporal justification logic is a new family of temporal logics of knowledge in which the knowledge of agents is modelled using a justification logic. In this paper, we present various temporal justification logics involving both past and future time modalities. We combine Artemov’s logic of proofs with linear temporal logic with past, and we also investigate several principles describing the interaction of justification and time. We present two kinds of semantics for our temporal justification logics, (...) one based on interpreted systems and Fitting models and the other based on Mkrtychev models, and further, we establish soundness and completeness. We show that the internalization property holds in some of the temporal justification logics. We further investigate the two well-known epistemic-temporal notions of no forgetting and no learning in the framework of justification logics. Finally, we present temporal justification logics that avoid the logical omniscience problem. (shrink)

Most people who believe in temporal parts believe that the referents of our ordinary referring terms, like Bill Clinton, or that table, are fusions of temporal parts from past, present and future times. Call these fusions worms, and the theory that the referents of ordinary referring terms (ordinary objects) the worm theory. Buying the metaphysical theory of temporal parts does not immediately imply that we must buy the worm theory. Theodore Sider (1996, 2000), for example, has suggested (...) that these ordinary referring terms just pick out a single, instantaneous, temporal part. Sider’s theory, called the stage theory, solves some pressing philosophical problems, including the problem of temporary intrinsics. But the stage theory has several difficulties of its own, especially what I will call the problem of long-term intrinsics. I argue for a rival theory, the growing individuals theory. On this theory, the referents of our ordinary referring terms have past and present temporal parts, but not future temporal parts. This theory best accounts for our intuitions about which intrinsic properties ordinary objects have. (shrink)

Three experiments examined whether children and adults would use temporal information as a cue to the causal structure of a three-variable system, and also whether their judgements about the effects of interventions on the system would be affected by the temporal properties of the event sequence. Participants were shown a system in which two events B and C occurred either simultaneously (synchronous condition) or in a temporal sequence (sequential condition) following an initial event A. The causal (...) judgements of adults and 6-7-year-olds differed between the conditions, but this was not the case for 4-year-olds' judgements. However, unlike those of adults, 6-7-year-olds' intervention judgements were not affected by condition, and causal and intervention judgements were not reliably consistent in this age group. The findings support the claim that temporal information provides an important cue to causal structure, at least in older children. However, they raise important issues about the relationship between causal and intervention judgements. (shrink)

Summary Verbs of creation (create, make, paint) are not transparent. The object created does not exist during the event time but only thereafter. We may call this type of opacity temporal opacity. I is to be distinguished from modal opacity, which is found in verbs like owe or seek. (Dowty, 1979) offers two analyses of creation verbs. One analysis predicts that no object of the sort created exists before the time of the creation. The other analysis says that the (...) object exists throughout the act of creation. I investigate three theories: Theory I says that no object of the sort created and which is caused by the very act of creation exists before the creation. In this theory, verbs of creation must embed a property. Theory II can regard the indefinite object of a creation verb as a quantifier and gives it wide scope with respect to the verb. The theory has to make sure that the objects quantified over exist only after the event. While Theory I and II start from the assumption that the extension of all nouns depend on time, Theory III says that Individual Level predicates do not depend on time. This ontology will enable us to treat verbs of creation as first order relations. The theory will entail that a picture does not mean the same as there is a picture. The paper discusses various approaches to the problem: Krifka, Parsons, Landman, Kratzer and Zucchi. (shrink)

We present Dynamic Epistemic Temporal Logic, a framework for reasoning about operations on multi-agent Kripke models that contain a designated temporal relation. These operations are natural extensions of the well-known “action models” from Dynamic Epistemic Logic. Our “temporal action models” may be used to define a number of informational actions that can modify the “objective” temporal structure of a model along with the agents’ basic and higher-order knowledge and beliefs about this structure, including their beliefs about (...) the time. In essence, this approach provides one way to extend the domain of action model-style operations from atemporal Kripke models to temporal Kripke models in a manner that allows actions to control the flow of time. We present a number of examples to illustrate the subtleties involved in interpreting the effects of our extended action models on temporal Kripke models. We also study preservation of important epistemic-temporal properties of temporal Kripke models under temporal action model-induced operations, provide complete axiomatizations for two theories of temporal action models, and connect our approach with previous work on time in DEL. (shrink)

A lot of people believe that distinct objects can occupy precisely the same place for the entire time during which they exist. Such people have to provide an answer to the 'grounding problem' – they have to explain how such things, alike in so many ways, nonetheless manage to fall under different sortals, or have different modal properties. I argue in detail that they cannot say that there is anything in virtue of which spatio-temporally coincident things have those (...) class='Hi'>properties. However, I also argue that this may not be as bad as it looks, and that there is a way to make sense of the claim that such properties are primitive. (shrink)

In this essay I address the question of the reality of temporal passage through a discussion of some of the implications of Kant's reasoning concerning the necessary conditions of objective judgement. Some theorists have claimed that the attribution of non‐relational temporal properties to objects and events represents a conceptual confusion, or ‘category mistake’. By means of an examination of Kant's Second Analogy, and a comparison between that argument and Cassam's recent exploration of an argument regarding the necessity (...) of the conceptualisation of ourselves as spatially located, I draw out a consequence of Kant's argument: namely, that the representation of temporal becoming is a necessary condition of objective judgement and an a priori element in the representation of objects of experience. I finish by explaining why this would show that the attribution of temporal becoming to objects and events cannot be described as a category mistake. (shrink)

We present a technique for automatically verifying cryptographic protocols specified in the mainstream specification language CAPSL. We define a translation from CAPSL models into interpreted systems, a popular semantics for temporal-epistemic logic, and rewrite CAPSL goals as temporal-epistemic specifications. We present a compiler that implements this translation. The compiler links to the symbolic model checker MCMAS. We evaluate the technique on protocols in the Clark-Jacobs library and in the SPORE repository against custom secrecy and authentication requirements.

The expressions “now,” “today,” “tomorrow,” “yesterday,” “last month,” “a year ago,” “past,” “future,” “present,” and others like them are temporal indexicals. Temporal indexicals and dates are both quite different from names. Temporal indexicals often play an important part in philosophical arguments about time. An example is this claim of McTaggart's in his famous essay about the unreality of time. Role‐linking is the key to understanding why temporal indexicals are useful. The system of temporal indexicals and (...) system of dates correspond to two different but interconnecting ways people think about things – role‐based and descriptive. Both contrast with a third way, via detached notions. McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time has two sides. According to McTaggart, these two essential properties of time cannot be combined; people's concept of time is incoherent; there is not and could not be anything that fits the conception; time is unreal. (shrink)

Even the most Parmenidean-minded of people recognize that quotidian objects somehow undergo change. This claim, nonetheless, is as clearly intuitive as it is apparently incompatible with one of our most widely believed logical principles, namely, Leibniz's Law. This paper focuses briefly on the metaphysical issue underlying this alleged incompatibility in order to provide elements for exploring its semantical counterpart: the analysis of the logical form of sentences attributing complementary temporal properties to current objects. Four analyses are presented, and (...) the ability of each to account for the linguistic data is explained. The semantical issue is preceded by some introductory remarks on the role of temporal references in the evaluation of declarative sentences. (shrink)

The well-known phenomenological argument draws metaphysical conclusions about time, specifically about change through time and the resulting passage or flow of time, from our temporal experience. The argument begins with the phenomenological premise that there is a class of properties which underlies our experience of time and change through time, and its conclusion is that these properties are not merely experienced but exemplified. I argue that the phenomenological argument is best served by the adoption of a representational (...) theory of perception. I then present a representational theory of temporal experience. (shrink)

In conclusion, then, the notion of temporal necessity is certainly queer and perhaps a misnomer. It really has little to do with temporality per se and everything to do with counterfactual openness or closedness. We have seen that the future is as unalterable as the past, but that this purely logical truth is not antithetical to freedom or contingency. Moreover, we have found certain past facts are counterfactually open in that were future events or actualities to be other than (...) they will be, these past facts would have been different as a consequence. God's beliefs about the future are such past facts. Moreover, the effects of actions which God would have taken had He believed differently are also such past facts. Oddly enough, then, virtually any past fact is potentially counterfactually open, and the only necessity that remains is purely de facto. We, of course, do not in general know which events of the past depend counterfactually on present actions, and those cases we do know about seem rather trivial. Our intuitions of the necessity, unalterability, and unpreventability of the past as opposed to the future stem from the impossibility of backward causation, which is precluded by the dynamic nature of time and becoming. But the counterfactual dependence of God's beliefs on future events or actualities is not a case of backward causation: rather future-tense propositions are true in virtue of what will happen, given a view of truth as correspondence, and God simply has the essential property of knowing all and only true propositions. With regard to the future, virtually all facts are counterfactually open, and therefore future-tense propositions are not temporally necessary. Propositions thus move from being temporally contingent to being temporally necessary when all the opportunities to affect things counterfactually have slipped by. Hence, the mere fact that an event is past is no indication that it is counterfactually closed. This is especially evident in the case of God's foreknowledge. If we say that God foreknows that I shall do x and therefore I cannot refrain from doing x, lest I change God's past foreknowledge, we are being deceived by a modality which has nothing to do with my power or freedom. All that is impossible is the conjunction of God's foreknowledge that p and of ~ p; but this modality in sensu composito has no bearing on my ability to act such that ~ p would be true and God would have foreknown differently. Temporal necessity, then, turns out to be only obliquely temporal and modally weak, certainly no threat to freedom or divine foreknowledge. (shrink)

We introduce a methodology whereby an arbitrary logic system L can be enriched with temporal features to create a new system T(L). The new system is constructed by combining L with a pure propositional temporal logic T (such as linear temporal logic with Since and Until) in a special way. We refer to this method as adding a temporal dimension to L or just temporalising L. We show that the logic system T(L) preserves several properties (...) of the original temporal logic like soundness, completeness, decidability, conservativeness and separation over linear flows of time. We then focus on the temporalisation of first-order logic, and a comparison is make with other first-order approaches to the handling of time. (shrink)

How can a persisting object change whilst remaining the same object? Lewis, who frames this as the problem of temporary intrinsics, presents us with the perdurance solution: objects persist by having temporal parts which may have differing properties. And in doing so he characterises the opposing view as persisting but not by having temporal parts – a view he calls endurance. But this dichotomous picture of Lewis, although now widely embraced, misses out the orthodox historic view – (...) a view I call temporal holism: objects persist by having temporal parts to which they are ontologically prior. (In the perduring solution, by contrast, the temporal parts are ontologically prior.) This paper sets out this temporal holist solution and makes clear its differences from perdurantist and endurantist solutions. Although temporal holism has a long and illustrious history, this history has not been explicitly recognised. I begin the task of recognising this history in this paper, in order to make clear the nature of temporal holism, and to show that it is a long-established, well supported and distinctive position. The paper sets out, too, how temporal holism solves other ontological problems so that, despite its current neglect, temporary holism has the potential to greatly enrich contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time—the so‐called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non‐causal signal, would occur. (...) We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. (shrink)

This paper investigates modular combinations of temporal logic systems. Four combination methods are described and studied with respect to the transfer of logical properties from the component one-dimensional temporal logics to the resulting combined two-dimensional temporal logic. Three basic logical properties are analyzed, namely soundness, completeness, and decidability. Each combination method comprises three submethods that combine the languages, the inference systems, and the semantics of two one-dimensional temporal logic systems, generating families of two-dimensional (...) class='Hi'>temporal languages with varying expressivity and varying degrees of transfer of logical properties. The temporalization method and the independent combination method are shown to transfer all three basic logical properties. The method of full join of logic systems generates a considerably more expressive language but fails to transfer completeness and decidability in several cases. So a weaker method of restricted join is proposed and shown to transfer all three basic logical properties. (shrink)

The paper argues that four-dimensionalism is incompatible with the existence of additively cumulative properties, including mass, volume, and electrical charge. These properties add up over disjoint objects: for example, the mass of a whole composed of two disjoint objects is a sum of the individual masses of the objects. The difficulty with such properties for four-dimensionalism stems from the way this theory makes persistence depend on the existence of disjoint objects at disjoint times. I consider various possible (...) responses to this difficulty and conclude that they all fail. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the feature of conscious life that scaffolds every act of cognition: subjective time. Our awareness of time and temporal properties is a constant feature of conscious life. Subjective temporality structures and guides every aspect of behavior and cognition, distinguishing memory, perception, and anticipation. This milestone volume brings together research on temporality from leading scholars in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, defining a new field of interdisciplinary research. The book's thirty chapters include selections from classic texts by (...) William James and Edmund Husserl and new essays setting them in historical context; contemporary philosophical accounts of lived time; and current empirical studies of psychological time. These last chapters, the larger part of the book, cover such topics as the basic psychophysics of psychological time, its neural foundations, its interaction with the body, and its distortion in illness and altered states of consciousness. Contributors Melissa J. Allman, Holly Andersen, Valtteri Arstila, Yan Bao, Dean V. Buonomano, Niko A. Busch, Barry Dainton, Sylvie Droit-Volet, Christine M. Falter, Thomas Fraps, Shaun Gallagher, Alex O. Holcombe, Edmund Husserl, William James, Piotr Jaśkowski, Jeremie Jozefowiez, Ryota Kanai, Allison N. Kurti, Dan Lloyd, Armando Machado, Matthew S. Matell, Warren H. Meck, James Mensch, Bruno Mölder, Catharine Montgomery, Konstantinos Moutoussis, Peter Naish, Valdas Noreika, Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Ruth Ogden, Alan o'Donoghue, Georgios Papadelis, Ian B. Phillips, Ernst Pöppel, John E. R. Staddon, Dale N. Swanton, Rufin VanRullen, Argiro Vatakis, Till M. Wagner, John Wearden, Marc Wittmann, Agnieszka Wykowska, Kielan Yarrow, Bin Yin, Dan Zahavi. (shrink)

This chapter examines David Lewis's view that we are temporal parts of animals. It examines three arguments for the view that persisting things have temporal parts–four‐dimensionalism. One is that it solves the problem of temporary intrinsics. The second is that it solves metaphysical problems about the persistence of material objects without the mystery of constitutionalism–though these solutions require a counterpart‐theoretic account of modality. The third is that it solves problems of personal identity–involving fission, for instance–in an attractive way. (...) It is then argued that according to four‐dimensionalism, the bearers of such properties as thinking and acting are momentary stages, forcing us to choose between saying that we don't strictly think and saying that we don't persist. (shrink)

It is easy to have about the temporal present, the time that is now, thoughts that seem both true and impossible. E.g., ‘Now is the time that matters'. We may reflect that this is not just true but that ‘it is always like that', that is: now is always the time that matters. Yet here we seem to be generalizing the ascription to the temporal present of a property that claims uniqueness, viz., being the time that matters. The (...) present paper explores, in the case of the temporal present, the meaning and implications of this kind of impossible generalisation. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate about ‘tenseless languages’ by defending a tensed analysis of a superficially tenseless language. The language investigated is St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish). I argue that although St’át’imcets lacks overt tense morphology, every finite clause in the language possesses a phonologically covert tense morpheme; this tense morpheme restricts the reference time to being non-future. Future interpretations, as well as ‘past future’ would-readings, are obtained by the combination of covert tense with an operator analogous to Abusch’s (1985) WOLL. (...) I offer St’át’imcets-internal evidence (of a kind not previously adduced) that the WOLL-like operator is modal in nature. It follows from the analysis presented here that there are only two (probably related) differences between St’át’imcets and English in the area of tense. The first is that St’át’imcets lacks tense morphemes which are pronounced. The second is that the St’át’imcets tense morpheme is semantically underspecified compared to English ones. In each of these respects, the St’át’imcets tense morpheme displays similar properties to pronouns, which may be covert and which may fail to distinguish person, number or gender. Along the way, I point out several striking and subtle similarities in the interpretive possibilities of St’át’imcets and English. I suggest that these similarities may reveal non-accidental properties of tense systems in natural language. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the analysis for cross-linguistic variation, learnability and the possible existence of tenseless languages. (shrink)

Provocatively, David Armstrong's properties are supposed to be both universals and spatio-temporal. What does this amount to? I consider four of Armstrong's views, in order of ascending plausibility: (1) the exemplification account, on which universals are exemplified by space-times; (2) the location account, on which universals are located at space-times; (3) the first constituent account, on which spatio-temporal relations are elements of what I call the form of time; and, the true view, (4) the second constituent account, (...) on which universals are spatio-temporal only 'derivatively' by being constituents of states of affairs which are so 'primarily'. The first two accounts are rejected because they entail that space-times must be substantival. In making plausible the second constituent account, I distinguish primitive and derivative spatio-temporality. Something is primitively spatio-temporal when it is at a space-time, or stands in spatio-temporal relations. Something is derivatively spatio-temporal when it is a constituent of something primitively spatio-temporal. (shrink)

The distributed temporal logic (DTL) is a logic for reasoning about temporal properties of distributed systems from the local point of view of the system’s agents, which are assumed to execute sequentially and to interact by means of synchronous event sharing. Different versions of DTL have been provided over the years for a number of different applications, reflecting different perspectives on how non-local information can be accessed by each agent. In this paper, we propose an automata-theoretic model (...) checking algorithm for DTL. To this end, we propose a notion of distributed transition system that will be used to specify the system to be verified. The properties that the system should meet are specified in DTL. In order to capture the models of these properties, we propose the notions of generalized distributed Büchi automaton and of distributed Büchi automaton. With these concepts, we are able to adapt results from automata-theoretic approaches to model checking in LTL to the distributed case. (shrink)

Although it has long been known that time is a cue to causation, recent work with adults has demonstrated that causality can also influence the experience of time. In causal reordering (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2013, 2016) adults tend to report the causally consistent order of events, rather than the correct temporal order. However, the effect has yet to be demonstrated in children. Across four pre-registered experiments, 4- to 10-year-old children (N=813) and adults (N=178) watched a 3-object Michotte-style ‘pseudocollision’. While (...) in the canonical version of the clip object A collided with B, which then collided with object C (order: ABC), the pseudocollision involved the same spatial array of objects but featured object C moving before object B (order: ACB), with no collision between B and C. Participants were asked to judge the temporal order of events and whether object B collided with C. Across all age groups, participants were significantly more likely to judge that B collided with C in the 3-object pseudocollision than in a 2-object control clip (where clear causal direction was lacking), despite the spatiotemporal relations between B and C being identical in the two clips (Experiments 1—3). Collision judgements and temporal order judgements were not entirely consistent, with some participants—particularly in the younger age range—basing their temporal order judgements on spatial rather than temporal information (Experiment 4). We conclude that in both children and adults, rather than causal impressions being determined only by the basic spatial-temporal properties of object movement, schemata are used in a top-down manner when interpreting perceptual displays. (shrink)

We engage with all representational pictures by seeing things in them. Seeing-in is a distinctive form of visual experience, one in which we are aware of both the marks, projected lights, or whatever that make up the picture (its Design) and what the picture represents (Scene). Some seeing-in is inflected: what we then see in the picture is a scene the properties of which make essential reference to Design. Since cinema involves moving pictures, it too supports seeing-in. But can (...) that seeing-in be inflected? Film is a relatively transparent pictorial medium: properties of the representation other than its content have a relatively low profile in our experience of it. This prevents film from exhibiting the sorts of inflection common in other pictorial media. However, film is certainly not completely transparent. Among the Design properties of which we are aware are temporal properties of the film. Is our experience of cinema inflected by these properties? And, if so, is this one source of the feature some take to constitute cinema’s distinctiveness as an artform, the special relation in which it stands to time? I argue that the answer to both these questions is Yes. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscientists are currently busy searching for the neural signatures of conscious experience. I shall argue that the notion of neural correlates of consciousness employed in much of this work is subject to two very different interpretations depending on how one understands the relation between the concepts of “state consciousness” and “creature consciousness”. Localist theories treat the neural correlates of creature consciousness as a kind of background condition that must be in place in order for the brain to realise particular (...) conscious experiences. Holists on the other hand take the neural correlates of creature consciousness to be a part of the core realiser of a particular conscious experience. My aim in this paper will be threefold. First I argue we should understand creature consciousness as a property of those creatures that have a minimal sense of self. Given this conception of creature consciousness I argue that the localist position is untenable: creature consciousness cannot simply be a background condition. Finally I argue that the minimal sense of self is a consequence of the temporal structure of consciousness. It follows that any theory of NCCs must explain how experiences with a complex temporal structure can be implemented in neural processing. (shrink)

This paper sets forward a novel theory of temporal binding, a mechanism that integrates the temporal properties of sensory features into coherent perceptual experiences. Specifying a theory of temporal binding remains a widespread problem. The popular ‘brain time theory’ suggests that the temporal content of perceptual experiences is determined by when sensory features complete processing. However, this theory struggles to explain how perceptual experiences can accurately reflect the relative timing of sensory features processed at discrepant (...) times. In contrast, ‘event time theories’ suggest that the temporal content of perceptual experiences reflects the relative event time of external sensory features and that the brain accommodates differential processing times. We can formulate retrodictive and predictive versions of this theory. Retrodictive event time theories propose that we accommodate desynchronised processing retrodictively. Predictive event time theories propose that we accommodate desynchronised processing by predictively modelling the event time of sensory features. I argue that both views have strengths and weaknesses. This paper proposes a new hybrid theory that integrates these theories to accommodate these weaknesses. Firstly, I argue how retrodictions and predictions can interact in mutually beneficial ways to ensure speedy and accurate temporal binding. Secondly, I propose how attention plays a central role in flexibly selecting which contents get to be temporally bound. This theory can explain how prediction and retrodiction differentially affect temporal binding and, in turn, proposes a new way to understand temporal binding and has implications for how we should understand conscious experiences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most theorem provers for Classical Logic transform the input formula into a particular normal form. This tranformation is done before the execution of the algorithm or it is integrated into the deductive algorithm. This situation is no different for Non-Classical Logics and, particularly, for Temporal Logics. However, unlike classical logic, temporal logic does not provide an extension of the notion of non negative normal form. In this work, we define a temporal negative normal form for the (...) future fragment of the linear time propositional temporal logic, named FNext. The definition saves as much information as possible about implicants and implicates of the input formula and its subformulas. This property is the novelty of this normal form; for example, in [Fis97] the normal form is guided by the separation property and in [Ven86] the normal form provided prepares the input formula to be treated by a resolution method. Moreover, we also introduce an algorithm having linear cost, which transforms the input formula into a temporal negative normal form. Furthermore, in this work we present a new structure and a set of operators over it that allows us to efficiently manage the information about unitary implicants and implicates contained in the subformulae. (shrink)

A nonlinear two-variable reaction-diffusion model of bone mineral metabolism, built from an overall self-oscillatory compartmental model of calcium metabolism in vivo, has been studied for its ability to generate spatial and spatio-temporal self-organizations in a two-dimensional space. Analytical and numerical results confirm the theoretical properties previously described for this kind of model. In particular, it is shown that, for a given set of reactional parameter values and certain values of the ratio of the two diffusion coefficients, there exists (...) a set of unstable wavenumbers leading spontaneously to the development, from the homogeneous steady state, of either different types of stationary spatial patterns (hexagonal, striped and re-entrant hexagonal patterns) or more or less complex spatio-temporal expressions. We discuss the relevance of analogies established between some spatial or spatio-temporal structures predicted by the model and some peculiar features of the primary bone trabecular architecture which appear during embryonic ossification. (shrink)

We show that monadic intuitionistic quantifiers admit the following temporal interpretation: “always in the future” (for$\forall $) and “sometime in the past” (for$\exists $). It is well known that Prior’s intuitionistic modal logic${\sf MIPC}$axiomatizes the monadic fragment of the intuitionistic predicate logic, and that${\sf MIPC}$is translated fully and faithfully into the monadic fragment${\sf MS4}$of the predicate${\sf S4}$via the Gödel translation. To realize the temporal interpretation mentioned above, we introduce a new tense extension${\sf TS4}$of${\sf S4}$and provide a full and (...) faithful translation of${\sf MIPC}$into${\sf TS4}$. We compare this new translation of${\sf MIPC}$with the Gödel translation by showing that both${\sf TS4}$and${\sf MS4}$can be translated fully and faithfully into a tense extension of${\sf MS4}$, which we denote by${\sf MS4.t}$. This is done by utilizing the relational semantics for these logics. As a result, we arrive at the diagram of full and faithful translations shown in Figure 1 which is commutative up to logical equivalence. We prove the finite model property (fmp) for${\sf MS4.t}$using algebraic semantics, and show that the fmp for the other logics involved can be derived as a consequence of the fullness and faithfulness of the translations considered. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the themes of the book. The thesis of temporal supervenience is that all facts about ordinary time, all facts shaped by our ordinary temporal discourse, logically supervene on facts about spacetime; what goes on in spacetime fully determines what goes on in ordinary time. Temporal supervenience has many aspects, corresponding to various kinds of supervenient temporal phenomena. Among the most basic phenomena are persistence and change through ordinary time. The (...) problem of temporal supervenience with respect to these phenomena has two components. The first component is to specify the spatiotemporal supervenience base of persistence and change. How do objects occupy spacetime? And how are properties instantiated across occupied spacetime? The second component is to build an explanatory bridge from the supervenience base to the supervenient phenomena. Such a bridge requires an ‘analysis’ of temporal existence and temporal instantiation, that is, a semantic account of ordinary temporal predications such as ‘a was F’. The problem of temporal supervenience thus connects the metaphysics of time with the semantics of temporal discourse. Before the supervenience of ordinary temporal facts on spacetime facts can be explained, the shape of ordinary time needs to be clarified. This is a further task of Chapter 1. Tenserism and A-time are criticized in the context of temporal supervenience with the aim of promoting detenserism as the correct account of tense and B-time as the true shape of ordinary time. (shrink)

In this paper we focus our attention on tableau methods for propositional interval temporal logics. These logics provide a natural framework for representing and reasoning about temporal properties in several areas of computer science. However, while various tableau methods have been developed for linear and branching time point-based temporal logics, not much work has been done on tableau methods for interval-based ones. We develop a general tableau method for Venema's \cdt\ logic interpreted over partial orders (\nsbcdt\ (...) for short). It combines features of the classical tableau method for first-order logic with those of explicit tableau methods for modal logics with constraint label management, and it can be easily tailored to most propositional interval temporal logics proposed in the literature. We prove its soundness and completeness, and we show how it has been implemented. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.