Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...) what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self which is imagined either as moving through time, or as being stationary, with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist, with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the (...) part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people’s belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts denying that temporal passage is an objective feature of reality face an explanatory challenge with respect to why it appears to us as though time passes. Recently, two solutions have surfaced. Cognitive illusionism claims that people experience the passage of time due to their belief that time passes. Cognitive error theory claims that we do not experience the passage of time, but hold the belief that we do, which we have acquired through making an inference from the (...) prior belief that time passes. These approaches suppose that belief and passage experience are explanatorily connected, and they depend on the claims that people who experience the passage of time or at least believe that they do also believe that time passes. To test these claims, we probed the beliefs of populations of individuals with depression and schizotypy, thus conditions that are strongly associated with alterations in temporal phenomenology. Depression was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and schizotypy with the short Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (O-LIFE). While cognitive illusionism and inferentialist cognitive error theory would predict a strong association between BDI and O-LIFE scores and beliefs about time passage, our study found no such association. The experience of passage does not seem to be explanatorily connected to beliefs about the passage of time. (shrink)

Temporal non-dynamists hold that there is no temporal passage, but concede that many of us judge that it seems as though time passes. Phenomenal Illusionists suppose that things do seem this way, even though things are not this way. They attempt to explain how it is that we are subject to a pervasive phenomenal illusion. More recently, Cognitive Error Theorists have argued that our experiences do not seem that way; rather, we are subject to an error that leads (...) us mistakenly to believe that our experiences seem that way. Cognitive Error Theory is a relatively new view and little has been said to explain why we make such an error, or where, in the cognitive architecture, such an error might creep in. In this paper we remedy this by offering a number of hypotheses about the source of error. In so doing we aim to show that Cognitive Error Theory is a plausible competitor to Phenomenal Illusion Theory. (shrink)

This paper asks how to account for vulnerable integrity in the temporal dynamism of human lives without relying on a subtractive vision of integral human nature, borrowing from presumed past or future rationality and maturity, or depending on an external attribution of dignity. Illustrating the challenges with vignettes from the author’s life, it argues inductively that human integrity includes morally inviolable vulnerability to others with whom we are in interdependent relationship and without whom we cannot develop or maintain (...) our selves. Others reside at the core of our integrity, for better and for worse, and we reside at theirs. Augustine’s accounts of memory, time, and the narrative self; Whiteheadian process thought’s understanding of continuity through change; and feminist theories of narrative all provide theological and philosophical justifications for this vision of integrity. John Wall’s and Johan Brännmark’s non-foundational approaches to integrity and human rights lead us to the same conclusion without entailing theological anthropological claims, ensuring its relevance in a pluralist culture. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the (...) temporal belief hypothesis according to which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Temporal dynamists argue that we should believe that there exists temporal passage because there being passage is the best explanation for the presence of our temporal phenomenology. Some non-dynamists have countered that the presence of passage makes no difference to our temporal phenomenology, and consequently that temporal phenomenology cannot be evidence that there is passage. This paper attempts to bolster this non-dynamist response by offering new arguments for the claim that the presence of passage makes (...) no difference to our phenomenology. (shrink)

Movement perception and its role in aesthetic experience have been often studied, within empirical aesthetics, in relation to the human body. No such specificity has been defined in neuroimaging studies with respect to contents lacking a human form. The aim of this work was to explore, through functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), how perceived movement is processed during the aesthetic judgment of paintings using two types of content: human subjects and scenes of nature. Participants, untutored in the arts, were shown the (...) stimuli and asked to make aesthetic judgments. Additionally, they were instructed to observe the paintings and to rate their perceived movement in separate blocks. Observation highlighted spontaneous processes associated with aesthetic experience, whereas movement judgment outlined activations specifically related to movement processing. The ratings recorded during aesthetic judgment revealed that nature scenes received higher scored than human content paintings. The imaging data showed similar activation, relative to baseline, for all stimuli in the three tasks, including activation of occipito-temporal areas, posterior parietal and premotor cortices. Contrast analyses within aesthetic judgment task showed that human content activated, relative to nature, precuneus, fusiform gyrus and posterior temporal areas, whose activation was prominent for dynamic human paintings. In contrast, nature scenes activated, relative to human stimuli, occipital and posterior parietal cortex/precuneus, involved in visuospatial exploration and pragmatic coding of movement, as well as central insula. Static nature paintings further activated, relative to dynamic nature stimuli, central and posterior insula. Besides insular activation, which was specific for aesthetic judgment, we found a large overlap in the activation pattern characterizing each stimulus dimension (content and dynamism) across observation, aesthetic judgment and movement judgment tasks. These findings support the idea that the aesthetic evaluation of artworks depicting both human subjects and nature scenes involves a motor component, and that the associated neural processes occur quite spontaneously in the viewer. Furthermore, considering the functional roles of posterior and central insula, we suggest that nature paintings may evoke aesthetic processes requiring an additional proprioceptive and sensori-motor component implemented by “motor accessibility” to the represented scenario, which is needed to judge the aesthetic value of the observed painting. (shrink)

This paper aims to determine whether we can locate temporal passage in a non-dynamical (block universe) world. In particular, we seek to determine both whether temporal passage can be located somewhere in our world if it is non-dynamical, and also to home in on where in such a world temporal passage can be located, if it can be located anywhere. We investigate this question by seeking to determine, across three experiments, whether the folk concept of temporal (...) passage can be satisfied in our world if it is non-dynamical, and, if it can, what sort of thing in our world satisfies that concept. In particular, we focus on the question of whether that concept (if satisfied) is satisfied by something mind-dependent or something mind-independent. In other words, we ask, is temporal passage something that is at least partially in the mind, or is it entirely external to the mind? We find, contrary to what is often assumed by dynamists and non-dynamists alike, that the folk concept of temporal passage is satisfied in our world conditional on it being non-dynamical, and that the concept is satisfied by something mind-independent. This provides further ammunition for recent deflationary accounts of temporal passage that attempt to locate passage somewhere in our non-dynamical world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Temporal dynamists argue that we should believe that there exists temporal passage because there being passage is the best explanation for the presence of our temporal phenomenology. Presentists argue that presentism is the best version of temporal dynamism. Therefore, conditional on us accepting temporal dynamism, we should accept presentism. In this paper it is argued that if we understand temporal passage as the presentist does, such an argument can succeed only if (...) dualism is true. Thus, we conclude, either presentists should embrace dualism, or they should reject any argument for presentism that proceeds via any such argument for temporal passage that proceeds via considerations of what best explains our temporal phenomenology. (shrink)

Several philosophers have suggested that certain aspects of people’s experience of agency partly explains why people tend to report that it seems to them, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. In turn, it has been suggested that people come to believe that time robustly passes on the basis of its seeming to them in experience that it does. We argue that what require explaining is not just that people report that it seems to them as though time robustly (...) passes, and that they believe that it does, but rather, the substantial variation (a) in people’s reports regarding whether it seems as though time robustly passes, and (b) their beliefs about whether time robustly passes. We empirically investigate the agentive explanation of (a), according to which variation in people’s agentive experiences explains variation in people’s reports regarding whether it seems to them as though time robustly passes. We also empirically investigate the experiential seeming explanation of belief, according to which variation in people’s beliefs about whether time robustly passes is explained by variation in their reports regarding whether it seems in experience as though time robustly passes. We found empirical support for the agentive explanation, but not for the experiential seeming explanation of passage beliefs. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

This article presents an account of temporal understanding in Mandarin Chinese. Aspectual, lexical, and adverbial information, and pragmatic principles all contribute to the interpretation of temporal location. Aspectual viewpoint and situation type give information in the absence of explicit temporal forms. The main, default pattern of interpretation is deictic. The pragmatic principles are the Bounded Event Constraint, the Simplicity Principle of Interpretation, and the Temporal Schema Principle. Lexical and adverbial information can lead to non-default interpretations. Two (...) other temporal patterns, narrative dynamism and anaphora, appear in text passages that realize the 'discourse modes' of narrative and description. (shrink)

Temporal dynamists typically hold that it seems to us as though time robustly passes, and that its seeming so is explained by the fact that time does robustly pass. Temporal non-dynamists hold that time does not robustly pass. Some non-dynamists nevertheless hold that it seems as though it does: we have an illusory phenomenal state whose content represents robust passage. Call these phenomenal passage illusionists. Other non-dynamists argue that the phenomenal state in question is veridical, and represents something (...) other than robust passage. Call this the veridical passage-less view. This paper argues against in favour of the latter view over the former, by arguing that we should reject passage illusionism. (shrink)

The philosophical investigation of perceptual illusions can generate fruitful insights in the study of subjective time consciousness. However, the way illusions are interpreted is often controversial. Recently, proponents of the so-called dynamic snapshot theory have appealed to the Waterfall Illusion, a kind of motion aftereffect, to support a particular view of temporal consciousness according to which experience is structured as a series of instantaneous snapshots with dynamic qualities. This dynamism is meant to account for familiar features of the (...) phenomenology of time, such as succession, continuity, and change. Previous theories have typically appealed to a subjective present occupying an interval of time; that is, a “specious present.” I argue, through analysis of motion aftereffect illusions and the rare condition of akinetopsia, i.e. motion-blindness, that the Waterfall Illusion fails to support the dynamic snapshot theory as intended. Furthermore, I suggest that future theories of subjective time should see temporal phenomenology as the result of non-localised processes closely tied to the mechanism underlying consciousness generally. (shrink)

It’s generally thought that we naively or pre-theoretically represent the future to be open. While philosophers have modelled future openness in different ways, it’s unclear which, if any, captures our naïve sense that the future is open. In this paper we focus on just one way the future might count as being open: by being nomically open, and empirically investigate whether our naïve representation of the future as open is partly constituted by representing the future as nomically open. We also (...) investigate the connection between our naïve representation of the future as open, and our representation of time. One of the purported advantages of the growing block theory of time is that it captures our naive sense that the future is open, and the past closed. We investigate whether there is an explanatory connection between people representing the future to be nomically open and representing our world to be a growing block and reflect on the implications of our findings for theorising about future openness and temporal ontology. (shrink)

It was once held to be a virtue of the growing block theory that it combines temporal dynamism with a straightforward account of in virtue of what past-tensed propositions are true, and an explanation for why some future-tensed propositions are not true (assuming they are not). This put the growing block theory ahead of its principal dynamist rival: presentism. Recently, new growing block theorists have suggested that what makes true, past-tensed propositions, is not the same kind of thing (...) as what makes true, present-tensed propositions. They have done so in an attempt to defuse a particular epistemic objection to their view. In this paper it is argued that the new growing block theorist faces a dilemma. The more unified a strategy is for responding to the epistemic objection, the more that strategy results in the new growing block model positing truthmakers that are similar to those posited by the presentist, which erodes the purported advantage of the growing block theory over presentism. On the other hand, versions of the new growing block theory that embrace disunified strategies are better able to differentiate themselves from presentism, but are unattractive because of their disunity. (shrink)

This essay explores Foucault’s conception of the historical a priori through the lens of an archival ethics of eros. Highlighting the paradoxical nature of the historical a priori as both constitutive and contingent, it harnesses the temporal dynamism of experiences of the untimely as erotic. Drawing on the work of Anne Carson, the essay brings out the strangeness of eros as an ancient Greek word that remains unintelligible to us. That strangeness signals an ethics of dissonant attunement to (...) the untimeliness of the historical a priori. Such an ethics of eros names those experiences of connection and rupture that both bind and unbind us in relation to a biopolitical present that is radically unstable. Reading eros as strange thus ultimately allows us to find resources for an ethics of self-transformation in Foucault’s reflections on the temporal instability that the historical a priori names. (shrink)

Stemming from a general study of rhythm in the work of Gilles Deleuze, we propose a distribution of this concept throughout three levels: a topic level, in which we place rhythm between chaos and measure; a dynamic level, in which we analyse the formation of rhythm towards its stabilisation as a spatio-temporal dynamism; and an unfolding, in which these dynamisms take on the form of rhythmic machines applied in music (refrain), in painting (sensation) and in cinema (montage and (...) time crystals). In this last phase, the rhythmic devices of various arts lead to a genesis of time. We are thus driven to think and elaborate on the link between these two concepts, rhythm and time, in the writings of Deleuze. Bearing this purpose in mind, we turn to the schema of the three syntheses of time in Difference and Repetition. These syntheses show how time emerges from different ways of understanding repetition, in the place of which rhythm will then appear. We will compare this schema with the argument articulated by Deleuze in Logic of Sensation regarding rhythm in its pictorial form. This comparison will enable us to deduce that both concepts follow a parallel path arising from the same series of processes: vibration, coupling, resonance and forced movement. We will conclude that the schema proposed in Difference and Repetition and its aesthetic purpose delineate the ways in which rhythms unfold creatively. These three syntheses of rhythm are implicated in artistic processes. (shrink)

According to the No Alternate Possibilities argument, if time passes then the rate at which it passes could be different. Thus, time cannot pass, since if time passes, then necessarily it passes at a rate of 1 second per second. One response to this argument is to posit hypertime, and to argue that at different worlds, time passes at different rates when measured against hypertime. Since many A-theorists think we can make sense of temporal passage without positing hypertime, we (...) pursue a different response. We describe several worlds that do not contain hypertime, but do contain differential passage: worlds where time passes at different rates in different subregions within the same world. Hence we argue that even if we focus just on the set of worlds that do not contain hypertime (whether this is all, or only some of the worlds) we find that not all these worlds are such that time passes at a rate of 1 second per second. Thus the No Alternate Possibilities argument fails even when restricted to just this set of worlds. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. This is an invited comment on “Physical Time Within Human Time”. The topic is the nature of time and its various representations in physical theory vs. our experience. In this Comment, I dissent from the standard formulation of the topic as involving a “Two Times Problem,” in which physical time is taken as being at odds with the human sense of a “flow of time.” I provide a brief overview of the case to be made for the contrary view: (...) namely, that physical theory is indeed consistent with a genuine temporal dynamism that takes into account the quantum level in connection with spacetime emergence, the latter being supervenient on specific quantum processes. (shrink)

In this paper we provide an analysis of dynamic dispositionalism. It is usually claimed that dispositions are dynamic properties. However, there is no exhaustive analysis of dynamism in the dispositional literature. We will argue that the dynamic character of dispositions can be analyzed in terms of three features: (i) temporal extension, (ii) necessary change and (iii) future orientedness. Roughly, we will defend the idea that dynamism entails a continuous view of time, to be analyzed in mathematical terms, (...) where intervals are its constitutive elements, whose duration lasts as much as a certain change takes to occur (in support of i). Such changes are the necessary components for the flowing of time because we think there cannot be time without change, (thus supporting ii) and that the forward-looking feature of properties is what determines the direction of time (as per iii). The paper is structured in 5 sections. In the first section, we set the problem: we outline and criticize some dispositional theories that defend an unsatisfying notion of dynamism. In the second, third and fourth sections we defend each desideratum for a disposition to be dynamic. Finally, we draw some conclusions and consider potential future research. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates the contention that the folk concept of time is a functional concept: a concept according to which time is whatever plays a certain functional role or roles. This hypothesis could explain why, in previous research, surprisingly large percentages of participants judge that there is time at worlds that contain no one-dimensional substructure of ordered instants. If it seems to participants that even in those worlds the relevant functional role is played, then this could explain why they (...) judge that there is time in those worlds. While our experiment supported the finding that participants are reticent to judge that there is no time, actually, we found no evidence that this is because they deploy a functionalist concept, at least of the kind proposed in recent research. Our findings are, however, consistent with the folk deploying a much more minimal functionalist concept according to which time is just whatever it is—regardless of its nature—that plays the role of grounding our temporal phenomenology. (shrink)

While inanimate objects can neither experience nor express emotions, in principle they can be expressive of emotions. In particular, music is a paradigmatic example of something expressive of emotions that surely cannot feel anything at all. The Contour theory accounts for music expressiveness in terms of those resemblances that hold between its external and perceivable properties and the typical contour of human emotional behavior. Provided that some critical aspects are emended – notably, the stress on the perception of similarity instead (...) of the more plausible hypothesis that the listener perceives manifestations that are similar – we are inclined to endorse contour theory. In particular, we share its basic idea that expressive properties are perceived. Although other kinds of processes – high-level conceptual inferences, imagination – sometimes characterize our encounters with music, still perception constitutes the standard process underlying the detection of expressiveness. Moreover, we propose to extend contour theory to visual arts. Taking into consideration, as a case study, depicted landscapes, we observe that they frequently cannot but express emotions such as joy, sadness, liveliness or melancholy. The fact that pictures, unlike music, lack any temporal dimension is a prima facie reason for doubting the extendibility of contour theory’s conceptual arsenal to them. Nevertheless, while being obviously unable to behave somehow, we claim that depicted landscapes can perfectly convey dynamic information. If this is the case, the extension of the notion of contour to visuals art via the stress on the notion of dynamism would represent a second interesting revision of contour theory. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that most people unambiguously have a phenomenology as of time passing, and that this is a datum that philosophical theories must accommodate. Moreover, it has been assumed that the greater the extent to which people have said phenomenology, the more likely they are to endorse a dynamical theory of time. This paper is the first to empirically test these assumptions. Surprisingly, our results do not support either assumption. One experiment instead found the reverse (...) correlation: people were more likely to report having passage phenomenology if they endorsed a non-dynamical theory of time. Given that people do not have an unambiguous phenomenology as of time passing, we conclude that this is suggestive evidence in favor of veridical non-dynamism—the view that our phenomenology is veridical, and that it does not unambiguously represent that time passes. Instead, our phenomenology veridically has some quite different content. (shrink)

This article re-reads John 20:1-29 to foreground the normal, the post-normal and the new normal realities within the Johannine resurrection narrative. The narrator of John demonstrates the normal situational aspects by taking into consideration the setting, characterisation, thematic development, point of view and plot development of the story in closer relationship with the temporal and spatial mechanisms. The ordinary, local and existent realities are expressed to reveal the colourless human experiences in relation to the divine aspects within the narrative (...) framework. The resurrection of Jesus introduces a post-normal situation within the Sitz im Leben Jesu and the Sitz im Leben Kirche. The post-normal situation was introduced by placing the story of Lazarus at a strategic place (Jn 11:1-45) and thereafter by unfolding the essentials such as speed, scope, scale and spontaneity. The unfolding of the divine within the existential human realities created a post-normal situation where the Johannine community had to undergo expulsion and persecution from the side of the dominant structures. The narrator gives the reader a hope about a new normal situation above and beyond the existent struggles of the Johannine community. CONTRIBUTION: This article presents a new perspective concerning the normal, the post-normal and the new normal realities and dynamism within John 20:1-29 and suggests a new way forward in interpreting the Fourth Gospel by taking into consideration the existential aspects of the COVID-19 and Omicron pandemic situations. As a contextual and theological interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, this article fits well within the scope of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 297-327 [Access article in PDF] Liberal Irony A Program for Rhetoric James P. McDaniel [Figures] Seeing like a state Perhaps these famous yet simple pictures display not so much the virtuosity of photography or photographers as they statically represent fragments of Mahatma Gandhi's theosophical and political dynamism, his uncanny blend of calm and charisma, thought and play. The compositions are technically simple yet (...) thematically rich. The great leader being led by a boy, the public figure reflecting quietly in private over news reports: these modest representations key awareness of the place of overturning in Gandhi's thought, words, and deeds. A man who encouraged non-violent resistance (ahimsa) to British Imperialists, Gandhi submitted his body to great harshness (himsa). A witness to incredible atrocities committed against his people, Gandhi exhorted his followers to present their bodies before armed imperialist soldiers with full knowledge that they would be brutalized, many killed. Legally prohibited from doing so, Gandhi made salt. Exhausted and hungry, Gandhi walked hundreds of kilometers without rest and fasted for long stretches of time. Hated and feared, Gandhi loved. Perpetually reversing the "logic" of the world he knew, overturning its values to find and clarify truer values, insisting that choices be made between the received and the [End Page 297] promised, the "is" and the "ought," the actual and the possible, Gandhi was an ironist.Each picture can also be seen as an allegory, or taken together as an allegorical complex of mutually illuminating signs, and Gandhi as a political allegorist of human relations for early twentieth-century India and the globe. Allegory's signature inscriptions are everywhere about these simple photos. Personification of virtue, a stock technique of allegorical composition, abounds: Humility becomes Gandhi. Each photograph personifies humility uniquely: sparseness of setting, simplicity of garb, and other visual cues for self-abasement adorn the one; richness of natural setting, playfulness, childlikeness, and such ornament the other. Both images suggest the presence of the eternal in the temporal, but in different ways, another key fixture of allegorical design: Gandhi's stillness sitting near his spinning wheel, itself an image of eternal circuitousness, in the one, and his vigorous exertion against a vast, seemingly static, natural landscape, both "frozen" in time thanks to the technology of photography, in the other. Likewise, time's flow seems in a sense reversed in a manner that mirrors symmetrical ontological reversals: the older follows the younger, the man the boy, and the wise follow the inexperienced. Further allegorical decoding could be endeavored, for instance rearticulating the two texts on four tiers of signification: literal, figural, historical, and anagogical—the "four-level" allegorical hermeneutic initially developed for application to sacred texts and later ascendant as a critical method from the Middle Ages to some versions of poststructuralism in recent years (e.g., Fredric Jameson's Political Unconscious, Frederick Dolan's Allegories of America,Paul de Man's Allegories of Reading). Each tier reveals a unique dimension of discourse: its textual surface (literal), its embedded significations (figural), its reflexive display of placement in time and society (historical), and its alignment with archetypal or ultimate patterns of existence (anagogical).As two approaches to the same texts, irony and allegory are more complementary than exclusive. Neither renders the other invalid or uninteresting, nor do they deplete their common rhetorical resources, yet each features distinctive fixations. The first perspective fixates on a single strategy reflected in the texts and explores the ramifications of that strategy: dialectical reversal. The second fastens on and traverses across myriad textures and patterns of discursive technique displayed in the texts: allegorical personification (e.g., Gandhi as humility), temporality (e.g., fusing of public, private, and eternal time), paratactic association of images (i.e., interplay between visual signs not necessarily regulated by a single code [End Page 298] of meaning), and cosmic ornamentation (e.g., the spinning wheel that, by the way, is not spinning; like Gandhi, it is sitting still in a world of tumult, as if mirroring a moment of individual and universal arrest). Ironic strategizing and inventorying, in this light... (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines how two American theorists, Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler, deploy geologic language during the 1990s moment when their feminist careers morphed into queer careers. I argue that the precise composition of this institutional shift – methodological, material, and epistemological – is both reflected and refracted in the figure of the rock. A symbol that connotes fixity in short time spans, but dynamism in long ones, the rock oscillates between facticity and dissolution, mirroring shifting notions of sex (...) and gender in the 1990s. In her retrospective account of the emergence of queer theory, Rubin’s use of a fossil metaphor ushers the field toward a non-reproductive and non-procreative genealogy, illuminating a different temporal texture to such seemingly fixed structures as sex, gender, and sexuality. Butler’s inherited geologic language conceives of gender as the process of sedimentation that resists the biological determinism of identity-based feminist politics. Examining the rock provides crucial readings of Butler’s materiality, one that oscillates between fixed being and dynamic becoming, stability and change, surface signification and depth excavation. (shrink)

One can use mathematics not as an instrument or measure, or a replacement for God, but as a poetic articulation, or perhaps as a stammered experimental approach to cultural dynamics. I choose to start with the simplest symbolic substances that respect the lifeworld’s continuous dynamism, temporality, boundless morphogenesis, superposability, continuity, density and value, and yet are independent of measure, metric, counting, finitude, formal logic, syntax, grammar, digitality and computability – in short, free of the formal structures that would put (...) a cage over all of the lifeworld. I call these substances topological media. This article introduces elementary topological concepts with which we can articulate material and cultural change using notions of proximity, limit, and change, without recourse to number or metric. The motivation is that topology furnishes us with concepts well-adapted for poietically articulating the world as stuff, rather than objects with an a priori schema. With care, it may provide a fruitful approach to morphogenesis and cultural dynamics that is neither reductive nor anthropocentric. I will not pretend any systematic application of the scaffolding concepts introduced in this article. Instead, I would see what fellow students of cultural dynamics and cosmopolitics make of these concepts in their own work. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the materiality of experience as stemming from a temporal process of sense-formation (Sinnbildung), whose essence is not just formally configured, but also materially organized. In order to understand this process of sense-formation, I first examine the materiality that is intrinsic to the intentional sense and its relationship with the sensible materiality of experience brought forth by the project of hyletic phenomenology. In the second part of the paper, I propose to overcome the tension between (...) a materiality of sense and a materiality of sensibility by reflecting on the specific materiality that is created in our experience through the dynamism of imaginative modifications. Allowing us to switch between different temporal and spatial horizons, imaginative projections and reveries reveal a hidden “reverse” side of our perceptive field, that we access only when we let go of objectifying acts and established significance. In the last part of the paper, I turn toward bodily gestures, in which I see an expression of experience that resists objectification and straightforward symbolization, attesting for the complex social inscription of our bodily existence. I end the paper with an inquiry into the specific materiality of gestures, understanding them as vanishing archives offered to the future. (shrink)

This article examines the limits of Heidegger’s ontological description of emotionality from the period of Sein und Zeit and Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik along the lines outlined by Lévinas in his early work De l’existence à l’existant. On the basis of the Lévinassian concept of “il y a”, we attempt to map the sphere of the impersonal existence situated out of the structured context of the world. However the worldless facticity without individuality marks the limits of the phenomenological approach to (...) human existence and its emotionality, it also opens a new view on the beginning and ending of the individual existence. The whole structure of the individual existence in its contingency and finitude appears here in a new light, which applies also to the temporal conditions of existence. Yet, this is not to say that Heidegger should be simply replaced by Lévinas. As shows an examination of the work of art, to which brings us our reading of Moravia’s literary exposition of boredom (the phenomenon closely examined in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik), the view on the work of art that is entirely based on the anonymous and worldless facticity of il y a must be extended and complemented by the moment in which a new world and a new individual structure of experience are being born. To comprehend the dynamism of the work of art in its fullness, it is necessary to see it not only as an ending of the world and the correlative intentional structure of the individual existence, but also as their new beginning. (shrink)

Philosophical and theological conceptions of eternity frequently define it through a contrast with time’s transience. These conceptions reflect the widespread influence of Augustine’s idea of eternity, where eternity stands atemporally in opposition to time. Such conceptions are problematic for both divine and human relations to the world. However, the work of Plotinus and Boethius shows that eternity can be conceived more inclusively—as transcending time, but nonetheless including temporal change and dynamism within its presence. This facilitates Boethius’ views of (...) divine knowledge and human freedom in ways that are not available to Augustine. His work demonstrates how an inclusive conception of eternity can reconcile the pursuit of eternal wisdom with a commitment to ethical responsibility within the temporal flow of the world. (shrink)

Perceptual completion fills the gap for discrete perception to become continuous. Similarly, dynamic perceptual completion provides an experience of dynamic continuity. Our recent discovery of the ‘happening’ element of DPC completes the total experience for dynamism in the flow of time. However, a phenomenological explanation for these experiences is essential. The Snapshot Hypotheses especially the Dynamic Snapshot View provides the most comprehensive explanation. From that understanding the ‘two times’ problem can be addressed. The static time of spacetime cosmologies has (...) been irreconcilable with the dynamic FOT. Dismissing the FOT as an illusion is unsatisfactory. Therefore, we provide four hypotheses for the TTP.1) Since cosmological static time demands that all events are discrete, DPC elements for dynamism should likewise be expected to be discrete and accounted for by a snapshot phenomenology such as the DSV. 2) If temporality can be demonstrated to be similar to apparent motion by being a snapshot phenomenon and not demanding temporal extension it would confirm the DSV and permit reconciliation with static time. 3) If the ‘present moment’ is subjective as static time theories suggest, it should be possible experimentally for an observer to choose his own ‘present’ by moving to various points in the past with the aid of virtual reality. 4) If dynamism e.g. motion can be precluded without significant information loss or violating physics principles it is a cognitive add-on, thereby contradicting non-static time theories which suggest that time is ‘real.’ We confirm those hypotheses. (shrink)

As lawmakers produce norms, the underlying normative system is affected showing the intrinsic dynamism of law. Through undertaken actions of legal change, the normative system is continuously modified. In a usual legislative practice, the time for an enacted legal provision to be in force may differ from that of its inclusion to the legal system, or from that in which it produces legal effects. Even more, some provisions can produce effects retroactively in time. In this article we study a (...) simulation of such process through the formalisation of a temporalised logical framework upon which a novel belief revision model tackles the dynamic nature of law. Represented through intervals, the temporalisation of sentences allows differentiating the temporal parameters of norms. In addition, a proposed revision operator allows assessing change to the legal system by including a new temporalised literal while preserving the time-based consistency. This can be achieved either by pushing out conflictive pieces of pre-existing norms or through the modification of intervals in which such norms can be either in force, or produce effects. Finally, the construction of the temporalised revision operator is axiomatically characterised and its rational behavior proved through a corresponding representation theorem. (shrink)

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible (...) for its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time. (shrink)

The traditional ontology within which chemistry has developed involved various versions of a general substance/attribute scheme. Recently this has been challenged by two versions of Dynamism. One version is derived from the writings of A. N. Whitehead and the other from several sources, including G. Leibniz and I. Kant. Both involve the idea of flux of actual occasions. Unlike the former scheme, the latter involves a foundation of causal powers and the energetics of field theory. The situation has been (...) made more interesting because of the revival of trope theory, based on an ontology of particularized attributes. This notion is claimed to resolve philosophical problems about the nature of universals and of substances through the introduction of spatial and temporal sequences of tropes. While trope theory seems, at first sight, to work as an attractive alternative to substance/attribute close inspection shows that it is beset with difficulties that are more problematic that the dynamist ontology based on casual powers, dispositions and affordances. (shrink)

Yarnold is motivated by the thesis that theology must interpret science. It does so presumably for the benefit of the religious community, being careful that the formulations emanating from such an interpretation are "true to the facts of biblical and Christian experience." Yarnold's main focus is the distinction between time and eternity, or between the temporal world and the eternal world. The book is a valiant attempt to explore post-Newtonian concepts of space and time and space-time, and to relate (...) them to the traditional theological notion of eternity. After exploring our biological and physical awareness of time and relating that awareness with the law of entropy and after exploring some biblical concepts of time, Yarnold reaches the formula that we in the temporal world experience successiveness, while God in the eternal realm experiences everything all at once. "The space-time continuum may be regarded as a valid representation of the external world as apprehended by Deity." Unfortunately, when he is through investigating the dynamism of modern science, he continues to cling to a basically static and traditional theology which seems to ignore that dynamism.—S. O. H. (shrink)

Stephen Mumford has argued that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists because perdurantism, by breaking down persisting objects in sequences of static discrete existents, is at odds with a powers metaphysics. This has been contested by Neil Williams who offers his own version of ‘powerful’ perdurance where powers function as links between the temporal parts of persisting objects. Weighing up the arguments given by both sides, I show that the profile of ‘powerful’ persistence crucially depends on how one conceptualises the (...) processes involved in the manifestation of powers. As this turns out not to be determined per se by subscribing to some view labelled ‘powers view’, further discussion is needed as to what processes are and to what kind of process theory a powers metaphysics should commit itself in order to be convincing. I defend the claim that dispositionalism is best combined with a version of process ontology that is indeed incompatible with a perdurantist analysis of persistence. However, I argue that this does not imply that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists. (shrink)

In a proleptically queer mode, Avery Cardinal Dulles’s Models of the Church argued that the church—a mystery—must bear multiple simultaneously true, dynamic, indispensable, yet inadequate labels. If so, one theological test of our ethics is their ability to sustain ecclesiological multiplicity. The anti-trans* policies of some US dioceses and of the Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE) document “‘Male and Female He Created Them’” embrace Dulles’s institution model to the point of exclusive authoritarian institutionalism, while other CCE documents, embracing open-ended, loving (...) dialogue across difference, favor his communion and community of disciples models without discarding the other dimensions of church. Dulles’s belief in the dynamism and temporality of ecclesiological models is permission to replace the institution model, which is vulnerable to abuse, with a kenotic model drawn from queer theology that installs apophasis and self-criticism as indispensable elements of ecclesiology. Ethics of sexuality and gender must pass this ecclesiological test. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 425-426 [Access article in PDF] Martin Heidegger. The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy. Translated by Ted Sadler. London: Continuum, 2002. Pp. xiv + 216. Paper, $29.95.Of the recently translated volumes comprising Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, perhaps the volume whose importance is most underestimated contains his lectures from the summer semester of 1930 (Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit), which now appears (...) in English under the title On the Essence of Human Freedom. In this work, Heidegger complements his other attempts to retrieve Kant's transcendental philosophy—which primarily focused on reinterpreting the Critique of Pure Reason—by offering the fullest treatment of practical reason to be found in the Gesamtausgabe. As such, this translation of Band 31 of the Gesamtausgabe proves invaluable because it (1) provides another side to Heidegger's critical exchange (Auseinandersetzung) with Kant (198) and (2) yields some tantalizing clues as to a vestige of a Heideggerian ethic which can be developed by examining human freedom.In a lecture course from the winter semester of 1925-26 (Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit), Heidegger turned to Kant's doctrine of schematism in order to distinguish finitude as the key dimension of temporality. From that point until the publication of "Kants These über das Sein" (1961), the importance of retrieving transcendental philosophy surfaces at strategic places in Heidegger's thought, although he devotes most of his attention to unraveling the issue of temporality couched in the Transcendental Analytic of the first Critique. What sets The Essence of Human Freedom apart, however, is that it identifies freedom as a new locus from which to address the possibility of being's disclosure through time, which remains unthought in the Greek concept of ousia as "permanent presence": "The question of human freedom is the fundamental question of philosophy, in which is rooted even the question of being" (203). Human freedom, and the questioning of its finite origin in human existence (Dasein), thereby yields a wider topography within which to re-ask the question of being in light of its connection to time. The topography takes this form: the traditional, or "leading question of philosophy" (what are beings as such?), gives way to the "fundamental question of philosophy" (why is being disclosed through time?), which can be developed only by addressing freedom as the ground of human existence (23).In Part I of The Essence of Human Freedom, Heidegger shows how Kant's modern effort to define freedom epistemically as a form of causation must be recast in light of the ontological concern of the ancients to define movement as a determination of the dynamism of being. In Part II, Heidegger outlines Kant's attempt to establish the possibility of freedom in the Transcendental Dialectic, the enigma of how two apparently incompatible forms of causation—the determinism of nature and the spontaneity of will—can stand in a "double [End Page 425] relation to the same effect" (172). Heidegger offers his own resolution of the third antinomy. He argues that the apparent incompatibility of the preceding causalities can be resolved when reason reconciles itself with its own finitude: leaving open its possibility of serving as a spontaneous cause in the intelligible realm of morality, while restricting the scope of natural causality to the sensible realm of appearances. The need to establish the possibility of freedom must then give way to establishing its actuality as the self-legislative power of the will in the practical domain. "Pure willing is the willing of one's own essence as will.... Thus the fundamental law of a finite pure willing, i.e., of a pure practical reason, is a categorical imperative (190-1). Having then distinguished the occurrence of freedom in its practical domain, Heidegger identifies ethical praxis as the source of actuality for the spontaneous causality of a will, the self-legislation of the categorical imperative. "The factuality corresponding to the idea of freedom is that of praxis" (185). In one of the strongest statements to be found anywhere in his writings in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE THOMISTIC TEXTS JOHN F. x. KNASAS Genter for Thomistic Studies Houston, Temas SOME THIRTY YEARS ago in the journal Thought, there appeared an article by Fr. Joseph Donceel, S.J., entitled " A Thomistic Misapprehension? " Its thesis is that American Thomism had seen too much of the a posteriori in Aquinas's noetic.1 In fact the interpretation was so a posteriori that it bordered on empiricism (...) and positivism. Donceel intends to balance the American understanding of Aquinas by spotlighting various Thomistic texts that speak of an a priori contribution of the intellect to human knowledge. Donceel is merely calling attention to something that some outstanding European Thomists, e.g., Defever, Marechal, and Rahner have known for some time. Donceel's " balanced" interpretation is what is called Transcendental Thomism. In sum, the position claims that the human intellect is not so complete a tabula rasa that it fails to make an a priori contribution to the data of sensation. This contribution is the intellect's very dynamism to Infinite Being. The dynamism has a constitutive role in human experience. Swept up within this intellectual torrent, the data of sensation stand before us in consciousness as finite and limited. So " objectified " the data are disposed for the traditional abstvactive account of the specific and generic natures. After the Second Vatican Council, Thomism generally fell into disrepute among American Catholic intellectuals. Phi1 Joseph Donceel, " A Thomistic Misapprehension?" Thought, 32 (1957) : 189. 81 82 JOHN F. X. KNASAS losophy departments " pluralized." Their members represented analytic, existential, and process philosophy.2 If Thomism remained vibrant, it was in the a priori strain. Both on the philosophical and theological levels, it was at home with the pluralism tha.t marked the time.3 The current emphasis on political activism, however, ha:s caused even Transcendental Thomism to suffer an eclipse. In the heat of political struggle, Transcendental Thomism, too, appears decadent and bourgeois. The case can be made, though, that the uncovering of the intellect's a priori dynamism to the Infinite was a crucial move for liberationists. Gutierrez notes 4 that the Transcendental Thomist understanding of the human intellect posits a single finality for human nature. The traditional distinction between the temporal and eternal planes loses meaning. Human history becomes salvation history. In this way, then, Transcendental Thomism continues to exercise its influence. This paper investigates the purported Thomistic texts expressing an apriorism. The texts cited by Donceel are all found in Marechal's Cahier V.5 There MarechaI mentions many others besides. Hence, my paper will use the Marechalian collection. My treatment focuses upon the texts that are seemingly most a priori. I. A central text for Marechal is De Veritate, q.l, a.4, ad 5m (first set). Aquinas remarks: 2 See "Is a 'Catholic' Philosophy Department Possible? " by the Committee on Research (Thomas I.angan, K. I,. Schmitz, Jude P. Dougherty) of the ACPA (HJ78). 3 On Transcendental Thomism's capacity to admit a theological pluralism without falling into a relativism, see Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Gent1.ry (New York: The Seab1iry Pres8, 1977), pp. 258-9. 4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 69. 5 Oahier V is a volume in Jl.riarechal's monumenfal Le point de depart de la metaphysique. Subsequent references to Oahier V are from Donceel's substantive translation A J,[wrechal Reader (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE TEXTS 83 The truth by which the soul passes judgment on all things is the first truth; for, just as from the truth of the divine intellect there flow into the angelic intellects those: intelligible species by which angels know all things, so does the truth of the first principles by which we judge everything proceed from the truth of the divine intellect as from its exemplary cause. Since we can judge by means of the truth of these first principles only insofar as this truth is a likeness of the first truth, we are said to judge everything according to the first truth.6 The text illustrates a " dynamic exemplarism " in Aquinas... (shrink)

This is a book about everything. Literally. It is also a book about how anything whatsoever happens. By answering the question what is a thing?, philosopher M. Oreste Fiocco reveals what it is to exist, what a being, any being at all, is. In this way, he illuminates reality as a whole and what it is to be real. Such profound matters require a special method of inquiry, which Fiocco introduces and elaborates. Any assumption about the world or anything in (...) it might distort the correct answer to a question as general as what it is to exist. Thus, the method employed herein -- original inquiry -- begins with no assumptions about reality. It is, then, a method independent of any figure, trend, or tradition in the history of philosophy. Via this method, one simply confronts all this, the world, an all-encompassing diverse array of whatnot, and on this basis can come to a secure account of what it is to be. In simply confronting the world, however, one's experience shifts, is transient: all this goes from one way--with, say, a cat here--to some other way--the cat being over there. This manifest inconstancy must be accounted for in any comprehensive account of the world. Yet so must a manifest constancy. If the cat is now, at this moment, over there, that the cat is now, at this moment, over there is forever true. These seemingly contradictory phenomena, inconstancy and constancy, demonstrate the importance of time to understanding the world. Since any legitimate inquiry is directed at something or other and since many objects of inquiry (including inquiry itself) occur over time, correct accounts of temporal reality and of being - of time and the world - provide insight into all inquiry. These accounts provide constraints on and, hence, guidelines for investigating any subject matter in any field. Therefore, this is a book for anyone curious about such grand, abstruse matters as the nature of reality or of time itself, as well as a book for someone curious about any thing at all. (shrink)

Após uma breve retomada da tese bergsoniana da inadequabilidade da linguagem para exprimir o real, a qual está presente ao longo de toda sua obra, este trabalho procura mostrar de que modo Matéria e Memória contempla uma reflexão mais profunda sobre esta temática ao apresentar a noção de “aparelho motor”, que permite vislumbrar o fundamento corporal dos hábitos da prática e aponta para o problema de transpô-los sem crítica ao âmbito do pensamento especulativo. Em linhas gerais, procuramos entender de que (...) modo a concepção de linguagem de Bergson – com base na definição da palavra como entidade de ordem motora ou mais explicitamente como aparelho motor – anuncia um acesso extralingüístico ao real. (shrink)