An Appearance of Succession Requires a Succession of Appearances

Abstract

A familiar slogan in the literature on temporal experience is that ‘a succession of appearances, in and of itself, does not amount to an experience of succession’. I show that we can distinguish between a strong and a weak sense of this slogan. I diagnose the strong interpretation of the slogan as requiring the support of an assumption I call the ‘Seems→Seemed’ claim. I then show that commitment to this assumption comes at a price: if we accept it, we either have to reject the extremely plausible idea that experience is as it seems, or we are forced to provide an account of temporal experience that isn’t compatible with the phenomenology. I conclude by noting that the only plausible interpretation of the slogan is the weak interpretation, and outline a positive account of temporal experience, according to which an appearance of succession requires a succession of appearances.

Experience of and in Time

“…illusory, cases, it is as if this is so’ (‘The Temporal Structure of Experience’). Soteriou suggests that this connects to ‘a distinctive respect in which perception seems to one to be passive and not subject to the will’ (‘Perceiving Events’ 227), contrasting the case of episodic memory (and presumably imagination) where we seem plainly to be able to distinguish the time and duration of our act of remembering and the time and duration of the event(s) remembered (see also Rashbrook §2).…”

Rethinking the Specious Present

“…Crucially, however, even on Lee's "extended atomism" version of retentionalism, it is not the case that an experience of the short sequence A-B-C involves the subject experiencing A, then experiencing B, then experiencing C. Instead, there is a single experience of the sequence A-B-C. According to the extensional model (Foster 1979;Foster 1982: chapter 16;Foster 1991: 246-50;Dainton 2000;2001;2008;Hoerl 2009;Phillips 2010;2014;Rashbrook 2013), by contrast, the temporal structure of the experience matches the temporal structure of its content. Thus if the content of the experience is an interval of time n seconds long, then the experience itself lasts n seconds.…”

The perceived unity of time

“…11 11 For examples see Arstila (2015), Dainton (2000), Foster (1991), Mellor (1981), Phillips (2014), Rashbrook (2013). These authors do not maintain that experience having a particular temporal property is sufficient for that property appearing as part of the experience's content.…”

“…Maniadakis and Trahanias (2016) develop a similar account inspired by striatal beat frequency models.11 For examples seeArstila (2015),Dainton (2000),Foster (1991),Mellor (1981),Phillips (2014), Rashbrook (2013. These…”