The Illusions of Time Passage: Why Time Passage Is Real

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Illusions of Time Passage: Why Time Passage is Real

 

There is a lot to like about this paper. It takes up the task of trying to spell out some of the biological/psychological mechanisms that ground our having experiences of what I will call ‘time passing’. In that regard I think it does a good job.

 

The paper argues that we should not think that passage is an illusion – the mechanisms that produce the experiences we have, of time passing, are, as it were, doing their job just fine: they are not producing illusory states.  The bulk of the paper is devoted to spelling out those various mechanisms, and as far as that goes, the paper does a good job.

 

However, I think the paper would benefit from thinking more about how this view connects with other views, which are mentioned and cited.

 

Consider, first, the various papers that are cited as being ones according to which we don’t have any experiences as of time passing at all (so called cognitive error views). This paper seems to set itself up as taking a view that is antithetical to this. However, I don’t really see that this is so. In part, this all comes down to what content the experiences are taken to have – something about which the paper does not really take a stand. 

 

Notice that A-theorists suppose the experiences to represent *robust* passage of the sort we would have if our world contained dynamical (i.e. A-theoretic) passage.  In what follows I will talk of robust passage and experiences as of said passage, to distinguish them from experiences of time passing, where these might be veridical experiences of a B-theoretic world, which have a content that is in some way ‘flowy’ or ‘passagey’ but which might not represent that time robustly passes. And let’s distinguish this latter from what we might call B-theoretic passage,  which are the experiences that are flowy, or passage, and which are veridical in a B-theoretic world. Thus ‘experiences of time passing’ is used here as neutral regarding the content of the experiences (as between dynamical and non-dynamical). 

 

I think the paper fails to clearly differentiate these views of content, and hence fails to clearly differentiate the various views on offer. 

 

Then the B-theoretic illusionists agree that our experiences of time passing are experiences of something dynamical – they think we have experiences as of robust passage, but that these experiences are illusory.

 

Cognitive error theorists (and deflationists more generally) deny that we have experiences with *this* content: i.e. with content as of robust passage. But this is consistent with them thinking that we have experiences of time passing. It is just that they will think that this experience is of B-theoretic passage. It is pretty clear that Ismael, Deng and Sattig (2019) have a view like this. I think even Miller et at al and Hoerl are also best described in this way. They only deny that we have experiences as of robust passage, they don’t deny that we have experiences that in *some* way deserve the name experiences of time passing. After all, they all think that in some trivial B-theoretic sense, time does pass, and they think we have experiences of this being so.  But *that* view is entirely consistent with everything said in this paper. Indeed this paper would be naturally seen as spelling out the mechanisms that generate what these authors all explicitly say are veridical experiences of our B-theoretic world (i.e. of B-theoretic passage). So, I think the pitch of this paper is a little odd.  Not odd in that it says that we should deny that passage is an illusion, but odd in that it seems to position itself against so-called deflationist views. In fact, it seems that this is by far the more natural pairing. Since the paper argues that our experiences are not illusory, it’s not very convivial to B-theoretic illusionists. On the other hand, nothing that is mentioned in the paper gives us much reason to think that the experiences we have, represent dynamical passage as the A-theorist would have it. (On this, it might be helpful to see Miller forthcoming in Ergo, which is on this topic).  So, it is much more natural to think that it is an account of B-theoretic passage of the sort Deng, Ismael, Leininger, Sattig, etc have articulated, and which is entirely consistent with the sort of deflationism defended by Hoerl, Miller etc. 

 

At any rate, I think the dialectic here can be better spelled out in order to better see where this paper fits into things.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper defends the reality of the passage of time. It is based on a biological, not metaphysical explanation. As far as I can say, this paper is well-written and convincing. I must however add that the editors should consult a biologist or a cognitive scientist or some researcher in that field as I am not competent myself to assess the veracity of all the relevant scientific evidence. Importantly, the journal needs to make sure that the author’s “account has the support of extensive scientific findings in biology, neuroscience, and psychology” from experts in those fields.

Smaller points related to what was just said above.

-          Please explain the term ‘mesoscale’ to the reader

-          The following paragraph is crucial for the author’s reasoning: “The phenomenology of passage is not a feature of either the micro-world of quantum mechanics or of the cosmological world of general relativity. Rather, it is a feature of the meso-world, based on the dynamics of homeostatic biological systems. Similar to Buonomano & Rovelli’s conception [9], which explains the conscious experience of time on the basis of entropy alone, our approach grounds the experience of passage on a clearer meso-scale, namely that of complex biological systems.”

-          To me the description is very dense. I would go on and elaborate on the key concepts like meso-world and homeostatic biological systems. The readers of the journal probably are not biologists but philosophers.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the authors have done enough to respond to the various comments raised, given their length constraints.