May, 2018 9

EXRE Colloquium: Donnchadh O’Conaill (Fribourg) “Temporal Modes of Presentation and the Experience of Passage”

Miloud Belkoniene Time: 17:15 - 19:00

It is often claimed that in perception we experience temporal passage; that is, we experience times or events as passing from the future into the present and then into the past. The experience of passage is often cited as a reason to believe that tense is a feature of reality. Opponents of this claim typically argue either that we do not have an experience of passage, or that we experience passage but that this is an illusion.
I shall outline an account of the experience of passage which fits into neither of these responses offered by opponents of passage. On this account, it is true that time seems to pass, but it is not the case that our experiences present this passage as a mind-independent feature of reality. Therefore, we do have experiences of passage but they would not be illusory even if reality turns out to not be tensed.