September 10, Time, History, Imagination and God

 

Anthony Bigg 10.00-11.15

 

There can be no evidence against the existence of God. 

 

Abstract: Here are two true propositions. (I) the facts about what reasons for action an agent has (the rational facts) supervene on the facts which are not about what reasons for action an agent has (the non-rational facts). (II). Suppose we know that P is a logical entailment of a theory of T. Then when assessing evidence E for T, the relevant likelihoods to compare are Pr(E | T&P) vs Pr (E | ~T) If these propositions are true, then it is impossible for any fact to constitute evidence against the existence of God. Therefore, it is impossible for any fact to constitute evidence against the existence of God. Therefore, facts about evil, suffering, divine hiddenness etc do not constitute evidence against the existence of God.

 

 

Rita LI  11-15-12.30

 

Title: Taking a perspective on the past

 

Abstract: Thoughts about past events might still change their truth values. This is the puzzle of the changing past. Two ways of resolving the puzzle have been proposed (Barlassina & Del Pretel 2015). First, the change is due to a change in the contents of such thoughts. Second, the change is due to a change in the states of the world as the truth makers that those thoughts require. Both of these options face some issues and are less than satisfactory. I argue for a perspectivalist account of such thoughts, which presents a third solution to the puzzle. According to this account, despite its reference to a date time, a thought about some past event does not express an eternal proposition, but a perspectival one. A perspectival proposition has, as its constituent, a reference to temporal perspective, this accounts for its changing truth value.

 

 

 

LUNCH

 

 

Brigitte Everett  1.30-2.45

 

A New Explanation for (reported) Experiences of Time Passing 

Passage Deflationism is the view according to which it does not seem to anyone, perceptually, as though time passes. Given that the majority of people report that it seems to them as though time passes, deflationists must explain why it is that some people report that it seems to them as though time passes. In this paper, I will argue for a new explanation, which can be added to any version of deflationism. I call this new explanation the imagination explanation. According to the imagination explanation, some people either imagine that it seems to them as though time passes, or believe that they imagine that it seems to them as though time passes. Call the former the strong imagination explanation and the latter the weak imagination explanation. According to both strong and weak variants of the explanation, imagined experiences of passage, or believed imaginings of experiences of passage, are compared with people’s actual, B-theoretical, temporal experiences. As a result of this comparison, some people then falsely report that it seems to them as though time passes

 

 

Matthew Champion

 

3.00-4.15

 

Title: Soundings of Global Time: Istanbul, Tenochtitlan, Zhaoqing

 

Abstract: In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the sounds of the European time would travel ever more widely across the world. Personalized watches, domestic wall clocks, elite table and automated clocks, public city clocks, change ringing, carillons, peals for masses, and dance and popular melodies intruded into, and intersected with, the sonic worlds of a myriad of other cultures which admired, adopted, hybridized and attacked these technologies of time. In this chapter, I listen to three of the many possible sonic histories of the clock in these moments of imposition and encounter. What emerges are sonic temporal encounters shaped strongly by different forms of power, different technological traditions, and different expectations around the control and meaning of time.

 

Chris Hudson: 4.15-5.15 

Time as a Trifecta of Consciousness, Change, and the Timeless:

Applications to Personal and Societal Time Competence

Christopher G. Hudson, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Salem State University, Salem MA USA

chudson@salemstate.com or cghudson1@gmail.com

 

Abstract

This presentation will provide an overview of Christopher Hudson’s recent book

Navigating Time. Toward an Interdisciplinary Theory (2026, Edward Elgar Publishing). This

book explores fundamental questions on the origins and nature of time, so as to clarify what it

means for us to navigate through it in our personal and social lives. Central is the question of the very existence of time which is now being challenged by physicists, philosophers, and others. Does time exist as a fundamental reality, or is it a phenomenon that is derivative of other realities, perhaps even an illusion? If it does exist, what is it? What are its essential elements? Do the past and future exist, or only the present? If time is not fundamental, but emergent, what is it emergent from: The fabric of spacetime? information? a world of ideal forms? the mind of God? The book’s two aims are to advance a theory of time that is based on resolutions of conflicts between some of the most promising insights from both historic and contemporary theories, as well as one that addresses what it means for individuals and societies to be time competent. The first part of the book is a systematic review of theories on time from history, psychology and psychoneurology, sociology, economic, law, physics, cosmology, philosophy, and the major spiritual traditions. The next part outlines the author’s theory which draws on his interpretations of the insights reviewed as well as several conjectures involving the origin and evolution of time, as well as the range of ways that temporality manifests in humans. The final chapters address the problems of developing competence in navigating time. The theory that the book advances begins with a focus on the primacy of the experience and phenomenology of the present moment, but then builds on an enigmatic and little known definition of time given by Plato. This is the idea that time is the “moving image of eternity”. Three themes are identified from this idea: Consciousness, change, and eternity, which the author argues are the three essential elements of the various types of temporality, all of which involve an observer or consciousness, apparent change, and some reflection of the eternal in the unchanging, in some frame that enables consciousness to experience change. This temporal trifecta is itself a moving and evolving one, especially among humans and their societies. It is conjectured that time first manifests as a result of a partial and incomplete symmetry breaking from space in the earliest instants of the big bang. This results in the underlying fabric of space-time that then becomes the various fields that constitute the phenomenal world as a result of their interaction with consciousness and information. The approach advocated, thus, assumes both a type of panpsychism known as cosmopsychism, as well as more fundamental assumptions involving a monistic idealism involving a universal spiritual consciousness. The book delves into conflicts between the major philosophical theories about time such as presentism and eternalism, and several of their more recent adaptations such as the growing universe and moving spotlight models. It emphasizes the primacy of an eternal present moment in the context of ongoing change and becoming, distinguishing between the experience of a concrete and a transcendental present which can incorporate past and future. At the same time, it advocates for a modified form of eternalism, involving a block universe that recognizes the existence of the past and future, but ones that only exist on a virtual or informational but not a physical level. The present is conceived as an active process of a growing universe in which consciousness is playing a key role in its growth and in selecting, integrating, and actualizing possible future time lines into newly created spacetime. Among the metaphors used to illustrate these ideas is that of a team working on a loom who are weaving the fabric of current and past spacetime out of the incoming threads of future time lines. The final chapters expand on the practical implications of the proposed theory for time competence aimed at navigating the diverse temporal decisions that both individuals and societies face. The book draws on the Greek notion of time as Kairos that calls for discovering the optimal and even spiritually indicated times for important events and activities. The approach emphasizes the importance of discovering the timeless and unchanging as these often provide the key signposts and frames for navigating time. These can emerge out of study, prayer, and meditation, as well as key life events such as births, marriages, or deaths. Time competence often involves the ability to counterbalance living in the present, with the need to learn from the past and plan for the future, both in the short- and long-term. Policy issues include social investments that range from education, to mental health, to environmental protection. The book also considers the difficult political problems of moving beyond short-term and deadlocked decision making

that characterizes so much of contemporary public policy.

 

 

August 2, Time and Free Will

 

August 3, N 494, A14, Main Quad, University of Sydney 

 

9.30-10.30

 

Eddy Nahmias, Georgia State University 

Why Consciousness is Essential for Free Will: What Robots can Teach us about what Matters 

 

Philosophers and scientists seem conflicted about the relationship between consciousness and free will. They often suggest that consciousness is essential for free will, though typically without explaining why or what features of consciousness are important—for instance, self-awareness or conscious thoughts or qualitative experiences. However, most theories of free will do not seem to require the capacity for conscious experiences or “qualia”. These theories seem to allow that a robot that had the right capacities for control and reasoning could have free will even if it was “dark on the inside.” How could a non-conscious robot have free will? 

 

10.30-11.30

 

Andrew J Latham, Melbourne University

Praise Be Terminable 

 

Abstract: Agents can intuitively be praiseworthy for some action at one time but, owing to their

subsequent conduct, cease to be (or become less) praiseworthy for that action at a later time.

Reflecting on cases where praiseworthiness intuitively diminishes, we identify diachronic

fittingness conditions for praiseworthiness. On the view we advance—the Evaluative Commitment Account of Diachronic Praiseworthiness—an agent’s praiseworthiness over time depends on that agent’s continued commitment to the value underlying her original praiseworthy action, where facts about an agent’s commitment to a value are partly a function of her track record vis-à-vis that value.

 

11.30-12.30

 

Giuliano Torrengo, University of Milan,

What does it mean to believe that time does not really pass? 

 

Abstract: The debate over the reality of temporal passage is often portrayed as a confrontation between common sense and science. Passage realists typically maintain that ordinary thought is committed to a naive form of their view, whereas

antirealists maintain that their view agrees with scientific thought in denying that time really passes. Yet both sides frequently find the opposing position difficult

to understand. This paper focuses on a challenge raised by realists: what does it mean to believe that time does not pass? I examine whether antirealists can make their position intelligible by appealing to ordinary beliefs about temporal succession and discuss recent experimental-philosophy findings on folk intuitions about passage. I argue that neither a robust Priorian belief in real passage nor a metaphysical

lightweight belief in mere succession adequately captures the common sense conception of time. Drawing on phenomenological considerations, I introduce a Husserlian belief centred on the apparent flow of experience. Although

this belief does not support passage realism, it helps explain the intuitive appeal of realism.

 

2.00-3.00

 

David Builes

Princeton 

The Block Universe for Presentists

 

Some Presentists have thought that Presentism is a necessary truth. Some Presentists have also thought that our conscious experience supports Presentism over the “block universe” picture of the world. However, there are challenges to both these views. With respect to the first, it seems that we can easily conceive of a block universe, and conceivability seems to be at least a prima facie guide to possibility. With respect to the second, there is a worry that our conscious experience would be the very same if we lived in a block universe. The goal of this

paper is to argue that Presentists should endorse a particular conception of the block universe, which Presentists can then use to respond to these two objections.

 

 

3.00-4.00 Luca Gasparinetti NOTE – we will move to the Centre for Time room for this last session because N 494 is not available from 3.00. 

 

The Temporal Foundations of Spacetime 

 

Abstract Recent philosophical discussion of the Hawking–King–McCarthy–Malament–

Levichev (HKMML) theorem has centred on the interpretation of the partial ordering

relation from which the conformal geometry of spacetime can be recovered. The dominant reading treats this relation as causal, using the theorem to support causal theories

of spacetime and the priority of causation over spacetime geometry. A less developed alternative reads the order as temporal. This paper offers a systematic articulation of

that temporal interpretation within General Relativity. I argue that the relativistic ordering relation induced by the Lorentzian metric is best understood as temporal, and that the HKMML relation preserves the same structural role. Since this formal structure can be captured without invoking substantive causation, the temporal interpretation is preferable on grounds of interpretive parsimony. The upshot is that the theorem does

not by itself establish the priority of causation over spacetime: at most, it supports the priority of relativistic temporal order over conformal geometry.