The Passage of Time

01/04/2022 to 30/09/2023

What is the nature of the passage of time? This question marks the biggest challenge in contemporary philosophy of time. While numerous aspects of time have been illuminated by researchers in the various disciplines concerned with the study of time, the nature of passage remains in the dark. The challenge of explaining passage is the focus of the envisaged monograph.

Most philosophers of time hold that there is temporal passage. There is no consensus, however, about which type of phenomenon passage belongs to. Traditionally, philosophers seeking to understand passage have taken approaches from two different perspectives. Some have started with passage as a phenomenon that occurs in the physical world, and have asked what constitutes this objective phenomenon. Theirs is a project anchored in metaphysics and located in the neighbourhood of theoretical physics. Others have started with passage as a phenomenon that is given in our experience of the world, and have asked what constitutes this subjective phenomenon. Theirs is a project anchored in the philosophy of mind and located in the neighbourhood of cognitive science.

The first main objective of the monograph is to give both perspectives on passage equal weight, and to develop these perspectives towards their integration. Metaphysicians of time have consulted the philosophy of temporal experience and philosophers of temporal experience have consulted the metaphysics of time. But a study of passage that genuinely integrates approaches from these different angles has yet to be conducted. Such an integrative study can be expected to yield an improved understanding of the multi-perspectival space of possible explanations of passage, and thereby to lead us into hitherto uncharted territory. The structure of the monograph will reflect this integrative objective by a division into two parts. Part A will concern the reality of passage and will focus on issues in the metaphysics of time and spacetime, whereas Part B will concern the experience of passage and will focus on issues in the philosophy of mind, building upon the metaphysical groundwork of Part A.

The second main objective of the monograph is to traverse the aforementioned multi-perspectival space of options towards an exciting, unusual destination. At the monograph’s apex, a novel explanation of passage will be developed and shown to surpass all of the alternative approaches considered. The account will be developed under a hypothesis that defines a new kind of approach to passage. The hypothesis is that experienced passage has its source in the geometrical structure of spacetime as represented in human experience, which differs from the geometrical structure of objective spacetime, as described in physics and metaphysics.

The eight chapters of the monograph will form a path from the standard account of passage in the metaphysics of time to the geometrical account of passage in the philosophy of temporal experience. The view of passage as a phenomenon in the mind-independent world will give way to the view of passage as an illusion that frames all of human experience. This illusion is a result of the human mind’s inability to experience spacetime’s four-dimensional geometrical structure as it really is. The monograph will thus treat the sense of passage as revealing how the mind reinvents time.