“Our experience of time has long puzzled theorists from very different perspectives: psychologists and physicists, metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.”
“Experiencing Time is, first and foremost, an attack on the A-theory of time and so a defence of the B-theory.”
“This terminology and opposition comes from J. M. E. McTaggart (1908) who discusses how we can either order events by describing them as (more or less) past, present or (more or less) future (the A-series), or by describing them as standing in certain precedence relations to each other, such as earlier than, later than or co-occurrent with one another (the B-series).”
“According to B-theorists, the B-series suffices to describe temporal reality. Thus, all times are accorded equal status, and change is treated simply as a matter of objects having different properties (or parts) relative to different times.”
“In contrast, the A-theorist insists that we cannot adequately describe the facts without recognizing their orientation towards a privileged time: the present.”
“The A-theorist also repudiates the B-theorist’s account of change, insisting that true change, or what Prosser calls “temporal passage,” involves a change in the orientation of the facts, or (on presentist views) simply in the facts themselves.”
“One might naturally wonder what all this has to do with our experience of time. Chapter two opens with Prosser’s answer: “The major reason for believing that time passes [i.e. that there is A-theoretic change] is that experience seems to tell us so” (p. 22).”
“Indeed, as later becomes clear, in Prosser’s view, the notion of “temporal passage” at the heart of the A-theory is so closely tied to experience that, cut-off from it, the A-theory would be “without enough content to offer a genuine alternative to the B-theory” (p. 23). These contentions are foundational for Prosser’s project.”
“For that project commences (in chapter two) by arguing against the A-theory on the ground that the passage of time cannot possibly be experienced, a result which is said to deprive the A-theorist of any contentful notion of passage.”
“Contemporary A-theorists – many of whom conceive of themselves first-and-foremost as presentists – also do not standardly place significant weight on experience. Many rather regard their view as the proper articulation of our general common-sense commitments about time and existence.”
“Thus, Dean Zimmerman:
My reason for believing the A-theory is utterly banal (some . . . will want to say “insipid”): it is simply part of commonsense that the past and future are less real than the present; that the difference between events and things that exist at present, and ones that do not, goes much deeper than the difference between events and things near where I am and ones that are spatially far away – in Australia, for example. (2008, p. 221)”
“See also Ned Markosian (2004) and T. M. Crisp (2003), and, indeed, even Tim Maudlin (2002, p. 237). In fact, Prosser himself writes: “There seems little doubt that the A-theory best captures the way most of us think of the world prior to philosophical reflection on the matter.” (p. 1)”
“The nub of this argument is the idea that, for us to experience the passing of time, some specific aspect of our experience would have to be differentially sensitive to time’s passage.”
“Turning to Prosser’s diagnostic project, Prosser’s most striking suggestion is that change is experienced as dynamic because experience misrepresents its objects as enduring as opposed to perduring.”
“Taking his lead from Kant, Prosser hypothesizes that “in order to experience change our experience must . . . represent something as retaining its identity through the change,” and this, he continues, “requires objects to be represented as enduring” (p. 173).”
“To the obvious objection that perdurantists don’t deny that objects retain their identities through time, Prosser replies that the perdurantist account “does not correctly capture the phenomenology or the way we naturally think, prior to philosophical reflection” (p. 173).”
“This claim deserves further development. Prosser criticizes Brian J. Scholl’s (2007) contention that our visual systems compute “object file” representations of objects as enduring on the (very reasonable) ground that all we can really say is that our visual systems represent objects as persisting (p. 181). But, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Why not think that a neutral notion of persistence suffices to capture our perceptual phenomenology? If it does, Prosser’s key diagnosis of why change is experienced as dynamic falls short.”