Philosophy 290-1

We will discuss some issues at the intersection of metaphysics and philosophy mind concerning space, time and consciousness. The overarching question of the course will be - what is the relationship between the fundamental spatial-temporal arena in which physical events occur, and the “manifest image” of space and time we find in human experience? More specifically, we will spend much of the course considering two recent debates. The first concerns the “spatial functionalist” position put forward by David Chalmers, on which manifest macro-spatio-temporal relations need not be the same as fundamental spatial-temporal relations. The second concerns the appearance of time’s passage: some claim that we experience the present moment as, in some sense, “moving through time”, and that this experience gives us evidence about the real nature of time. In particular, it gives us reason to believe that time involves “passage” in a strong sense (although some think the evidence is misleading - “time’s passage is an illusion”). We will assess this argument, appealing to considerations from metaphysics, philosophy of perception, epistemology, and cognitive science.