My reason for first discussing the issue of the objective spatiality of consciousness in
isolation from that of its objective temporality is that there has been a historical asymmetry in the treatment of the two cases. As Dainton (2000 p. 60) puts it, “according to a long-standing tradition consciousness is essentially temporal but wholly non-spatial”. I’d now like to broach the question of whether this asymmetry has any basis in reason. This would be the case if it were something peculiar to space, something that didn’t generalise to the time case, that somehow excluded the spatiality of consciousness. If the case for non-spatiality rested, for instance, upon the metaphysical principle invoked by McGinn, according to which different things can’t occupy the same location at the same time, there would be reason to think so, as the principle has no temporal analogue. But NSSD hinges upon the standard spatial realist conception of spatial dimensions as non-phenomenal and constitutive of their bearers, and these features do generalise to the time case so long as one is assuming the temporal analogue of standard spatial realism, standard temporal realism. Standard temporal realism has it that time is a continuous metaphysically primitive non-phenomenal fourth dimension, in addition to the three spatial dimensions. Physical things are characterised as ‘space-time worms’,
embodying non-phenomenal temporal dimensions much as standard spatial realism has it that
86 For a defence of absolutism of this kind in the face of much historical criticism, see Earman (1970). 87 For a thoroughgoing exposition and evaluation of relationism, see Hinckfuss (1975).
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they embody non-phenomenal spatial dimensions.88 Possession of such temporal dimensions is likewise irreducible to possession of more fundamental non-temporal properties. In such a case, one can invoke the exact temporal analogue of NSSD:
The No Standard Temporal Dimensions Argument (NSTD)
P1) Objective temporal dimensions are constitutive properties of all that exists in objective time.
P2) All constitutive properties of consciousness are phenomenal properties. P3) Objective temporal dimensions aren’t phenomenal properties.
C) Consciousness doesn’t exist in objective time.
My extension of the same line of argument to temporal properties is likely to raise some eyebrows, this in spite of the indisputable parity of reason between the two cases so long as space and time are assumed to be as standard spatial and temporal realism characterises them to be. As the above quote from Dainton indicates, temporality is considered by many to be
essential to experience in a way that space isn’t. Regarding the prospect of fundamental physics abandoning spatiotemporal categories, Strawson (2006a p. 9) writes, “Note that if temporality goes, i.e. not just spacetimeTM but temporality in any form, then experience also goes, given that experience requires time”. No analogous concern is expressed with respect to spatiality. That experience requires time might strike one as so obvious as to be trivial, but as noted in the discussion of McGinn, that experience is non-spatial is less than a folk truism, and the asymmetry in the treatment of the two cases is arguably attributable to a long- standing philosophical blind spot.
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That experience is essentially temporal seems trivially true because we experience temporal
phenomena. Stuff appears to change, move etc. In other words, experience is phenomenally
temporal, temporal in its experiential nature. But this is altogether different to its being temporal in some non-phenomenal objective sense. Any temporal aspect of experience, inasmuch as its being is revealed in experience, is, in its fundamental nature, appearance. By contrast, standard temporal realism has it that the temporal properties of physical things aren’t appearances at all. It is this consideration that famously led William James (2008 p. 643) to insist upon the difference between a succession of appearances and the appearance of succession, a distinction which, due to its having been later taken up by Husserl (1964 p. 31), has become something of a standard commitment for those working within the
phenomological tradition. In section 7.1, I will argue that in characterising phenomenal temporality as the appearance of succession, James laid a phenomenologically inadequate foundation upon which many phenomenologically inadequate theories of time consciousness have subsequently been built. But the distinction between objective temporal properties and temporal appearances remains intact, and while very few robust realists have followed Jackson in naively identifying experienced space with a region of objective space, some have seemingly opted for an exactly analogous naive realism in the case of time, taking
experienced time to be objective time.89 By way of example, I will briefly consider two accounts, those of Strawson and Dainton.
Strawson at least appears to take objective temporal properties of consciousness to register directly in experience. A subject’s experience, according to Strawson, “will standardly have
89 Geoffrey Lee (2007 p. 373), a philosopher who is far more attentive than most with respect to the distinction
between objective temporality and temporal appearances, makes an explicit comparison between this kind of naïve temporal realism and the kind of Naïve spatial realism endorsed by Jackson: “It is a kind of resemblance theory of mental representation, in the same camp as the theory that experiences have spatial and colour properties that match those of external objects, as if your eyes were firing brightly coloured phenomenal rays into the environment”.
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for it the character of being part of a more or less continuous process of experience”, and as a result the subject is even apprised of the purported stop-start nature of this process,90
experiencing consciousness as “gappy” and “continually restarting” (Strawson 2003 pp. 289, 290, 311). These comments could be given a representationalist reading, but there is nothing to disabuse the reader of the far more natural direct realist interpretation.
Barry Dainton presents a more perplexing case. His account of phenomenal temporality is an attempt to address the problem of accounting for the appearance of temporal succession. Dainton suggests that part of the answer is to have it that co-experiencing be a diachronic phenomenal relation pertaining to objectively successive phenomenal contents. But if the objective succession of such contents is a non-phenomenal relation, this alone couldn’t account for the appearance of succession, as the co-experienced contents bearing such a non- phenomenal relation to each other is altogether different to their bearing the phenomenal
succession relation the appearance of succession demands.91 As Geoffrey Lee (2014 p. 34) puts it, “the objective duration of an experience is not a phenomenally relevant feature of it”. Dainton also appears to identify experienced and objective time.
Unlike Jackson’s identification of experienced space with a region of objective space, the identification of experienced time with objective time doesn’t come across as a radical affront to naturalism. While the former has it that phantom limb sensations occur in empty space, the latter merely has it that the time found in experience is the same time experience is found in, a view attractive in its commonsensical simplicity. I’m inclined to think it is the prima facie plausibility of such naïve realism that gives impetus to the intuition that experiences are
90 He thinks each of the “intrinsically unified episodes of experience” comprising “the conscious life of a human
being …last for a maximum of about three seconds” (Strawson 2003 p. 289).
91 In both these philosopher’s defence, neither of them are strongly wedded to the view that objective succession
is non-phenomenal, as standard temporal realism has it, both being at least open to the kind of pan-phenomenal Russellian monism to be discussed shortly. Both are nonetheless guilty of failing to see that objective succession can only register in consciousness if it is a phenomenal relation. Both merely consider its being so a live option (Dainton 2000 pp. 7-10; Strawson 2006b p. 260).
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essentially objectively temporal. If there is an argument for the essential objective temporality of consciousness that isn’t founded upon the assumption that its objective temporal properties are directly experienced as such, I’m yet to encounter it. But it has been shown to be too naïve, at least so long as we continue to assume, as required by standard temporal realism, that objective succession isn’t one and the same as the appearance of succession. Of course, inasmuch as it purports to demonstrate not merely that an objective succession of appearances does not alone account for the subjective appearance of
succession, but rather, that the objective succession of appearances is altogether impossible, NSTD goes well beyond the conclusions of James and Husserl.