Kristie Miller

It has been argued that one or other asymmetry in temporal ontology grounds there being reasons to have certain temporal attitudes which we not only have, but also judge to be reasonable, and that this gives us reason to posit that asymmetry. Call this general form of argument, the Argument from Reasonable Attitudes (ARA). There are several versions of this argument depending on (a) the posited asymmetry and (b) the attitude(s) mentioned and (c) whether the reasons adduced are subjective or objective. I argue that none of the resulting versions of the ARA are sound, and so reflecting on the nature of these temporal attitudes does not furnish us a reason to posit an asymmetry in temporal ontology.

This paper empirically probes people’s judgements about whether future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry (TVA for short) are rationally permissible, obligatory, or impermissible. While philosophers are divided about the normative status of these attitudes/preferences, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will judge that future-bias is at least permissible, and probably obligatory, and will judge that TVA is not permissible. If this is right, it is important for two reasons. First, many researchers have argued that future-bias is a manifestation of TVA. If, however, people make different normative judgements about the two phenomena this tends to undermine this idea. Second, if it is true, it impacts theorising about the normative status of these phenomena: the assumption that future-bias is rational currently guides theorising, in that defenders of the rationality of future-bias tend to argue that its rationality is obvious, and hence must be accommodated, while opponents tend to try to show why, despite not being rational, future-bias appears to us to be rational. Yet no empirical work has been undertaken to test these assumptions about people’s judgements. In the first work of this kind, we confirmed that most people judge future-bias to be rationally obligatory, and TVA to be rationally impermissible.

There is a widespread idea that people experience this world as if it is other than a block world; as if, instead, this world is dynamical and time passes in a robustly A-theoretic manner. In light of this, some argue that there is good reason to think that the world is robustly dynamical, for the best explanation of having these various experiences is experiencing time as it really is, in itself, as dynamical. Thus, there is a kind of inference to the best explanation from the nature of people’s experience, broadly construed, to the conclusion that this world is not a block. This book takes up the challenge of responding to this argument in its various guises. By appealing to new empirical work undertaken at the Centre for Time in Sydney, it is argued that for a whole range of ways that one experiences this world temporally, including attitudinally, belief-wise, and perception-wise, people experience the world just as it is: as a block world. There is, at the end of the day, no pressure to conclude that this world is dynamical via the nature of any of people’s experiences of the world.

Many philosophers are sympathetic to a perdurantist view of persistence. One challenge facing this view lies in its ability to ground prudential rationality. If, as many have thought, numerical identity over time is required to ground there being _sui generis_ (i.e. non-instrumental) prudential reasons, then perdurantists can appeal only to instrumental reasons. But it is hard to see how, by appealing only to instrumental reasons, the perdurantist can vindicate the axiom of prudence: the axiom that any person-stage has reason to promote the wellbeing of any other person-stage that is part of the same person as that stage. Call the claim that perdurantists cannot vindicate the axiom, and hence that the view should be rejected, the normative argument against perdurantism. This chapter argues that purely instrumental rationality can ground the truth of this axiom, and hence that the normative argument against perdurantism fails.

Evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias, another is future-bias, and a third is present-bias. Philosophers have argued that, in part, the normative status of these biases depends on the extent to which they tend to promote, or frustrate, wellbeing, where “wellbeing” is taken to be of fundamental value. Since near-bias is thought to be associated with impulsivity, lack of self-control, and poor long-term health and financial outcomes, it has often been supposed that it is associated with lower wellbeing and is therefore rationally impermissible. By contrast, philosophical views about the normative status of future-bias have been mixed, with some arguing that future-bias is impermissible because it frustrates wellbeing, and others arguing that it is at least permissible (and perhaps obligatory) because it is the product of mechanisms whose functioning can be expected to promote wellbeing. However, to date, there are no studies that directly probe how time-biases correlate with wellbeing. We empirically investigate which biases promote or frustrate wellbeing. We find no evidence that near-bias or present-bias frustrate wellbeing, but future-bias is associated with higher measures of wellbeing on several measures.

There is a widespread intuition that we have prudential reason to discount the value of an event when it is past compared to equidistant in the future, even holding fixed various factors that might be thought to ground our having such reasons, such as the probability, (dis)utility, and so on, of that event conditional on it being past compared to future. It is also usually assumed that if, holding fixed such factors, we retain such a preference, then that preference is genuinely time-biased: it is sensitive to the temporal location, per se, of the event, rather than to factors (like probability or utility) that are contingently associated with temporal location. However, there is significant dispute about whether temporal location per se is normatively relevant, and hence whether it can ground there being prudential reason to have such preferences. Since empirical research suggests that we retain these preferences under these circumstances, there is a question about whether our actual preferences are prudentially reasonable. In this paper I argue that we can understand our actual preferences not as genuinely time-biased, but as apparently time-biased preferences that are sensitive to the degree to which the personal-identity relation obtains between person-stages. Since degree of personal-identity is normatively relevant, a stage has prudential reason to be apparently time-biased when the personal-identity relation holds more strongly towards the future than the past. I argue that this is, quite plausibly, sometimes the case. To show this I employ a degree-theoretic conativist view of personal-identity on which, (a) which relation realises the personal-identity relation relative to a stage is determined by certain conative attitudes of that stage, and hence can vary from stage to stage, and (b) what realises the personal-identity relation, relative to a stage, holds as a matter of degree and (c) the degree to which the personal-identity relation holds between stages is non-symmetric and (d) some affective relations that plausibly are among those that jointly realise personal-identity for some stages are temporally asymmetric: they hold more strongly towards the future than the past.

Some philosophers argue that in order to accommodate a range of our practices we must suppose that causation is not an all or nothing matter: it comes in degrees. We argue for two key claims. First, we can accommodate these practices without positing degree theoretic causation, and we can do so by appealing to various things that clearly do admit of degrees. So, positing causation by degree is unnecessary. Second, not only is positing degree theoretic causation unnecessary, but in fact there is no single thing, causation by degree, that could play the role required of it if it is to accommodate these practices. Thus, we conclude, there is no motivation to posit degree theoretic causation that arises from consideration of these practices.

While philosophers disagree about the permissibility of future-bias, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will at least judge that future-bias is permissible, and probably judge that it is obligatory as well. Recent empirical work supports this supposition: people overwhelmingly judge that they themselves ought to prefer, of a negative event, that it lies at a certain point in the past rather than an equidistant point in the future. This finding can potentially be marshalled into an argument that people ought to be future-biased, which proceeds via the idea that people’s normative judgments in these matters are a good (if defeasible) guide to the normative facts, or that the best explanation for people having such normative judgements is that there are normative reasons to be future-biased. Such arguments rely on the idea that people’s normative judgements in this regard are consistent. So far, however, the only normative judgements that have been investigated concern people’s judgements about their own first-personal preferences about negative events in conditions of equality. This paper presents the results of a study that probes these judgements much more broadly, including both first- and third-personal judgements, in conditions of equality and inequality, about positive and negative events, as well as people’s normative judgements about other people’s preferences (what we call other-directed normative judgements).

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that not only is metaphysical modal normativism an attractive view but that, as a matter of fact, many of us have, all along, been metaphysical modal normativists of a particular stripe. Namely, we have been the kinds of modal normativists, in the form of counterpart theorists, who are robust realists about possibility simpliciter. Having introduced modal normativism as Thomasson does in Norms and Necessity, I go on to recast it in somewhat different terms. With this re-casting in place we can see that while the view offers a pleasingly deflationary account of metaphysical necessity and possibility it does so only against the backdrop of robust realism about possibility simpliciter. If that is right, then Lewis’ counterpart theory turns out to be a potent version of metaphysical modal normativism. So many of us have, all along, been metaphysical modal normativists, and so much the better for it.

Recent research [Latham, Miller, and Norton 2019. “Is our Naïve Theory of Time Dynamical?” Synthese] reveals that a majority of people represent actual time as dynamical. But do they, as suggested by McTaggart and Gödel, represent time as essentially dynamical? This paper distinguishes three interrelated questions. We ask (a) whether the folk representation of time is sensitive or insensitive: i.e. does what satisfies the folk representation of time in counterfactual worlds depend on what satisfies it actually – sensitive – or not – insensitive, and (b) do those who represent actual time as dynamical, represent time in all possible worlds as dynamical – what we call insensitive dynamism – or do they represent time in all possible worlds as dynamical only conditional on the actual world in fact being dynamical – what we call sensitive dynamism, and (c) do dynamists and non-dynamists deploy two different representations of time, or deploy the same representation, but disagree about what actually satisfies that representation? We found no evidence that the folk representation of time is sensitive, or that the folk representation of time is essentially dynamical in either sense, though we did find evidence of a largely (though not universally) shared representation, on which dynamical features are sufficient, but not necessary, for time.

ABSTRACT Strong non-maximalism holds that some truths require no ontological ground of any sort. Strong non-maximalism allows one to accept that some propositions are true without being forced to endorse any corresponding ontological commitments. We show that there is a version of truthmaker theory available – anti-aboutness truthmaking – that enjoys the dialectical benefits of the strong non-maximalist’s position. According to anti-aboutness truthmaking, all truths require grounds, but a proposition need not be grounded in the very thing(s) that the proposition is about. We argue that if strong non-maximalism can be defended, then so can anti-aboutness truthmaking on the very same basis; one can enjoy the benefits of strong non-maximalism without giving up on the idea that truth is always grounded in being.

In Back to the Future II, Doc incapacitates Jennifer when she arrives in 2015, in order to prevent her having too much knowledge of her future. Doc clearly believes that having knowledge of the future, or at least, too much knowledge, is a bad thing. But if it is bad, why is it bad? This chapter explores one reason why Doc might have thought knowing too much about one’s future is bad: namely that it undermines one’s deliberative freedom. This chapter takes up the question of why we might think this is so, and then argues that if that was Doc’s motivation, he need not have worried. Knowing about the future need not undermine deliberative freedom.

Empirical evidence suggests that one explanation for a certain sort of time-bias—near-bias—is diminution in self-connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther future stages. In this paper we extend this research in two directions. First, we explore the association between self-connectedness towards past person-stages and retrospective near-bias, with the aim of determining whether we can explain retrospective near-bias in terms of diminished feelings of connectedness between current person-stages and temporally farther past stages. Second, we explore the association between future-bias and asymmetries in self-connectedness with future stages as compared with equidistant past stages. If current stages feel more connected to future stages than equidistant past ones, then this asymmetry could explain our bias towards future over past person-stages. We aim to determine whether this is so, in part as a way to try and better understand the mechanisms that underlie time-biases, but also in order to better evaluate the normative status of these preferences. That is because on many views, the strength of certain inter-stage connections grounds there being an egoistic concern relation obtaining between stages, whose strength, in turn, determines whether that stage has prudential reason to have (or not) time-biased preferences. Since self-connectedness may be evidence of, or partly constitutive of, such inter-stage connections, it may be that if asymmetries in, or diminution of, self-connectedness, explains time-biased preferences, it also normatively licenses those preferences.

The idea that actually there is no time, or that for all we know there might actually be no time, has recently gained traction, with several authors arguing in favour of such a view. The metaphysical picture of timelessness that such authors defend varies, and in turn, arguments against actual timelessness are often directed at particular metaphysical pictures of timelessness. In what follows I offer a new argument against actual timelessness: the temporal illusion argument. This argument is perfectly general, in that if it succeeds, it shows that the view that actually our world is timeless is false in any of its incarnations. The temporal illusion argument is simple. It says that if actually there is no time, then temporal illusionism is true. But temporal illusionism is not true, and hence neither is actual timelessness. I elucidate this argument and then defend it from objections.

Strong non-maximalism holds that some truths require no ontological ground of any sort. Strong non-maximalism allows one to accept that some propositions are true without being forced to endorse any corresponding ontological commitments. We show that there is a version of truthmaker theory available—anti-aboutness truthmaking—that enjoys the dialectical benefits of the strong non-maximalist’s position. According to anti-aboutness truthmaking, all truths require grounds, but a proposition need not be grounded in the very thing(s) that the proposition is about. We argue that if strong non-maximalism can be defended, then so can anti-aboutness truthmaking on the very same basis; one can enjoy the benefits of strong non-maximalism without giving up on the idea that truth is always grounded in being.

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for negatively valenced events to be located in the past rather than the future, and positively valenced ones to be located in the future rather than the past. Strong risk aversion is the preference to pay some cost to mitigate the badness of the worst outcome. People who are both strongly risk averse and future-biased can face a series of choices that will guarantee them more pain, for no compensating benefit: they will be pain pumped. Thus, combining these preferences is rationally impermissible. Dougherty (2011) argues that this gives us reason to think that future-bias is rationally impermissible. This argument, and a similar one presented by Greene and Sullivan (2015), relies on the idea that if several preferences are not rationally combinable, then in the absence of some explanation of why they are not combinable, we should conclude that (at least) one of them is rationally impermissible. We take up this question by, inter alia, reflecting on the empirical results of a study we ran that probes people’s risk averse and future-biased preferences. We argue that the data, in conjunction with other considerations, suggests that we should not infer from the irrationality of the combination of these preferences to the irrationality of one of the preferences singly. We also argue that given the descriptive data about these preferences, there is no reason to think that, if one of them is rationally impermissible, then it is future-bias. Finally, we reflect on the general issue of whether individual preferences are rationally evaluable.

In this paper I present a new definition of endurance. I argue that the three‐dimensionalist ought to adopt a different understanding from the four‐dimensionalist, of what it is to have a part simpliciter. With this new understanding it becomes possible to define endurance in a manner that both preserves the central endurantist intuitions, whilst avoiding commitment to any controversial metaphysical theses. Furthermore, since this endurantist definition is a mereological one, there is an elegant symmetry between the definitions of endurance and perdurance in that the theories of three‐ and four‐dimensionalism are both expressed in the language of mereology. Nevertheless, though both definitions are expressed within the same broad language, some of the terms of that language have subtly different meanings within the context of each theory. It is in understanding on the one hand that each theory is essentially a mereological theory and that therefore each shares some underlying theoretical similarities, and yet also that there are some subtle differences in the way each theory understands some of the terms of mereology, that allows us to see clearly what lies at the heart of the debate between these two accounts of persistence.

Endurantism is not inconsistent with the theory of special relativity, or so I shall argue. Endurantism is not committed to presentism, and thus not committed to a metaphysics that is at least prima facie inconsistent with special relativity. Nor is special relativity inconsistent with the idea that objects are wholly present at a time just if all of their parts co-exist at that time. For the endurantist notion of co-existence in terms of which “wholly present” is defined, is not, I will argue, a notion according to which co-existence is transitive. Although an absence of absolute simultaneity presents some problems for the endurantist claim that objects are wholly present whenever they exist, there are a number of ways that the endurantist can respond to this difficulty. Thus, I conclude, considerations pertaining to the theory of special relativity certainly do not rule out endurantism as a metaphysics of persistence.

ABSTRACT Ismael aims for an understanding of the nature of an embedded perspective of agents in a world. If successful, this would explain a cluster of ways in which from an embedded perspective, we experience the world in an array of temporally asymmetric ways. Moreover, these are ways that have led many philosophers to rather metaphysically inflationary views about the nature of time, according to which time itself really is dynamical, and is characterized by the movement of an objectively (i.e., non-perspectival) present. Ismael aims to explain these features of our experience without positing any such metaphysical picture. She argues that there are constraints which prevent us from taking this Olympian conception of the world and our place in it, and that these, jointly, explain why we experience the world in these temporally asymmetric ways. We take up two related questions. First, what it would mean to say that these constraints are not merely epistemic, and second, how far these constraints get us in explaining why we experience the world in these ways.

It is often suggested that we have experiences as of objects enduring. If this is a claim about perceptual experience, it is unclear how it could be true. It seems plausible that however objects persist, we would receive the same inputs to perception. Hence, things would seem experientially the same regardless of whether objects endure, or persist in some other manner. So, it cannot be that in any interesting sense we have experiences as of objects enduring. My aim is the modest one of articulating how, despite this, we could have perceptual experiences as of objects enduring. I then argue that even if we do, it does not give us any reason to infer, on the basis of these experiences, that objects endure.

It is often suggested that we have experiences as of objects enduring. If this is a claim about perceptual experience, it is unclear how it could be true. It seems plausible that however objects persist, we would receive the same inputs to perception. Hence, things would seem experientially the same regardless of whether objects endure, or persist in some other manner. So it cannot be that in any interesting sense we have experiences as of objects enduring. My aim is the modest one of articulating how, despite this, we could have perceptual experiences as of objects enduring. I then argue that even if we do, it does not give us any reason to infer, on the basis of these experiences, that objects endure.

In “The Open Future” (2021) Patrick Todd argues that the future is open, and that as a consequence all future contingents are false (as opposed to the more common view that they are neither true nor false). Very roughly, this latter claim is motivated by the idea that (a) presentism is true, and so future (and indeed past) things do not exist and (b) if future things do not exist, then the only thing that could ground there being future tensed facts, and hence make those future tensed claims true, is the present and the laws of nature. But (c) the present and the laws of nature cannot ground there being future tensed facts because they do not necessitate there being any such fact. Hence future tensed claims are all false. Todd then goes on to present a semantics for his version of the open future on which all future contingents are false. In what follows we take up two strands of Todd’s view. First, we begin, in Section 2, by outlining Todd’s argument that future contingents are all false. We suggest that the considerations that Todd adduces for this conclusion do not support this being so. Then in Section 3 we consider the semantics that Todd offers, and argue that it yields implausible consequences.

This paper empirically probes people’s judgements about whether future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry (TVA for short) are rationally permissible, obligatory, or impermissible. While philosophers are divided about the normative status of these attitudes/preferences, they have typically agreed that non-philosophers will judge that future-bias is at least permissible, and probably obligatory, and will judge that TVA is not permissible. If this is right, it is important for two reasons. First, many researchers have argued that future-bias is a manifestation of TVA. If, however, people make different normative judgements about the two phenomena this tends to undermine this idea. Second, if it is true, it impacts theorising about the normative status of these phenomena: The assumption that future-bias is rational currently guides theorising, in that defenders of the rationality of future-bias tend to argue that its rationality is obvious, and hence must be accommodated, while opponents tend to try to show why, despite not being rational, future-bias appears to us to be rational. Yet no empirical work has been undertaken to test these assumptions about people’s judgements. In the first work of this kind, we confirmed that most people judge future-bias to be rationally obligatory, and TVA to be rationally impermissible.

According to the conativist the truth of our beliefs about personal identity are determined by our conations. But if our conations determined the truth of our survival beliefs, then our survival beliefs should not be sensitive to what philosophers say, about which account of personal identity is the correct one. There ought be no motivation for individuals to change their conations in response to other people’s differing beliefs about survival. In fact, however, preliminary evidence suggests that this isn’t so. On being told that experts, or the majority of experts, have a view about personal identity which differs from their own, many individuals change their conations. In this paper we consider what impact this finding would have, were it firmly established, and argue that it would motivate a refinement of conativism, a refinement that, we think, is in any case preferable.

Several arguments trade on the idea that the (purported) fact that it seems to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes—the argument from experience—or the (purported) fact that we have pre-theoretic or naïve beliefs according to which time robustly passes—the argument from belief—gives us a reason to conclude that time robustly passes. In what follows I present empirical work that investigates whether these purported facts obtain. I argue that given substantial variation in people’s temporal beliefs and reported temporal seemings, our evaluation of these empirical claims, and the arguments from experience and belief, depends on what explains this variation. I outline new empirical work that aims to explain the variation, and argue that it tends to undermine the argument from experience. I then consider a further puzzle that this data generates: the association puzzle. This is the puzzle of why we find no association between people’s reported temporal seemings and their temporal beliefs. I consider a new hypothesis to explain this, according to which people have disunified temporal beliefs, only some of which are associated with their reported temporal seemings. Having presented evidence that this is so, I argue that it tends to undermine the argument from belief. Ultimately, I argue that this empirical work taken as a whole suggests we should be sceptical of arguments that proceed via claims about our temporal experiences or beliefs, to the conclusion that time robustly passes.