Lyu Zhou

We human cognizers represent reality as 3-dimensionally spatial. However, despite appearances to the contrary, I contend that the likelihood that reality is 3-dimensionally spatial in accordance with our spatial representations is either low at worst or inscrutable at best, if these representations are the results of evolution. The key reason is that natural selection is interested primarily in fitness and not specifically in truth per se. Dimensional veridicality of our spatial representations – i.e. the property of veridically representing the true dimensionality of space – is not required for adaptive behavior. Dimensional veridicality per se confers no additional evolutionary benefits. Representational adequacy with respect to the relevant structure of reality suffices for evolutionary fitness without dimensional veridicality. Independent considerations of quantum ontology – e.g. Wave Function Realism – also challenge the common view that reality is 3-dimensionally spatial. There are serious considerations that counsel agnosticism: we do not know, and hence should suspend judgment about, the true spatial dimensionality of reality.

In this article, I argue that our immediate present consciousness is not only phenomenally extended but also mereologically inverted in the sense that its phenomenal temporal parts depend for their existence on the whole, unlike any system or process in spacetime, in which the whole depends for its existence on the parts. The fact that our immediate present consciousness is mereologically inverted shows that it cannot exist in spacetime. Our immediate present consciousness cannot be a spatiotemporally extended process: any such process is not mereologically inverted, since it could have ceased halfway, with a part – i.e. the completed half – existing on its own without depending on the whole process for its existence. Nor can our immediate present consciousness be a point-event in spacetime: our immediate present consciousness is structurally complex and phenomenologically rich, but any point-event in spacetime is simple and structureless. I conclude that our immediate present consciousness cannot exist in spacetime. On my view, spacetime is a logical construct from the immediate phenomenal data of our consciousness.

The specious present (James, 1890/1950) is the phenomenal temporal structure of the representational content of my present experience. This article is a study of the mereological structure of the specious present and what it reveals about the nature of the mind. I argue that the specious present has certain features that cannot be easily explained within the framework of physicalism about the mind — the view that consciousness is nothing over and above what is physical. In particular, the specious present is a phenomenally extended (i.e.non-instantaneous) whole whose parts are conceptual abstractions and are therefore dependent on this whole. However, unlike the specious present, what is physical does not have this special property of the parts being dependent on the whole. Therefore, it is unclear how the specious present can be explained in physicalistic terms.

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin to human temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness).