CFP: Philosophy of Mental Time VI: The Experience of Time

Submission deadline: July 29, 2017

Conference date(s):
November 25, 2017

Go to the conference's page

Conference Venue:

Department of Philosophy, Philosophy of Mental Time Research Group, Nihon University
Tokyo, Japan

Topic areas

Details

Human experience takes place in time, but we also appear to experience time – or the passing of time – itself. While this may seem a rather obvious observation, it raises a number of puzzling questions. How do we experience time? What exactly do we experience when we experience time? Do we actually experience time? Or do we infer time from something in or some aspect of our experience?

These are questions that are not likely to be (satisfactorily) answered by philosophers alone, but that need the input of neuroscientists, psychologists, and others, and conversely, answers to these questions may have implications outside the scope of philosophy.

The subject matter of this workshop is "mental time", the experience and awareness of time, including that of past, present, and future. Its scope is interdisciplinary – we invite contributions that straddle the boundaries between philosophy and the empirical sciences, or between different sciences or different branches (etc.) of philosophy.

Topics we would like to see addressed include – but are not limited to – the following.

* Perceiving the present. --- For example, duration of the experienced present (i.e. the specious present), discrete vs. continuous present, and so forth.

* Perceiving the past and future. --- Memory, mental time travel, future concern, the anticipation of death, and related topics.

* Time in ethics and social philosophy. --- Future generations and distributive justice, the relevance of time awareness for moral status, and so forth

* Time awareness and the metaphysics of time. --- Can aspects of our experience and awareness of time contribute to solving the metaphysical puzzles about time (such as those of the A Theory vs. B Theory, presentism vs. eternalism, 3Dism vs. 4Dism, and so forth)? Conversely, can the metaphysics of time improve the (philosophical and/or scientific) understanding of the experience of time?

There is a nearly identical CFP for a special issue of the Annals of the Japan Society for Philosophy of Science that is scheduled for publication in 2019. The deadline for submissions for that special issue is February 24, 2018. Hence, participants in the November conference (i.e. the conference of this CFP) can – if so desired – revise their conference paper and then submit it for the special issue of the Annals. (But participation in the November conference is not a requirement for contributing to the special issue.)

For further information, feel free to contact the conference organizers. (Email addresses can be found on the Project Group's homepage. See URL below.)

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