From the Agent’s Perspective: Action and the Temporality of Experience

Whether experience itself unfolds in time is debated. This paper defends the extensional account of temporal consciousness, where the temporal properties we directly experience match those of experience itself. After showing that introspection alone cannot settle the question, a new argument is developed based on introspection into and the veridicality conditions of awareness of bodily actions. The paper critiques a prominent version of the extensional view that gives temporally extended experiences explanatory and metaphysical priority over their temporal parts. Attention to facets of agential awareness suggests that extended experience should instead be understood as processual in its temporal character.

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Abstract

Abstract Does experience itself unfold in time? This paper defends an extensional account of temporal consciousness—on which the temporal properties we directly experience match the temporal properties of experience itself—while drawing upon features of agential awareness. After showing that recent debate on the ability of introspection to settle the question about the temporal properties of experience leaves us in a dialectical impasse, I develop a new argument in favor of the extensional account based on introspection into, and veridicality conditions of our awareness of (some) bodily actions. I then address the appropriate framing of the temporal character or ontology of conscious experience on the extensional view, in light of the claims concerning agential awareness. I discuss and critique a prominent version of the extensional account, according to which temporally extended experiences covering whole intervals possess explanatory and metaphysical priority over their temporal parts. I proceed to suggest that attention to facets of agential awareness yields the outlines of a position on which extended experience should rather be understood as processual in its temporal character.