The Flow of time: Rationalism vs. empiricism

ABSTRACT

I distinguish between empiricist and rationalist approaches to the idea of the flow of time. The former trace back the idea of the flow of time to the deliverances of our sensory or introspective capacities. According to the latter, the idea of the flow of time is integral to what it is to have a conscious point of view in the first place. I discuss some aspects of what I take to be Ismael’s version of a rationalist approach, which focuses on the point of view of an agent. In particular, I raise some questions as to whether Ismael’s account does succeed in reconstructing the common-sense idea of the flow of time in the sense of Becoming, and where her account leaves us with respect to the ‘two times’ problem regarding the relationship between everyday thought about time and the scientific view of time.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Already in 1895, H. G. Wells has his Time Traveller saying that “[t]here is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it” (Wells, 1895, p. 8). For the moment, I shall rely on the intuitive sense of what it would be for time to flow or pass, as supplied by Weyl’s first sentence. I shall shortly turn to the question as to how exactly these notions, which I will use more or less interchangeably, should be understood.

2 That English speakers find it quite natural to talk about themselves as ‘seeing’ or ‘feeling’ time passing is also suggested by recent empirical research (Shardlow et al., 2021).

3 For related suggestions, which I do not have space to discuss in this paper, see Crowther and Soteriou (2017) and Soteriou (2020). As will hopefully become clearer as we go along, the view at issue here is different from the claim that the belief in the passage or flow of time has its origin in “feeling oneself act” (Young, 2022). The latter would in fact be a version of an empiricist theory.

4 Ismael herself characterises her account as being based on just two ingredients, but she characterizes them as “self-representation + the thermodynamic gradient” (2023, p. 14). This is, as it were, to go back one step in the explanatory order: facts about self-representation explain the phenomenon of interference, and facts about the thermodynamic gradient explain the existence and temporal asymmetry of traces or records.

5 On this, see also Ismael, 2023, p. 11. For some other considerations that are relevant here, see Fernandes (2020).

6 Some related historical debates are discussed in Warren (2014). There is, of course, also the flip-side of having to live with the consequences of one’s failings. See also Lee et al. (2022) for related issues.

7 For somewhat analogous considerations regarding the project of unmasking colours as not real, see Stroud (2000, ch. 7).