Zoom: https://umac.zoom.us/j/99695878157 Abstract In this talk, I would like to explore some meta-theoretical questions regarding current debates about temporal experience, by which I mean questions about how best to conceive of what is at stake in those debates. I begin by introducing the question of how we perceive temporal phenomena at all, and briefly consider a suggested reformulation of that question. I then turn to the question of whether time really passes, and whether we experience time as really passing. I examine both a metaphysics-first approach to this issue, and then the reformulation implicit in Craig Callender's book 'What makes time special?' (OUP 2017). I conclude that as a reformulation, the latter does not succeed. I end with some remarks […]

Zoom: https://umac.zoom.us/j/94985864920 Abstract Time, it might be said,  is concerned with the nature of the past, the present and the future, with variants of  presentism and eternalism and (non-static) growing block the leading metaphysical theories.  But this is hardly clarifying.  Presentism is often characterized as the thesis that only the present exists, while the others embrace more. If the positions and the distinctiveness of presentism should turn on the dubious assumption of a property of ‘existing’ (present tense) or ‘being present’, then the substantive nature of the debates may well deserve to be viewed as dubious.  Another questionable assumption, I argue, is that temporal relations and our understanding of tense requires a commitment to events (at least as concrete if not abstract particulars). The tenseless predication required for the characterization […]