Specious present and its place in spacetime: towards a non-spatiotemporalist account for human consciousness.
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...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 207; no. 2; pp. 1 - 27 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Feb2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191133447&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191133447 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 207 iid: 2 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 191133447 10.1007/s11229-025-05427-3 ppf: 1 ppct: 26 formats: tig: atl: Specious present and its place in spacetime: towards a non-spatiotemporalist account for human consciousness. aug: au: Zhou, Lyu affil: https://ror.org/05bnh6r87 Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, 218 Goldwin Smith Hall, 14850, Ithaca, NY, USA su: Consciousness Philosophy of mind Whole & parts (Philosophy) Cognitive structures Phenomenology Spacetime sug: subj: Consciousness Philosophy of mind Whole & parts (Philosophy) Cognitive structures Phenomenology Spacetime keyword: Phenomenal consciousness Specious present Temporal consciousness ab: 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. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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