This essay presents a critique of what I call strict four-dimensionalism, a
metaphysical view supported by David Armstrong, Mark Heller, and David Lewis.(1)
Strict four-dimensionalism includes "things experiential" in the group of things
that are temporal only insofar as they either have temporal extension or exist at some
point upon the axis of time. I argue that experience cannot exist in this way. Its
temporality must be of a different order. For experience must involve the passing
of time,(2) and this is something that strict
four-dimensionalism must exclude. This does not, however, disprove that ontology in
toto. It does not venture beyond the theme of experience's temporal nature. What is at
stake here is simply the securing of experience's temporality from a misleading
metaphysical interpretation. The issue is simply the metaphysics of the seemingly
non-thing-like entity of temporal experience.
Four-dimensionalism maintains that, strictly speaking, physical objects existing for
more than an instant so exist only by being extended along the axis of time, just as
common objects existing at more than one point in space exist in this way only by being
extended along the three spatial axes.(3) As Lewis puts it:
"Enduring things are timelike streaks" laid out across the fourth dimension,
"wholes composed of temporal parts, or stages, located at various times and
places" (Lewis 1976, 145). For a thing that lasts from one time to another, say from t1
to t2, it is thus not the case that the same thing once existing entirely
at t1 exists later entirely at t2. According to four-dimensionalism,
the only way for an object to "persist" from t1 to t2 is for it to
have a temporal length extending from t1 to t2, so that it fills the
available "temporal space." For such an object, what exists entirely at t1
and what exists entirely at t2 are simply two of its distinct, instantaneous
temporal parts (cf. Heller, 5).(4) Strictly speaking no
object endures through time according to four-dimensionalism, which is why some
four-dimensionalists employ the following terminological distinction: objects with more
than a momentary existence do not so exist by enduring through time, as
traditionally thought; instead, they perdure through the dimension of time (Lewis
1986, 203).
Human beings — like all psychological beings of the
cosmos — are not left out of this temporal scheme. And strict
four-dimensionalism remains consistent in not making an exception of things experiential.
For strict four-dimensionalism, experience itself is something stretched out across the
dimension of time. This view is often arrived at by thinking of experiences as states of
perduring minds — states that must perdure with the minds that
have them. This seems to be the case for Armstrong, Heller, and Lewis, all of whom go so
far as to situate the human mind and its experiences in the perduring domain governed by a
causal physics.(5)
How does this metaphysical view account for experience? Most strict
four-dimensionalists would agree that no instantaneous mind could itself have what I will
call a full experience — an awareness, for example, in
which some recognition of an object could occur.(6) Such
experience takes more than an instant; recognition takes some time, and at least
straightforwardly conceived, that is something that no "instant-mind" affords.
Most strict four-dimensionalists account for this experience by holding that the momentary
experiences of certain instant-minds lie within the temporal boundaries of a temporally
extended experience, which is coextensive with the temporally extended mind whose state it
is. It is this experiential expanse that provides the length of time needed for full
awareness.
But while this appeal to the temporally extended mind might seem to overcome the
inadequacy of the instant-mind, it does not of itself provide a sufficient metaphysical
basis for full experience. More must be said — specifically, how
does this temporally positive length of experience support such awareness with its durational
character, something evident in our everyday conscious life? Where in this account is
there such experience? How does it take place? These questions are harder to answer than
one might think. Does the length of experience occur bit by bit? How would that happen?
Would the temporally extended mind experience each bit in sequence, so that it is at first
mostly in the future in relation to the moment of its experience, but moment by moment
becoming more and more past in relation to that moment? If this seems wrongheaded,(7)
should we return to the instant-mind and wed one such mind alone to each momentary bit,
with full experience emerging from the length within which such limit-minds lie? But would
this latter solution (more characteristic of the strict four-dimensionalist camp) not
return us to the problem with the instant-mind? If we linked experience and mind
point-for-point, like train tracks, with every point of the temporally extended mind
having only its momentary experiential state, what mind would there be to experience a
duration with its passing of time? More importantly, where would there be
any such passing? Is an axial length sufficient to grant time its passing?
Before trying to judge strict four-dimensionalism's ability to answer such questions,
it will be helpful to set out carefully the basic features of any full awareness. This
will make clearer what is at stake. Concerning our experience, one thing has often been
noticed: it is never purely of what now exists. Rather, it everywhere involves some
temporal context, which gives the present experience its meaning. For example, we react
with frustration in encountering a traffic jam, with initially nothing "in mind"
other than the immediate, lived-through feeling of frustration and the need to get by.
What is involved in such an experience? Perhaps upon reflection we bring to mind that we
need to get to a meeting. But in the initial experience of the traffic jam, this was not
in mind: we were not recalling the past or thinking of where we were going, but simply
feeling stuck. But though an explicit recognition of the temporal context was lacking, the
very sense of the experience included a directedness toward something futural
as already "binding" upon us. Even the explicit awareness subsequently
brought about by reflection no doubt had its inexplicit context (I might have thought,
"I have a pressing appointment," while leaving "understood" that this
appointment is with my boss; further, that he is my boss in a context of work; and
so on). Full experience is always the experience of a situated present, connected with an
ultimately inexplicit temporal context that supports that present's identifiable meaning.(8)
Secondly, we experience the traffic jam's duration: it continues to block our way
as a bicyclist rides on by. This brings into view aspects of the phenomenon of
experience other than its contextual character (these elements being separated only
abstractively). Our experience bears witness to an availability of the passing of
time as such within the domain of experience. It also manifests the successful disclosure
in experience of time's passing as passing. Though usually unnoticed, these
elements are always part and parcel of our full experience, as when we simply watch the
bicyclist passing by. Some process of moments is clearly available to the experiential
domain and our awareness is successfully disclosing that process. This description
illuminates three features that I take to be essential to any full awareness: (1) a
temporally contextualized experiential present, (2) the availability of a passing duration
to the domain of experience, (3) the ongoing disclosing of that passing as such
(which is not the explicit noticing of it). Can strict four-dimensionalism account
for these features?
The first feature is already the subject of debate. Roderick Chisholm argues that
strict four-dimensionalism cannot account for temporally contextualized awareness. He
thinks that every instantaneous part of a temporally extended mind has no contact with the
experiential context surrounding its now, such that a contextualized awareness of its
present experience might have some raison d'être.(9)
Following Heller's response to Chisholm (Heller, 23), however, it seems that strict
four-dimensionalism can appeal to causality to insure that the instant-mind has in its
present not simply an impression of a now-content but an "experience" (not yet
"full") that brings to bear a temporal context. Causal connections between
instant-minds might insure that each instant-mind is "made" so as "to
see," in its own small way, its present in terms of the temporal context lying
beyond. Causality might thus provide a raison d'être for instant-minds that
support a coherent length of experience that is everywhere contextually savvy (cf. also
Armstrong 1980, 151-154; Lewis 1976, 148).
But more is needed for a full experience, and it is with the second requirement of such
experience that insurmountable problems begin to arise for strict four-dimensionalism. In
our experience we have more than contextualized moments. We are involved in a passing
duration that supports the ongoing aspect of awareness. It is by such an
involvement in a passing of time that we can identify things —
like a soaring hawk or a persisting monotone pitch. No experience without
such an involvement in time's passing is imaginable. This involvement is itself two-fold:
it essentially implies (a) the existence of time's passing and (b) the availability
of that passing as such to the mental or experiential domain (which supports the
third feature of full experience — the bringing-to-awareness of
that passing).
When it comes to this essential two-fold feature, strict four-dimensionalism must fail.
(a) For strict four-dimensionalism, the whole temporal cosmos —
including minds, experiences, and their causal connections — is
laid out along a static dimension of time. The fourth dimension is like the ground of an
extended but entirely fixed landscape. This leads to the following difficulty: insofar as
there is nothing "advancing through" the fourth dimension with the opposing
"falling past" that this implies, strict four-dimensionalism provides no
temporal passing at all. There is no time passing that might be available to the
experiential domain.
But could not some such passing be posited as a brute fact? Some strict
four-dimensionalists posit not only causal connections between instant-minds but an actual
causal movement of an "experiential now" that "activates" one
instant-mind after the other (cf. Heller, 23). This is supposed to account for the
temporal "movement" of experience. Such a movement would certainly provide an
existing temporal passing. But several problems emerge for this idea, given a strict
four-dimensionalist ontology. First, allowing such a movement would require admitting
something truly enduring through time — namely, the present
point of the movement itself. Movement is passage, of something through or past another,
even where neither of these is really a thing. There can be just the progress of a
movement itself — like waves, which, although not things, still
pass through both time and space. For a movement through time to occur, whatever that
movement may be, it itself must pass time, and this implies its enduring through it.(10)
Any movement through time compromises strict four-dimensionalism at its roots. But without
some such movement (2(a)), there could be no temporal passing available to anything
experiential (2(b)) — the very thing needed for (3) an ongoing
temporal awareness. Here alone is sufficient cause to overturn strict four-dimensionalism,
since this shows that it cannot support several elements necessary for any full
experience.
(b) The second problem with postulating a temporal passing as a brute fact brings up
the other facet of an involvement in time's passing. For the problem here is that the
postulation of the moving "experiential now" must make that movement as such
available to the mental domain if there is to be anything able to support (3) an experience
of time's passing. But this view's ontology of "things mental" —
states in perduring minds — provides nothing in this domain
able to bear the presence of time's passing as such. For time as passing to be
present to something mental would require that something mental suffer that passing as
passing, allow the passing to be available as such by bearing its happening. But
this would be to endure time.
But why should any one "thing" have to undergo that passing? Could not this
passing involve a series of mental entities, so that there is a passing but with
nothing lasting through its passing? This, however, would leave the passing as
such unavailable to anything mental. Different entities might each have their moment
of that passing, but the passing as passing would be nowhere "received" — in a sense because it would be everywhere
"received," but exhausted bit by bit. For there to occur anywhere a
"reception" of time's passing as passing requires that somewhere its process
be "received." But receiving a process takes more than a moment of time. It,
again, implies endurance.
But is not the whole process "received" by the extended mind that it
traverses? Not as a process unless that mind lasts its passing as a passing. This
mind would have to be at one time in one state then later in a different state with regard
to that movement for the latter even to exist for that mind as a movement. This
would be to encounter a temporal passing as such, but this would also be to last through a
sequence of moments in turn and so to endure time.
Strict four-dimensionalism cannot accommodate any time passing or anything in the
mental domain to which that passing can be available as such. But both are needed for the
third element of experience — the bringing of that passing to
awareness. Again, since it cannot account for several features essential to full
experience, strict four-dimensionalism must fail.
The very nature of experience calls for something more like traditional endurantism
when it comes to experience. As ordinarily formulated, this view keeps pace with strict
four-dimensionalism when it comes to our awareness of a temporal context, by
positing a mind capable of such. It also promises to succeed where strict
four-dimensionalism fails, by allowing for a passing of time and the availability of that
passing as such to something mental by positing a temporal movement relative to a
persisting mind's experiential present.
It might be thought, however, that this view must ultimately suffer a fate like that of
strict four-dimensionalism. Does not the traditional endurantist see time as a stream
encountered by the mind bit by bit, with the mind at no moment existing but at an
infinitesimal moment of that stream? Endurantism seems caught in a paradox like that of
Zeno's arrow and no better able to account for an awareness of time's passing. For such
passing could never be given in any moment at which the enduring mind would exist. While
the enduring mind might be involved in a passing of time, it might seem no more
able than the strict four-dimensionalist mind to be aware of this as a passing.
It is important to note that this problem is not the problem that was raised
against strict four-dimensionalism. That problem had to do with the lack of any temporal
passing at all and with a lack of its availability as such to the mental domain (these
shortcomings clearly making impossible an account of our awareness of time's passing).
Certainly, though, if there is a problem here for endurantism, there is also one for
strict four-dimensionalism — at least if both views are
formulated to provide a series of moments through which, in sequence (enduringly or
perduringly), consciousness has its time.
But to say that the conscious mind endures through a temporal process that has moments
at its infinitesimal limits — and so to say that there is in
this way an existence of that mind at the moment — is
not to say that the conscious mind ever simply exists at a moment. That would be an
impossibility. The conscious mind, to be conscious, must have an ongoing experience
that takes some duration. The conscious mind can exist only as existing. It is thus
wrong to think of this mind simply at the limit and then to try to find out where it would
experience time's passing there. The conscious mind is never simply there. It is
there-in-the-process-of-an-ongoing- experiential-existence. Similar to Aristotle's
response to Zeno, the response to the objection here is — the
conscious mind is to be conceived first as in process, with its moments being truly
abstract limits at the infinitesimal depths of this process, which is not to say that
these moments are unreal but that they are unthinkable and non-existent in isolation. The
ontological foundation of consciousness is not the pure infinitesimal but an ongoing
involvement in time and an ongoing bringing of time's passing to awareness.(11)
To see this response as begging the question, escaping Zeno only by claiming what should
be explained on Zeno's grounds, is in reality to make an unwarranted counter-assumption
that values the infinitesimal as the ontologically basic. It is to remain blind to
the possibility of another ontological basis — one that is in
fact demanded by the phenomenon of consciousness that we, continually, have.
Endurantism may be more plausible than strict four-dimensionalism in accounting for
experience. But is traditional endurantism satisfactory? Should the enduring of time's
passing be thought in traditional fashion in terms of a thing-like mind that passes
through a stream-like time? Or does the phenomenon of temporal experience call for less
spatial thinking? Would an endurantism without a thing-like mind, without a stream-like
time, provide a better ontology of the process of experience? While much still needs
examination, hopefully some progress has been achieved here in disclosing a way for
further inquiry.
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