Leitura interessante

Brain, time, and phenomenological time
Rick Grush
Department of Philosophy, UC San Diego
Revision: 05.08.2003 (37 p.)

"1. Introduction
The topic of this paper is temporal representation. More specifically, I intend to provide a theory of what it is that our brains do (at the sub-personal level) such that we experience (at the personal level) time in the way that we do. A few words about both sides of this relation

As far as the brain goes, I will actually be making little substantive contact with neurophysiology. The main thrust of my strategy on the brain side is to articulate an information-processing structure that accounts for various behavioral and phenomenological facts. The neurophysiological hypothesis is that the brain implements this information processing structure. The amount of neurophysiology won't be zero, but at this stage of the game, our understanding of the brain's capacities for temporal representation are incredibly slim. The experimental side of neurophysiology is in need of some theoretical speculations to help it get going in earnest.

As far as our personal-level experience goes, there are only a few central aspects that I will be addressing. It will help to mention some of the aspects I will not be addressing. I won't be addressing memory, including how it is that our memories come to us with the conviction that they concern events that happened long ago. Nor will I be concerned with what might be called objective temporal representation. My belief that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published less than 100 years after Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding does depend on my ability to represent objective temporal relations and objective units of time, such as years. But the capacities involved in such temporal representation are not my
concern.

Rather, I am directly interested in what I will call behavioral time. This is the time that is manifest in our immediate perceptual and behavioral goings on, and in terms of which these goings on unfold. I will expand on this shortly, but first an analogy with spatial representation may prove helpful. In philosophical, psychological, and cognitive neuroscientific circles it is common to distinguish allocentric and egocentric spatial representation. The contrast is between an ability to represent things that in no way depends on my own whereabouts, and the representation of things in relation to myself. So my ability to represent the Arc de
Triomphe as being between the Obelisk and La Grande Arche de la Defense in no way depends on my own location in space. Whereas my belief that there is a pitcher's mound 90 feet west of me relies on my own location as a sort of reference point.

But there are two senses in which a spatial representation can be non-objective. In the sort of case that I have called egocentric, the location of objects is represented in relation to oneself, rather than as being at some objectively specifiable spot in an objective framework. But the units and axes of such a specification might yet be objective. My belief that the pitcher's mound is 90 feet west of me is not objective in that it makes reference to my own location as a reference point, but the axes and units employed in this specification are objective.

I use the expression behavioral space for a kind of spatial representation in which not only the reference point, but also axes and magnitudes that define the space are non-objective. My representation of the coffee cup as being right there when I see it and reach out for it specifies its location relative to me, in a space whose dimensions are spanned by axial asymmetries of up/down, left/right, and front/back -- axial asymmetries whose content derives from my own behavioral capacities. And the magnitudes involved -- the difference between the cup that is right there and the sugar bowl that is over there -- are also imbued with content via their connections to my own behavior. I may have no clear idea how far the
coffee cup is from me in inches and feet, but I have a very precise representation of its distance specified in behavioral terms, as is evident from the fact that I can accurately grasp it.

Back to time. Analogues of allocentric/objective, egocentric and behavioral space are readily specifiable in the temporal domain. Allocentric/objective temporal representation is exploited by my belief that Kant's masterwork was published 90 years after Locke's; and also in my belief that the numeral '4' always appears in the seconds position of my watch one second after the numeral '3' appears there. Egocentric temporal representation is involved in my belief that Kant's first Critique was published 222 years ago (i.e. back from now); and it is also manifested when I see the numeral '3' appear in the seconds spot of my stopwatch and I come to believe that the numeral '4' will appear one second from now. Egocentric temporal
representation uses my current time, now, as a temporal reference point much like egocentric spatial representation uses my current location, here, as a spatial reference point. But the behavioral time specifies the temporal dimension and magnitudes not in terms of such objective units, but in terms of behavioral capacities. When I move to intercept and hit a racquetball that is moving quickly through the court, I may have no accurate idea, in terms of seconds or milliseconds, of how far in the future the point of impact between my racquet and
the ball will be. But I am nevertheless quite aware in behavioral terms. My movements and planning reveal an exquisite sensitivity to the temporal features of the event that will unfold. A more common example might be moving one's hand down to catch a pencil that has just rolled off the edge of a table. One's attention is palpably focused on a spatio-temporal point -- just there and just then (a foot or so from the torso and a few hundred millliseconds in the future, though the units are not in terms of feet or milliseconds, but are behaviorally defined) -- at which the hand will contact the pencil".

http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/bt%26pt/bt%26pt.pdf