In pulling together a very short talk for the Notions of Time event
tomorrow, I came across this section of text, from the introduction to
a paper
The experience of time: neural mechanisms and the interplay of
emotion, cognition and embodiment
by Marc Wittmann, PhD Psychology, UC San Diego. I've removed the
citations for clarity.
Thought some of the more philosophical among you might find it
interesting, or at least worth a shot of good whiskey...
> Throughout history, philosophers have been intrigued by the nature
of time and how we, as humans, experience its progression.
The perception of time is part of human experience; it is essential
for everyday behaviour and for the survival of the individual
organism. Yet, and surprisingly enough, its neural basis is still
unknown.
Temporal intervals, lasting only seconds or spanning a lifetime, are
judged according to their perceived duration—often regarded as
painfully long or, the reverse, as lasting too short.
Everyday decisions we make, as simple as either waiting for the
elevator or taking the stairs, are based on the experienced passage of
time and anticipated duration.
The importance of our temporal experiences for daily living is
strikingly documented in individual neurological cases where patients
report of an accelerated progression of time and, consequently, have
troubles in adequately interacting with the environment, i.e. driving
a car.
Although we doubtless have a time sense, our bodies are not equipped
with a sensory organ for the passage of time in the same way that we
have eyes and ears—and the respective sensory cortices—for detecting
light and sound.
Time, ultimately, is not a material object of the world for which we
could have a unique receptor system.
Nevertheless, we speak of the perception of time.
When we talk about time (‘an event lasted long’, ‘time flew by’), we
use linguistic structures that refer to motion events and to locations
and measures in space; a further indication that time itself is not a
property in the empirical world.
Despite a growing body of knowledge on the psychology and on the
neural basis of the experience of time, the riddle for philosophers
and scientists alike is still unsolved: how does the mind (or, for
that matter, the brain) create time?
Martin Heidegger's paraphrase of St Augustine's famous quotation
‘In you, my spirit, I measure times; I measure myself, as I measure
time’
reflects a theoretical approach—founded in western philosophical
tradition—which states that time is a construction of the self.
Perceived time, thereafter, represents the mental status of the
beholder. In terms of a functional equation, one could state that time
T is a function F of the self, where the self stands for all possible
psychological (i.e. empirical and theoretical) properties of an
individual who perceives time.
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