Sengupta, Rakesh
(2017)
How embodied is time?
[Preprint]
Abstract
It is a standard understanding that we live in time. In fact, the whole physical world as described in sciences is based on the idea of objective (not absolute) time. For centuries we have defined time ever so minutely, basing them on finer and finer event measurements (uncoiling springs to atomic clocks) that we do not even notice that we have made an inductive leap when it comes to time - we can measure time, so we experience time. In the current work I wish to critique this inductive leap and examine what it means to experience time. We are embodied and embedded cognitive agents, constrained by our body as well as in continuous interaction with our environment (mostly in an unconscious manner, e.g., Are you standing or sitting? Are you paying complete attention to each part of your body and posture? etc). So another way to ask the question of temporal experience would be - how embodied is time? I posit that experience of time spoken of in general literature is a linguistic construct, in that, the idea of experience of time overshadows the actual phenomenal contents of time perception. Moreover, time perception (either as perception of duration or perception of an instant of time) itself comes from a post-facto judgment of events. It has also been observed that the order of events in time can be altered to create an illusion of violation of causality itself. This points to the possibility that events are arranged in a temporal map that can be read off by higher cognitive substrates. In the current work we go on to explore the nature of such a map as it emerges from an embodied mind.
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