What changes?
State, process, occurrence?
Temporal analysis begins with events or states located in an order.
Side 93
Time & Temporal
Experience
A study of temporal order, duration and passage across physics, metaphysics and lived experience. Time seems both measurable as structure and felt as flow, yet those two descriptions do not map neatly onto one another.
event→order→duration→passage→experience
06temporal lenses
05time theories
05experience problems
93Side
Time organizes events by before, after and duration.
Even before asking whether time “flows,” temporal structure allows events to be ordered and intervals to be compared.
Which comes first?
Before / simultaneous / after.
Temporal ordering need not imply a moving present.
How much time separates events?
Duration.
Clocks operationalize duration through regular physical processes.
What differs across the interval?
Persistence through variation.
Change presupposes some relation between states at different times.
From whose temporal standpoint?
Present, remembered, anticipated?
Human temporal experience adds perspective to objective ordering.
Modern physics treats time as part of spacetime structure rather than one universal cosmic clock.
Relativity makes simultaneity observer-dependent and links measured duration to motion and gravity.
Operational measurement.
Time is measured by comparing processes against regular physical standards.
Distant “now” is frame-dependent.
Observers in relative motion need not agree on which separated events are simultaneous.
Elapsed time depends on trajectory.
Moving clocks and clocks in different gravitational conditions can accumulate different proper times.
Events occupy four-dimensional structure.
Space and time are geometrically linked rather than independent backgrounds.
Time measured along one path.
Each worldline has its own accumulated duration.
Useful in large-scale cosmology.
Special spacetime structures can support a practical common time parameter without restoring universal Newtonian time.
Does only the present exist, or are past and future equally real?
Metaphysical theories of time disagree about existence, passage and the privileged status of the present.
| Theory | Core claim | Main pressure point |
|---|---|---|
| Presentism | Only present entities exist | Relativity and truth about the past |
| Eternalism | Past, present and future events all exist | Explaining experienced passage |
| Growing block | Past and present exist; future does not yet | Why this edge is objectively present |
| Moving spotlight | All times exist but one is objectively present | What moves and in what meta-time? |
| Relationism | Time depends on relations among events/change | Whether empty time is possible |
Experienced time stretches, compresses and seems to pass.
Subjective duration depends on attention, memory, arousal, novelty and the structure of ongoing activity.
Specious present
The present seems temporally extended.
Experience contains enough temporal width to perceive melody and motion.
Duration judgment
Felt time depends on context.
Attention to time can lengthen prospective duration judgments.
Novelty
Dense memory can expand retrospective time.
Periods rich in distinct events may feel longer when remembered.
Absorption
Engagement can shrink felt duration.
When attention is captured by a task, less monitoring is devoted to time itself.
Arousal
Emotion changes temporal estimation.
Threat, anticipation and excitement can distort perceived duration.
Past and future enter the present through memory and anticipation.
Temporal cognition depends on retaining what is gone and simulating what has not yet happened.
Reconstruct a past scene.
Past events are re-presented from the standpoint of the current self.
Construct a possible future.
Future simulation recruits many of the same resources used in episodic memory.
Use future states to guide present action.
Agency depends on representing consequences that do not yet exist.
Future outcomes lose motivational weight.
Temporal distance influences valuation and choice.
Selfhood links different temporal stages.
Concern for a future self assumes some persistence relation across time.
Imagine what might have happened.
Temporal cognition also explores unrealized alternatives to actual history.
Many fundamental equations are time-symmetric, yet ordinary life is not.
The arrow of time concerns why entropy, records, causation and memory all exhibit strong temporal asymmetry.
Thermodynamic arrow
Entropy tends to increase toward what we call the future.
Causal arrow
Causes ordinarily precede effects in our descriptions and interventions.
Memory arrow
We retain records of the past, not the future.
Radiative arrow
Waves typically propagate outward from localized sources rather than converging spontaneously.
Cosmological boundary
Temporal asymmetry may depend partly on low-entropy boundary conditions of the universe.
The Order of Timephysical and conceptual time
Philosophy of Timepresentism, eternalism and passage
Relativitysimultaneity, proper time and spacetime
Temporal Experienceduration, memory and anticipation