Talk at Boğaziçi: Angelica Kaufmann (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) ““Do animals represent the passage of time?”(07/08/2018)

Angelica Kaufmann (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will give a talk on August 7th, 17:00, at JF 507

“Do animals represent the passage of time?”

Abstract: Complex actions extend through time. The capacity to plan complex actions (perhaps, as opposed to basic actions), necessitates a capacity to represent objective temporal magnitudes (Peacocke, 2017), the fundamental of which are succession and duration (Zakay, 2016). These representational capacities are the building blocks of the experiential dimension of time. If the experiential dimension of time is characterized as the capacity to represent time, what does this capacity involve? What distinguishes genuine representation of such temporal magnitudes from mere sensitivity to these magnitudes? This is the Constitutive Question of the nature of temporal representation. An answer to this question is crucial to any empirical evaluation of the role of temporal representations (rather than mere sensitivities) in action planning. To make such empirical evaluation possible, we begin with an analysis of Peacocke’s (2017) criteria for temporal representation. We argue that a crucial feature of all genuine representation is missing in Peacocke’s account, namely, its context-independent operation. This provides us with a modified account of temporal representation, which we then test on a series of empirical findings that, we argue, Peacocke’s account fails accurately to describe as instances of genuine representation of temporal magnitudes (as opposed to mere sensitivity).