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This chapter discusses some relatively basic sorts of perceptual attribution: body, numerosity, spatial relations, and temporal relations. It elaborates accounts of constitutive conditions for having each of these four types of representation. It also discusses the form and content of these types, and whether each type is constitutive to perceptual representation. These accounts further develop the notions perception and representation.

Provides an analysis of temporal relations in causal terms. Qualitative temporal relations, that is, the relations of simultaneity and temporal priority, are analysed in terms of actual causal relations and spatial relations. A reduction of quantitative temporal relations, such as the relation of temporal distance, in causal terms is feasible as well, but, the chapter argues, a realist view should be preferred. The causal theory of time put forward is defended against charges of circularity and against putative counterexamples.

This chapter deals with Nāgārjuna’s critique of the notion of causation. It first discusses the interdependence of cause and effect, followed by an analysis of the critique of the four ways of causal production: self-production, production from another object, production from itself and another object, and causeless production. A second set of arguments Nāgārjuna presents against causation deal with the possible relations between cause and effect: cause and effect being successive, overlapping or simultaneous. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Nāgārjuna’s thought on time.

Russell initially rejected neutral monism, but later came to accept a version of it, aiming to construct both matter and minds from the same ‘neutral’ stuff. This neutral stuff was sensibilia (or, as they became, events of sensing), except that minds also have an extra ingredient, namely events of imaging. The idea is that a mind may be identified with the class of all those events of sensing and imaging which occur in it. Russell explains that two such events occur in the same mind when there are experiences of temporal relations between them, but he also adds connecting links of ‘mnemic causation’. To obtain the right results one must invoke merely possible experiences and causation, and this is awkward. Russell tries to account for beliefs, desires, and other mental states (including being conscious of something), all in terms of sensings and imagings, but these analyses are highly questionable.

This chapter deals with the theory of negation described in the non-Buddhist Nāgārjuna school of thought. Since many of Nāgārjuna’s arguments are formulated against the background of this theory and set out to refute it it is important to gain a clear understanding of the Nāgārjuna account in order to grasp the point of Nāgārjuna’s arguments. The chapter deals in particular with the problem of negating non-denoting terms (such as ‘unicorn’) and the problem of the temporal relation between the negation and the negated object.

Nāgārjuna’s discussion of epistemology focuses on the relation between means of knowledge (pramāṇa) and objects of knowledge (prameya). He investigates in particular how the means of knowledge themselves are supposed to be established: are they somehow self-established, or do the objects of knowledge establish them? Nāgārjuna concludes that neither of these alternatives is satisfactory. Another question concerns the temporal relation between objects and means of knowledge. Do they come into existence at the same time or does one precede the other? Neither of these it taken to be acceptable by Nāgārjuna either. The chapter concludes by outlining the aims of Nāgārjuna’s epistemological theory.

This chapter discusses the familiar difficulties originating from Newcomb's problem. Those problems gave rise to “causal decision theory”, which differs from classical decision theory in the manner in which probabilities enter into the definition of expected value. This chapter proposes that one can replace the appeal to causal dependence by appeal to temporal relations and statistical relevance between mixed physical/epistemic probabilities. The basic idea is simply that causes propagate through the world in temporal order. The resulting analysis handles the known counterexamples to classical decision theory in essentially the same way Skymis' theory does, but without appealing to vaguely understood concepts like causal dependence.

This chapter discusses reasoning about identities and other relations. In relational reasoning, a novel relation that holds between arguments in the premises is derived. These inferences can be made without relying on a memory for a similar inference, and without using rules of inference with a particular content. The use of models in reasoning is confirmed. Three important experiments are described that would demonstrate that people rely on one method rather than the other. The first experiment used descriptions of two-dimensional spatial layouts of household objects that can be found on a table. A second experiment examined reasoning about temporal relations, but it depended on verbs and their tenses to convey the order of events. A third experiment showed a still greater difficulty for meaning postulates. It can be stated that the model theory postulates that the reasoning depends on the significance of propositions.

Gives a brief summary of the results reached in the book and their advantages. It recapitulates the differences between the dynamic view of the world defended in the book and traditional tensed conceptions of time. While the latter hold that tensed facts are fundamental, the former holds that tensed facts reduce to tenseless facts even in a dynamic world, where what tenseless facts there are depends on what time it is. The different roles of causation for the present approach are summed up: Causation defines the direction of time, and can be used to analyse temporal relations; There can be causation only in a world where the past and the present are real, while the future is not.

This chapter examines to what extent repeated temporal relations between stimuli automatically lead to preferential treatment of those stimuli that have frequently been experienced at some given point in time. It reviews the main findings of the foreperiod paradigm and suggests that the observed target-specific effects of temporal validity are based on associations between the critical points in time at which targets appear and the task-relevant features of the targets that are frequently experienced at these points in time, such as target identity and required response.

Information processing systems must identify and encode relations that can be defined in space and time. Both dimensions are used by the nervous systems to handle relations. Relations among signals of different origin are established via selective convergence of connections on target cells in the anatomical layout of the nervous systems. Furthermore, relations can be expressed more dynamically by adjusting the signals’ temporal rather than spatial contiguity. This chapter examines rhythmic modulation of neuronal activity and context as well as task-dependent modulation of oscillation frequencies and phases in the neocortex. More specifically, it discusses precise temporal relations among the discharges of neurons and synchrony as a tag of relatedness, oscillations as a timing mechanism, and the duration of synchronized events. It also considers functions attributed to synchronization, including binding, attention, and stimulus selection. Finally, the chapter looks at how signals become part of consciousness and analyzes the link between abnormal synchrony and mental disorders.

This chapter presents three psychophysical experiments involving temporal relations in vision. The first shows that, even with improved experimental technique, high-intensity short flashes can indeed look brighter than longer flashes of the same intensity, thus indicating that the classical Broca-Sulzer effect is not an artifact. The second experiment was a study of the transitional fraction of a second between dark adaptation and the beginning of light adaptation, using the conditioning-stimulus-test-flash technique. The third experiment concerns the successful measurement of test-flash thresholds in the presence of a 30-cps flickering stimulus. Each of these experiments raises a number of questions regarding the neurophysiological organization, function, and interactions of the visual systems serving the two eyes. A common unifying principle is the idea of temporal quantization of the visual input by the higher visual nervous system.

Temporal and spatial relations are often regarded as paradigmatic categorical properties that pro-vide a counterexamples to the claim that all fundamental natural properties powers (potencies)—properties that are dispositional in nature/essence. In this chapter, I consider the consequences for this debate of thinking that a good physical theory should be background-independent. I propose that the conception of time and space not as a background but as an active component of the physical universe help show that temporal and spatial properties and relations need not be considered as necessarily categorical.