Abstract

I argue for constraining the nomological possibility space of temporal experiences and endorsing the Succession Requirement for agents. The Succession Requirement holds that the basic structure of temporal experience must be successive for agentive subjects, at least in worlds that are law-like in the same way as ours. I aim to establish the Succession Requirement by showing non-successively experiencing agents are not possible for three main reasons, namely that they (1) fail to stand in the right sort of causal relationship to the outcomes of their actions, (2) exhibit the wrong sort of epistemic status for agency, and (3) lack the requisite agentive mental attitude of intentionality. I conclude that agency is incompatible with non-successive experience and therefore we should view the successive temporal structure of experience as a necessary condition for agency. I also suggest that the Succession Requirement may actually extend beyond my main focus on agency, offering preliminary considerations in favor of seeing successive experience as a precondition for selfhood as well. The consequences of the Succession Requirement are wide-ranging, and I discuss various implications for our understanding of agency, the self, time consciousness, and theology, among other things.

Highlights

  • In an oft-quoted passage, William James claims “the unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward- and a forward-looking end. It is only as parts of this duration-block that the relation of succession of one end to the other is perceived.” (James, 1890, pp. 609–610). This quote and the section of The Principles of Psychology from which it is extracted have come to be seen as embodying an initial statement of the doctrine of the specious present, which is the idea that the experienced present has some kind of temporal

  • I will argue for constraining the possibility space of temporal experiences, endorsing what I call the Succession Requirement for agents (SR), which holds the experiences of agentive subjects in our world must have the same basic temporal structure, namely, a successive structure

  • It is likely that Non‐Successive Experiencers (NSEs) lack many more capacities often associated with agency that rely on epistemic asymmetry as well

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Summary

Introduction

In an oft-quoted passage, William James claims “the unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward- and a forward-looking end. I will argue for constraining the possibility space of temporal experiences, endorsing what I call the Succession Requirement for agents (SR), which holds the experiences of agentive subjects in our world must have the same basic temporal structure, namely, a successive structure. 187) suggestion, inspired by Buddhist thinking, that we reject the enduring self and see human experience as consisting of “successive momentary subjects, each timelessly entrenched in its own temporal perspective,” may be off the mark for precisely the reason that such a move invokes a plethora of non-successive experiencers, none of which can be the agents we take ourselves to be. Because agency is not compatible with non-successive experience, the succession requirement must obtain for agents in this world

Succession
One Damn Thing After Another: A Brief History
Challenging the Possibility of Non‐successively Experiencing Agents
Causal Distance and Direction
Epistemic Asymmetry
Intentionality
NSEs and Non‐standard Theories of Agency
Losing Your Self in the Moment
Findings
Conclusion
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