Sounds and Other Denizens of Time

Abstract

On the basis of the No-Space world thought experiment put forward by Strawson in his Individuals , we attempt to clarify in what sense there may be individual entities that exist only in time and to what extent such entities may qualify as belonging to an objective reality. For Strawson it is sounds which are the individuals of the No-Space world, and on Strawson’s view sounds can belong to objective reality provided that they can be related to an auditory analogue of space. We argue that such an analogue of space can be specified in terms of a system of “master-sounds” that function as analogues of spatial bodies. We then extend our treatment of Strawson’s thought experiment to include parts of the social world that, just like sounds, may be taken to exist only in time. We conclude by proposing a characterization of poems, games of (blind) chess, obligations, debts, and certain other social entities as “No-Space artifacts” since they, too, can exist not only in our spatial world but also in the No-Space world sketched by Strawson.