Čapek’s Argument for the Reality of Temporal Passage
摘要
The antirealist position on temporal passage is that time exists but does not pass. Antirealists either claim that experiences of passage represent something that does not exist or that these experiences do not represent passage. This paper reconstructs and defends an argument for the reality of passage by Milič Čapek that is based on the idea of mental passage, the passage of experience itself. The belief that mental passage exists is introspectively justified. This justification is not undermined by perceptual illusions and is also compatible with antirealist explanations of why the belief arises. Both physicalism and psychophysical dualism justify the premise that mental passage implies physical passage. Arguments by Huw Price and Simon Prosser purport to show that experiences do not represent physical passage. However, these arguments rely on thought experiments that presuppose the non-existence of mental passage, and therefore miss the fact that mental passage enables the representation of physical passage.