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The time-lag argument and simultaneity

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Abstract

The time-lag argument seems to put some pressure on naïve realism to agree that seeing must happen simultaneously with what is seen; meanwhile, a wide-accepted empirical fact suggests that light takes time to transmit from objects at a distance to perceivers—which implies what is seen happened before seeing, and, accordingly, naïve realism must be false. In this paper, I will, first of all, show that the time-lag argument has in fact involves a misunderstanding concept of simultaneity: according to Special Relativity, simultaneity is a matter of convention rather than a matter of fact, so, in principle, we can stipulate a perceptual conception of simultaneity, according to which what is seen is simultaneous with seeing. Secondly, the generalized time-lag argument has a mistaken view on the perceived events and perceiving; it has a doubtful assumption that these events are momentary in the mathematical sense. Such idealization is the main reason why we have the intuition that the time-lag effect of perceiving is in conflict with our ordinary perceptual experiences. Finally, I argue that the naïve realist account of the perceptual relation is a nontemporal constitutive relation; and hence naïve realism is compatible with the claim that we can perceive things as they were, and it should not be weakened by the time-lag argument.

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Notes

  1. Some philosophers prefer the term “Direct Realism” to the term “naïve realism” because “naïve” is supposed to be pejorative. However, if defending naïve realism is a process of finding a way back to our original view on perception, namely a naïve view, then the term “naïve realism” is preferable. I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing up this terminological issue, which gives me the opportunity to briefly address it.

  2. I assume that the backward causation is implausible. The discussion of its impossibility is beyond the scope of this paper. For the discussion, see Ben-Yami (2007, 2010).

  3. The assumption of an absolute time might also be a stipulation (or a convention).

  4. I thank an anonymous reviewer for reminding me that Descartes’ view on the propagation of light is derived from his physics.

  5. Here I do not commit myself to any substantial theory of color. I use the term “phenomenologically” to indicate my neutrality.

  6. I thank an anonymous reviewer for reminding me that there is no real directness or indirectness implied in using the preposition “by” here.

  7. I assume that backward causation is impossible, so we cannot perceive future things. The discussion of the impossibility of backward causation can be seen in Ben-Yami (2007, 2010).

  8. Le Morvan does not consider the conventional nature of simultaneity. But if we adopt the standard synchronization, then we do see a star as it used to be.

  9. I’m indebted to Howard Robinson who put forward this objection in a private conversation. Sean Enda Power (2010) mentioned a similar objection.

  10. See Grice (1961).

  11. C.D. Broad (1952) describes vision as ‘saltatory’: it seems to leap the spatial gap between the perceiver and the perceived.

  12. Here, I follow the majority to stipulate that the incoming light’s speed is finite.

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Acknowledgements

I’m most indebted to Hanoch Ben-Yami for his inspiring discussions on special relativity and its relationship to vision. His meticulous and insightful comments also helped a lot to improve this paper. I’m also grateful to Keith Allen, Tim Crane, Ette Dan, Rob Hoveman, Ferenc Huoranszki, Howard Robinson, and two anonymous reviewers for their stimulating comments on various aspects of the paper’s earlier versions. The research was fully sponsored by Central European University Foundation of Budapest (Grant No. BPF/17869). With CEU’s funding, I could not complete it.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

    Zhiwei Gu

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Gu, Z. The time-lag argument and simultaneity. Synthese 199, 11231–11248 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03287-1

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