Abstract
If it is possible to think that human life is temporal as a whole, and we can make sense of Wittgenstein’s claim that the psychological phenomena called ‘dispositions’ do not have genuine temporal duration on the basis of a distinction between dispositions and other mental processes, we need a compelling account of how time applies to these dispositions. I undertake this here by examining the concept of expectation, a disposition with a clear nexus to time by the temporal point at which the expectation is satisfied. However, it seems that we cannot always identify the beginning of an expectation, and in a few cases, its end. If so, the reduction of expectations to neural events or accompanying feelings which spread over time in the usual way seems a hard enterprise, because these processes, much as other physical processes, have a definite and largely measurable time span. Only at a higher level, that is, as part of human life, expectation can be said to be temporal.
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Notes
There might be cases in which, as time goes by, the event that is expected becomes past so that, after its occurrence, I could be said to be expecting a (now) past event. However, this possibility does not exclude that what is expected has to lie ahead in the future for me to form some kind of expectation about it.
‘Biological function provides a potential source of these aims which would enable an understanding of them in physicalistically acceptable terms. However, the application of such an appeal to the understanding of the aims of mental states is not straightforward. Consider the case of the aim of belief. It is often remarked that the aim of belief—to be true—explains why we cannot consciously believe at will. How should we interpret the ‘cannot’? On one interpretation, the cannot is as strong as metaphysical necessity. It is literally not possible for a creature consciously to be able to do this. Appeal to biological function has no capacity to explain this unless it is not possible for there to be non-evolved creatures with beliefs’ (Noordhof 2011, 278).
The concept of intention is likewise hostage to similar puzzles. For instance, it is quite unintuitive to say: ‘what I am at, is intending’ or ‘I am engaged in intending’ (1980, I §598). In claiming this, Wittgenstein judges that a subject is certainly not intending, since yet again intending is not a time-limited activity.
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Garcia-Valdecasas, M. Do Expectations Have Time Span?. Axiomathes 23, 665–681 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-012-9205-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-012-9205-0