The Illusions of Time

1. Cognition and Representation of Temporal Phenomena

   1. Spatiotemporal Illusions Involving Perceived Motion

      • Timothy L. Hubbard

      Pages 289-313

   2. Perceptual Illusions Caused by Discrete Sampling

      • Rodika Sokoliuk, Rufin VanRullen

      Pages 315-338

   3. Time Markers and Temporal Illusions

      • Valtteri Arstila

      Pages 339-357

2. Back Matter

   Pages 359-374

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This edited collection presents the latest cutting-edge research in the philosophy and cognitive science of temporal illusions. Illusion and error have long been important points of entry for both philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the mind. Temporal illusions, specifically, concern a fundamental feature of lived experience, temporality, and its relation to a fundamental feature of the world, time, thus providing invaluable insight into investigations of the mind and its relationship with the world. The existence of temporal illusions crucially challenges the naïve assumption that we can simply infer the temporal nature of the world from experience. This anthology gathers eighteen original papers from current leading researchers in this subject, covering four broad and interdisciplinary topics: illusions of temporal passage, illusions and duration, illusions of temporal order and simultaneity, and the relationship between temporal illusions and the cognitive representation of time.

• reality
• consciousness
• temporal order
• cognition
• memory
• time perception

“The book The Illusions of Time is very well-structured and this structure helps understanding enormously. … Even if you are not a psychologist, neuroscientist or philosopher, all the contributions herein are understandable; the illustrations are particularly illuminating. … It is certainly not intended to be a conclusion, but rather an inventory of what certain sciences know at present. That is exactly what the book is good for, to question what we take for granted when talking about ‘time.’” (Kerstin Cuhls, Kronoscope, Issue 21, 2021)

• University of Turku, Turku, Finland

  Valtteri Arstila

• Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, USA

  Adrian Bardon

• University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

  Sean Enda Power

• Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

  Argiro Vatakis

Valtteri Arstila is a Collegium Researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and the Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Finland. His research focuses on the philosophy and psychology of subjective time, time consciousness, cognitive penetration, and artificial intelligence.

Adrian Bardon is Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, USA. He is the author of A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time (2013) and The Truth about Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion (2019).

Sean Power is a philosopher researching time, illusion, perception, and epistemology. He is a research affiliate at the University College Cork, Ireland, whose works include Philosophy of Time and Perceptual Experience (2018) and Philosophy of Time: A Contemporary Introduction (forthcoming).

Argiro Vatakis is Assistant Professor at the Psychology Department, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece. She is the Editor-In-Chief for the journal Timing and Time Perception, and the founder of the Timing Research Forum.

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