Abstract
The time-lag argument forces us to acknowledge that all perception is perception of the past. While the spatial distance between the perceiver and the perceived typically is obvious, the temporal distance usually remains hidden from the perceiver. This temporal distance provides interesting challenges for Perceptual Realism. If objects and events in the world are presented to us as simultaneous with the experience, then the experience is illusory. If we deny that the past exists, then all perception is, like hallucination, perception of something which does not exist. This chapter argues that there are, in fact, several time-lag arguments, and that their importance for philosophical theories of perception has been underestimated. It is argued that they provide important means of evaluating recent theories about perception.
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Notes
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Suchting points out that on the version of the time-lag argument that he develops and eventually provides an argument against:
no use has been made of the consideration that in some cases the object transmitting the light may actually have disappeared by the time the light reaches earth. Such a point may serve to make the argument more dramatic and persuasive, but it is far from clear what it adds to its systematic force. The essential problem would seem to be independent of the question of the existence or non-existence of the object at the time when it is apparently seen. (Suchting, 1969, p. 48)
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An exception is L. S. Carrier (1969) who argues for “the Simultaneity Principle” by claiming that we can only see what exists. Carrier obviously assumes that the past does not exist. A similar idea is suggested by Ronald Houts (1980). However, the view that the past does not exist is but one possible view of the ontology of time. Contra Carrier and Houts, the existence or non-existence of the past is still very much an open question. Due to a perceived conflict with special relativity, the view that the past does not exist, or generally, that there is a metaphysically privileged present, is somewhat controversial (see Bourne, 2006 for an excellent overview, as well as a defense of Presentism, the view that only the present exists). An assumption that the past does not exist underlies what I will refer to as the hallucination-like time-lag argument. Thus, there can be an overlap between the classic time-lag argument and the hallucination-like time-lag argument. I will insist that they are distinct because one could accept “the Simultaneity Principle” without denying that the past exists, and one can accept the hallucination-like time-lag argument without accepting “the Simultaneity Principle”.
- 4.
Why should we think that we only perceive the past, even if we admit that the process enabling the perception takes time? What decides where and when the entity perceived (seen, heard, etc.) is located? It can be helpful to compare perception with shooting. Like shooting, perception has (typically) a target. A shot is fired from a specific position in spacetime and hits something at a different position in spacetime. What decides the aim for the perception? Where and when should we look to find the actual or presumed target of the perception? There are two natural suggestions: based on the relevant causal process involved in linking the experience and a physical object, or based on where the experience presents the object as being located. We could refer to the latter as the object’s “apparent location”.
One could insist that the apparent location decides where any relevant target for the perceiving has to be. To see the problem with that suggestion, consider a type of thought experiment suggested by Grice (1961) and Soteriou (2000). Let us assume that there are two qualitatively identical red balls, where one is positioned straight in front of the subject, “ball 1”, and one is off to the subject’s right, “ball 2”. Let us also assume that there is a mirror between the subject and ball 1. Further, the mirror is angled so as to reflect light from ball 2 to the subject. As a result of light from ball 2 being reflected by the mirror, the subject has an experience as of a red ball in front of him. In this scenario, does the subject see ball 1 or ball 2? If the target of the perception (seeing in this case) is based on the apparent position, then the subject would see ball 1. After all, the subject has an experience as of a red ball in front of him right where ball 1 in fact is. However, intuitively, the subject in this scenario sees ball 2. Beyond intuition, a sign that the subject sees ball 2, rather than ball 1, is that the subject’s experience is counterfactually dependent on ball 2, and not on ball 1. Similar considerations hold for the temporal case. The experience will counterfactually depend on the state the object is in when the relevant energy (light, sound, odorous molecules) was emitted or reflected off of the object. I conclude that it is the relevant causal connection that decides the target of the perception, rather than the apparent location.
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I add the qualification “typically” because there are, possibly, cases where the time gap becomes apparent and is experienced as such. Because of the great difference of the speed of light and sound waves, audio-visual cross-modal perception offers a type of example. Such cases would include perceiving thunder and lightning, perceiving distant explosions, and seeing and hearing a drummer hit a drum from a distance. In those cases, the same event is first seen and then heard. Possibly, the auditory experience represents the event as past. A suggestion for a purely auditory case might be found in the case of direct hearing and hearing echoes. Possibly, hearing the echoes as echoes implies hearing the event that the echoes present as past. Finding purely visual examples is even more difficult. One option would be, if one accepts the controversial thesis that we can see through photographs and TV screens (as argued by Kendall Walton, 1984), then one could set up a TV screen to be slightly delayed compared to other TV screens. In such a case, the subject might experience the screen with the delay as showing something akin to an echo and the experience might present the event as past.
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Almäng further points out that the conclusion, that all perception is illusory, does not require experience to present events as tensed because “if we assume that the experience of having a perception is given as simultaneous with the perceived event, all perceptions would be illusory whether or not we assume that events are perceived as tensed” (Almäng, 2014, p. 374).
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Byrne and Logue (2009) offer a good overview of various forms of disjunctivism.
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Strictly speaking, Suchting’s argument concerns the accuracy or inaccuracy of judgments made on the basis of perception, rather than the accuracy of the perceptual experience itself, but reading him as if talking directly about perceptual experience yields an interesting argument.
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As an example, John Searle seems to have something like the illusion-like time-lag argument in mind when he argues that his theory is superior to disjunctivism:
A good test case for anybody’s theory of perception is, Can it account for the veridical perception of objects that ceased to exist millions of years ago? I now see a star through a telescope that I know ceased to exist twenty-seven million years ago. In one respect, the experience is not veridical because, again, all experiences are of the here and now, and it seems to me that the star is existing here and now when I know in fact it does not. All the same, I know that I am seeing that particular star. Now I can draw a picture of that, indeed I have drawn such a picture in this chapter. The star causes in me a visual experience. I would like to see the picture drawn by the Disjunctivists. I do not think they can draw a coherent picture. In what sense exactly for them is the star a constituent part of the experience of it? It is pretty tough to describe that for an object that ceased to exist twenty-seven million years ago. (Searle, 2015, p. 198)
When Searle says that all experiences are of the here and now, he could be read as endorsing the Simultaneity Principle, that is, the principle says that we only perceive what is simultaneous with the subject undergoing the experience. On the other hand, in seeming contradiction, Searle says that the subject is seeing that particular star that ceased to exist 27 million years ago. If the star is seen, it can only be seen in the past when it existed, so what the subject sees is not simultaneous with the subject undergoing the experience. As I have argued, the right lesson to draw from the classic time-lag argument is that perception is always of the then and there, rather than the here and now. The confusion is, I think, a result of Searle not distinguishing the classic time-lag argument from the illusion-like time-lag argument. What Searle ought to say is that there is a case to be made for his theory having an advantage over disjunctivism with respect to the illusion-like time-lag argument because his theory, but not (certain forms of) disjunctivism, can account for the fact, if it is a fact, that we perceive past objects as present.
- 12.
See Alvin Goldman (1977, p. 269f) for a similar point.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Jan Almäng, Jola Feix, Anders Nes, Simon Skau, and Sebastian Watzl for helpful discussions of many of the ideas in this chapter.
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Sundberg, K. (2019). Hidden Duration: Time-Lag in the World and Mind. In: Arstila, V., Bardon, A., Power, S.E., Vatakis, A. (eds) The Illusions of Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22048-8_8
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