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Studies on time: a proposal on how to get out of circularity

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Abstract

The analysis of time is vitiated very often by circularity: several disciplines, such as psychology, linguistics, and neurosciences, analyze time by using concepts or terms which already contain in themselves, or are based, on the experience and notion of time (as when, for example, time is defined as “duration”, or when our ability to estimate durations is explained by resorting to the notion of an internal clock). Some detailed examples of circularity in the analysis of time are given here and examined. A way out of circularity is then given: it is represented by the proposal of attentional semantics (AS) of considering words and their meanings in terms of the aim they serve, and the means and processes developed and implemented in order to achieve that aim. According to AS, the main aim of words is that of indicating to, and eliciting in, the listener or reader a specific conscious experience: namely, the conscious experience referred to by their meanings. Words achieve their main aim by conveying the condensed instructions on the attentional operations one has to perform if one wants to consciously experience what is expressed through and by them. By describing the conscious experiences elicited by words in terms of the attentional operations that are responsible for the production of such conscious experiences, AS offers an a-linguistic counterpart to language, and therefore an effective way out of circularity. Following in footsteps of Mach (Contributions to the analysis of the sensations, 1890), but slightly revising his hypothesis, AS defines time-sensation as the perception of the effort made, or alternatively the nervous energy expended, by the organ of attention when performing a “temporal activity” (for instance, estimating duration), that is, when one’s own attention is focused in a continuous and incremental way on the conscious product of the (“non-temporal”) activity performed by means of another portion of one’s attention.

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Notes

  1. Four different psychophysical methods were used to assess prospective time judgments: the method of constant stimuli, the method of magnitude estimation, the method of stimulus duration reproduction, and the method of single stimuli.

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Acknowledgments

I am highly indebted to Franco Baroncini, CEO of Sincron©, for having always encouraged me to carry on my research throughout all these years. I thank Joseph Glicksohn and Peter Hancock for their insightful and constructive comments on a previous draft of the paper. I also thank my colleague Giulio Benedetti and Steve Taylor, from whom I have always had fruitful advices and suggestions. I am also particularly grateful to Nick White for having revised the English version of the paper.

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    Giorgio Marchetti

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Marchetti, G. Studies on time: a proposal on how to get out of circularity. Cogn Process 10, 7–40 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-008-0215-1

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