One of the most striking features of our everyday understanding of time is that we think of time as passing or flowing, in a way that differs radically from how we think about space. This workshop will be concerned with the question as to what grounds this idea of time as passing or flowing, especially as modern physics seems to make no room for an objective passage or flow of time. What do we mean by talking of time as (apparently) passing or flowing, and can we give a description of the supposed experience of passage or flow in non-metaphorical terms? There are particular ways, separate from the supposed passage or flow of time, in which time is objectively different from space, or ways in which we consider objects to occupy time differently from how they occupy space. Might these other differences between time and space be able to contribute to an explanation also of why we think of time as passing or flowing? Is the source of the idea of the flow or passage of time a perceptual or a cognitive one? How might the idea of the flow or passage of time be connected to other aspects of our everyday metaphysics, such as our conceptions of objects, the self, agency and change?

Participants: Roberto Bottini (Trento), David Braddon-Mitchell (Sydney), Patrick Burns (Queen's University Belfast), Craig Callender (UCSD), Thomas Crowther (Warwick), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Christoph Hoerl (Warwick), Jenann Ismael (Columbia), Ruth Lee (Queen's University Belfast), Teresa McCormack (Queen's University Belfast), Kristie Miller (Sydney), Simon Prosser (St Andrews), Luca Rinaldi (Milano-Bicocca), Giuliano Torrengo (University of Milan), Gerardo Viera (Antwerp).

Provisional Schedule


Friday, 18th February

9:30-10:15 Christoph Hoerl: Welcome and Introduction
 
10:15-11:30 Jenann Ismael: Eternalism Without the Block
 
11:45-1:00 Tom Crowther: Passage and the Progressive

1:15-2:30 lunch at Trattoria Storica

2:45-4:00 Roberto Bottini: The spatial representation of time in the mind and brain
 
4:15-5:30 Giuliano Torrengo: Passage, flow, and change

7:00 dinner at Trattoria Al Mariner
 
 
Saturday, 19th February
 
9:30-10:45 Craig Callender: Recent Progress on Explaining the Flow of Time
 
11:00-12:15 Kristie Miller: Reported Passage Phenomenology and Beliefs about Time’s Passing

12:30-1:45 lunch at Trattoria Storica

2:00-3:15 Ruth Lee: Beliefs about and phenomenology of the flow of time
 
3:15-4:30 Luca Rinaldi: Bringing order out of chaos: when language structures time

4:45-6:00 Simon Prosser: Moving through time

7:45 dinner at Ristorante Ogio