Research

Carnap's words describe a general idea that has recently once again moved to the forefront of debates about time in philosophy: that the understanding of time that modern science (in particular physics) provides us with differs radically from how we ordinarily think about time. The idea is that in our everyday understanding, we think of time as 'passing' or 'flowing', and in distinguishing between past, present and future events, we take ourselves to be describing a difference in the nature of those events themselves. By contrast, scientists typically operate with a picture of reality in which the idea of time passing or flowing does not figure, and which treats past, present, and future events exactly the same. Given this, many philosophers, just like Carnap, believe that our everyday understanding of time rests on a profound mistake about the nature of reality.
 
However, Carnap's words also indicate a crucial role for psychology to play in informing philosophical debates about this claim. By helping properly describe and explain how we ordinarily think about time, research in psychology can contribute to a better understanding of how deep the gulf between the everyday and the scientific notions of time actually runs, and what is responsible for it. Yet, so far, there is very little by way of research on time that genuinely crosses the boundaries between philosophy and psychology in this way. Philosophers rarely consult actual empirical research to back up their claims about core features of our everyday thinking about time, and psychologists studying time have not typically taken their task to be to unpack the basic commitments of our everyday understanding of time that are the subject of philosophical debate. This project will be the first to provide a genuinely interdisciplinary investigation of our everyday understanding of time and its diverse aspects. It will ask as yet underexplored questions under three main themes:

• How does an understanding of time develop in children, and how should we characterize any developmental changes in this understanding? To what extent does young children's understanding of time already involve ideas such as that time 'passes' or that past, present, and future are different from one another in their nature? 


• How should we interpret the results of research in psychology that indicate close connections, on the cognitive level, between time and space? Might such research point to aspects of the way people think about or experience time that are actually more in line with how time is conceived of in the sciences, where time is often assimilated to space?

 

• Does research in psychology bear out the idea of fundamental differences in people’s attitudes toward the past, the present and the future, and should such differences be interpreted as indicating implicit commitments about the nature of time itself? Is it possible to construe such differences as rational, and if it is not, what might explain them?

 
In addressing these questions, the project will provide a new agenda for conducting interdisciplinary research on time, one that will pave the way for innovative future directions of research in both philosophy and psychology.

Rudolf Carnap

Albert Einstein