Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Extensionalism is, roughly, the view that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended (and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur). This view is widely acknowledged to be incompatible with thin presentism, the second most popular position in temporal ontology. In this paper, I argue that extensionalism is also incompatible with several other positions in temporal ontology, namely those positing the existence of non-present times that host sentience—positions I collectively refer to as the sentient non-present view. Most notably, extensionalism proves to be incompatible with B-theoretical eternalism, which is the most popular position in temporal ontology.

One of the most prominent positions within the debate on temporal perception is extensionalism, a view roughly positing that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur. The debate on temporal perception intersects significantly with temporal ontology, the philosophical inquiry into the ontic status of the past and the future. In particular, it has been argued that extensionalism is incompatible with thin presentism, which is the second most prevalent position in temporal ontology. However, it has largely gone unnoticed that…

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