The Images of Time â Robin Le Poidevin

Can we learn anything about the metaphysical nature of time from considering our mental representation of it? Le Poidevin sets out to show that we can. The book falls into three parts. Part I, ‘Aspects of Time and Representation’, begins with a useful introductory chapter summarizing the argument of the book. Ch. 2 clarifies how Le Poidevin understands the notion of representation and the importance of truth and causation in an account of it. He introduces and defends what he calls the causal truthmaker principle (CTMP), namely, that perceptual beliefs which qualify for the title ‘knowledge’ are caused by their truthmakers. For any perceptual belief which counts as knowledge, there is some causally active aspect of the world that makes the belief true. This is central to much of the argument throughout the book and sets up the specific problem for the philosophy of time, for according to Le Poidevin, certain accounts of the truthmakers of our perceptual beliefs about time appear not to satisfy (CTMP). His project is to find an account of truthmakers for perceptual beliefs which does satisfy (CTMP), since this is a virtue in so far as (CTMP) is independently attractive. In ch. 3, Le Poidevin distinguishes egocentric from objective forms of representation. Egocentric representations are perspectival, whereas objective representations are from no perspective. This reflects the metaphysical debate between A‐ and B‐theories of time, where the B‐theory takes the difference between past, present and future to be entirely perspectival and mind‐dependent, whereas the A‐theory does not

Argument (complex analysis) · Causal theory of reference · Causation · Cognition · Cognitive science · Epistemology · Mental representation · Metaphysics · Perception · Perspective (graphical) · Philosophy of mind · Representation (politics) · Artificial Intelligence · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Historical Philosophy and Science · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology