Yasushi Hirai (Keio University): Tense or Aspect: Reframing the Bergson-McTaggart Debate on Time

This presentation aims to provide a systematic organization of the concept of aspect, which characterizes Bergson’s philosophy of time. While McTaggart’s argument, representing tense-based philosophies of time, assumes seriality from the outset (specifically, a total order satisfying both antisymmetry and completeness), Bergson’s argument, starting with the imperfective aspect, establishes the internal temporal constitution of an event (Comrie) and treats series as a subsequent construction. Building on early interpretations by linguists who read Bergson from the perspective of aspect, this presentation proposes the introduction of a third aspect, the perfective aspect, as a crucial element alongside the more commonly recognized imperfective and perfect aspects. The perfective aspect contributes to the local unitization of time. By re-reading Bergson as an attempt to grasp the flow of time from the local perspective of aspect, it is shown that the paradoxes of time inherent in McTaggart’s theory can be avoided, and the flow of time can be understood independently of seriality.

Barry Dainton (University of Liverpool) : How to Live Forever

I will be focusing on a forthcoming (Analytic Philosophy) paper “Experience and Time: A Metaphysical Approach” by David Builes and Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello (henceforth B&OI). In their prizewinning paper B&OI develop an intriguing new line of argument relating to the nature of temporal experience. According to extensionalists our temporal experience is extended over brief intervals of time, in much the way it seems to be. The argument developed by B&OI puts the extensionalist in the awkward position of having to accept that their current stream of consciousness had no beginning – and hence that their life is infinitely long. Finding this result objectionable, the “metaphysical approach” defended by B&OI is a full-blooded version of retentionalism, according to which seemingly dynamic experience exists in durationless episodes of consciousness. Since Bergson would (probably) incline more to the extensional view than the instantaneous alternative the line of reasoning developed by B&OI will obviously be of interest to Bergsonians.

Modération : Anna Kuszmiruk (Nicolaus Copernicus University) 

Organisation de l’atelier : Caterina Zanfi et Mathilde Tahar

Dans le cadre de l’IRN CNRS « Un chapitre dans l’histoire globale de la philosophie : nouvelles perspectives sur le bergsonisme » 

Zoom Link: https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/95096060568?pwd=ek43aEpvYmFocGFOejlqc0tKdkd2UT09

Meeting ID: 950 9606 0568
mot de passe: hqxn4