Logic & Philosophy of Science Colloquium

The naive idea that the brain lets time be its own representation has been known to be untenable for some time. As Kant maintained, and as recent results in cognitive neuroscience have confirmed, the mind is not a passive recipient of temporal information, but an active interpreter. In this talk I will present a theory of the information processing structure used by the brain that accounts for a number of aspects of temporal experience, and is superior to a number of prominent recent proposals (e.g. Dennett and Kinsbourne's 'multiple drafts' model, and Rao, Eagleman and Sejnowski's optimal smoother model). The model sheds new light on the familiar 'specious present' and similar philosophical views (e.g. those of Husserl).