Comunicação | First International Colloquium Emergence and Time: 
Braga 5-7 September 2023 (CEFH da UCP-Braga; FCT).

The view that time is real structures our common beliefs and discourse about ourselves or the world. Common alternative views of the nature of time may include differences about time asymmetry, intrinsic direction, or the distinction between objective and subjective, but never question its reality or existence.  

This ontic realism is problematic in scientific views about time. Time appears in most equations of classic physics. However, since Newton we know that we do not measure the true-time t, but the assumption of its existence allows efficient frameworks to describe nature, change, and causation ​(Newton, 2017, p. 37)​. Relativity and Quantum theories turn obsolete the ordinary belief about a time t flowing by itself, and in relation to which everything evolves. This stance allows a description of nature, and of change as independent of space or time ​(Rovelli, 2017, 2018)​.  

Human organisms code inner and outer situations or events into neural maps for homeostatic purposes ​(Damasio, 2003; Damasio & Carvalho, 2013)​, and human bodies also create secondary and schematic maps of those first order maps and merge them into neural schemas for action or motor behavior ​(Arbib, 1999; Aziz-Zadeh & Damasio, 2008; Jeannerod, 1999)​.  Neural mappings code time as temporal meanings derived from cognitive representations of space and motion, and these meanings can be enacted through synchronous coactivation of neural mappings or patterns ​(Kraft et al., 2009; Pöppel, 1994, 2009)​ and traduced into symbolic, grammatical, and diagrammatical units for reasoning or causal narration ​(Brandt, 2020a; Evans, 2004, 2013; Talmy, 2000, 2003b)​, or other intentional actions ​(Bergen et al., 2003; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005; Talmy, 2003a)​. 

In this paper, we discuss the dependence of such alternative views of time upon a presumed bifurcation between concepts of subjective or mental origin as opposed to concepts having a sensorimotor, or external origin. First, we will argue that such bifurcation is illusory because temporal experience and cognition is a complex process involving several cognitive processes (assessing motion, fictive motion, spatial situations, and duration; to distinguish the present from the past, to anticipate the future from present and past experiences, to judge simultaneity, to order events in memory in chronological or causal sequences, etc.)  Second, we will argue that although time cannot be equated with an objectively real attribute of the physical world, grammatical structures for temporal cognition define temporal frames of reference ​(Evans, 2013)​ that enable us to make sense of the dynamical aspects of our experience, such as motion, change, and causation. Finally, we will discuss the possible reconciliation between the multiplicity of times in relativity theory or timeless physical theories ​(Rovelli, 2009, 2021)​ and the temporal reference systems in human language and thought. 

The evidence presented indicates that time is not a unitary notion or property but a complex, processual, and multidimensional cognitive representation ​(Brandt, 2020b; Rovelli, 2021)​ that looks consistent with a dynamical conception of the world but denies both Presentism and Eternalism ​(Rovelli, 2009; Tooley, 2000)​. 

References 

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​Evans, V. (2013). Language and Time. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107340626 

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