Talk Details
Prof. Narayanan Srinivasan
Dept of Cognitive Science, IIT KanpurTitle: A Temporal Hierarchy Framework for Temporal Properties of Consciousness
Abstract:
Temporality is a fundamental property of consciousness. Time is also important in many disciplines like Physics and its basic nature has been hotly debated. Within phenomenology, phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger have tried to understand the nature of time-consciousness. Philosophical theories of time-consciousness have tried to address its nature and they differ in terms of the temporal properties of the vehicle and content of our experience. In attempting to understand temporal consciousness, we have proposed a nested hierarchical model of multiple timescales. The model consists of three time scales that could potentially explain many findings on the phenomenology of temporal experience as well as timing of cognition. The model combines three different philosophical models (i.e., cinematic, extensional, and retentional) arguing that these different possibilities correspond to different time scales arranged in a nested hierarchical fashion. The model can be used to explain different phenomena and makes predictions on how we experience time, visual experience, and temporal properties of visual experience. I will discuss some recent experiments on visual awareness and temporality that are based on the proposed model.