scholarly journals You can't change the past: Children’s recognition of the causal asymmetry between past and future events

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine A Tillman ◽  
Caren Walker
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Future Event ◽  
Turn On ◽  
The Past ◽  
External Agents ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Do So

Children’s temporal and causal reasoning skills improve substantially during early childhood, but it remains unclear when they fully understand the conceptual distinction between the past and the future. Here we explored U.S. 3- to 6-year-old children’s (n = 228) and adults’ (n = 60) understanding that acting in the present can change the future but not the past. To do so, we told participants 3-step causal stories, e.g., “(1) When Sally flips the light switch, (2) the light turns on, (3) so she can see to find her toy,” and asked about the effects of an action at event 2, e.g., “What if John turned off the light?”. When asked about the effects of the change on the future consequent event (3), only 3-year-olds responded at chance, while 4- to 6-year-olds became increasingly likely to judge that the future event would also change. However, when asked about the effects of the change on the past antecedent event (1), children of all ages, like adults, consistently judged that the past event still occurred. This suggests that children have an early-developing understanding that the past cannot be changed. Using a similar paradigm, we also explored children’s reasoning about the implications of the non-occurrence of event 2, in which the cause was not specified, e.g., “What if the light didn’t turn on?”. Both children and adults reasoned differently about these scenarios than they did about those involving actions by external agents. In particular, adults and 6-year-olds inferred that the antecedent event also had not occurred. Implications for theoretical accounts of causal and temporal reasoning are discussed.

Discourse about the Future

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 169-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Clark
Keyword(s):  
Future Event ◽  
True Statement ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Future ◽  
Tensed Sentence ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Contingent Event ◽  
Truth Value

While philosophers feel relatively comfortable about talking of the present and the past, some of them feel uncomfortable about talking in just the same way of future events. They feel that, in general, discourse about the future differs significantly from discourse about the past and present, and that these differences reflect a logical asymmetry between the past and future beyond the merely defining fact that the future succeeds, and the past precedes, the present time. The problem is: how can we talk about events which have not yet happened, or at any rate are not yet bound to happen, or whose participants do not yet exist? The effect of these worries has led them to claim to recognise restrictions on our talk about the future which do not govern talk about the past and present. The most famous of these views is Aristotle's. According to one familiar interpretation, he holds that a statement about a future event which is not yet settled, a contingent event in the future, is neither true nor false, even though the statement that the event either will or will not happen is necessarily true. Proponents of this view felt that if a future-tensed statement were already true then the fact that it stated would already be settled. I do not propose to discuss this well-known and muchdiscussed doctrine of Aristotle's, but I do want to consider some allied views which have been aired recently, and to look at their philosophical significance. Before I look at these, however, it will be convenient to recall three of the main reasons why the Aristotelian doctrine is unpopular. In the first place it is paradoxical to accept that a statement of the form p v ∼ p is (necessarily) true while claiming that neither of its disjuncts is true. Then there are misgivings about the notion of truth involved: many feel that truth is essentially an attribute of timeless propositions and that it is nonsense to talk of a statement's becoming true as you would of Aristotle's views if the event described became inevitable. There is also the difficulty of accounting for the meaning of a future-tensed sentence which may express a statement that is neither true nor false simply because what it states is not yet settled. It could not be said of the sentence expressing such a statement that you know what it means if you know what it is for the sentence to express a true statement. I know the meaning of the present-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle is now being waged’ if I know that it can normally be used to make a true statement precisely in the event of there being a sea-battle being waged at present. But I do not know the meaning of the future-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle will be waged tomorrow’ simply by knowing that the sentence expresses a true statement if it is already settled that there is going to be a battle: the statement doesn't mean that the battle is already settled, otherwise it would not lack a truth-value when the matter was still open – it would be false.

Discourse about the Future

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Michael Clark
Keyword(s):  
Future Event ◽  
True Statement ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Future ◽  
Tensed Sentence ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Contingent Event ◽  
Truth Value

While philosophers feel relatively comfortable about talking of the present and the past, some of them feel uncomfortable about talking in just the same way of future events. They feel that, in general, discourse about the future differs significantly from discourse about the past and present, and that these differences reflect a logical asymmetry between the past and future beyond the merely defining fact that the future succeeds, and the past precedes, the present time. The problem is: how can we talk about events which have not yet happened, or at any rate are not yet bound to happen, or whose participants do not yet exist? The effect of these worries has led them to claim to recognise restrictions on our talk about the future which do not govern talk about the past and present. The most famous of these views is Aristotle's. According to one familiar interpretation, he holds that a statement about a future event which is not yet settled, a contingent event in the future, is neither true nor false, even though the statement that the event either will or will not happen is necessarily true. Proponents of this view felt that if a future-tensed statement were already true then the fact that it stated would already be settled. I do not propose to discuss this well-known and muchdiscussed doctrine of Aristotle's, but I do want to consider some allied views which have been aired recently, and to look at their philosophical significance. Before I look at these, however, it will be convenient to recall three of the main reasons why the Aristotelian doctrine is unpopular. In the first place it is paradoxical to accept that a statement of the form p v ∼ p is (necessarily) true while claiming that neither of its disjuncts is true. Then there are misgivings about the notion of truth involved: many feel that truth is essentially an attribute of timeless propositions and that it is nonsense to talk of a statement's becoming true as you would of Aristotle's views if the event described became inevitable. There is also the difficulty of accounting for the meaning of a future-tensed sentence which may express a statement that is neither true nor false simply because what it states is not yet settled. It could not be said of the sentence expressing such a statement that you know what it means if you know what it is for the sentence to express a true statement. I know the meaning of the present-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle is now being waged’ if I know that it can normally be used to make a true statement precisely in the event of there being a sea-battle being waged at present. But I do not know the meaning of the future-tensed sentence ‘A sea-battle will be waged tomorrow’ simply by knowing that the sentence expresses a true statement if it is already settled that there is going to be a battle: the statement doesn't mean that the battle is already settled, otherwise it would not lack a truth-value when the matter was still open – it would be false.

scholarly journals A palace fit for the future: Desirability in temporal work

2021 ◽  
pp. 147612702110120
Author(s):  
Siavash Alimadadi ◽  
Andrew Davies ◽  
Fredrik Tell
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Renewal Program ◽  
The Future ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Future Outcomes ◽  
Pluralistic Contexts

Research on the strategic organization of time often assumes that collective efforts are motivated by and oriented toward achieving desirable, although not necessarily well-defined, future states. In situations surrounded by uncertainty where work has to proceed urgently to avoid an impending disaster, however, temporal work is guided by engaging with both desirable and undesirable future outcomes. Drawing on a real-time, in-depth study of the inception of the Restoration and Renewal program of the Palace of Westminster, we investigate how organizational actors develop a strategy for an uncertain and highly contested future while safeguarding ongoing operations in the present and preserving the heritage of the past. Anticipation of undesirable future events played a crucial role in mobilizing collective efforts to move forward. We develop a model of future desirability in temporal work to identify how actors construct, link, and navigate interpretations of desirable and undesirable futures in their attempts to create a viable path of action. By conceptualizing temporal work based on the phenomenological quality of the future, we advance understanding of the strategic organization of time in pluralistic contexts characterized by uncertainty and urgency.

Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Hilary M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
To Come

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.

Time and Truth: The Presentism-Eternalism Debate

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Stoneham
Keyword(s):  
Open Future ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Growing Block ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Block Universe ◽  
The Way

AbstractThere are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agrees with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreement. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect.

One Hundred and Fifty Years of Teubner Texts

1961 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-171
Author(s):  
Bruno Doer
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Publishing Firm ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Future ◽  
Do So ◽  
A Share

It is always agreeable to offer congratulations to someone who is celebrating a jubilee. It is a particular pleasure to do so when the ‘child’ whose birthday it is can look back over 150 years of existence, and all those who have a share in the jubilee may reflect that the thanks for the achievements of the past and wishes for the future serve the cause of publicity. For no one who sets out to discuss the state of classical studies in Germany can, or should, fail to mention the Leipzig publishing firm of B. G. Teubner. Here publishing and scholarship have in the past century and a half formed an indissoluble partnership which has made it its duty to provide the best texts for use in the study of classical antiquity.

scholarly journals Quitting Without Reporting Having Tried: Findings From a National Survey

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Brown ◽  
Eleni Vangeli ◽  
Jennifer A. Fidler ◽  
Tobias Raupach ◽  
Robert West
Keyword(s):  
National Survey ◽  
Common Reason ◽  
Household Surveys ◽  
The Past ◽  
Quit Attempt ◽  
Quit Attempts ◽  
The Future ◽  
Quitting Smoking ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Do So

Background: It is assumed that smokers rarely quit without ‘attempting’ to do so but the assumption does not appear to have been adequately tested. This study assessed the prevalence of reporting having stopped without reporting a quit attempt and the reasons given for this discrepancy.Methods: Data were collected from ex-smokers who said they had quit within the last 12 months during nationally representative household surveys conducted monthly between 2006–12.Results: Of the 1,892 ex-smokers who said that they had quit within the last 12 months, 13.9% (95%CI = 12.4%–15.5%) reported having made no serious quit attempts in that period. In a sub-group of 24 smokers who were asked why they had reported stopping without also reporting an attempt, nine cited inconsistency over timing; three reported stopping without attempting to do so; four did not consider it an ‘attempt’ because they had succeeded; and six had not ruled out the occasional cigarette in the future.Conclusions: A substantial minority of people who report having stopped in the past year may fail to report a corresponding quit attempt. However, quitting smoking without considering that one has tried appears to be rare. Instead, the most common reason for the discrepancy is inconsistent reporting of the timing of quit attempts.

On The Meaning of “Act of God”

1968 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon D. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biblical History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Biblical Faith ◽  
Song Of Moses ◽  
Do So

The concept, “act of God,” is central to the biblical understanding of God and his relation to the world. Repeatedly we are told of the great works performed by God in behalf of his people and in execution of his own purposes in history. From the “song of Moses,” which celebrates the “glorious deeds” (Ex. 15:11) through which Yahweh secured the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, to the letters of Paul, which proclaim God's great act delivering us “from the dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and reconciling us with himself, we are confronted with a “God who acts.” The “mighty acts” (Ps. 145:4), the “wondrous deeds” (Ps. 40:5), the “wonderful works” (Ps. 107:21) of God are the fundamental subject-matter of biblical history, and the object of biblical faith is clearly the One who has acted repeatedly and with power in the past and may be expected to do so in the future.

scholarly journals Culture, Temporal Focus, and Values of the Past and the Future

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. 1030-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tieyuan Guo ◽  
Li-Jun Ji ◽  
Roy Spina ◽  
Zhiyong Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Future Event ◽  
Asymmetry Effect ◽  
Past Event ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Canadians ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Focus

This article examines cultural differences in how people value future and past events. Throughout four studies, the authors found that European Canadians attached more monetary value to an event in the future than to an identical event in the past, whereas Chinese and Chinese Canadians placed more monetary value to a past event than to an identical future event. The authors also showed that temporal focus—thinking about the past or future—explained cultural influences on the temporal value asymmetry effect. Specifically, when induced to think about and focus on the future, Chinese valued the future more than the past, just like Euro-Canadians; when induced to think about and focus on the past, Euro-Canadians valued the past more than the future, just like Chinese.

The Problem of Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Callender
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Albert Einstein ◽  
Problem Of Time ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Core Features

In early childhood we come to model the world as having a special present that carves the world up into a past, present, and future. We regard the past as fixed and the future open, and we feel that this structure updates itself, or flows. The core features of this conception of time—manifest time—appear to be virtually universal, and they pervade our language, thought, and behavior. Yet manifest time seems to conflict with time as understood by physics. This conflict worried Albert Einstein, but the philosopher Rudolph Carnap pointed toward a way forward.

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