Towards an account of intuitive time

Empirical research demonstrates that people hold many intuitive theories of the physical and biological worlds, but this research has yet to extend to the domain of time. However, in developing and motivating particular philosophical theories of time, many philosophers have made claims to the effect that adults hold an intuitive theory of time (‘common sense time’), and have suggested that a number of beliefs contribute to this theory: the Objective Now Assumption (there is an objective moment in time that is the present moment); the Past-Present-Future Difference Assumption (the past, the present, and the future are fundamentally different in nature); and the Dynamicity Assumption (time as something that undergoes constant change). We empirically examined the content of people’s beliefs about time, and whether these beliefs covary in a theory-like way. In Study 1 we drew on the three assumptions to present participants with a large number of statements about time, and explored their responses using exploratory factor analysis. We found that subsets of people’s beliefs about time covaried in interpretable ways, suggesting that they are associated with a number of latent belief constructs: Open Future, Mutable Past, Presentism, and Directionality.

Study 2 successfully replicated this model in a new sample and, using latent profile analysis, found evidence of multiple and mutually incompatible intuitive theories of time. Three plausible belief profiles emerged. Approximately 60% of participants, falling into two distinct profiles, responded in a way that was broadly consistent with some aspects of common sense time. Both contained participants who endorsed Directionality and Open Future and rejected the mutability of the past; members of one profile demonstrated a noticeable degree of endorsement of Presentism, whereas members of the other rejected it. However, a significant minority of participants (approximately 40%) belonged to a profile whose members were more likely than were participants belonging to other profiles to reject aspects of common-sense time. This subpopulation appears to hold an intuitive theory of time that is somewhat more consistent with the view of the nature of time emerging from modern physics. On this view there is no objective present dividing past from future, and thus there are no fundamental differences between the past, present, and future, nor are there dynamic changes in time.

While some philosophers might be read as developing theories of time based on the intuitive theories held by distinct subpopulations, we have provided evidence against the claim that there is only one such intuitive theory of time with which people typically operate. Given these differences between subpopulations, philosophers need to proceed with caution when invoking alleged intuitions about time, and might benefit from close collaboration with psychologists on how individual differences in beliefs about time can arise, the implications of such individual differences for the process of grasping scientific time, and the relation between beliefs about time and temporal biases.