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Acta Anal

DOI 10.1007/s12136-011-0134-0

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content


Jan Almng

Received: 8 April 2011 / Accepted: 7 September 2011


# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Francois Recanati has recently argued that each perceptual state has two
distinct kinds of content, complete and explicit content. According to Recanati, the
former is a function of the latter and the psychological mode of perception.
Furthermore, he has argued that explicit content is temporally neutral and that timeconsciousness is a feature of psychological mode. In this paper it is argued, pace
Recanati, that explicit content is not temporally neutral. Recanatis position is
initially presented. Three desiderata for a theory of time-consciousness are
subsequently introduced. It is then argued that a theory locating timeconsciousness as a feature of psychological mode will fail to satisfy these desiderata.
In the last section the intentionality of memories is discussed. Using the notion of
shiftable indexical, it is argued that memories have the same explicit content as
perceptions, but that they nevertheless can have different conditions of satisfaction
since they are entertained in different modes.
Keywords Time . Content . Perception . Memory . Psychological mode . Recanati

1 Introduction
Most philosophers would agree that perceptual states in some loose sense of the
word represent the environment as being at a specific (possibly extended) time. Two
broad reasons can be given for this claim. First, it seems to be a phenomenological
J. Almng
Department of Social and Behavioural Studies, University West, Trollhttan, Sweden
J. Almng
Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
J. Almng (*)
Liljebjrns v 10, SE-671 33 Arvika, Sweden
e-mail: jan.almang@filosofi.gu.se

J. Almng

feature of perceptions that they present states as obtaining and events as occurring in
a certain temporal order and with a certain duration. Secondly, temporal facts
apparently enter into the conditions of satisfaction of a perceptual state. If I see a red
ball right now my perception can only be veridical if there is a red ball in my
environment at the present time. If there was a red ball in my presence an hour ago
but which by now has been removed, the perception is not veridical.
While most philosophers would agree so far, there is widespread disagreement as
to how perceptual states can represent temporal facts. One point of contention
concerns whether or not time-consciousness is to be explicated at the level of
psychological mode or at the level of intentional content. Recently Franois Recanati
has defended the claim that it is to be explicated at the level of psychological mode.
In this paper, it is argued, pace Recanati, that the time-consciousness of perceptual
states is primarily a feature of intentional content rather than of psychological mode.
Section 2 in what follows spells out Recanatis theory. Section 3 argues that the
tensed features of an act of perception are to be found at the level of intentional
content. Section 4 presents an account of the intentionality of perceptions and
memories that locates a temporal indexical in intentional content.

2 Recanati on Mode and Content


In his theory of intentionality, Searle (1983) makes a critical distinction between
psychological mode and intentional content. According to him, the same intentional
content can be entertained in various distinct psychological states. Thus, it is for
example possible to see a red ball, to desire a red ball, think of a red ball, and so on.
In these various cases the intentional contents can be identical, whereas the
psychological modes are different. In the first case, the psychological mode is that of
a visual perception, in the second it is that of a desire, and in the third it is that of a
thought. Psychological mode is thus on Searles account the way a specific content is
entertained by a mental state and by implication what makes the state into a state of a
specific kind.
In Searles theory the psychological mode makes no contribution to the content of
the state. It is at this point that he is criticised by Recanati. According to Recanati
(2007: 130135), we can distinguish between two kinds of content in perceptions.
There is obviously the propositional or intentional content of the experience. This
notion is equivalent to Searles notion of intentional content. In the following, we
shall refer to it as the explicit content of the act. But explicit content differs according
to Recanati from the truth-conditional or complete content of a perceptual
experience. Let us assume that I am seeing a red flower. In this case, the explicit
content of the experience would according to Recanati be that there is a flower
there. On Searles account, however, the explicit content would also include a selfreferential component. The explicit content would thus be tantamount to that there
is a flower there and that there is a flower there is causing this visual experience.
Recanati does not deny the importance of the self-referential component. To the
contrary, he agrees with Searle that it has an important function in the complete
content of the perceptual experience. However, he denies that this component is a
feature of the explicit content of the perception. Rather, he believes that it is a feature

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

of the perceptual mode of entertaining a specific content. The reason is that in order
for a mental state to be a perceptual state, it has to meet the self-referential condition:
For a representation that p to count as a perception that p, it must be the case that
the representation is caused by the fact that p; but what is represented is only the fact
that p (Recanati 2007: 132).
The complete content of an act of perception is consequently constituted by the
explicit content in conjunction with the contribution of the psychological mode. On
Recanatis account, the psychological mode makes the same contribution to the
complete content whenever the explicit content is entertained in that specific mode.
Indeed, the contribution to the complete content in an act of a specific kind is those
features of the complete content that the act shares with other acts of the same kind.
It is to be noted that this means that the phenomenology of an intentional state
supervenes on the complete content and not merely on the explicit content. (Recanati
2007: 141)
The mode-content distinction forms the basis of Recanatis reasoning when he
argues that the time-consciousness of perceptual states is a feature of mode rather
than of explicit content. Recanati notes that the critical distinction between
perceptions and episodic memories of perceptual states concerns the temporal
contents of the perceptual acts. When perceiving an event, the event is presented as
occurring now. When remembering an event however, the event is presented as past.
According to Recanati, we are inclined to think that when visually remembering a
past event, the intentional act has the same explicit content as when we originally
perceived the event: The scene or event the memory is about is clearly the same as
the scene or event the initiating perception is about (that is what makes memory)
(Recanati 2007: 137). In the following, we shall assume that this analysis is correct.
But even so acts of such different kinds as perceptions and memories can
obviously not have the same truth-conditional or complete content. Perceptual states
are veridical when the represented state of affairs is simultaneous with the act of
perception. Memories however can only be veridical when what is represented lies
in the past. Recanati believes that the solution to this apparent puzzle lies in
assigning time-consciousness to the psychological mode of perception. The explicit
content of perceptual states is temporally neutral. Yet perceptual acts are not
temporally neutral since they have to be evaluated at a specific time, to wit, the
present time. But this feature is something they have in virtue of being perceptual
states, not in virtue of their explicit content. Here is Recanati:
The complete content of a perceptual state is analysed into (i) the explicit
content of the state (the lekton) and (ii) a situation with respect to which that
content is supposed to be evaluated. The complete content is distributed, and
that means that what the situation component supplies need not be replicated in
the lekton. Now the content of a perceptual experience is relative to the
situation of perception. This relativity extends to time: the content of
perception is temporally neutral, but it is evaluated with respect to the time
of the perceptual experience. So the subject has, at t, a perceptual experience
the content of which is the temporal proposition that there is a flower there,
and that proposition is presented as true at t, the time of the present perceptual
experience. (Recanati 2007: 141)

J. Almng

Consequently, time consciousness is according to Recanati to be explicated at the


level of psychological mode rather than intentional content. In a similar vein, the
explicit content of episodic memories is temporally neutral. Yet the complete content
of the intentional act of visually remembering an event is not temporally neutral
since the event is presented as past. But this is something the act has in virtue of
being a memory, not in virtue of its explicit content. Consequently, the temporal
consciousness involved in memories is to be explicated at the level of mode as well.
It follows that a visual perception of an event and a visual memory of the same event
have the same explicit content since that content is temporally neutral. Yet the acts
have different complete or truth-conditional content since they are entertained in
different modes (Recanati 2007: 130135).
Recanati is not the only philosopher to attempt to locate time-consciousness in the
psychological mode. Franz Brentano appears to have been attracted to this view as
well (see Chisholm 1981). His approach is however radically different from
Recanatis approach since he attempts to account for time-consciousness by
postulating the existence of several different but simultaneous acts. A closer
resemblance to Recanatis theory can however be found in the theory defended by
David Woodruff Smith (1986, 1989). Smith has also criticised Searle for not
recognising that there are two kinds of content and located time-consciousness in
psychological mode, even though he does not exclusively locate it there (Smith
1989: 181183). Smiths primary interest is however not in time-consciousness, so
he does not defend this position at any length. Consequently, we shall concentrate on
Recanatis theory in this paper.

3 Time Consciousness as a Feature of Content


Recanatis argument seems to presuppose that in every perception, the time of the
perception is represented in the complete content of the act in virtue of the content
containing an indexical element referring to a present moment in time. Recanati is
however less than clear as to whether this element refers to an extended, albeit very
short, period of time, or whether it refers to a non-extended point in time. At this
point, it becomes important to inquire into the nature of perceptual timeconsciousness.
Any adequate theory of time-consciousness should satisfy three desiderata. It
should be able to account for at least three features of perceptual experiences. The
first desideratum is that it should be able to explain a feature of perceptual
experiences that was much discussed under the term the specious present toward
the end of the nineteenth century. It consists in the fact that perceptual experiences
never seem to be momentary. Rather, we are always seemingly experiencing
something as temporally extended. When listening to a tune of music such as do-remi you never seem to be merely conscious of a momentary tone such as mi. It is
rather the case that you seem to be conscious of do-re when you hear mi. The
three tones are perceived together in some sense of the word. It is not only the case
that you first hear do, then hear re and then hear mi. When hearing mi you
are still in some non-technical sense of the term conscious of do and re.
Something similar seems to be true of visual perception. When seeing a ball move

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

through a trajectory in space, you do not see the ball merely at successively different
points in space. You see it as moving in space from one position to another, and you
appear to be conscious of it as moving in a trajectory.
The notion specious present was originally introduced by William James and
others in order to explain our capacity to retain past perceptual content in
consciousness. One of the essential ideas behind this notion was clearly that what
you perceive is never given in a mere unextended point in time, but rather as
extended in time. Perceptual experiences essentially involve an experience of a
certain temporal duration. Yet this experience is at the same time to be clearly
distinguished from memory. It is not the case that you remember hearing do-re
when hearing mi. Memories are a different kind of mental states than
perceptions, and you need not be in any such state in order to experience
temporal duration.
The second desideratum that I would like to highlight is originally due to
Immanuel Kant. He noted that there is a difference between a succession of
conscious states and a consciousness of a succession. The former does not entail the
latter. Perceptual experiences are normally characterised not only by the specious
present, but also by the specious present being temporally ordered such that it
presents a succession of states to the perceiver. When you are hearing mi, you are
not merely hearing it together with do-re, you are hearing it as succeeding do-re
in time. In a similar vein, when seeing a ball move through a trajectory in space, you
do not merely perceive the ball as being in different positions. You perceive the ball
as occupying different positions in a temporal order.
Whereas the first feature of perceptual experiences highlights the fact that we
always perceive objects or states of affairs as extended in time, the second feature
highlights the fact that this duration is experienced as temporally ordered. So it is not
the case that you first perceive re and then mi and then somehow judges that
mi succeeds re. You literally perceive mi as succeeding re, and something
similar obviously goes for visual perception. In short, objects or states of affairs are
perceived as standing in temporal relations. We shall express this by saying that the
object of a perception, whether it is a normal physical object, an event, or a state of
affairs, is a temporal complex.
The third desideratum worth highlighting has been emphasised by Recanati
himself. A type of a visual experience may be veridical in one situation and
hallucinatory in another. Perceptual content must consequently contain an element
referring to the time of the perception, or else they could not be assessed as to their
veridicality. Any theory of time-consciousness must consequently explain how the
truth conditional content can have this temporal feature.
At this point it is important to make a tristinction originally due to Alexius
Meinong between time of act, content, and object (Meinong 1899: 245247).1 The
time of act is the time in which a person entertains a specific intentional content in
an intentional act. The time of object is the time in which the object actually endures.
The time of content is the time that the perceived object is presented as enduring in.
It can easily be seen that time of content need not necessarily coincide with the time
of the act. An intentional act can in principle be more or less momentary, yet present
1

We shall however depart from Meinong in the specifics of the tristinction.

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an object as enduring in time and undergoing certain changes. In this case the time of
act does not coincide with the time of content. Following James, we can use the term
specious present to refer to the temporal extension of the time of perceptual
content.
In order to see how the tristinction works, consider for example the
intentionality of beliefs. Trivially, a lot of our beliefs are about the past. I
believe for example that the Second World War endured between 1939 and
1945. The time of the act is in this case whenever I have a belief to that effect.
The time of the content, however, is the time between 1939 and 1945. Since
the Second World War actually did endure between 1939 and 1945, the time of
the object coincides with the time of the content. Whenever an intentional act is
true or veridical, the time of content will coincide with the time of the object,
though it need not coincide with the time of the act.
It is important to emphasise at this point that on Recanatis account, timeconsciousness is a function of the complete content, but not of the explicit content.
The explicit content does not refer to any moment in time, and it is not in virtue of
the explicit content that the act is evaluable at a specific point in time. This is clearly
stated in the long passage from Perspectival Thought quoted above (Recanati
2007:141), and it is difficult to see how it could be different if time-consciousness is
removed from explicit content. So according to Recanati, the explicit content is
temporally neutral, and the complete content is tensed in virtue of the latter referring
to the time of the act.
Now, if the above characterisations of perceptual experiences are correct, it is fair
to say that the time of the content will always be temporally extended. However, this
does not entail that the time of the act is temporally extended. Whether the time of
the act is extended and consequently coincides with the time of the content is a
major point of contention in the literature of the phenomenology of time, but we
need not take a stand in that discussion here.2 As we shall see, both positions are
difficult to combine with the doctrine that time-consciousness is located in
psychological mode. It does not really help whether one conceives of the tensed
indexical in the psychological mode as referring to an extended period of time or to a
single point in time.
Let us initially assume that the tensed indexical contributed to the complete
content by the psychological mode does not refer to an extended period of time but
to a single point in time. If this is the case, it seems that time-consciousness cannot
be a function merely of psychological mode. For, as we have seen, the perceptual
object is always presented as a temporal complex. The complete content of the act
presents a temporally enduring state of affairs. However, by assumption, the time
being referred to by the psychological mode is momentary and not extended.
If we construe the indexical as merely referring to a single point in time, we end
up with a theory that cannot satisfy a single one of our desiderata. Such a theory fails
to account for the fact that the time of content is always extended. It also fails to
account for the fact that we perceive events as preceding and succeeding each other.
When hearing mi, you are hearing it as succeeding do-re. While you might

For a discussion of this point, see Dainton 2000 and Miller 1984.

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

possibly hear mi as sounding in the present and thus as simultaneous with the act,
do-re is at the time of the act heard as sounding in the past and by implication as
preceding the time being referred to by the psychological mode.
The basic trouble for Recanati is that the time of content for perceptions will
always be extended. If the tensed indexical that is contributed by the psychological
mode to the complete content refers to a momentary point in time, viz. the time of
the act, then it cannot account for the fact that the complete content is extended and
presents a temporal complex. But since these features are essential to the conditions
of satisfaction of that very act, this theory cannot account for the veridicality
conditions of the perceptual act either. In the case at hand, that part of content
presenting re has its time of evaluation in the past. But if the content contributed
by psychological mode determines the time of evaluation on its own and refers to an
unextended now, then the complete content would have the wrong time of
evaluation.
Perhaps it can at this point be retorted that since all perceptual experiences are
experiences of something as temporally extended, the mode of perceiving would be
to perceive something as present, but not as momentarily present, but as covering a
short temporal interval that coincides with the specious present. This move can be
made in either of two ways, either by assuming that the time of the act is momentary
yet even so has a complete content reflexive to an extended now-point or by
assuming that the time of the act is simultaneous with the time of the content and
hence extended. In virtue of being extended, the time of the act would be reflexive to
an extended time.
Considering that we never have an experience of a momentary non-extended
perceptual state, I actually think that it is correct to argue that the tensed indexical in
the psychological mode refers to an extended period of time. If the psychological
mode explains our experience of being in a perceptual state, and if it is essential to
this experience that we experience a stream of successive perceptions, then the
tensed indexical in the psychological mode must refer to an extended now-point that
includes the entire time of content. And this must be so no matter whether the time
of the act is extended or not. But even if the tensed indexical in the psychological
mode refers to an extended now-point, we cannot dispense with tense in explicit
content.
A theory that posits an extended tensed indexical in the psychological mode
seems to meet our first desideratum. The complete content would specify a short but
extended period of time as the time of the act. Such a theory however fails to take
into account the second and third desiderata mentioned above, viz. that we perceive
temporal relations and that perceptual states should have the right conditions of
satisfaction. Let us first consider the second desideratum. It is to be noted that the
temporal relations perceived need not be identical from perception to perception.
Even within the specious present we can discern different kinds of temporal order
and different kinds of temporal distance between the relata that constitute the
temporal complexes. Sometimes the specious present presents us with three events,
sometimes with more than three events. The temporal distance between these events
could of course vary as well.
When hearing do-re-mi, mi is presented as succeeding do-re. But this can
certainly not be due to the psychological mode of perception. Even if the

J. Almng

psychological mode refers to an extended period of time, it cannot present the


explicit content of the act as ordered. But presenting do-re-mi as temporally
ordered is what would be required of it if this line of reasoning were correct. What is
needed is a kind of temporal operator that presents mi as succeeding do-re.
Since the psychological mode will be the same whether we hear do-re-mi or mido-re, it cannot contribute such a feature to the complete content. If the tensed
indexical is located in the psychological mode it could never give us the temporal
order between the sounds we are hearing.
Consequently if the tensed features of the complete content are exhausted by the
contribution of the psychological mode of a tensed content referring to an extended
now-point, it is not possible to account for the perception of temporal complexes. In
order to meet the second desideratum, the temporal content of perceptual
experiences must also be located at the level of explicit content.
But perhaps, it could be argued, this criticism of Recanati is slightly unjust. He is
clearly not trying to account for our first two desiderata for a theory of timeconsciousness. He is above all interested in explaining the third desideratum, viz. the
truth-conditional aspects of a theory of time-consciousness, and not how we perceive
temporal relations or experience a specious present. So is not his theory of timeconsciousness left unaffected by this criticism? Are we not dealing with two different
kinds of time-consciousness, viz. one that explains our first two desiderata and a
second that fixes the time of evaluation for the perception and thus explains
why a type of perceptual content might be veridical in one situation and
hallucinatory in another? This is however not the case. Whereas there might be
more to the complete content with respect to tense than what is provided by the
explicit content, the time of evaluation of the perceptual act must be a function
of explicit content.
In order to see this, let us look a bit closer at the contribution of psychological
mode to the complete content of the act with regard to tense. I have argued that the
explicit content of perceptual experiences is not temporally neutral. However, this
does not entail that the contribution to the complete content of the psychological
mode is temporally neutral since we certainly have an experience to the effect that
our perceptions occur in time. Consider first of all the perception of a red ball that is
moving through the spatial positions p1p3. The complete content of an act of
perception of this movement would be something akin to
(i) The red ball is now moving through p3 after having just moved through p1
and p2 and the red ball is causing this visual experience that I am having in
this specious present.3
Now, I suggest that the italicised part of (i) is the contribution of the psychological
mode to the complete content.
Note that on this account, the tensed indexical in the psychological mode refers
not to a single point in time, but to an extended time that coincides with the time of
the content. It is consequently a part of the psychological mode to experience the

As Smith has pointed out, perceptual content seems to be singular and demonstrative rather than
indefinite as in Searles account (Smith 1986: 201); thus the change from a red ball to the red ball.

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

perception as present, but not as present in a non-extended now-point, since we do


not experience a momentary point in time. Considering that that the psychological
mode makes the same contribution to the complete content in all acts of perception,
the tensed indexical must take as its value the time referred to in the explicit content.
For if we assume that the time of the explicit content can vary with the situation at
hand and is not constant, the time referred to in the psychological mode cannot be
constant. Consequently, the only way that the contribution to the complete content
by the psychological mode can be invariant from perception to perception is if the
indexical takes as its value the temporal extension referred to in explicit content.
A strong case can now be made that the time of evaluation is a function of the
time of the explicit content and that the psychological mode is rather irrelevant. In an
act of perception we are presented with a temporal sequence of events. However, the
tensed indexical that is contributed by the psychological mode cannot determine the
temporal order in which the events are presented. For this indexical refers to the
entire time of content without assigning a temporal structure to the events being
perceived. Consider the event consisting of the ball moving through p3 and let us
assume that this occurs at time t3 and that the ball moved through p2 at t2 and so on.
The specious present thus spans time t1 to t3.
It is quite clear that the time of evaluation for that part of content presenting the
ball as moving through p3 must be t3. But if we follow Recanati in assuming that the
time of evaluation is fixed only by the psychological mode, we end up with a
situation in which the time of evaluation is located sometime during the specious
present, viz. between t1 and t3. The indexical contributed by the psychological mode
is not specific enough to determine that the event occurs now, where this indexical
refers to a single point in time. In a similar way, the time of evaluation for the part of
content presenting the ball as moving through p2 must be t2. Once again, the time of
evaluation cannot be determined by an indexical referring to the entire specious
present, since that would give us too indeterminate a time of evaluation. That part
would be determined as having the same extended time of evaluation as the other
parts of content.
The now of the psychological mode is not singlehandedly able to give us a
temporally distributed content, which presents the ball as moving through p3 after
having just moved through p1 and p2. It could only present these three events as
occurring sometimes during the specious present but without specifying in which
order. Consequently, the time of the evaluation must be a function of the explicit
content in perception.
Perhaps an objection could here be raised. On the account that I am suggesting,
would it not be the case that we experience the sequence of perceptions as
unstructured, since the time of content refers to the entire specious present without
assigning a specific order to the perceptions? But it is not true that the order would
be unstructured. We experience the perception of seeing the ball move through p3 as
succeeding the perception of seeing the ball move through p2 in virtue of the fact
that we see one event as succeeding the other. The order in which we experience the
perceptual states is determined by the order in which we perceive the events we are
presented with through the perceptions. The perception of a sequence of events is
temporally ordered through explicit content and the same order explains how we can
experience a sequence of perceptions.

J. Almng

4 The Psychological Modes of Perception and Memory


One of Recanatis main arguments for locating time-consciousness at the level of
psychological mode rather than at the level of explicit content is that this ensures that
memories and perceptions can have the same explicit content. Memories and
perceptions have a temporally neutral explicit content on Recanatis account. The
difference in complete content is accounted for by the fact that time is a feature of
mode: Since the explicit content of the perception is temporally neutral, there is no
objection to saying that it is preserved in memory (Recanati 2007: 141).
Recanati is certainly correct in arguing that we have a strong intuition to the effect
that memories and perceptions can in principle have the same kind of explicit
content. Yet are we not by locating time-consciousness at the level of explicit content
committed to denying this intuition? Recanati argues thus, but as we shall see, that is
not the case.
Recanati considers two alternatives to his own account of memories: the
metarepresentational analysis and the conjunctive analysis. The essence of the
metarepresentational analysis is that it turns the original perception into a
represented object. I agree with his objections to that theory and shall not discuss
it further. It is however worth looking a bit closer at his analysis of the conjunctive
analysis as outlined by Searle.
In Recanatis reconstruction of Searles account of memories, the content of an act
of remembrance has two distinct parts. On the one hand, there is a part that it has in
common with the perception of which it is a memory. On the other hand, there is a
part that is unique to the memory. The content is thus conjunctive: The first
conjunct represents a scene or event in the world; the second conjunct represents the
subjects past perceptual experience of that scene or event hence the second
conjunct is metarepresentational (Recanati 2007: 138). Consequently, the explicit
content (and according to Searle, this is the only content that there is) of an act of
remembrance presents the original scene or event and in addition a remembrance of
the perception of that scene or event.
Searles analysis of memories is not very clear to me, and I shall not try to defend
his theory. I shall however defend the notion that a reference to the present tense
features in the explicit content of a perceptual state and that that content in its
entirety is replicated in remembrances. It is to be noted that these two claims are
entailed by the claims that time-consciousness is at least partially to be explicated at
the level of explicit content and that the explicit content of a perception can be
replicated in an act of remembrance of that perception.
Recanati has two objections to Searles analysis. Both are relevant in the present
context since they are directed to the idea that the present tense can feature in
explicit content. The first objection is that Searles theory fails to take into account
the difference between judgments based on perceptions and judgments based on
memories. When making a judgment based on a present perceptual experience, you
judge that what is perceptually presented is occurring now. When judging on the
basis of a memory of that perception, however, you judge that the scene you
perceived has occurred in the past (Recanati 2007: 139). The reasoning seems to be
that if the explicit content of a perception is not temporally neutral but makes a
reference to the present tense, and if the explicit content is retained when

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

remembering a perception, it is inexplicable how we can justifiably judge that the


event occurred in the past when remembering events originally presented in
perception. Before returning to the first objection, we shall take a look at the second
objection.
Recanatis second objection is that it seems phenomenologically false to claim
that the explicit content of an act of perception has a present tense and that this
content is replicated in an act of remembrance. When the content of a perception is
transformed into a memory, the present tense is subtracted from the complete content
of the original perception and replaced with a past tense. There is a feeling of
presentness accompanying every perception that is shifted to a feeling of pastness
in an act of remembrance (Recanati 2007: 140). Recanati can make this move
because he insists that phenomenology supervenes on the complete content rather
than on explicit content. Consequently, the explicit content (which is tenseless) can
remain the same even though the phenomenology of tense varies between different
kinds of acts.
It seems to me however that Recanati is mistaken in both objections. It is possible
to construe a theory that retains the present tense in the explicit content, yet which
escapes Recanatis objections. Recanati argues that there is a feeling of pastness
accompanying every memory. But is this really true? I would suggest that it is far
from obvious and that in so far as we have intuitions to that effect, they can be given
a different explanation than that there is a feeling of pastness in the act of
remembrance.
Consider first of all the very act of remembering having seen an event in the past.
We are disposed to judge that this event has occurred in the past in virtue of the fact
that we remember an event. We do not in addition need the memory to represent the
event as past. All normal persons believe when they are remembering something that
the events represented in memory have occurred in the past. It is an essential part of
an act being a memory that the event represented did occur in the past, if it did occur
at all. And normal cognizers know this in virtue of being familiar with the kind of
mental state that an act of remembrance is. If we are presented with an event through
a memory, we do not in addition need to represent the event as past in order to judge
that the event occurred in the past.
A second consideration that should be borne in mind when discussing the
intuitions of Recanati is that visual memories are in the stream of consciousness
often embedded in non-visual propositional thought. So, for example, we might
think, the summer of 1994 was a summer with fantastic weather and then
immediately following on this thought is a train of visual memories of the sun setting
across a lake and other environmental scenes. In this case the total stream of
consciousness certainly has a feeling of pastness, but is it really true that the visual
memories in that stream have a feeling of pastness? I would suggest that that is not
the case.
Consider our explication of the content of a visual perception in (i). It is
characterised by the fact that the perceiver seems to perceive the red ball while at the
same time being, in some non-technical sense of the word, aware that the red ball is
presented in the mode of perception. The act is further characterised by the fact that
it contains a dual kind of time-consciousness. On the one hand, the content presents
the ball as moving in the present and coming from the past. But on the other hand,

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the content also makes a reference to a perceptual experience of the ball as occurring
in the present tense. Something similar, I would suggest, is involved in a
remembrance of that perception.
When we do remember an event, we experience the act of remembrance as
occurring now. The key difference between seeing an event and remembering seeing
an event is not in the tensed indexical contributed by the psychological mode in
both cases there is a present tense. The difference is that in the first case we perceive
the event and in the second case we remember having perceived the event. But both
experiences are experienced as occurring now.
But on the account that I am defending, there is also a second temporal feature in
every act of remembrance. And this is the tense of the explicit content that is
replicated from the original perception. The explicit content does not merely contain
an indexical referring to the present tense. If we are to account for the second feature
of time-consciousness, degrees of the past tense seem to be involved as well.
Otherwise we could not remember seeing (or hearing) a succession of events. But
the present tense clearly features in the explicit content. Or at any rate this is how it
appears to the present author. It is however notoriously difficult to agree on
phenomenological intuitions. I shall thus leave that particular problem and proceed
to argue that this account does not fall prey to Recanatis first objection.
Based on these considerations, the following complete content of an act of
visually remembering the ball moving suggests itself:
(ii) The red ball is now moving through p3 after having just moved through p1
and p2 and I am now remembering my visual perception of this.
Once again, the contribution to the complete content by the psychological mode is
italicised. It is to be noted that the contribution to the complete content of the
psychological mode in (ii) would be rather complex. It would correctly explain why
a memory is experienced as a present experience and our sense when remembering
of having had a particular perceptual experience of an event as present. Yet this
account does not make the experience into an intended object (Recanati correctly
warns against such a move).
If we look a bit closer at the logical structure of (ii) with respect to tense we shall
see that the complete content would look like this:
(iii) Presently I remember visually perceiving x as present.4
This however leaves us with an apparent problem. For whereas (iii) might do the
phenomenology involved justice, it seems that we end up with conditions of
satisfaction, which specify the time of evaluation for remembered events in the
present. But that is clearly erroneous.
The solution to this problem lies in treating the tensed indexicals as shiftable
indexicals.5 The context of evaluation for the tensed indexical in explicit content is
4

For the sake of simplicity, this account leaves out the complication that the explicit content also contains
a reference to the past tense.
5
I am very grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting that the problem could be treated this way. I
owe the entire idea that the tensed indexicals in perceptual content could be treated as shiftable indexicals
to him or her.

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

shifted from the time of the act to a time in the past, in virtue of the explicit content
being embedded in an act of memory. So whereas the explicit content still presents
the person entertaining the content with an event in the present tense, the time of
evaluation is nevertheless located in the past in virtue of the mode in which the
content is entertained.
Philippe Schlenker, one of the originators (cf. Schlenker 2003 and Schlenker
2004) behind the idea of a shiftable indexical, uses the notion to clarify (amongst
other things) what he calls The Historical Present. A narration occurring in the
historical present is characterised by the author using the present tense when
describing a sequence of historical events. Here is an example used by Schlenker
himself:
Fifty-eight years ago to this day, on January 22, 1944, just as the Americans are
about to invade Europe, the Germans attack Vercors. (Schlenker 2004:281)
In this case, the authors use of the present tense clearly denotes an event that is
past relative to the narration of the event. As Schlenker points out, the result is to
present the scene in a particularly vivid way, as if the narrator were observing it
directly (Schlenker 2004:297). The general idea is consequently that when one uses
the historical present, one locates the point of view of the narration in the past, thus
allowing the author to use the present tense in order to refer to past events.
In order to explicate how a present tense can refer to a past event, Schlenker
makes a distinction between the context of utterance and the context of thought. The
general idea is that in narrations using the historical present, the context of thought is
the context in which the narration occurs. The context of utterance however is set
somewhere in the past [], which yields the impression that the (actual) speaker is
present at the scene he is describing (Schlenker 2004: 281). In these cases the
present tense is supplied its semantic value from the context of utterance, and not
from the context of thought. The context is shifted from its normal context in virtue
of the discourse being a narration in the historical present.
There is a very large discussion in the philosophy of language concerning
shiftable indexicals and to what extent they do and can occur in natural languages.
Recanati himself, for example, suggests that tenses should not be construed as
proper indexicals but rather as perspectivals (Recanati 2010: 210). I cannot take a
stand on all the issues involved here, and it seems to me that not much for my
purposes hinges on whether to agree with Schlenker that they are genuine indexicals
or with Recanati that they are perspectivals. What I do believe, however, is that the
general idea behind shiftable indexicals can also be used to illuminate intentional
content.
Schlenker makes a distinction between context of thought and context of
utterance. It is possible to make a similar distinction between context of mode
and context of (explicit) content. The general idea behind this distinction is that
the context of mode is always the context in which a person has an intentional
act of some mode. But the context of content need not be identical with the
context of mode. In an act of memory, the context of content is shifted from
the present to a context located in the past. Similarly, when the psychological
mode is anticipation, the context of content is located in the future. In an act of

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perception, however, the context of content will be identical to the context of


mode. The general idea is consequently that context of content is determined by
the psychological mode. Whether or not the present tense in explicit content refers
to the time of act depends upon which psychological mode entertains the explicit
content.
Treating the present tense as it occurs in explicit content as a shiftable indexical
has two distinct advantages. First of all, it can explain how memories can be so vivid
to us. Schlenker notes that a narrator can use the historical present to great effect in
order to yield the impression that the narrator is a contemporary observer of the
events he describes. But if this can be said about narrations, it can equally well be
said about memories. As I have argued, remembering seeing an event involves reliving seeing the event here and now. But there is also a point of view in the
psychological mode with a different context of evaluation, thus explaining how the
perceiver is aware that the present of the explicit content is not the present in which
the content is entertained.6
The second advantage is obviously that since the context of evaluation of the
explicit content is shifted from the present to a time in the past, the act
nevertheless has the right kind of conditions of satisfaction. Using shiftable
indexicals makes it possible to do justice to the phenomenology of memory,
which requires a present tense in the explicit content, and to the conditions of
satisfaction of a memory, which requires that the explicit content is evaluated
with respect to a past state of affairs.

5 Conclusions
Recanati has in my opinion correctly argued that Searle is wrong to equate content
with complete content. If the intuitions underlying the discussion of time
consciousness are correct, however, Recanati is mistaken in arguing that explicit
content is temporally neutral. This does not entail that the psychological mode
makes no contribution to the complete content of the act with respect to tense. If
Recanati is correct, a memory of a perceptual experience can in principle have the
same content as the original perception. Recanati attempts to locate the difference
between the complete contents of the acts in the difference between the
psychological modes of memory and perception. This however does not entail that
the explicit content is temporally neutral. I have argued that a theory that posits a
present tense in explicit content even in memories squares better with the
phenomenology involved than Recanatis theory does. I have also tried to explain
how acts of memory can retain a present tense in explicit content and avoid the
objections raised against that idea by Recanati.
Acknowledgments Thanks are due to Alexander Almr, Kent Gustavsson, Ingvar Johansson, Christer
Svennerlind and an anonymous referee for valuable comments.

I owe this point as well to my anonymous referee.

Time, Mode and Perceptual Content

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