Our Temporal Beliefs

Abstract This chapter takes up the idea that people pre-reflectively believe our world to be dynamical, and that since the best explanation for this is that the world is dynamical, one should infer that it is (the Belief IBE Argument). It considers new empirical data regarding our temporal beliefs. The chapter then argues that, in general, one ought to not infer from people’s believing that P to P itself. It then considers several arguments to the conclusion that there is something special about a widespread belief that time robustly passes, which means that the best explanation for this belief is that time robustly passes. It argues that these fail. The chapter then argues that positing robust passage is a very poor explanation for anyone coming to believe that time robustly passes. Finally, it takes up the question of why, if time does not robustly pass, so many people believe it does, and present new empirical evidence in this regard.