Atomism and the Contents of Experience

Diachronic perceptual atomism is the view that the contents of experience do not involve temporal relations between non-simultaneous events, such as motion, succession, or duration, but only 'snap-shots' of the world. Traditionally, atomism has not been a very popular view Indeed, many philosophers think that it is obviously false and that the main debate about time consciousness takes place between models which reject atomistic commitments. This anti-atomistic sentiment can be traced back to William James's (1890, p. 628) slogan that 'a succession of feelings, in and of itself is not a feeling of succession'. In this paper I argue, first, that the arguments typically launched against atomism in the spirit of James's slogan fail; and second, that the viability of atomism depends on what the conditions for a mental event's being an experience are. In particular, I argue that if a mental event is an experience only if it fulfils certain downstream conditions, which concern the role of the event in the subject's cognitive life, then atomism fails. Otherwise, it is in fact a viable and in many ways attractive view. It follows from my discussion that, contrary to popular belief atomism is by no means obviously false. Rather, its viability depends on one further views about the relationship between experience and cognition.