But this is just false, right? Read that back to yourself and ask whether it's true. The only thing you experience is being at your computer? No: you experience plenty of other things as well. — The Great Whatever

Like? Certainly my experience of being in my room describes a complex set of experiences. My visual experience of me of the computer screen in front of me, the feeling of sitting in my seat and the feel of the fingers typing on the keyboard, and the silent hum of the background noise. What more do you expect there to be?

The difference is that at any one time one experiences only the experiences for that time. — Banno

Just as much as for any bank account, I own only the money in that account. But that doesn't stop me from owning all the money in every account simply by owning all the accounts themselves. I still don't see how this is different from my P2. for our temporal experience since I am perfectly willing to say that at any one time we experience only the experiences at that time. Still doesn't stop someone who is composed of all of those times to have all of those experiences (in fact seems to be a straightforward consequence of having them as parts).

As far as I know, my experience is simply not like that. I only find myself having the experience of being in my room in front of my computer and nothing more. You could object like others that what I am "actually" saying is that I am only having these such experiences "at a time", but then I wouldn't see that as being anything other than dictating what I should claim to be experiencing.

As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017. You're saying I cannot have experience of 2010 despite my existence there? That makes no sense. 2010 is not a year of sensory deprivation for me. — noAxioms

I am not saying that you cannot (in face, P2. explicitly states that you must have them). I am just saying that you do not have them (or maybe you do, but I don't). If part of me really did exist at 2010, then I would've felt the experiences of 2010 as part of my overall experience. But I simply do not. The pains the joys of that year should be present as part of my total experience, but I simply do not find them to be there.

Shouldn't this read:
P2. If we are temporally extended beings, then we must have each of our experiences at each time in which we exist. — Banno

I don't see how that is any different from my P2. Suppose I have three bank accounts, each of which hold a certain sum of money. There doesn't seem to be a difference between these two claims:

- If I own all three bank accounts, I have all of the money that is had in each account together.
- If I own all three bank accounts, then I have each dollar that is in each of the bank accounts that I own.

Maybe this is what you want to say anyways. If so, then please tell me how the rest of my argument fails.

You can say, and believe: "I saw my friend earlier"; "I am seeing my friend now" and "I will see my friend later". In those forms of expression the words "earlier", "now", and "later" function as indexicals. The times that they refer to are functions of the time when the expressions are being uttered. (Likewise, the word "I" can refer to you by dint of the fact that it is being used by you; and the word "here" refers to a specific place by dint of its being uttered by someone located at that place.)

When you are enjoying the visual experience a tree, you need not be thinking of this experience under a mode of presentation (i.e. a Fregean sense) that could be expressed thus: "I am seeing this tree at 4:16 PM on April 10th 2017". You could also be expressing the same content under the different mode "I am seeing this tree now", which is equivalent to the content of "I am seeing a tree". — Pierre-Normand

I'm not sure that's right, but in any case it doesn't matter – as long as there's a notion of having an experience at a time, the same holds, since the present tense in your claim will be translated to mean 'I experience only t at t,' t the time of utterance. — The Great Whatever

Maybe I don't understand indexicals well enough, but even if we were to assume that there was a present tense that attaches itself to my claims, I still don't see why it should only refer strictly to the time of the utterance itself and not, say, something less restrictive, like the time in which the person making that utterance exists. It might sound weird to distinguish the two, but that is because in usual cases where we use the term "now" we do not explicitly assume that we are temporally extended beings, and the speaker of a phrase always exists limited to a single time in which they make these utterances (in accord with the common sense views of time). But here, there is a distinction between the time in which an utterance occurs and the temporal region in which the person uttering it exists. I see no reason why we should use the former usage over the latter. In fact, I think the latter is a more reasonable view to take if we consider the similar case for "here".

Just as much as you can say that there is a present tense anchor to all of our experiential claims, you could probably also say that any claim about my experience should have a spatial anchor to it. This requires me to always describe an experience as being had "here". But what is meant by "here"? We can say that it is limited to the location in which the utterance is occurring, more specifically the location of the words themselves coming out of my mouth, but that sounds too limited IMO. It seems more reasonable to me to assume that when I say"here" I mean the spatially extended in which I, as the speaker of the phrase, exist. Similarly, it sounds more reasonable to assume that when I say "now" , I can only be referring to the temporally extended region in which I exist. If this is the case then I as a temporally extended worm cannot mean "the time of this utterance" when I use the phrase "now".

I'm in a rush right now, but I just want to say that the worm theory is an eternalist theory. The notions of "experienced", "will" and "present-tense" do not make sense under that sort of view since there is no such thing as a flow of time.

But this is just to say that the time at which you are having an experience doesn't figure explicitly as part of the content of this experience. — Pierre-Normand

There's more to it than that actually. If an experience is had as part of a larger experience, then I believe that this fact should figure into the content of that experience itself. Let me give an example of what I mean by that.

Take a visual experience of seeing only blue. Now take an experience of seeing only red. Imagine the two cases where you have them separately, and not together. Now imagine having them both together as parts of a larger visual experience. I imagine that in the latter case, you will probably see the red experience differently in this context then if it were had alone. More specifically, I imagine you will find that the red experience is had at a particular portion of your visual field (of course there are various configurations in which you can imagine this, perhaps the red experience is to the left side of your vision, or perhaps in the centre, while the rest of your vision is engulfed by blue). The same goes for your blue experience as well. The red and blue experiences can no longer be described as being seen simpliciter as they are when they are being had alone. In fact, when I ask myself whether or not I am seeing each of them in that way, I simply find that I do not have such an experience (in fact it seems impossible for me to even imagine what it would be like to see both red and blue simpliciter together). Instead I find that these colour experiences of mine are had "over there" occupying their own particular regions of my experience. Unlike when I have them alone, I have to specify a location to describe precisely how I experience them. In essence, as a result of both experiences not being had alone, they each feel differently.

Of course, I don't believe that this sort of interdependence is limited to just visual experiences. We also have this sort of experience with regards to our other senses as well (for example, I may be having a feeling of coldness in my left hand and heat in my right), but I think it's more general. I believe that any set of experiences had together would exhibit this sort of feature in some form, which also includes having multiple experiences over time. If this is true, then given that the worm theory requires that we are a subject which has all of our experiences, then our experiences at every time should similarly feel distinctly different as opposed to how they would feel if they were had alone. If this sort of distinct feeling can be characterized as the feeling of "being at a particular time" then I would have to disagree with you that the time of an experience does not feature within is felt content.

P3 seems easily deniable by the worm-theorist, who can claim that we experience all times in which we exist (it's just, as you note, temporally extended).

It's easy for someone to claim that you experiencing all of your times, but do you really find yourself having all of them? I can claim that you are in excruciating pain right now despite your protests to the contrary, but I imagine that that is not gonna be convincing if you simply do not find yourself as being in pain.

At best you have only the trivial premise that we only experience one time 'at a time,' which can of course be granted. — The Great Whatever

Like I told Pierre, when I say that I find myself as only having the experience of, say, me sitting in my room, I am not saying that I am having them "at a time". Nowhere does such a notion come into my description of what I am experiencing. I only say that I am only having this experience in a general sense.

Yes, and the worm theorist need not dispute that.

I disagree. The claim that I am having an experience of sitting in my room only is simply inconsistent with the claim that I am also having another experience that is not of me sitting in my room (as you later claim). You cannot have both facts be true so one of them has to be false.

The worm theorist says that those two events relate you, the very same individual (or space-time worm) to the two separate contents of those experiences.

If that was indeed the case, then I should not be introspecting myself as only having one of those experiences (again, not specified as being "at a time"). So much as I have an experience of one of those times, I should've found that that particular experience is had as part of a larger experience which also contains the experience of the other time along with any other times I may have (at least if my introspection on my direct experience is supposed to be certain). This is what it would mean to have both experiences together after all.

That's because the eternalist (or the perdurantist) aren't saying that there are different conscious subjects along your world-line. You are the whole worm, and your temporal time-slices are temporal parts of yours just as much as your hands and feets (or rather, their own worms) are spatial parts of yours. What the eternalist may argue is that your having experiences one at a time doesn't contradict your being a worm who is having those experiences anymore that your being touched by someone on specific parts of your body, say, contradicts that it is you, the same individual, who is being touched in each case.

I think you are misinterpreting what I mean in my P3 since you seem to be emphasizing the fact that I am only having an experience "at a given time". When I say that I am only experiencing a certain set of experiences, I am not saying that my experience is limited to a certain set of experiences "at a time", I am saying that I am only having those experiences in general. Nowhere when I introspect upon my experience does the notion of my experience being had "at a time" even come in. I, as the entity that should be a temporally extended conscious subject, only have an experience of sitting in my room in front of my computer simpliciter. This is just how it feels to me.

SImilarly, if I told you that I am only seeing red in my vision and you reply by saying that I am "really" saying that I am only seeing red at a particular part of my visual field, then I will tell you that I am not making any such claim at all and that I am only referring to my visual experiences of seeing only red in a general sense simpliciter.

Hello and thank you for welcoming me.

I think the worm-theorist would readily accept the way you are characterizing the content of your experience (i.e. what it is you are experiencing) but she would question your portrayal of who it is who is the subject of this experience. The worm-theorist would claim that each separate content of experience had over time is being had (which is a event rather than an ownership relation) not by "your" perduring worm as a whole, but rather by just the one contemporaneous temporal stage of your worm that is occurring at the time when this experience is being had. Hence, the fact that you are truly only experiencing one thing at a time just reflects the fact that those episodes (or events) of experiencing something or other characterize your own temporal stages separately. In yet other words, your saying that you only experience one thing at a given time only boils down to saying that only one single temporal stage of yourself (i.e. just one time-slice of your worm) is involved directly in this experiencing. (There may still be indirect involvement through the exercise of memory and anticipation).

It seems that this type of response collapses to the stage theory does it not? Cause if we are going to grant that there are multiple different conscious subjects who exist at every stage of our lives anyways, then why not just adopt the stage view? As far as I know, the worm theory claims that there is one only entity, one conscious subject which identifies with the whole spacetime worm. Although it is conceivable to argue that such a being could also exist on top of the multiple conscious subjects at every time it would seem unnecessary to do so.

Just because something is temporally extended needn't imply that every temporal slice of the extended thing is identical to every other temporal slice. Differences between one slice and another would represent change in this this kind of scheme, and we obviously change during the course of our lives. (That introduces the problem of how to define personal identity.)

I am not saying that every part is identical to every other part, or that it is a requirement for composite objects. Certainly such a view would be clearly false because that would mean that there can be no objects with heterogeneous parts.

I am merely saying that the whole, which is identical to the sum of every part (but not identical to each individual part) should itself have the sum of the experiences which every part has. That is, if a time slice has experience x at T1, and another one has an experience y at T2, then, as the being who is composed of both time slices, I should have an experience x at T1 and y at T2. In other words, I have them both together.

Assuming that we are conscious throughout our lives (which isn't likely to be true)...

Even if that weren't the case, we are certainly still conscious for a fair amount more than a single instant, so it doesn't seem to matter for the purposes of my argument.

... we should probably say that our consciousness at time T-1 is consciousness of T-1, while our consciousness at time T-2 is consciousness of T-2. So we can say that our time-slices are experiencing throughout, but only experiencing the time in which that particular slice resides (plus accumulated memories).

This probably has more to do with P2. than P3 IMO. From the looks of it since you don't seem to be disputing what I claim to be experiencing (or really not experiencing) as a conscious subject and are instead focused on what we should be experiencing.

In any case, I think your objection is missing some context. Sure a consciousness at a time has conscious experiences of that time, but what does this say for a temporally extended spacetime worm that is the sum of multiple consciousnesses at multiple times?

Maybe I'm not understanding the distinction between worm-theory and stage-theory properly. It's conceivable that my amendments to your premises and my interpreting personal identity in something other than a strong logical way has moved me towards being a stage theorist and I'm actually conceding your point without realizing it.

Sorry if my explanations aren't clear enough. The wiki on perdurantism distinguishes between both views, so perhaps you can check that out for a quick reference.