Abstract: Many epistemological principles are formulated temporally: a conclusion can be learned from a premise only if the premise is known before the conclusion, a belief is justified if previously believed, a belief is self-undermining if it does not leave enough time for it to be rationally formed. But what matters for any norm is personal time, not time. Personal time is a time-like relation (roughly, the time measured by your wristwatch) that knits together temporal parts so that they conform to familiar laws of nature. Processes that disrupt developmental sequences (artificially aging, progeria, high speed travel) threaten inconsistent narratives. These ostensible contradictions lead non-actual phenomena, such as time travel, to be over-judged as impossible. Indeed, the need to draw a distinction between time and personal time emerged most forcefully for those seeking a consistent reading of this genre of fiction. This literary illumination allows us to discern a less visible need to draw the distinction for all types of value: prudential, moral, aesthetic, and epistemic.

Hybrid talk. Room: School V.