What is it like to be a bot? The world according to GPT-4.

The recent explosion of Large Language Models (LLMs) has provoked lively debate about "emergent" properties of the models, including intelligence, insight, creativity, and meaning. These debates are rocky for two main reasons: The emergent properties sought are not well-defined; and the grounds for their dismissal often rest on a fallacious appeal to extraneous factors, like the LLM training regime, or fallacious assumptions about processes within the model. The latter issue is a particular roadblock for LLMs because their internal processes are largely unknown - they are colossal black boxes. In this paper, I try to cut through these problems by, first, identifying one salient feature shared by systems we regard as intelligent/conscious/sentient/etc., namely, their responsiveness to environmental conditions that may not be near in space and time. They engage with subjective worlds ("s-worlds") which may or may not conform to the actual environment. Observers can infer s-worlds from behavior alone, enabling hypotheses about perception and cognition that do not require evidence from the internal operations of the systems in question. The reconstruction of s-worlds offers a framework for comparing cognition across species, affording new leverage on the possible sentience of LLMs. Here, we examine one prominent LLM, OpenAI's GPT-4. Inquiry into the emergence of a complex subjective world is facilitated with philosophical phenomenology and cognitive ethology, examining the pattern of errors made by GPT-4 and proposing their origin in the absence of an analogue of the human subjective awareness of time. This deficit suggests that GPT-4 ultimately lacks a capacity to construct a stable perceptual world; the temporal vacuum undermines any capacity for GPT-4 to construct a consistent, continuously updated, model of its environment. Accordingly, none of GPT-4's statements are epistemically secure. Because the anthropomorphic illusion is so strong, I conclude by suggesting that GPT-4 works with its users to construct improvised works of fiction.

Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience (TATE) in Mental Disorders-Empirical Validation and Adaptation of a Structured Phenomenological Interview.

Abnormal experiences of time (ATEs) are an established object of research in phenomenological psychopathology. Objective: The purpose of this study was the first validation of the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience (TATE), a structured phenomenological interview concerning ATEs in individuals with diverse mental health conditions, and its adaptation for the Polish language. Methods: The research employed a mixed-method approach and consisted of several phases including (1) consensual translation; (2) construct and content validation by an expert panel; (3) direct feedback from patients with lived experiences of alcohol addiction, borderline personality, autism, and clinical depression; (4) an auditorium questionnaire with 98 respondents without mental health issues, who were both interviewed and gave qualitative feedback; and (5) a final expert panel and approval. Results: Following multiple stages of modification, the final TATE demonstrates strong internal consistency and validity (Cronbach's α = 0.9), with strong correlations between the frequency, intensity, and impairment of various forms of ATEs as well as their rare occurrence among healthy participants. Conclusions: TATE represents a multidimensional and structured quantitative phenomenological approach to temporal experience for psychiatry and clinical psychology. This article presents the validated version of TATE for Polish alongside updated administration guidelines. It is now the state-of-the-art TATE that may be further adapted to other languages, including English.

"Just forget about it and move on": Stillbirth ruptured and repaired narratives beyond expectant futures.

The critical sociological literature has explored social prescriptions on women's reproductive lives, trajectories, outcomes and aftermaths. However, little attention has been given to how these prescriptions are expressed through temporal negotiations. This article delves into the narratives of Jewish-Israeli women who have experienced stillbirths. In their narratives, these women contest expectations directed towards them in interactions with professionals, family and friends. Within these expectations, a form of dictation over their future comes into being, where a new pregnancy should quickly precede the stillbirth. The focus here lies on how these women navigate and contest these temporal expectations, carving out space for stillbirth as a meaningful and painful event that should be granted attention and for alternative forms of remembering their stillborn and caring for them after their death. They reshape their narratives through what I call "thickening a present tense" and extend care to the stillborn in the aftermath of the stillbirth. This work contributes to scholarly inquiries into reproductive life and probing time as a socially prescribed mechanism for the value and social distribution of care.

Longitudinal metabolite and protein trajectories prior to diabetes mellitus diagnosis in Danish blood donors: a nested case-control study.

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Metabolic risk factors and plasma biomarkers for diabetes have previously been shown to change prior to a clinical diabetes diagnosis. However, these markers only cover a small subset of molecular biomarkers linked to the disease. In this study, we aimed to profile a more comprehensive set of molecular biomarkers and explore their temporal association with incident diabetes. METHODS: We performed a targeted analysis of 54 proteins and 171 metabolites and lipoprotein particles measured in three sequential samples spanning up to 11 years of follow-up in 324 individuals with incident diabetes and 359 individuals without diabetes in the Danish Blood Donor Study (DBDS) matched for sex and birth year distribution. We used linear mixed-effects models to identify temporal changes before a diabetes diagnosis, either for any incident diabetes diagnosis or for type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus diagnoses specifically. We further performed linear and non-linear feature selection, adding 28 polygenic risk scores to the biomarker pool. We tested the time-to-event prediction gain of the biomarkers with the highest variable importance, compared with selected clinical covariates and plasma glucose. RESULTS: We identified two proteins and 16 metabolites and lipoprotein particles whose levels changed temporally before diabetes diagnosis and for which the estimated marginal means were significant after FDR adjustment. Sixteen of these have not previously been described. Additionally, 75 biomarkers were consistently higher or lower in the years before a diabetes diagnosis. We identified a single temporal biomarker for type 1 diabetes, IL-17A/F, a cytokine that is associated with multiple other autoimmune diseases. Inclusion of 12 biomarkers improved the 10-year prediction of a diabetes diagnosis (i.e. the area under the receiver operating curve increased from 0.79 to 0.84), compared with clinical information and plasma glucose alone. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Systemic molecular changes manifest in plasma several years before a diabetes diagnosis. A particular subset of biomarkers shows distinct, time-dependent patterns, offering potential as predictive markers for diabetes onset. Notably, these biomarkers show shared and distinct patterns between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. After independent replication, our findings may be used to develop new clinical prediction models.

Past Happiness and Broken Future Horizon of Oncological Patients during Chemotherapy-A Quantitative Exploration of a Phenomenological Hypothesis.

Understanding the impact of cancer on the experience of time is crucial in the context of hope and recovery. This study, a follow-up to a previous qualitative study of ovarian cancer patients - explored two types of such experiences-the memory of past happiness and the limited future planning. A sociodemographic questionnaire with nine questions about the experience of time was used on a convenience sample of 202 patients with various cancers, predominantly women with breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer. It was found that the respondents experienced increased focus on the present, decreased focus on the future, and a sense of unpredictability, with a relatively short temporal horizon measured in weeks and months, not years. Almost half of the respondents (46%) measured time during treatment by the rhythm of chemotherapy and check-ups, which thus appeared as the most meaningful events. The increase in the frequency with which patients underwent chemotherapy mildly affected their focus on the present (R = 0.25, p < 0.05), likely because of the discomfort of the side effects. The correlations between age and time in treatment, on the one hand, and the experience of time, on the other, were negligible. Changed temporal experience during chemotherapy is a factor that can have an impact on patients' well-being and ability to cope with the disease. It thus should be taken into account when planning oncology care.

Adoption of Diabetes Technology in Denmark: Continuous Glucose Monitor as Time-Machine.

Health technologies to monitor glucose values are an important part of daily diabetes self-care. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in Denmark with 14 people with type 2 diabetes, I explore people's experience of living with Continuous Glucose Monitoring. This new technology automatically measures glucose levels throughout the day but is not yet common in type 2 diabetes treatment in Denmark. In this article, I capture the social shaping of Continuous Glucose Monitoring, employing the concept of time. I show how adoption of the technology is embedded in a form of biographical time. This refers to people's use of the technology linked to their stories about themselves. Drawing on a notion of habitus, people's embodied past experiences and future prospects come to shape its use, I propose. My main claim is that while people with diabetes implement the technology into their lives in unique ways, adapting it to their circumstances and social conditions, practice of Continuous Glucose Monitoring reproduce social structures. This is evinced, I argue, in people's tinkering with the technology and the frames of reference used to inform it. I introduce the term "tinkering in time", highlighting the introduction of new health technology within the frame of lived human time.

The End of the Beginning? Temporality and Bioagency in Pandemic Research.

This paper deals with the ways in which the intellectual and political history of AIDS can assist in the chronological conceptualization of a pandemic such as COVID-19 as it is unfolding. It problematizes the idea of pandemic "beginnings" and "ends" to show that such definitions are shaped by the disciplinary location and thematic foci of relevant scholars. Central to this analysis is the notion that ethical and political contexts affect research on a pandemic in different ways at national and global levels at various points in its trajectory. The article develops this argument in relation to two main themes: firstly, with reference to the history of AIDS research in South Africa; secondly, with the philosophical concept of bioagency to understand the ways in which viruses and humans co-shape the course of epidemics over time. I first make the case for the development of historically informed, long-term ethnographic studies of COVID-19. Using bioagency as a point of departure to consider viruses as social actors, the essay then critiques the notion of bioinformationalism as catalyzing the widening accessibility of biomedical research. Instead, I discuss the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries as protagonists in the operation of biocapital. I argue that the history of AIDS in South Africa can provide methodological and theoretical insights into how to interpret an unfolding epidemic, outlining an ambitious transdisciplinary research agenda for thinking about the temporality of a pandemic spanning the different, interconnected, scales of life.

In the Eyes of the Future: Eye Movement during Near and Distant Future Thinking.

Research has suggested that near future events are typically viewed from a first-person (an own-eyes, also known as field) perspective while distant future events are typically viewed from a third-person (an observer) perspective. We investigated whether these distinct mental perspectives would be accompanied by distinct eye movement activities. We invited participants to imagine near and distant future events while their eye movements (i.e., scan path) were recorded by eye-tracking glasses. Analysis demonstrated fewer but longer fixations for near future thinking than for distant future thinking. Analysis also demonstrated more "field" mental visual perspective responses for near than for distant future thinking. The long fixations during near future thinking may mirror a mental visual exploration involving processing of a more complex visual representation compared with distant future thinking. By demonstrating how near future thinking triggers both "field" responses and long fixations, our study demonstrates how the temporality of future thinking triggers both distinct mental imagery and eye movement patterns.

What Is It Like to Be in Alcohol Addiction Recovery? A Dialectical Phenomenological Analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Currently, there is no scientific consensus on the concept of alcohol addiction recovery beyond substance use control. This conceptual issue challenges the implementation of therapeutic strategies and mental health policies that are unrestricted to symptomatic remission. Aiming to contribute to its definition, this study aimed to examine the recovery experience of individuals with alcohol addiction using dialectical phenomenological psychopathology (DPP) as a theoretical and methodological framework. METHODS: A dialectical phenomenological analysis was conducted through an examination of online interviews with eight Brazilian, São Paulo state citizens who were self-declared to be undergoing alcohol addiction recovery (or who declared that they had completely recovered). RESULTS: Participants' reports generated eight categories that were subdivided into two groups. The first group indicated experiential elements of recovery, such as changes in self-relation, changes in interpersonal relations, and changes in time relations, giving new meanings to suffering and alcohol use, and recovery as a continuous process. The second group referred to how the participants interpreted recovery according to their worldviews: as a spiritual experience, moral reformation, and mentality change. CONCLUSION: These categories can be understood through the lens of DPP as a process of change in the subjects' being in the world, characterized by the continued management of their existential imbalances in the dimensions of spatiality, temporality, selfhood, and intersubjectivity. The results are preliminary when it comes to conceptualizing recovery but may help future studies to develop recovery-oriented therapeutic strategies.

Time perception among people living with and without dementia: A scoping review.

Dementia often manifests with profound alterations in perception, but it is unclear if and to what extent time perception is altered among people living with dementia compared to those experiencing normal aging. Thus, this scoping review aimed to answer the following research questions: (1) What study designs, participants, time intervals, paradigms, tests, and scores have been employed and in which countries were these methods employed to study time perception in dementia? (2) In which ways do time perception differ across individuals living with and without dementia? (3) In which ways do time perception differ across individuals living with different types of dementia? After deduplication, title and abstract screening, and full-text review, a total of 12 studies were included in this scoping review. Findings generally indicated that people living with dementia perceive time differently than people living without dementia, and that some differences across dementia diagnoses may exist, but the body of literature on time perception in dementia was quite limited. Future research should focus on replicating findings while extending the research to look beyond the dementia versus non-dementia dichotomy as differences across dementia diagnoses may exist. Moreover, if people living with dementia (and, in particular, living with different dementia diagnoses) experience time differently from those experiencing normal aging, we need to begin to address these differences in dementia-friendly initiatives to improve well-being for this population.

Pain and temporality: a merleau-pontyian approach.

Chronic pain is a common disorder with enormous sociomedical importance. A major part of primary and secondary costs of illness is caused by the various pain syndromes. Nociception - the sensory perception of a painful stimulus - is a complex process relying on an intricate system of anatomical, neurophysiological and biochemical networks. This applies even more so to pain - the state of experiencing a nociceptive event, of interpreting it in terms of meaning for the affected individual and of suffering a range of emotions it elicits. This intricacy renders it obvious, that the empirical medical sciences alone cannot explain all aspects of pain. Hence, it has also become a focus of phenomenological research. One aspect of these investigations is the interaction of pain and the perception of the lived body's spatiality. The focus of this article will build on these concepts to develop a construct of the alteration of temporality caused by chronic pain and the effects this spells out for the affected subject. To this end, I will primarily draw on Merleau-Ponty's ideas of the lived body as well as on theories of enactivism and embodiment. I will also point out parallels to neuroscientific data, thereby demonstrating the proximity of phenomenology and neuroscience. A possible partial solution to the pain dilemma may be derived from psychology: techniques relying on cognitive behavioural intervention, awareness training, and existential analysis may provide alleviation to patients suffering from chronic pain.

Where do incarcerated trans women prefer to be housed and why? Adding nuanced understandings to a complex debate through the voices of formerly incarcerated trans women in Australia and the United States.

Background: Incarcerated trans women experience significant victimization, mistreatment, barriers to gender-affirming care, and human rights violations, conferring high risk for trauma, psychological distress, self-harm, and suicide. Across the globe, most carceral settings are segregated by sex assigned at birth and governed by housing policies that restrict gender expression-elevating 'safety and security' above the housing preferences of incarcerated people. Aim/methods: Drawing upon the lived experiences of 24 formerly incarcerated trans women in Australia and the United States and employing Elizabeth Freeman's notion of chrononormativity, Rae Rosenberg's concept of heteronormative time, and Kadji Amin's use of queer temporality, this paper explores trans women's carceral housing preferences and contextual experiences, including how housing preferences challenge governing chrononormative and reformist carceral housing systems. Findings: Participants freely discussed their perspectives regarding housing options which through thematic analysis generated four options for housing: 1) men's carceral settings; 2) women's carceral settings; 3) trans- and gay-specific housing blocks; and 4) being housed in protective custody or other settings. There appeared to be a relationship between the number of times the person had been incarcerated, the duration of their incarceration, and where they preferred to be housed. Conclusions: This analysis contributes to richer understandings regarding trans women's experiences while incarcerated. This paper also informs the complexities and nuances surrounding housing preferences from the perspectives of trans women themselves and considers possible opportunities to enhance human rights, health and wellbeing when engaging in transformative approaches to incarceration.

Temporalities of peer support: the role of digital platforms in the 'living presents' of mental ill-health.

This paper considers matters of time in online mental health peer support. Significant evidence of the value of peer support exists, with new digital platforms emerging as part of the digitisation of mental health support. This paper draws from a project exploring the impact of digital platforms on peer support through interviews with users of a major UK-based online peer support platform. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept of the 'living present', the paper highlights how notions of past, present and future operate as co-existing dimensions of the present. The analysis highlights how the immediacy of digital platforms elicits expectations of peer support being 'on tap', which creates challenges when support is not received synchronously. Unlike in-person support, digital platforms facilitate the archiving of support, which can (re)enter the present at any moment through asynchronous communication. Anticipations of the future feature as dimensions of the present in terms of feelings regarding when support may no longer be needed. The paper offers potential implications for social scientific understanding of digital peer support, which include valuable insight for mental health services designing and delivering digital peer support.

The Loss of Spatiality and Temporality in Twilight Consciousness: The Emergence of Exogenous Psychosis Induced by Novel Psychoactive Substances.

BACKGROUND: The state of twilight consciousness is marked by a focused narrowing of awareness, maintaining vigilance and attention while simultaneously experiencing perceptual shifts in the surrounding environment. It is crucial to recognize that this twilight state represents not just a contraction but also an expansion of conscious experience. SUMMARY: Substances of abuse, particularly new psychoactive substances, play a significant role in inducing this twilight state. They achieve this by deconstructing essential components of consciousness, such as the perception of time and space. KEY MESSAGE: This paper aimed to explore the phenomenon of the twilight state of consciousness and shed light on how new psychoactive substances can alter the perception of time and space during this twilight phase, potentially triggering exogenous psychosis. This comprehensive inquiry employs a phenomenological approach to the study of consciousness, recognizing it as the primary tool for ascribing significance to this intricate yet often overlooked aspect of psychopathology.

The timescapes of older adults living alone and receiving home care: An interview study.

In this study, we drew on Barbara Adam's (1998) timescape perspective and applied a timescape lens to our analysis of how nine older adults who live alone, receive home care and are considered by home care professionals to be frail, experience living (in) time. Over a period of eight months, we conducted three interviews with each of the nine participants. We analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis and drew on timescapes to further interpret our preliminary analysis. Our results show that situated everyday time, place across time, and large-scale time interact in the framing and shaping of older adults' everyday lives. Older adults' embodied experiences of being of advanced age, living alone and receiving home care influenced their timescapes. We propose that paying attention to older adults' timescapes can enable home care professionals and other supporters to consider older adults' health, well-being, vulnerabilities and strengths from a broader perspective than the 'here and now' and thereby enhance the provision of person-centred care.

The role of temporality in adolescent refugees' sense of well-being.

Adolescent refugees confront a complex interplay of trauma arising from forced displacement, resettlement, and the challenges of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Using photovoice methodology, this study engaged 14 Iraqi and Syrian adolescent refugees now residing in the United States with the aim to illuminate their well-being experiences. Our findings show that temporal continuities and discontinuities in adolescent refugees' lives contributed to their sense of well-being by helping satisfy their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and safety. Temporal continuities involved drawing upon past resources and formulating future career aspirations based on present experiences. Temporal discontinuities encompassed contrasting past and present and processing adversities endured. This study underscores that, beyond current circumstances, the interpretation of life experiences over extended timeframes influences the well-being of adolescent refugees.

Uncertainty Work: Dealing with a Psychiatric Crisis in Two European Community Mental Health Teams.

The quest for how to deal with a crisis in a community setting, with the aim of deinstitutionalizing mental health care, and reducing hospitalization and coercion, is important. In this article, we argue that to understand how this can be done, we need to shift the attention from acute moments to daily uncertainty work conducted in community mental health teams. By drawing on an empirical ethics approach, we contrast the modes of caring of two teams in Utrecht and Trieste. Our analysis shows how temporality structures, such as watchful waiting, are important in dealing with the uncertainty of a crisis.

Temporal topic model for clinical pathway mining from electronic medical records.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the discovery of clinical pathways (CPs) from electronic medical records (EMRs) data has received increasing attention because it can directly support clinical doctors with explicit treatment knowledge, which is one of the key challenges in the development of intelligent healthcare services. However, the existing work has focused on topic probabilistic models, which usually produce treatment patterns with similar treatment activities, and such discovered treatment patterns do not take into account the temporal process of patient treatment which does not meet the needs of practical medical applications. METHODS: Based on the assumption that CPs can be derived from the data of EMRs which usually record the treatment process of patients, this paper proposes a new CPs mining method from EMRs, an extended form of the traditional topic model - the temporal topic model (TTM). The method can capture the treatment topics and the corresponding treatment timestamps for each treatment day. RESULTS: Experimental research conducted on a real-world dataset of patients' hospitalization processes, and the achieved results demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the proposed methodology for CPs mining. Compared to existing benchmarks, our model shows significant improvement and robustness. CONCLUSION: Our TTM provides a more competitive way to mine potential CPs considering the temporal features of the EMR data, providing a very prospective tool to support clinical diagnostic decisions.

Bohemia at the Pacific seabed: Archiving the future of deep-sea mining with the Interoceanmetal Joint Organization.

This article uses historical and ethnographic methods to examine the primarily East-Central European Interoceanmetal Joint Organization (IOM). I ask how and why the IOM has survived as an institution since its inception in 1987, working especially with the personal archive of Vratislav Kubista. Kubista was a metallurgist and former Deputy Director General at IOM who after retirement sought to develop a local deep-sea mining museum. This is a story about the work that archives do, but even more about how institutions maintain archives. I draw on recent work in the history and anthropology of time and archival practice to situate IOM's history and Kubista's collection in narratives of ruin, the unbuilt, and the experience of multiple temporalities within spaces of resource speculation and anticipation. I suggest that IOM's history highlights the contingencies of resources in the temporality of indefinite pause, their attendant data, and scientific labor and life under the shifting political, economic, and scientific circumstances of the ongoing not-yet. In broadening the history of what is once more a hotly contested potential resource, this account speaks to the claims of contemporary would-be seabed miners, who frequently frame the practice in terms of innovation, urgency, and novelty.

Parenthood, spatial temporal environmental exposure, and leisure-time physical activity participation: Evidence from a micro-timescale retrospective longitudinal study.

Parents with dependent children are at a high risk of physical inactivity. While previous studies have mostly focused on how parents' time constraints and changing social network may inhibit leisure time physical activity (LTPA) over the long-term, less is known about the integrated effects of parenting and spatial-temporal environmental exposure on the execution of LTPA during certain episodes of a day. By adopting an integrated social-spatiotemporal-environmental model (ST-ISEM) based on micro-timescale retrospective longitudinal analysis, we examine the association between LTPA participation and spatial-temporal environmental exposure at a micro-timescale, i.e., at the episode-level in working adults' workday, and specifically how parenting integrated with spatial-temporal environmental exposure can jointly influence episode-level LTPA participation. Using data from the day reconstruction method from 701 individuals in Shenzhen, China, we find that parenting may affect the participation of LTPA on workdays not only by shaping temporal environmental factors (time constraint path and social network path), but also by interacting with built environmental exposures (spatial path), both at the episode-level. This study contributes to the theorizing of an integrated social-environmental model for health and wellbeing by extending the ISEM from the life span to the micro-timescale and also by highlighting the importance of temporality in environmental exposure and health studies. It also contributes to the spatial temporal behavioral perspective of time geography literature by clarifying multiple pathways through which social and spatiotemporal environmental factors could interact and jointly affect health behaviors at a micro-timescale. This study contributes to the literature on parenting and LTPA decline by enriching and deepening the understanding of the time constraint and social network pathways through which parenting leads to LTPA change at the micro-timescale. While time constraints may decrease parents' LTPA at long-term, increasing physical activities related to childcare after work may strongly obstruct moderate-to-vigorous LTPA at a micro-timescale. This study also identifies a spatial pathway by which parenting hinders LTPA due to changing understanding and usage of urban spaces. This pathway warrants attention from social epidemiologists, health geographers, and urban planners since existing interventions promoting physical activity in urban spaces may be ineffective for parents.