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27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / a. Experience of time

[how we experience the nature of time]

11 ideas
Heavenly movements gave us the idea of time, and caused us to inquire about the heavens [Plato]
     Full Idea: Days, months, years and solstices have caused the invention of number, given us the notion of time, and caused us to inquire into the nature of the universe.
     From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 47a)
Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Time is not change … but time is not without change, for without any change (or any noticeable change) in our minds, time does not seem to pass.
     From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b19)
     A reaction: Aristotle has spotted what seems to be a key problem in understanding time, which is disentangling what occurs in nature from what occurs in our consciousness. The extreme views (naïve realism about time, or the view that it is imaginary) both seem wrong.
We can only sense time by means of movement, or its absence [Lucretius]
     Full Idea: It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility.
     From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.465)
     A reaction: This seems a remarkably Einsteinian remark, though he is only talking of the epistemology of the matter, not the ontology. We are not far from the concept of space-time here.
I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine]
     Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.
     From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14)
     A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind.
If everything in the universe happened a year earlier, there would be no discernible difference [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: To ask why God did not make everything a year sooner would be reasonable if time were something apart from temporal things, but time is just the succession of things, which remains the same if the universe is created a year sooner.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Samuel Clarke [1716], 3.6)
That times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, so it is known by intuition, not analysis [Kant]
     Full Idea: The proposition that different times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, and cannot arise from concepts alone. It is therefore immediately contained in the intuition and representation of time.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B047/A32)
     A reaction: It seems possible that this proposition is in fact analytic. What would it be like for two times to be simultaneous? If it happened we would not accept it, because it would violate our very concept of an instant in time.
The three modes of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity [Kant]
     Full Idea: The three 'modi' of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B219/A177)
     A reaction: I find such an assertion quite breathtaking in its confidence. How does he know this? It is tempting to try to reduce the three modes down to two or one. See Ideas 2608 and 4230 for McTaggart's reduction to two.
There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart]
     Full Idea: It is universally admitted.... that there could be no time if nothing changed.
     From: J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927], II p.11), quoted by Sydney Shoemaker - Time Without Change p.49
     A reaction: This is set up alongside Aristotle (Idea 8590) to be attacked by Shoemaker. I think Shoemaker is right, and that the rejection of McTaggart's view is a key result in modern metaphysics.
We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell]
     Full Idea: There is no reason in experience to suppose that there are times as opposed to events: the events, ordered by the relations of simultaneity and succession, are all that experience provides.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4)
     A reaction: We experience events, but also have quite an accurate sense of how much time has passed during the occurrence of events. If asked how much time has lapsed, why don't we say '32 events'? How do we distinguish long events from short ones?
For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller]
     Full Idea: If past moments are seen as abstract (rather than concrete) it doesn't follow that because past objects no longer exist that therefore past times do not exist. The abstractionist needs to say which times are concretely realised.
     From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.7.2)
     A reaction: Abstractionists see times as representations of change, rather than as substances.
The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller]
     Full Idea: According to the cognitive error theory of the passage of time, …it is either our misdescription of our temporal phenomenology, or some mechanism of our brain infers that the phenomenology is caused by time actually passing.
     From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 3.3.1)
     A reaction: [compressed] I think I have some sympathy with the misdescription view. If you imaginatively gradually remove all the changing events in your experience, that doesn't end with a raw experience of pure time, because there is no such thing.