Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Ego and Its Own' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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5 ideas

27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003])
     A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / h. Presentism
The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: When he wished to be subtle, Chrysippus wrote that the past part of time and the future part do not exist but subsist, and only the present exists.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081f
     A reaction: [from lost On Void] I think I prefer the ontology of Idea 20818. Idea 20819 does not offer an epistemology. Is the present substantial enough to be known? The word 'subsist' is an ontological evasion (even though Russell briefly relied on it).
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / e. Present moment
The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Stoics do not allow a minimal time to exist, and do not want to have a partless 'now'; so what one thinks one has grasped as present is in part future and in part past.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081c
     A reaction: [from lost On Parts Bk3-5] I agree with the ontology here, but I take our grasp of the present to be very short-term memory of the past. I ignore special relativity. Chrysippus expressed two views about this; in the other one he was a Presentist.
Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says most clearly that no time is wholly present; for since the divisibility of continuous things is infinite, time as a whole is also subject to infinite divisibility by this method of division.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
     A reaction: But what is his reason for thinking that time is a continuous thing? There is a minimum time in quantum mechanics (the Planck Time), but do these quantum intervals overlap? Compare Idea 20819.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
Life is forces conjoined by nutrition, to produce resistance, arrangement and value [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: A multiplicity of forces, conjoined through a common nutritive process, is what we call 'life'. All so-called feeling, representing, thinking is part of this nutritive process to enable resistance to other forces, and arrangement, and an evaluation.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[14])
     A reaction: [compressed at the end] Since no one else seems able to define life, this is quite a good attempt. Life is certainly a sort of unification of active energies, which than share goals.