On the Ontology of Goal-Driven Determinacy

Is telos in the kind of examples given facing the same direction as cause because it starts in your mind and crytallises or concretises later.

You may be intuiting the examples you said you wouldn't cite: the late S J Gould believed that at after a time of maximum mutations the form of many of which contained apparently useless features, after a contingent elimination episode had occurred some of the later surviving species found some of their features contingently matched the new environment they had to survive in. However if we were pious in an old fashioned way we could also add that this chain of events was in the mind of "god" beforehand, to be allowed to occur.

I think that what and who is, calls us to respect it / them as an end in it/themself-ves and not a means (of exploitation) to us only: my own original version of ought from is.

Physicists Shannon and Wheeler and linguist Halliday 1 are said to have suspected matter is a special case of meaning (this is very Peircian 2 too). I believe the meaning of what is, is "Is" (we are on an existence wave, hence our propensity * to be more than not be).

I've just spotted wave and weave are related in etymology. Jung is quoted as saying (roughly) that what we don't handle consciously, comes back to trouble us as destiny. Shopping done right doesn't haunt our destiny?

Lots of nice layers, it's your choice how to systematise your themes unconfusingly. I'm planning some articles myself, of this very sort!

{ * Propensity is a nice Popper word, occurring in The self and its brain }

1 Explained properly in 'On matter and meaning' in Halliday in the 21 st century ed Jonathan J Webster, Bloomsbury, 2013; I'm probably putting it too briefly

2 Peirce and pragmatism by W B Gallie, Dover, 1966

Quoting javra

That said, because a goal is always a potential future which one strives to make objectively real (here placing goals found in fantasies and dreams aside), a goal as telos is always found in the future.

I kind of have to disagree with this. The intent of a deed is never found in the world. The deed in itself is a means to achieve the intent but never really "wanted", in the sense of being the primary intent or will of the subject. What is objectively found in the future are consequences of deeds, not intents. Consequences are concrete and detailed while intents are abstract and general.

Quoting javra

So defining each, however, renders backward causation nonsensical.

That wouldn't matter anyways. The objective reality (of consequences) is nothing that would have anything to do with understanding anyways. You might understand proclaimed intents or not but you surely can't understand matter.

And we can all be teleological biscuits if we're not too half baked in the way we go about our lives :wink:

(The ultimate teleological biscuits being Choco Leibniz of course :yum: )

Quoting Heiko

you surely can't understand matter

Indeed. "Propensity", "existence", "respect" is perhaps as much detail as we shall grasp of this (beyond the physical sciences).

Quoting javra

1) An endstate (maybe the same as “teleute” but nicer sounding): an actualized result; an actualized completion, conclusion, or consummation of one or more processes, activities, events, or changes
2) A telos: A potential result toward whose actualization one or more givens strive, strain, stretch, bend, or move; respective to sentience, a goal, aim, or objective.
3) A telosis: A given’s activity or process of striving, straining, stretching, bending, or moving toward a telos; respective to sentience, the act of intending.

So:

• Telos = goal
• Telosis = plan for achieving that goal
• Endstate = intended future condition.

What value is added by using highfalutin philosophicalistic words? It just confuses things.

Let me see if I can summarize your point. My goal is to achieve a certain future condition. I have developed a plan, a series of actions, to meet that goal. When I've implemented that plan and the intended future conditions are achieved, they will have been achieved by backward causation because, as you've written, "a goal as telos is always found in the future."

Response - All the factors we are considering - goal, intended final condition, and plan - exist in the present. They are not in the future. Therefore, we are talking about just normal old everyday causation.

Quoting Fine Doubter

Is telos in the kind of examples given facing the same direction as cause because it starts in your mind and crytallises or concretises later.

Though it takes place in the mind, in the mind it takes place in the future - and from this mentally established potential future is determined what one chooses to do in the present. Contrast this with a memory, which takes place in the past, or a perception, which takes place in the metal present, both of which determine one's mental states and activities in different ways from that of goals.

Quoting Fine Doubter

You may be intuiting the examples you said you wouldn't cite: the late S J Gould believed that at after a time of maximum mutations the form of many of which contained apparently useless features, after a contingent elimination episode had occurred some of the later surviving species found some of their features contingently matched the new environment they had to survive in.

I'm focusing on goals because while non-sentient "ends toward which things move" in biology are contestable, and much more so in physics (despite the mathematical notion of attractors), I don't know of any that would contest the reality of consciously held goals determining at least some behavior. This, however, doesn't make me want to be dogmatic about goals being the only type of "ends toward which things move".

Quoting Heiko

That said, because a goal is always a potential future which one strives to make objectively real (here placing goals found in fantasies and dreams aside), a goal as telos is always found in the future. — javra

I kind of have to disagree with this. The intent of a deed is never found in the world. The deed in itself is a means to achieve the intent but never really "wanted", in the sense of being the primary intent or will of the subject. What is objectively found in the future are consequences of deeds, not intents. Consequences are concrete and detailed while intents are abstract and general.

Thanks for the disagreement. I assume you are approaching this from an eternalism pov. If not, the future is not yet objectified and so is also never found in the world in the sense I believe you're using, in so far as the future is never objectified until it becomes the objective present. I find that this applies both in presentism and in the growing block theory.

But even for an eternalist theory of time, would it make sense to then say that intents don't exist since they're never found in the world?

Quoting T Clark

So:

Telos = goal
Telosis = plan for achieving that goal
Endstate = intended future condition.

No. I'll try to re-describe the three concepts:

Telos = the potential end toward which a given moves; e.g., a goal (that which one wants to accomplish)
Telosis = the movement of a given toward a potential end; e.g., a striving (what one does to so accomplish)
Endstate = the actual end; e.g., the outcome of the striving toward a goal

If one's telos happens to be the taking to flight by the flapping of hands, one will start flapping ones hands as the telosis. The endstate of so doing is that one will not take to flight no matter how hard one tries. The goal determines what one chooses to do - is the motive for the activity one engages in - but the endstate of this might be opposite of ones intent, as per the example just given.

Quoting T Clark

Response - All the factors we are considering - goal, intended final condition, and plan - exist in the present. They are not in the future. Therefore, we are talking about just normal old everyday causation.

Causation, as typically understood, does not occur strictly in the present. The cause is not simultaneous to the effect, but precedes the effect in time. If the effect occurs in the present, the cause occurred in the past and no longer occurs in the present. If the cause occurs in the present, the effect will occur in the future after the present cause. This, in and of itself, does not adequately specify the nature of goal-driven determinacy: The goal, while being a potential future end, is always present for as long as that which it determines - viz, the striving toward it - persists.

Or maybe I should ask, how do you define causation?

Quoting javra

That said, because a goal is always a potential future which one strives to make objectively real (here placing goals found in fantasies and dreams aside), a goal as telos is always found in the future. It doesn’t matter if it occurs prior to the intending or is contemporaneous to the intending; in both aforementioned cases, the goal always holds place in the potential future (and, contingently, in the actual future as an endstate if one’s intending is fortuitous).

I don't think you can truthfully say that the goal is in the future. The goal always exists in the mind, at the present, and it is the intended fulfilment of the goal which is understood as in the future. The goal itself is in the present. That there is a difference between the goal itself (in the present), and the apprehended potential fulfillment of the goal (in the future), is evident from what you say about telos-accordant, and telos-discordant endstates. If the goal itself were in the future, then fulfilment of the goal would be necessitated, and telos-discordant endstates impossible.

So the following assumption cannot be held either:

Quoting javra

And, since in telos-driven activities the telos always occurs in the potential future relative to that which it determines, then telos-determinacy can be further specified as backward determinacy.

We cannot make backward determinacy out of telos-driven activities, because the goal is always existent at the present, with only a view (imagination) toward the future. It is not a real future, that the goal pertains to, but an imaginary one. That is why the telos discordant end state is possible. Therefore the activity which is supposed to be the means to the end might occur without the desired end state occurring, so we cannot say that it was the end state (in the future) which caused the activity. It was the goal, in the mind, at that time, with the imaginary future, which caused the activity which followed.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think you can truthfully say that the goal is in the future. The goal always exists in the mind, at the present, and it is the intended fulfilment of the goal which is understood as in the future. The goal itself is in the present

How is "the intended fulfillment of the goal" - which, as you say, is understood as in the future - not a redundant way of saying "the goal"? (e.g., Wiktionary defines "goal" as "a result one is attempting to achieve". To which I add that this result is not yet achieved, hence not of itself in the present.)

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, memories, perceptions, and goals all occur, ontologically speaking, in the mind and in the present. Everything that we are consciously aware of does. Yet our memories are our epistemological past, our perceptions are our epistemological present, and our goals are part of our less than certain epistemological future. To say that a goal takes place in the present holds the same weight as saying that a memory takes place in the present. Yet the memory is our awareness of the past (of past present moments we have already lived through) just as a goal forms part of our awareness of the future (of future present moments we have yet to live through).

While this can make little sense in eternalism, it can fit in neatly into a system of presentism. Whereas this quote seems to presume eternalism as regards the future:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If the goal itself were in the future, then fulfilment of the goal would be necessitated, and telos-discordant endstates impossible.

What I'm maintaining is that the future is not fully fixed ontologically. A goal is as much of the future as a memory is of the past. But, if for no other reason, there are a multitude of goals in competition with each other, and only some can become actualized as future present moments. When a predator pursues some prey, the goals of the predator and prey conflict, and only one of these two goals can become actualized as an endstate. Yet the "result each is attempting to achieve" resides in the potential future and not in the present.

As an aside, do we agree that a goal partly determines one's present choices of how to best achieve given goal?

Quoting javra

How is "the intended fulfillment of the goal" - which, as you say, is understood as in the future - not a redundant way of saying "the goal"? (e.g., Wiktionary defines "goal" as "a result one is attempting to achieve". To which I add that this result is not yet achieved, hence not of itself in the present.)

Perhaps I didn't phrase that well. There is a difference between the goal, and the fulfillment of the goal. The former is what exists in one's mind, at the present, as a determinate thing, the latter is indeterminate. Because it is indeterminate, I could not refer to it as a thing, "the fulfillment of the goal", so I referred to the "intended fulfillment of the goal". I think we must distinguish between "the goal", as a determinate thing intended, and the "intended fulfillment of the goal", to maintain the possibility that the goal might not be fulfilled.

Quoting javra

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, memories, perceptions, and goals all occur, ontologically speaking, in the mind and in the present. Everything that we are consciously aware of does. Yet our memories are our epistemological past, our perceptions are our epistemological present, and our goals are part of our less than certain epistemological future. To say that a goal takes place in the present holds the same weight as saying that a memory takes place in the present. Yet the memory is our awareness of the past (of past present moments we have already lived through) just as a goal forms part of our awareness of the future (of future present moments we have yet to live through).

I agree with this, but I would not say that our memories are necessarily our epistemological past, nor that our goals and anticipations are necessarily our epistemological future. I wouldn't even say that our perceptions are necessarily our epistemological present. This is because I think we use other conceptions to form our temporal conceptions, which serve as the base for our epistemological "time", therefore, past, present, and future. This is why we can have an epistemological "time" like eternalism, which removes past present and future from the experiential definitions which you give them.

I believe it is important to ground epistemology in solid ontology, so I think that going in the way which you do, referring to the ontology of time, for your epistemological definitions of past, present, and future, is the correct way. But I do not think that this is necessarily the way that epistemological definitions of past present and future, are formulated.

Quoting javra

What I'm maintaining is that the future is not fully fixed ontologically. A goal is as much of the future as a memory is of the past.

This is why I insisted on the distinction between the goal, and the (intended) fulfilment of the goal. A goal is "of the future", just like a memory is "of the past". But this is an imaginary past and future, existing in the mind, at the present. We ought to stress this point, that a memory, though we say it is "of the past", is a creation of the mind, it is the mind's attempt to recreate the past, so it is a product of the imagination, at the present. Therefore it is not a true product of the past, It may be influenced by the mind's anticipations of the future for example. This is why the memory can often be wrong, it is not truly "of the past", it is an imaginary recreation of the past.

Because of this situation with the memory, the past is not fully fixed epistemically., just like the future is not fully fixed ontologically. This results in two very distinct senses of "possibility", the epistemic, or logical possibility as to what may have occurred in the past, and the ontological possibility as to what may occur in the future.

Quoting javra

Yet the "result each is attempting to achieve" resides in the potential future and not in the present.

You use "potential future", here, in a similar way to my "imaginary future". I think it's better that we use something like "imaginary", to maintain that this future is only in the mind, and the future within the prey's mind is different from the future in the predator's mind. We can compare this to two people who have different memories of the same past situation. They have competing "pasts". And we might say that these are two "potential pasts", referring to epistemic potential. But when we're talking about "potential futures", it's a different type of "potential", because there is no real future, as there is a real past, so this is an ontological potential.

Quoting javra

As an aside, do we agree that a goal partly determines one's present choices of how to best achieve given goal?

Yes, I mostly agree with what you have written. It's just that the terminology is difficult with this subject, so I'm trying to clarify some things to make sure that we actually do agree.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There is a difference between the goal, and the fulfillment of the goal. The former is what exists in one's mind, at the present, as a determinate thing, the latter is indeterminate.

Yes, I agree. As much as I dislike introducing novel terminology, it's the difference between a goal one strives to achieve and a goal-accordant endstate in the terminology I'm proposing - as you initially mentioned. The first is determinate for as long as it persists, the second indeterminite until the time it becomes actualized, if it does become actualized.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with this, but I would not say that our memories are necessarily our epistemological past, nor that our goals and anticipations are necessarily our epistemological future. I wouldn't even say that our perceptions are necessarily our epistemological present. This is because I think we use other conceptions to form our temporal conceptions, which serve as the base for our epistemological "time", therefore, past, present, and future. This is why we can have an epistemological "time" like eternalism, which removes past present and future from the experiential definitions which you give them.

Yes, agreed, and there are also false memories, hallucinations, and futile goals or incorrect predictions to add into the mix. There's more to comment on here, but it will likely deviate from the thread's theme.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I believe it is important to ground epistemology in solid ontology, so I think that going in the way which you do, referring to the ontology of time, for your epistemological definitions of past, present, and future, is the correct way. But I do not think that this is necessarily the way that epistemological definitions of past present and future, are formulated.

I do have an ontology in mind, but I'm trying my best to approach the issue from a perspective where ignorance of ontology is (first) assumed.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You use "potential future", here, in a similar way to my "imaginary future". I think it's better that we use something like "imaginary", to maintain that this future is only in the mind, [...]

I see where you're going with this. Still, connotations stand in the way for me. For instance, given the possibility of hallucinations, one could say that all our present perceptions constitute our "imaginary present", since our perceptions are only in the mind, and since there is a slim possibility that they could be wrong. In short, describing all our awareness of past, present, and future as imaginary on account of it taking place in the mind fails to distinguish between imagined truths and factual truths - for me at least.

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)?

There's something subtly difficult about goal-driven determinacy (whose occurrence I find is incontestable) and, as mentioned in a previous post, it as determinacy is a different category from that of causality as understood in modernity. To introduce other Aristotelian notions, also different from formal (top-down) and material (bottom-up) determinacies. Maybe noteworthy, to Aristotle, goal-driven determinacy was about the (potential) ends to present activities determining said present activities; hence the Aristotelian term of "final cause".

Quoting javra

Telos = the potential end toward which a given moves; e.g., a goal (that which one wants to accomplish)
Telosis = the movement of a given toward a potential end; e.g., a striving (what one does to so accomplish)
Endstate = the actual end; e.g., the outcome of the striving toward a goal

I don't see how these are significantly different than my formulation.

Quoting javra

If one's telos happens to be the taking to flight by the flapping of hands, one will start flapping ones hands as the telosis.

I'm not sure this is relevant, but I'd think the first step would be to research the history of flight, aerodynamics, anatomy, and other relevant technical information. Then maybe I'd do some calculations about wing/arm surface, muscle strength, drag on my body, and other factors. Then, when my calculations showed I wouldn't be able to fly that way, maybe I'd do some research on eastern religions that are reported to teach us to levitate.

Quoting javra

Causation, as typically understood, does not occur strictly in the present.

Everything occurs strictly in the present. Our memories of the past and thoughts about the future take place in the present. Ok, ok, I'm being tediously pedantic.

Quoting javra

Or maybe I should ask, how do you define causation?

Some definitions from the web:

• [1] The act of making something (the effect) happen[2] The relationship of cause and effect between one event or action and the result[3] The act or agency which produces an effect[4] From Bertrand Russell - "Cause and effect . . . are correlative terms denoting any two distinguishable things, phases, or aspects of reality, which are so related to each other that whenever the first ceases to exist the second comes into existence immediately after, and whenever the second comes into existence the first has ceased to exist immediately before."[5] More from BR - "Causality - The necessary connection of events in the timeseries"[6] More from BR - "Cause - Whatever may be included in the thought or perception of a process as taking place in consequence of another Process. ."

Boy. That's not much help. First off, I want to stay away from old Aristotle's four types of causation, at least for the purposes of this post. Too complicated. I think the only helpful use of the word involves very simple systems, e.g. the cliche billiard balls. Hey, how about this. Physical causation is the transmission of energy from one thing to another. I like that. The moving cue ball strikes the three ball. Some of the kinetic energy of the cue ball is transmitted to the three ball, which then moves. Even non-physical causation has to eventually lead to physical causation.

I've been thinking for a while that causation is not a very useful concept. That is not a new thought. Bertrand Russell wrote about it extensively. Maybe I'll start a new thread.

Reply to javra Have you looked at Husserl’s notion of intentionality? He begins from a notion of the present as ‘thick’ or ‘specious’. This time consciousness underlies all of our experiences. The present is not a punctual now but a triad consisting of the just elapsed past ( called retention) , the immediate present and a protentional aspect anticipating into the future. The retentional aspect is not the same thing as a memory. It is more like a lingering of the just past as a slightly faded ‘present’ alongside the fresh present. Without this notion of a retentional phase of the now , it would be impossible to explain how we are able to enjoy a temporallly extended event like a melody. If perceived time is just puctual ‘nows’ one after the other. , the temporally unfolding context of a melody or book or movie or conversation would be lost.

Intention is the act whereby we experience the present. We intend a present event by expecting into it via protention. The protention is a kind of empty anticipation which is ‘fulfilled’ by what actually occurs into our intending. This fulfillment can be relatively ( but never perfectly) complete, or our anticipation can be disappointed by what actually happens. Even in disappointment what we expereince is never a complete surprise.. Protention makes even the most unexpected, disappointing event familiar and recognizable
to us to some extent. Also note that, since fulfillment is never perfect , what occurs into an intention is always novel in some fashion , in some aspect.
So every intention is teleologically oriented , every intention is both a prediction and a fulfillment , in the same act and same moment. And every intention produces novelty and the unexpected at least in some smalll measure.
The other feature of intentionality is that the world always appears to us in modes of givenness. The intentional object could be an imagining , a remembrance, a perception or the experience of an social value, depending on whether we are imagining, perceiving , remembering or valuing the object. So how the ‘same’ world appears to us shifts depending on our mode of intending.

I hope this helps.

Quoting javra

I see where you're going with this. Still, connotations stand in the way for me. For instance, given the possibility of hallucinations, one could say that all our present perceptions constitute our "imaginary present", since our perceptions are only in the mind, and since there is a slim possibility that they could be wrong. In short, describing all our awareness of past, present, and future as imaginary on account of it taking place in the mind fails to distinguish between imagined truths and factual truths - for me at least.

Yes, this is the point, all such temporal distinctions are imaginary, even our designation that now is the present. Notice that even by the time you say "now", it's in the past, so the present is just as illusory as the past and future. What I think is that we recognize a real difference between past and future, and this leads us to believe that there must be a division between them, hence "the present" is afforded reality. However, from this perspective we only come to believe in "the present" as a logical conclusion. The present is not experiential, we experience the past, and anticipate the future, and since we understand a substantial difference between these two, we come to the logical conclusion that there must be a present which separates them.

I really don't know what you mean when you suggest a difference between imagined truths and factual truths. I think that "truth" is always a judgement, so it is always a product minds, and in that sense, always imagined. We might assume a "factual truth" as independent from human minds, but that would imply a judgement of God, or something like that, as truth is a judgement.

Quoting javra

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)?

Yes, I'm in agreement with this.

Quoting javra

There's something subtly difficult about goal-driven determinacy (whose occurrence I find is incontestable) and, as mentioned in a previous post, it as determinacy is a different category from that of causality as understood in modernity.

By "determinacy" here, do you mean that we, in a sense, determine the future, through our goal-driven acts? This is obviously different from "determinacy" in the sense of determinism.

Reply to javra

I like your OP a lot.Many people take for granted that forward-determining 'causation' should be credited with exclusive responsibility for the shaping of the world. That doesn't match my experience - and I don't think most people experience the world this way in their every day life either - but its still treated as an implicit article of faith for many philosophers talking about this stuff. You often see philosophers tying themselves in knots, attempting to translate all determination into forward-determining causation. It's like they're operating in an ethos where you can't be credible if you admit any determination but 'causation' (as you define it in the OP.) Interested to see where you go with this. (And I'm curious if you have any ideas about when & why the emphasis on forward-determining causation came about.)

Reply to Arcturus
What you call "forward' causation is really, backward, and this is because determinations of forward and backward are perspective dependent, they are determined according to which way one is looking. If we place cause and effect in a temporal relation to each other, the cause is always further away from the observing perspective, than the effect is.

So if we orient ourselves in time, such that we are looking backward, into the past, the cause is further back in the past than the effect is. You call this "forward-determining causation", but it is dependent on a backward looking perspective. If, on the other hand, we turn ourselves around, such that we are facing the future, then the goals which are furthest in the future are the more final ends, and we prioritize the nearer goals as means toward those more final goals. In reality therefore, a true forward looking perspective will see things furthest in the future as being most significant causally, and things furthest in the past as least significant causally.

Now it is only from that backward looking perspective that "forward-determining causation" appears to be responsible for shaping the world. This is the perspective of those cave dwellers in Plato's cave allegory. They are looking at the past, as if it is the true reality, when the remembered past is really just a shadow of the activity which is occurring at the present. The memories are a representation, a reflection. Until they apprehend this fact, and turn around to look directly at the other side of this activity at the present, the future side, to see the good (what is intended, the goal), as the cause of whatever activity occurs at the present, they will not recognize that all the occurrences of the past are just reflections, shadows or representations, of that cause of the activity at the present, final cause, intent, free will, and so they are merely the effects of final cause, or intention.

Quoting T Clark

Telos = the potential end toward which a given moves; e.g., a goal (that which one wants to accomplish)
Telosis = the movement of a given toward a potential end; e.g., a striving (what one does to so accomplish)
Endstate = the actual end; e.g., the outcome of the striving toward a goal — javra


I don't see how these are significantly different than my formulation.

Hm. The telos is the objective that might or might not become a reality. The telosis is all the activities one engages in to make the objective a reality. And the endstate is the reality that unfolds at the end of one's telos-driven telosis, which might be accordant to the objective or might not be.

Quoting T Clark

Telos = goal
Telosis = plan for achieving that goal
Endstate = intended future condition.

So telosis includes planing but also incorporates movements toward the goal, as in the implementation of plans (if plans were made). And the endstate is the future condition that actually unfolds, not necessarily the future condition that was intended to unfold.

Quoting T Clark

Everything occurs strictly in the present. Our memories of the past and thoughts about the future take place in the present. Ok, ok, I'm being tediously pedantic.

I'm not disagreeing, but this can lead to a trivializing of past, present, and future such that no meaningful distinction obtains. Ontologically, presentism can make sense. But we nevertheless can only live by separating events into the past, the present, and the future.

Quoting T Clark

Even non-physical causation has to eventually lead to physical causation.

Interesting hypothesis, though I'm not clear on what "non-physical causation" is meant to entail. I forget what ontology tickles your fancy. Would thoughts that cause other thoughts that eventually go nowhere and never get turned into observable behavior be an example of non-physical causation that doesn't get turned into physical causation?

Quoting T Clark

I've been thinking for a while that causation is not a very useful concept. That is not a new thought. Bertrand Russell wrote about it extensively. Maybe I'll start a new thread.

:grin: Yea, I'm somewhat familiar with Russell's take. If memory serves right, he also thought everything is mathematical and, hence, non-causal. Thing is, blame/credit would be impossible without the notion of causation. And its hard to live without figuring out who does what. To not mention what does what. Here I'm entertaining one of the reasons for why things get done.

Quoting Joshs

Have you looked at Husserl’s notion of intentionality? He begins from a notion of the present as ‘thick’ or ‘specious’. This time consciousness underlies all of our experiences. The present is not a punctual now but a triad consisting of the just elapsed past ( called retention) , the immediate present and a protentional aspect anticipating into the future.

Thank you for the well written post regarding Husserl's intentionality. In truth, I need to delve into Husserl's notions more than I have. In my view of ontology, I agree with this quote. The present isn't infinitesimal or else illusory but holds an extension, and part of that extension includes the very recent past and future. As I once discussed with MU, sounds stand out to make this point. A musical note can only be heard within an extended present. And, as you say, so too is a melody, reductionistically composed of various musical notes.

I've, for better or worse, shied away from Husserl due to, imo, his "intentionality" being significantly different from the more common sense of intentionality that stems from "intends", which basically describes a stretching out from here to there. When it comes to goals, a consciousness's stretching out from the current conditions it is in toward the goal as desired future conditions it wants to see objectified. E.g., one generally plays a competitive game with the intention of winning. One here intends to win, i.e. as psyche, stretches out from where one is in the game to a future state where one has won the game. This notion of a psyche's stretching out so far seems to me to be a different category than that of aboutness.

Your thoughts are very welcome on this subject. I'm especially intrigued by this conclusion, which I believe I understand from Husserl's pov, although too vaguely for my own tastes:

Quoting Joshs

So every intention is teleologically oriented , every intention is both a prediction and a fulfillment , in the same act and same moment. And every intention produces novelty and the unexpected at least in some smalll measure.

BTW, in an ultimate scheme of things, I very much agree that all aspects of the psyche are at least in some measure teleologically oriented.

I'm thinking you'll need to look more into telosis (or maybe I should since I'm seeing it). Let me explain with an example:

My telos is "Type 'typo'"
The endstate is "tyop"

So how do we conceive of the telosis? If you go chronolocially, you get:

Step 1. Telos: type "t" - endstate "t"
Step 2. Telos: type "y" - endstate "type y"
Step 3: Telos: type "p" - endstate "type o"
Step 4: Telos: type "o" - endstate "type p"

But that's not enough. Taken like that steps 3 & 4 would be two separate mistakes, but seem to be systematically related to the telos: correct letters, incorrect order. But you need to have the full endstate to be able to judge this. For example, on my German keybord I might additionally misplace my hand and produce "typü". Now it looks like "p" is correct, but it's actually an invisible set of two mistakes: wrong finger sequence and misplacing my hand on the keyboard.

So other than outlining the steps, we need some sort of meta-level of revision, but I'm not sure how to allow for that. For example, a sneeze might interrupt my telosis, or lead to an uninted endstate, messing with suboridante teloi. And how we interpret this seems to related to the telos, too. It's at this level that I'm getting confused.

My hunch is that this is pointing towards any action being the relationship between what you meant to do, what you ended up doing, and how you see what you ended up doing from the point of view of what you meant to do, and how that feeds into what you want to do next. But I'm unsure how that relates to time, except that some of it seems... nonlinear in some way? I'm not sure.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, from this perspective we only come to believe in "the present" as a logical conclusion. The present is not experiential, we experience the past, and anticipate the future, and since we understand a substantial difference between these two, we come to the logical conclusion that there must be a present which separates them.

Hm. We here hold different perspectives. I find that the separation of all experiences strictly into past and future is the product of a logical, rather than experiential, conclusion. I again find that the present is extended experientially, as in the experienced sound of a musical note. An interesting topic for debate, though I'm not sure it is pertinent to the issue of where goals are temporally located.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I really don't know what you mean when you suggest a difference between imagined truths and factual truths.

Imaginary as in "existing only in the imagination (but not in reality)". For example, that Santa Claus gives presents to good kids would then be an imaginary truth, since this state of affairs exists only in the imagination. That no such being as Santa Claus exists in reality would, for most, be a (factual) truth. Maybe my word choice was poor, but I still find the connotations to "imaginary" to be problematic due to aforementioned reasons. I'm thinking we could get into notions of Maya where everything but Brahman is imaginary, but that wouldn't be much help in better understanding how goal-driven teleology operates ... kind of a thing. :smile:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)? — javra

Yes, I'm in agreement with this.

This to me points to goals having an important relation to the yet to be actualized - hence potential - future. I'm trying to see where our disagreements dwell and how we might, maybe, remedy them. If a goal is not, in and of itself, a potential future (of which we are aware and yearn to actualize), then, given the aforementioned agreement, how would you say a goal differs from a memory or a perception? This with agreement that all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

By "determinacy" here, do you mean that we, in a sense, determine the future, through our goal-driven acts? This is obviously different from "determinacy" in the sense of determinism.

The short answer is "yes": determinacy as in "to fixate the boundaries or limits of, either in part or in whole". I can't use the Aristotelian term of causation, since today causation strictly signifies efficient causes. But, as you rightly point out, determinism is today understood to be a system wherein the boundaries or limits of everything is completely fixated in advance, with no possibility of ontological change. Again, I dislike introducing novel terms where they're not needed, so I'm sticking to "determinacy" for now.

Reply to Arcturus Thanks. Unfortunately I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this thread, since it turns out I'm shorter on time than anticipated. But I'll do my best to reply as needed.

Quoting Arcturus

Interested to see where you go with this. (And I'm curious if you have any ideas about when & why the emphasis on forward-determining causation came about.)

Right now trying to see how fluidly goal-driven determinacy would fit into the label of "backward determinacy: where that determined occurs in the present and that which determines occurs in the potential future".

There are further implications, but this thread isn't the place to mention them, I'm thinking.

As to why teleology has become out of favor in philosophy nowadays, tmk, it has a lot to do with folk like Descartes, Bacon, and Hume - in no particular order - which saw no use for any type of Aristotelian causation other than those of "material cause" and "efficient cause" ... making it easy for modern day materialism/physicalism to take root.

Quoting Dawnstorm

My hunch is that this is pointing towards any action being the relationship between what you meant to do, what you ended up doing, and how you see what you ended up doing from the point of view of what you meant to do, and how that feeds into what you want to do next. But I'm unsure how that relates to time, except that some of it seems... nonlinear in some way? I'm not sure.

Nice post! I'm interpreting goal-driven determinacy to be performed by sub/unconsciousness as well - which obviously isn't strictly divided from consciousness. An easy example: a slip of the tongue. This complicates matters, but it might also serve as a way to resolve at least some of the issues you've brought up.

But, personally, I'm right now just focusing on how to best understand goals in and of themselves. To keep things simple, from a consciousness pov.

Quoting javra

But, personally, I'm right now just focusing on how to best understand goals in and of themselves. To keep things simple, from a consciousness pov.

I'm not actually sure the consciousness/unconsciouness distinction is my major point, though it's definitely relevant. I think I'm trying to piece together your model, but I'm unsure how to conceptualise the telosis:

The distinction between telos and endstate, in your model, seems to primarily be one of "projected" vs. "actual". And somehow a projected endstate engenders a process - "telosis". What is this process? I started out my post by saing it's not simply a series of telos-endpoint pairs; that there needs to be some constant monitoring going on.

For there to be an endpoint, there has to be goal, but not only in the sense of determinism. The goal also determines what counts as an endpoint, either by supplying any given state with flags such as "success", or "give up", "hey, that's even better", or whatever. But what that means is that goals don't fix endpoints, and endpoints might in turn influence how you see your goal. But then it would have to be active all through the telosis. Basically, my hunch might be that the telos doesn't determine your actions; it's just the meaningful part of your actions. As such, whatever determines what happens (if you assume determinism) determines both the telos and endpoint and how they relate to each other.

Note that I'm not actually making any arguments. I'm not even sure how coherent I am. I'm just playing around with what your model looks like to me in order to better understand it.

For example, if a goal is a projected endpoint and there's an actual endpoint, what is that actual endpoint? The totality of what really happens has a detail level magnitudes higher than what you project. Some of it interfers with the goal, but a lot of it is irrelevant. So is your endpoint the totality of happens, or the totality of what happens minus what the goal considers irrelevant. I had the impression its the former. But if it's the former, it's not really an endpoint to begin with, it's just a moment in which stuff happens. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Quoting Dawnstorm

For there to be an endpoint, there has to be goal, but not only in the sense of determinism. The goal also determines what counts as an endpoint, either by supplying any given state with flags such as "success", or "give up", "hey, that's even better", or whatever.

Well that could have been said clearer. As soon as I figure out what I meant to say, I'll let you know how. I do know that used the word "determine" in two different ways, but I'm unsure how. Sorry for the confusion (maybe it's only mine).

Reply to javra Quoting javra

one generally plays a competitive game with the intention of winning. One here intends to win, i.e. as psyche, stretches out from where one is in the game to a future state where one has won the game. This notion of a psyche's stretching out so far seems to me to be a different category than that of aboutness.

The way I see it , being about something entails having an attitude and aim toward that object. I understand what you’re saying. Instantaneous perception would seem to imply a kind of passive contribution of then subjective intending or ‘aiming’ in comparison to the active, engaged preparatory posture of competing to win.
Husserl a tally brews foe what would seem to be a simple and immediate structure of perception into a complex of constitutive levels. At the most primordial level of sensing, intentionality is absent. The stimulus exerts an attraction on the the subject which the subject responds to be being attracted. At the next level of constitution, the subject actively turned toward the stimulus to ‘get a better look at it ‘, that is ,it strives to understand it better. What beings to this striving is a series of preparatory postures and bodily adjustments.

Husserl calls this active intentional process objectification, because it is how we constitute spatial
objects out of what are only a constantly changing flow of data. one could look at the constituting of a kind as a kind of sport, with the aim being to see the phenomenon as a more and more harmoniously correlated unity ( this chair, this ball, etc, rather than these disparate perspectival appearances and disappearances). In a sense we are competing with ourselves to achieve this elusive goal of the perfectly unified perceptual object, and we know we have gotten on the wrong track when we encounter optical illusions and mistaken identifications , such as when a shape in the dark first appears as a person but on closer inspection turns out to be only the shadow of a lightpost. So I think simple
perceptual identification is already well along in capturing the centra composted of the kind of intentionality you have in mind.

Quoting javra

Hm. We here hold different perspectives. I find that the separation of all experiences strictly into past and future is the product of a logical, rather than experiential, conclusion. I again find that the present is extended experientially, as in the experienced sound of a musical note. An interesting topic for debate, though I'm not sure it is pertinent to the issue of where goals are temporally located.

Well, what does "experience" mean to you? Let's say, it's real observation, or something like that. Isn't all observation, and all experience, past? You assume that it occurs at the present, but the present is not an experiential aspect of time at all. Imagine that you sit and do nothing, meditate, or just enjoy the experience of being present, or something like that. This in itself, is not a temporal experience, and does not give rise to any notion of "present" in time. It is only when you take notice of things having just happened, or anticipate things in the future, that temporality becomes part of the experience. Temporality only becomes a feature from these determinations of past and future. Then, it is from these constructed notions of past and future, that we produce a concept of time, and proceed to the logical conclusion that we are experiencing something called "the present". But without the construction of these temporal notions of past and future, we would not see ourselves as being at the present. We might say that a creature without temporal conceptions would still enjoy the experience of being present, but I do not think this being would be cognizant of being "present" in the sense of present in time.

That is why I argue that our base "experience" gives us the past as memories, and the future as anticipations, but it does not give us the present. All of our feelings concern the past and future, and although we say "we are sensing at the present", we are really sensing things which are separated from the mind by a medium, and because of this separation, the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed. We sense the past, not the present. That we are experiencing "the present" is a sort of self deception which we impose in our attempt to come to grips with the overwhelming difference between past and future.

Quoting javra

This to me points to goals having an important relation to the yet to be actualized - hence potential - future. I'm trying to see where our disagreements dwell and how we might, maybe, remedy them. If a goal is not, in and of itself, a potential future (of which we are aware and yearn to actualize), then, given the aforementioned agreement, how would you say a goal differs from a memory or a perception? This with agreement that all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present.

See, I look at this as if you are starting from a faulty premise, that premise of self-deception in which "all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present". Memories tell us of a past, and anticipations tell us of a future. The substantial difference between these two inspire us to assume "the present", to separate them. But "the present" only serves as a non-dimensional boundary, a division between past and future. As a divisor between the two parts of time, past and future, the present cannot partake in time at all. Then there is no time passing at the present, because all time is on one side or the other of the divisor, so we cannot say that these things occur "in the present".

This is a dilemma, and it leads to the notion which Joshs was talking about, the "thick" present. I like to think of two dimensional time, and call it the breadth of time. Now we do not have a single dimensional timeline with an arrow, but a wide line, and within that line, we do not really understand the directionality..

So to answer your question, how does a goal differ from a memory, it differs by the same principle that the past differs from the future. And, as I say, I believe this is a substantial difference, because we know from our experience that we cannot go back in time. Things which have happened cannot be changed, they are necessary, but things of the future have no real existence, being contingent. The difficult question is, how do things change from being contingent to being necessary, at what we call "the present" It is impossible that things can change in an instant of a dividing line, so the present must consist of some parts of past, and some of future.

Quoting Dawnstorm

For there to be an endpoint, there has to be goal, but not only in the sense of determinism. The goal also determines what counts as an endpoint, either by supplying any given state with flags such as "success", or "give up", "hey, that's even better", or whatever.

This is an important point. When one attempt fails, we often try another, so in these situations there is no real "endpoint", until success is achieved. This is actually a fairly common aspect of life, trial and error. Also we see a similar situation when one practices to better oneself, a musical instrument, a game, an athlete, etc... The goal is simply to get better, and this is like an "ideal", as there is no real endpoint because we never reach perfection.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

...although we say "we are sensing at the present", we are really sensing things which are separated from the mind by a medium, and because of this separation, the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed

Even if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed", that needn't contradict the statement that "we are sensing at the present". The present could just as easily be defined as the time at which we are sensing, instead of "the time of things" - whatever that is.

That is, when is the present moment if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed"? If the present moment is not 'the time at which things are sensed', then the present moment must presumably be time shifted by adding or subtracting some arbitrary amount of time to or from 'the time at which things are sensed', in order to account for light bouncing off an object, brain function, or something else. In other words, you are still using 'the time at which things are sensed' as your benchmark of the present moment, except that you account for some arbitrary "gap" or "medium" between an event and our sensing it. I can tell you what I am sensing at any given time, but what is the definition of this arbitrary gap or "medium" between some event and my sensing it? What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

...without the construction of these temporal notions of past and future, we would not see ourselves as being at the present.

If the present is the time at which we are sensing, then the past and future are not needed to help define the present; they are instead defined by it.

Quoting Dawnstorm

[...] I'm just playing around with what your model looks like to me in order to better understand it. [...]

First, I don’t assume determinism. I assume a form of compatibilism that is largely rooted in what most would nowadays term indeterminism (rather than one that is grounded in determinism). This part is exceedingly hard to explain in a nutshell. But such is my stance: compatibilism.

In attempts to better express my pov:

The telosis is the active striving to accomplish a given goal/telos – is what one does to reach what one aims for. The endstate is simply the outcome of this goal-driven striving. I’m going to make this post a little more complex, hoping that via this complexity some of your questions might be better addressed.

For any given goal, there can be subordinate goals and supraordinate goals. Subordinate goals will serve the purpose of accomplishing the given goal. Ultimate supraordinate goals can potentially take the form of what various philosophers have described as a psyche’s overarching and generalized will to – be this will to power (Nietzsche), to meaning (Frankl), to pleasure or else the “pleasure principle” (Freud, which I acknowledge is not that great of a philosopher), and so forth (self-preservation also comes to mind as a candidate for some), which would then as an ultimate supraordinate goal hold all other goals as subordinates of itself.

Think of, say, a tennis match between two professionals at a tournament. Why does a player move this way and not that way at some particular time during the match? Because they deemed it the best way to act at that given time so as to win the tennis match. Right? Their actions during the tennis match where thus significantly fixed, determined, by the goal of winning the match. This being the goal of each of the two players which is taken for granted while they’re playing in the tennis match (barring the goal of loosing the tennis match for whatever reason). A subordinate goal to so winning might be to tire the other player out by making them run left and right as much as possible. A subordinate goal of this might be to hit the ball in a certain way rather than another. Yet all these subordinate goal serves the purpose of winning the match. On the other hand, a supraordinate goal to winning the match might be increased fame, or money, or obtaining a kiss from some gal/guy in the stands. And this supraordinate goal might itself be subordinate to some overarching will-to that is ever-present.

The endstate of the tennis match cannot have both player’s goals to win the tennis match actualized. As the tennis match’s endstate, only one of the two players will be the winner of the tennis match – and this is known beforehand by both. The characteristics of the endstate to the tennis match are indeterminate until the outcome – i.e. the endstate – of the tennis match becomes actual … rather than being a potential outcome/endstate that dwells in the future.

As to goals determining the striving toward said goals (else expressed, the telos determining the telosis): Would a person invest the time and effort in preparing for and then playing a competitive tennis match in a tournament if they didn’t have the goal of winning said tennis match? The goal of so doing determines, for example, that the person practices prior to the match rather than, say, binging on TV and ice-cream on the sofa during the same period of time. Or, else expressed, the telos of winning the tennis match determines the telosis of practicing for and partaking in the tennis match in such ways as one deems best to accomplish the telos – with the telosis, again, being the striving, moving, etc. toward the particular telos.

The end as eventual actualized outcome, as endstate, doesn’t determine one’s present behaviors. For starters, one doesn’t know whether one will win or lose the tennis match prior the tennis match’s conclusion. Instead, it’s the end as telos, as goal, as a potential future outcome one strives to actualize, that determines one’s current behaviors … which, again, seek to make this potential future outcome an actual outcome at some future time.

What led to someone having the goal of winning the tennis match is a separate issue, but I maintain that this too would need to be accordant to some supraordinate goal the person holds. And if, for example, one were to change one’s mind about wanting to win the tennis match, this too would be in part determined by some goal that is supraordinate to that of winning the tennis match. Depending on example, such as the supraordinate goal of wanting to survive, or to have a good reputation, or some such.

In sum, my general stance: Every consciously performed action is in part determined by what one wants to accomplish by performing that action. Else it is not volitionally enacted. This serves as an important reason for our actions: our intents. Our intents don’t simply give our actions meaning. They significantly determine what we do (and what we don’t do) in our striving to accomplish our intents. All the same, our intents are not always the actual outcomes that result from our striving to actualize our intents.

Complexities of course abound. And, I’m now thinking, other examples might have better served my purpose (my intent, or goal, or telos) of clarifying where I’m coming from. But I’ll leave it here for now and see what unfolds.

(I’ll have to further respond to other posts later on.)

Quoting Luke

If the present is the time at which we are sensing, then the past and future are not needed to help define the present; they are instead defined by it.

To @Metaphysician Undercover: Yes, what Luke said.

Quoting javra

First, I don’t assume determinism. I assume a form of compatibilism that is largely rooted in what most would nowadays term indeterminism (rather than one that is grounded in determinism). This part is exceedingly hard to explain in a nutshell. But such is my stance: compatibilism.

I somehow mixed up "determinacy" (which comes up in the title of this thread) with "determinism" (which doesn't). I did actually think you're a compatibilist when it comes to mind because you were talking about "non-sentient teloi" in a bracket in your opening post..Where this occasionally tripped me up is in this: "How does a 'goal' determine an outcome, when you clearly say it doesn't?" I think that's why I focussed on the telosis?

Quoting javra

For any given goal, there can be subordinate goals and supraordinate goals. Subordinate goals will serve the purpose of accomplishing the given goal. Ultimate supraordinate goals can potentially take the form of what various philosophers have described as a psyche’s overarching and generalized will to – be this will to power (Nietzsche), to meaning (Frankl), to pleasure or else the “pleasure principle” (Freud, which I acknowledge is not that great of a philosopher), and so forth (self-preservation also comes to mind as a candidate for some), which would then as an ultimate supraordinate goal hold all other goals as subordinates of itself.

I almost got this far. What's new to me is that at the end of a sring of the goal hierarchy you end up with something like "generalised will". That's interesting.

Quoting javra

And, I’m now thinking, other examples might have better served my purpose (my intent, or goal, or telos) of clarifying where I’m coming from.

Yeah, it being a fairly formal transaction with typical goals for typical participants raises some questions. It's an interesting example, though.

Quoting Luke

Even if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed", that needn't contradict the statement that "we are sensing at the present". The present could just as easily be defined as the time at which we are sensing, instead of "the time of things" - whatever that is.

I did not deny that we are sensing at the present, I deny that we experience the present, as Javra said. What I was trying to argue is "that we sense at the present" is a logical conclusion, not directly derived from experience. Your post simply demonstrates a logical necessity to assume 'the present", as I've argued. We conclude, from logic, that we must be experiencing at the present, but we do not actually experience the present.

Quoting Luke

That is, when is the present moment if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed"? If the present moment is not 'the time at which things are sensed', then the present moment must presumably be time shifted by adding or subtracting some arbitrary amount of time to or from 'the time at which things are sensed', in order to account for light bouncing off an object, brain function, or something else. In other words, you are still using 'the time at which things are sensed' as your benchmark of the present moment, except that you account for some arbitrary "gap" or "medium" between an event and our sensing it. I can tell you what I am sensing at any given time, but what is the definition of this arbitrary gap or "medium" between some event and my sensing it? What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed?

As I explained, we derive directly from experience, memories, (that something just happened, or happened a long time ago), and also anticipations (concerning things which will happen). This provides what you call the "benchmark of the present moment". We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present.

The reason why I say this is that "time" is conceptual. So to have a concept of "the present" which is grounded in, or substantiated by a concept of "time" (i.e. to have a temporal notion of "present"), requires that there is coherency between the two "time" and "present". To produce a concept of time requires reference to past and future, as I described. And when the concept of "time" is constructed in this way, the idea that things are happening at the present moment becomes incoherent. because no time passes at the present moment, and activity requires the passage of time.

As an alternative, you might suggest that we start with the simple notion that we are experiencing things occurring at "the present". From here, we cannot derive a concept of time though, without referencing past or future, .so this concept of "the present" is not temporal.

This is the problem with Javra's proposition. If we start with the assumption that we are experiencing "the present", then there is no means by which 'the present" says anything temporal, it's just, 'being-here', 'being-there', or something like that, in an eternal (as in outside of time) way. And there is no problem with saying that we experience the present, so long as we do not conflate this idea of "present" with the temporal idea of "the present", which gives the present a relation to past and future. to give 'being present' a temporal meaning requires reference to before and after. So Javra's proposition gives us no approach to "goals".

It's merely two different ways of describing "experience". Javra describes experience as being present, and I describe experience as consisting of memories and anticipations. What I am arguing is that Javra's description, of being-here, or being-there, excludes temporality from experience, whereas my description makes temporality an essential part of experience. And unless we start with a description like mine, we have no basis for a "goal" based ontology which is also supported by experience. We could still make a goal based ontology but it would be supported by assumptions produced in some way other than experience. In other words, Javra has no way to get from the description of experience as "being present", to the premise that having a goal is experiential, without switching to a description of experience which includes the anticipation of the future as an essential part of the experience.

Quoting Joshs

So I think simple perceptual identification is already well along in capturing the centra composted of the kind of intentionality you have in mind.

Thanks again for the informative post. Yes, I in fact do agree with what you've outlined. For me, at least, the intending that occurs so as to perceive through any of the physiological senses occurs via sub/unconscious process of mind. While I don't want to derail the thread's theme with this, I by this infer that a total mind is composed of a multitude of sub/unconscious agencies (which in a healthy individual typically work in harmony, i.e. in unison) in addition to the conscious agency which we experientially know ourselves to be. An emotion or want that bothers us consciously (e.g., a pang of envy which we then proceed to dispel as inappropriate ) serves as an example of such a sub/unconscious agency that stands out to us for as long as we are opposed to what the emotion/want desires, or else intends. But I'm probably opening up a whole can of worms with this. Still, this is how I've so far made sense of perceptions being intentional, both in the sense of aboutness and in the sense of intending: via the intending of very basic unconscious agencies that together constitute the mostly involuntary conscious act of perception (leading to the notion of aboutness).

Yes, I'll need to read more into Husserl. Please let me know if anything just said in this post - regarding a multitude of agencies that typically work in unison constituting a single mind - strikes you as too audacious.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover So its know, I'll contribute later on.

Reply to javra Quoting javra

Please let me know if anything just said in this post - regarding a multitude of agencies that typically work in unison constituting a single mind - strikes you as too audacious.

The modular view of mind has a long pedigree in cognitive science. Check out Marvin Minsky’s ‘Society of Mind’.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I did not deny that we are sensing at the present, I deny that we experience the present

What's the difference?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

As I explained, we derive directly from experience, memories, (that something just happened, or happened a long time ago), and also anticipations (concerning things which will happen). This provides what you call the "benchmark of the present moment". We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present.

We "derive directly from experience" our conscious perceptions of the world, just as much as our memories or anticipations. We don't need the additional "idea" of these things (over and above these things).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

To produce a concept of time requires reference to past and future, as I described. And when the concept of "time" is constructed in this way, the idea that things are happening at the present moment becomes incoherent. because no time passes at the present moment, and activity requires the passage of time.

I could equally say that no time passes in the past or the future, either. In that case, according to your logic, past and future cannot produce the concept of time, either.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

you might suggest that we start with the simple notion that we are experiencing things occurring at "the present". From here, we cannot derive a concept of time though, without referencing past or future, .so this concept of "the present" is not temporal.

The concepts of "past", "present" and "future" are interrelated. You "derive" the present from the past and future as much as you "derive" the past and future from the present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If we start with the assumption that we are experiencing "the present", then there is no means by which 'the present" says anything temporal, it's just, 'being-here', 'being-there', or something like that, in an eternal (as in outside of time) way.

But we can say that we are always experiencing at the present moment, or that the present moment is (defined as) the time at which we are sensing/experiencing. The "outside of time" (or B-theory or untensed) way of expressing this is as being "simultaneous with" (some time or event).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It's merely two different ways of describing "experience". Javra describes experience as being present, and I describe experience as consisting of memories and anticipations.

Your description of experience does not include conscious perceptions of the world?

Quoting Luke

What's the difference?

There is an object of experience, just like there is an object of sensation. The present is not an object of experience, nor is it an object of sensation. So, we do not experience the present, though we conclude logically that we experience at the present.

Quoting Luke

We "derive directly from experience" our conscious perceptions of the world, just as much as our memories or anticipations. We don't need the additional "idea" of these things (over and above these things).

The present is not a perception. And, since it is clear that a conception is not the same type of thing as a sense perception, nor is it the same type of thing as a memory or an anticipation, being composed of elements from all these three, I think we do need the additional "idea" over and above these things.

Quoting Luke

I could equally say that no time passes in the past or the future, either. In that case, according to your logic, past and future cannot produce the concept of time, either.

I agree with the first part here, you can equally say that no time passes in the past and future, but you cannot say that this statement does not employ a concept of time. You have used "time" in that statement. So you simple employ a particular concept of time, within which time passes, and claim that such a conception of past and future would not require that particular concept of time, but it just requires a different conception of time.

Quoting Luke

But we can say that we are always experiencing at the present moment,

I look at this as incoherent. No time passes at a "moment", so it is impossible that we are doing anything at the "present moment" because activity requires the passage of time. I find "present moment" to be logically incoherent and that is why I assume the need for two dimensional time, a thick present, or a present with breadth. The idea of a timeline, with a point that marks the present, even if that point is supposed to be moving, is inconsistent with what we experience. We experience activity, change occurring at the present, therefore there must be temporal duration of the present, and not a "present moment".

Quoting Luke

Your description of experience does not include conscious perceptions of the world?

That's right, I am a skeptic and I find the proposed concept of "the world" to be unacceptable as a starting premise. There are objects of sensation, as I said above, but as I also said previously, these objects are all in the past by the time they are perceived by me through the medium of sensation. Therefore I class such perceptions with memories, images which appear to me, but the true object represented by the image is in the past. So what you call "conscious perceptions of the world" (assuming that you refer to sense perceptions) are in fact memories, by the time the images are present to the conscious mind.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There is an object of experience, just like there is an object of sensation.

What's the difference?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think we do need the additional "idea" over and above these things.

I don't think you've grasped the point. You said that we "derive directly from experience" our memories and anticipations. But then you said:

"We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present."

But of course we do "derive directly from experience" that "we are experiencing things happening". It is this that we do not need the additional "idea" for. Some might even say that our experience (or our "experiencing things happening") is less conceptual than our memories and anticipations.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with the first part here, you can equally say that no time passes in the past and future, but you cannot say that this statement does not employ a concept of time. You have used "time" in that statement. So you simple employ a particular concept of time, within which time passes, and claim that such a conception of past and future would not require that particular concept of time, but it just requires a different conception of time.

Whatever. If time doesn't pass at the present moment, then time doesn't pass. And you can't have a past or future without a present moment.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I find "present moment" to be logically incoherent and that is why I assume the need for two dimensional time, a thick present, or a present with breadth.

How long do you need the present moment to be? It makes little difference.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There are objects of sensation, as I said above, but as I also said previously, these objects are all in the past by the time they are perceived by me through the medium of sensation. Therefore I class such perceptions with memories, images which appear to me, but the true object represented by the image is in the past. So what you call "conscious perceptions of the world" (assuming that you refer to sense perceptions) are in fact memories, by the time the images are present to the conscious mind.

Then I ask you again:

Quoting Luke

What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed?

In other words: what is the time difference between an experience and a sensation?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

As regards the experiential nature of time, I feel like viewing more of your debate with Luke.

For my part, I don’t understand how your claim that present perceptions are aspects of the past can be obtained without reliance on inferences made by neuroscience. With these neuroscientific inferences being themselves an aspect of reasoning, and not one of direct experience. Note that I’m not disagreeing with the neuroscience. I’m only clamming that as far as direct awareness is concerned, the perceptions we are directly aware of are taken to occur in the now, whereas memories we are directly aware of (which are qualitatively different than direct perception) are taken to indicate nows that have already passed by. All this being independent of our concepts (i.e., generalized ideas) regarding time – which, as concepts, are abstractions abstracted from concrete experiences. And I maintain that these concrete experiences consist of an ever-changing now, of former nows, and of nows that have yet to be: with former and future nows being meaningful only in reference to the ever-changing now which we perpetually live through at the level of direct experience. And yes, I agree that the now we live through is extended in duration, otherwise we would not be able to experience sounds (as we once previously discussed on a different thread, with emphasis on musical notes).

But, again, I don’t think the nature of time is all too pertinent to what I’m stipulating for as long as there is general agreement in there being a past, present, and future.

If we agree that a goal significantly determines one’s intentions toward said goal, that one’s intending to achieve said goal occurs in the present, that the future is not fixed (or actualized) prior to it becoming the present moment, and that the goal (i.e., that aim one intends to make actual) references a future state of affairs, why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities.

Hence, that in some sense aspects of the future determine aspects of the present … rather than aspects of the past determining aspects of the present. The former again being deemed by me to be backward determinacy (i.e., teleology) and the latter being forward determinacy (i.e., causation).

Quoting Joshs

The modular view of mind has a long pedigree in cognitive science. Check out Marvin Minsky’s ‘Society of Mind’.

Cool, and reassuring. Thanks for the reference.

Quoting Luke

But of course we do "derive directly from experience" that "we are experiencing things happening". It is this that we do not need the additional "idea" for. Some might even say that our experience (or our "experiencing things happening") is less conceptual than our memories and anticipations.

My point was that we do not derive directly from experience, that things are happening at the present, when "the present" is supposed to be a temporal concept. I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

Sure, the additional "idea" is not necessary, but if you remove that distinction which I'm trying to make, you'll never understand what I'm trying to say, and keep repeating the same questions over and over again.

It may be true, that we are experiencing things happening, but this does not mean that we are experiencing the present, unless you remove the temporal conception of "the present". So if you insist that there is no need that "the present" as an "idea", so that things happening is synonymous with the present, you just create an inability to understand the difference which I am trying to explain.

If you do not agree with me, you might argue that there is no difference between things happening, and the present, but as i explained, there is an inconsistency between "the present" as a "moment", and things happening at the present. So you need to reject one or the other.


Quoting Luke

Whatever. If time doesn't pass at the present moment, then time doesn't pass. And you can't have a past or future without a present moment.

Time could pass at the present, so that there is no "moment" of the present. That's the point of two dimensional time.

Quoting Luke

Then I ask you again:

As I said, I find "present moment" to be incoherent.

Quoting javra

For my part, I don’t understand how your claim that present perceptions are aspects of the past can be obtained without reliance on inferences made by neuroscience.

Neuroscience supports what I'm saying, but is not necessary. Even Plato argued that there was a medium, light, between seeing, and the object seen. All I'm doing is extending this acknowledgement of a medium, from the external of the body, to the internal, so that there is a time delay between the sense organ, and recognition by the mind, such that sensation is temporally prior to conscious apprehension.

Quoting javra

With these neuroscientific inferences being themselves an aspect of reasoning, and not one of direct experience.

The problem is that "time" itself is an aspect of reasoning, not an aspect of direct experience. So to move toward an ontology which is based in temporal conceptions such as "goals" which implies future, we need something other than direct experience, as a premise. The difficult thing here is to find the premise which provides us with the highest probability of being true. So we want a temporal premise which appears as close as possible to being consistent with experience, without distorting and manipulating our description of "experience", in a way which would be caused by an attempt to rationalize a premise already held due to prejudice or bias.

Quoting javra

I’m only clamming that as far as direct awareness is concerned, the perceptions we are directly aware of are taken to occur in the now...

I think that you are employing a preconceived, temporal conception of "now" here. This is the point I was trying to explain to Luke. We cannot employ descriptive terms which are purely conceptual, ("now" being based in a concept of time rather than something empirical), and claim to be making an empirical observation. This is what happens when we proceed toward description, we employ predication. So we take preconceived ideas, descriptive terms, as predicates, and apply them toward describing our perceptions. Basically, this is observation. However, the descriptive terms may not be well defined, causing ambiguity and confusion, and this is the case with your use of "the now".

What does "the now" mean to you? If you define "the now" as the time which you are perceiving, then you are begging the question. If we define "the now" in relation to a justified conception of time, we have something much more solid to start from. But this is not easy to do. As I said earlier, by the time you even say "now" that now is in the past. So if "now" is supposed to refer to the present, we do not want to place it in the past in our conceptualization. How do we define "now" then? That's why I suggested we define "now" as the divisor between past and future.

Quoting javra

..are taken to indicate nows that have already passed by...

This exposes another problem with "the now". We experience the passage of time as continuous. Do you agree, that a continuous passage of time is most consistent with experience? How do you support individual and discrete "nows"? Is there one long continuous "now", or is there many past "nows"? Notice that both of these put "now" into the past, assuming that the past presence of "now", or past "nows", are part of "now". But why would we do this? Now ought not consist of something past.

Quoting javra

And I maintain that these concrete experiences consist of an ever-changing now, of former nows, and of nows that have yet to be: with former and future nows being meaningful only in reference to the ever-changing now which we perpetually live through at the level of direct experience. And yes, I agree that the now we live through is extended in duration, otherwise we would not be able to experience sounds (as we once previously discussed on a different thread, with emphasis on musical notes).

Now you mix the two incompatible definitions of "now". You talk of one extended, ever-changing "now", but then you say it consists of past nows and future nows. It's only when you put the now into the past and future, that you derive these "nows". If we define "now" as the divisor between past and future, we no longer have this problem. We have one continuous now, which separates past from future, and all the individual, discrete "nows" are really just the products of memories and anticipation, therefore distinct from the true continuous "now".

Quoting javra

But, again, I don’t think the nature of time is all too pertinent to what I’m stipulating for as long as there is general agreement in there being a past, present, and future.

You are proposing an ontology based in a temporally grounded idea "goals", so the nature of time is very important. If we do not have principles to separate past memories from future goals, such an ontology cannot even get started. You asked me yourself, how do I distinguish memories from anticipations, in my mind. If we do not have clear definitions of what constitutes the difference between past present and future, such an ontology would be lost in ambiguity.

Quoting javra

If we agree that a goal significantly determines one’s intentions toward said goal, that one’s intending to achieve said goal occurs in the present, that the future is not fixed (or actualized) prior to it becoming the present moment, and that the goal (i.e., that aim one intends to make actual) references a future state of affairs, why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities.

What you describe here is having one's attention firmly fixed on the future, one's goals. As I described in an earlier post, addressed to Arcturus, we need to distinguish between this, and having one's attention firmly fixed on the past, empiricism. Please read that post. It is only by having a very good understand of what constitutes "the past", and what constitutes "the future", that we can distinguish principles derived from facing the past, from principles derived from facing the future. There is an inversion involved with any sort of "turning around" (for example, what is behind you on the left will be on your right when you turn around), and the inversion between past and future is difficult. So I believe that making this distinction is very important, so that we can determine the nature of the inversion, allowing that principles of empiricism (backward facing) can be transposed to a forward facing goal-oriented ontology.

Therefore, to answer the question "why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities", let me again refer to what you call "a goal". The "goal" exists as part of what you call "present activities". However, as an object, or objective, it is a thing, and therefore has the status of a static state, the desired object, or state. This is inconsistent with "activities", and such a conception is based in backward facing memories of remembered states, what you called "nows".

When we turn around, to face the future, "the goal" becomes something active rather than passive, as the means, what you call "telosis", and the goal, as "an object" becomes elusive. In Aristotles ethics, the end is "that for the sake of which". But each end is just the means to a further end, onward indefinitely, until we posit a final end, which he suggested as "happiness". But he further suggested that the highest virtue was to be found in activity, because as living beings our nature is to be active. Now we have the problem that activity is usually represented as a means to an end, telosis, because we ask what is the purpose of any activity. But this is just the product of the backward facing ontology which makes "the end" a static object. When we replace this with an ideal, such as "to better ourselves", then activity, or practice is implied rather that a static goal. And the goal itself is to be active.

This is my proposition. Forward facing "goals" are activities, such that true goals are described as activities. Backward facing descriptions, observations, are expressed in terms of static states. This implies that activity does not really happen at the present, it occurs in the future, in relation to our experiential perspective which we call the now.

.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What does "the now" mean to you? If you define "the now" as the time which you are perceiving, then you are begging the question.

I imagine that if I were to be having a conversation with some non-philosophically inclined person and to then spontaneously ask, “Are we right now talking to each other in the present, in the past, or in the future?” that this other person would easily say, “In the present” (given that they’d reply in a few seconds’ time and wouldn’t find my question overly strange). And that it takes considerable conceptualization of the nature of time to question this intersubjective reality regarding an extended present period of time that unfolds during any conversation – one that transpires prior to percepts becoming memories, and before as of yet unactualized percepts occur as actualized percepts (which, again, have yet to be recollections).

In short, my take is that experiential now (or present, or current moment) consists of that extended duration in which our actualized percepts are not yet memories which our conscious selves recall. Our experiential past consists solely of what is recollection to us. And our experiential future consists of expectations, predictions, and aims - and, hence, in a roundabout way, of future percepts obtained via the physiological senses that have yet to transpire. It takes inference and temporal reasoning to consider that all our non-recalled actualized perceptions in fact occur in the objective past by a magnitude of nanoseconds relative to our experience of them. But, again, to me this does not constitute our experiences regarding the extended present moment; which, again, is at least in part composed of actualized percepts that have not yet become consciously recalled memories.

That said, what our discussions are teaching me is that the basic temporal placement of our experiences – be these of memories, of immediate percepts obtained via the physiological senses, or of ends we move toward - are less then uncontroversial. A worthwhile lesson. In honesty, this was my principal reason for starting this thread. Upward determinacy (bottom-up; or Aristotelian material causes) and downward determinacy (top-down; or Aristotelian formal causes) would occur such that what determines is fully simultaneous to that which is determined. Causation (Aristotelian efficient causes) is by definition forward moving sequentially and, hence, temporally: first the occurrence of the cause, followed by the occurrence of the effect. It then seemed a neat way of categorizing the Aristotelian notion of final causes (hence, teleology) in relation to the aforementioned three: as backward moving from a yet to be actualized end to activities intending to actualize this end that occur in the present. And in truth, I do have a hidden agenda in so categorizing. But this dispute regarding the temporal placement of our experiences confirms my qualms. I'm placing the cart before the horse. Bummer for me. :)

Still, I don't find this to affect the uncontroversial assertion that intents partly determine behavior. Right? IOW, by my reckoning, the reality of our experiencing ourselves to be goal-driven in a good part of what we do is not contingent on establishing the temporal placement of goals. So I figure we can further address telos-driven determinacy without needing to agree on the temporal location of teloi.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What you describe here is having one's attention firmly fixed on the future, one's goals. As I described in an earlier post, addressed to Arcturus, we need to distinguish between this, and having one's attention firmly fixed on the past, empiricism. Please read that post.

From that post:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If we place cause and effect in a temporal relation to each other, the cause is always further away from the observing perspective, than the effect is.

I can understand what you're getting at in most of the post. I find disagreement mostly on two counts. That teleology - here, goal-driven determinacy - occurs would not of itself dispel the reality of causation. As in, "that billiard ball caused that other to move". But I'm not sure if by the analogy of the cave you intended to claim that all causation is illusory. More importantly to me is this quote above. When I cause these words to appear on my screen, me as cause to the words that appear is not "further away from the observing perspective" than are the words I type as effect and observe. Furthermore, if any degree of free will occurs, then to the same degree the observing agent in question is a causally undetermined cause of the effects which unfold. One which is always partly driven, hence partly determined, by the intents it has in so causing the effects it produces. But I get that these issues are both complex and controversial, and they do complicate the basic issue of the thread: the ontology of teloi.

Getting back to your latest post to me:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

When we turn around, to face the future, "the goal" becomes something active rather than passive, as the means, what you call "telosis", and the goal, as "an object" becomes elusive. In Aristotles ethics, the end is "that for the sake of which". But each end is just the means to a further end, onward indefinitely, until we posit a final end, which he suggested as "happiness". But he further suggested that the highest virtue was to be found in activity, because as living beings our nature is to be active. Now we have the problem that activity is usually represented as a means to an end, telosis, because we ask what is the purpose of any activity. But this is just the product of the backward facing ontology which makes "the end" a static object. When we replace this with an ideal, such as "to better ourselves", then activity, or practice is implied rather that a static goal. And the goal itself is to be active.

This is my proposition. Forward facing "goals" are activities, such that true goals are described as activities. Backward facing descriptions, observations, are expressed in terms of static states. This implies that activity does not really happen at the present, it occurs in the future, in relation to our experiential perspective which we call the now.

OK, more concretely exemplified, my goal of completing this post to my satisfaction is in and of itself an activity in which way? Regardless of the goal's temporal placement, it is a state of affairs which has yet to transpire that I want to accomplish. My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic.

Also, since you've brought up Aristotle's notion of "a final end (or ultimate telos)", remember that for Aristotle this ultimate telos was an unmoved mover (this with no intimation of personhood whatsoever) of all that is. Being unmoved, this final telos cannot be an activity. It instead teleologically drives all that is activity - this while remaining determinate, or fixed, or static, in a metaphysical sense. At the very least here, the telos cannot be activity.

I'll leave it at that for now and see where you stand regarding this.

Quoting javra

But, again, to me this does not constitute our experiences regarding the extended present moment; which, again, is at least in part composed of actualized percepts that have not yet become consciously recalled memories.

That the present is extended, is the reason why it ought not be called a "moment". "Moment" usually refers to a much more precise point in time, not an extended duration. When we realize that the "experiential present" is an extended period of time, rather than a moment in time, we need principles which separate now from past, and now from future, or else any divisions made are arbitrary.

Consider that the average human reaction time is around two to three tenths of a second. If we take this as a base for a non-arbitrary length of "now", then we can see that other possible durations of "now", would provide us with completely different perspectives of various activities. But what makes this "now" the best "now"? With our duration of "now" for example we can't sense electrons moving (other than getting burned or shocked by them), but a being with a much shorter "now" might in some way be able to observe moving electrons. Likewise, if a being had an extremely extended "now", like a hundred years or so, this being would not be able to observe the earth moving around the sun, because in that period of time which is "now" for that being, the earth would have circled the sun a hundred times, rendering itself a blur, just like an electron cloud is a blur to us.

This provides a good argument for why we need to be careful with naive realism. Our temporal perspective, the length of any supposed experiential "now" has a huge influence on how what we call "the world" appears to us. So we need to take this into account, and validate any principles we use to designate the length of "now", when speculating ontological principles, because how the world appears, from the perspective of experience, is greatly shaped by the particular temporal perspective.

Quoting javra

Upward determinacy (bottom-up; or Aristotelian material causes) and downward determinacy (top-down; or Aristotelian formal causes) would occur such that what determines is fully simultaneous to that which is determined.

The difference between upward causation, and downward causation, may simply be the product of different temporal perspectives, different lengths of "now".

Quoting javra

Still, I don't find this to affect the uncontroversial assertion that intents partly determine behavior. Right? IOW, by my reckoning, the reality of our experiencing ourselves to be goal-driven in a good part of what we do is not contingent on establishing the temporal placement of goals. So I figure we can further address telos-driven determinacy without needing to agree on the temporal location of teloi.

I agree that goals determine behaviour, and that having goals is a large part of our experience. And I would also add that to be facing one goals, facing the future, is to be forward facing in time.

Quoting javra

More importantly to me is this quote above. When I cause these words to appear on my screen, me as cause to the words that appear is not "further away from the observing perspective" than are the words I type as effect and observe.

Take the forward looking perspective, looking ahead in time. You have the goal of making certain words appear on the screen. You act, and then the words appear. You, as an observer, "the observing perspective", see the words appear. Now you have to look back in time to remember your goal having caused the words to appear Having the goal to make the words appear was prior in time to the words appearing, therefore further away, in time, from you as observer, than the words appearing is. Perhaps I wasn't clear to say "further away in time", but I was talking about temporal relations.

Quoting javra

OK, more concretely exemplified, my goal of completing this post to my satisfaction is in and of itself an activity in which way? Regardless of the goal's temporal placement, it is a state of affairs which has yet to transpire that I want to accomplish. My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic.

My argument is that to characterize the goal as an endstate is a misrepresentation. Your true goal is to write the post, and this is an activity. That there is an end, a completion is a feature of "the post", not a feature of your goal. Most likely you will continue on, and write another post, so finishing that one particular post is not really your end goal, it's juts a step along the way, in an activity which has stops and starts.

Incidentally, this is probably one reason why goal directed activity is so hard for physics to understand. Physics doesn't have the principles to understand one extended activity, which consists of many stops and starts (writing many different posts for example), these would be distinct actions in physics, therefore not necessarily in the same direction. But with goal directed activity, the activity may stop and start, while keeping going in the same direction (the same goal).

Quoting javra

My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic.

I agree that this is the way "a goal" is commonly characterized, but I think it's a mistake. Suppose that you fix a goal in your mind, and you are what we call "determined" to achieve that end. I believe that this is not the best disposition to have. Consider that things change, circumstances evolve, and unknown factors become known. We must be willing to adapt our goals accordingly, as we move forward. So being hard set in one's ways, and to relentlessly seek to fulfill a fixed goal, is not good. We must be flexible.

In reality, the goal and the activity mix together, and become one. The activity is directed toward a goal, but the goal then gets adapted to match what the activity is capable of. Then the activity must be readjusted to meet the new goal. The proposed endstate is what, death?

Quoting javra

Also, since you've brought up Aristotle's notion of "a final end (or ultimate telos)", remember that for Aristotle this ultimate telos was an unmoved mover (this with no intimation of personhood whatsoever) of all that is. Being unmoved, this final telos cannot be an activity. It instead teleologically drives all that is activity - this while remaining determinate, or fixed, or static, in a metaphysical sense. At the very least here, the telos cannot be activity.

The unmoved mover is a thinking which is thinking on thinking, and this is clearly an activity. That's why Aristotle described the most virtuous activity as contemplation. And this divine thinking, of the unmoved mover was posited to account for the eternal circular motions of the planets.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That the present is extended, is the reason why it ought not be called a "moment". "Moment" usually refers to a much more precise point in time, not an extended duration. When we realize that the "experiential present" is an extended period of time, rather than a moment in time, we need principles which separate now from past, and now from future, or else any divisions made are arbitrary.

Per Wiktionary, "moment" has two non-specialized definitions: a brief but unspecified duration of time and, potentially at odds with this, the smallest portion of time. But in both cases, there is a duration - rather than it being akin to a mathematical point on a linear diagram of time. I was using "moment" in the first specified sense. As to the divisions being arbitrary, they are in the sense that the experiential division between past, present, and future are fully grounded in the experiences of the arbitrator. Yet, as I previously mentioned with conversations, there is an intersubjectively experienced present whenever we in any way directly interact.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This provides a good argument for why we need to be careful with naive realism. Our temporal perspective, the length of any supposed experiential "now" has a huge influence on how what we call "the world" appears to us. So we need to take this into account, and validate any principles we use to designate the length of "now", when speculating ontological principles, because how the world appears, from the perspective of experience, is greatly shaped by the particular temporal perspective.

No disagreements here. But I'll just add that I don't find the experiential present to be a quantifiable duration - in part, precisely because it is experientially arbitrary.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The difference between upward causation, and downward causation, may simply be the product of different temporal perspectives, different lengths of "now".

I don't find this to be the case. For instance, natural laws determine things in a downward direction: from the source's form, i.e. the given natural law, to the many givens that are partly determined by it. Same can be said of a culture's form (or that of any subculture, for that matter) partly determining the mindset of any individual who partakes of it. These being examples of downward determinacy. In contrast, the type of forest that occurs (temporal, tropical, or else healthy or sickly, etc.) as a form will be significantly determined upwardly by the attributes of individual trees to be found in a given location. Or else the attributes of a given statue as form, such as the potential sound it would make were it to be hit, will be in part determined by the statue's material composition (wood, bronze, marble, etc.). These latter two are examples of upward determinacy. In both upward and downward determinacy, that which determines and that which is determined by it occur simultaneously. You can't have one occur before or after the other - if at all conceivable - and still preserve the determinacy in question. So the lengths of "now" would hypothetically only make a difference to this in terms of whether the given determinacy is at all discerned. But if discerned, the determinacy would be found to have the determiner(s) and determinee(s) concurrently occurring.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And I would also add that to be facing one goals, facing the future, is to be forward facing in time.

I'm confused here. Weren't you arguing that goals are not found in the future? Facing one's goals would then not be tantamount to facing one's future - as far I've so far understood your arguments.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You act, and then the words appear. You, as an observer, "the observing perspective", see the words appear. Now you have to look back in time to remember your goal having caused the words to appear Having the goal to make the words appear was prior in time to the words appearing, therefore further away, in time, from you as observer, than the words appearing is.

Two disagreements. My goal of, say, writing this post to my satisfaction does not cause the specific words that appear in this post. I could have chosen words that are different to those that now appear while still being determined by the exact same goal I hold or writing this post to my satisfaction. Not only do I not take determinacy, in this case teleological, to result in determinism but I also find goals or intents to allegorically act as mathematical attractors to causal processes, such as in my causing a word to appear on the screen. This in the sense that one can do different things for as long as each of the two or more alternative paths yet lead to the fixed potential end one strives to make the actual end of ones given set of activities, this being the given goal. It is not my stated goal which causes these individual typed words but, rather, it is I as a conscious being (that is partly determined by my goal) who causes these specific words. Again, I could have chosen to cause different words than what appear while yet being driven by said goal.

The second contention is that my typing words on this screen is perpetually under the sway of getting closer to my goal of writing this post to my satisfaction. My goal always dwells ahead of me while I type words. The end I pursue - technically, the potential end that I want to make actual - has not yet occurred. When and if the goal is actualized (I could erase all I've written and try again some other time), all activities that strive to actualize it end with its actualization (when I've written this post to my satisfaction, I no longer type words for this purpose). It is not until my goal is actualized that I might look back at what I once wrote and need to also then look back to what my intents were in so writing. But for every existing goal that I hold - every goal that has not yet come to fruition - it is never behind me but, instead, is found in front of me. So, I'm not currently looking back in time to remember my goal of finishing this post to my satisfaction; I'm instead looking forward to the time that this goal will (fingers crossed) become actualized. A time period I approach with every activity striving to accomplish it.

Have I misunderstood what you were intending to express?

But my initial point was that if you uphold free will, as I think you do, then it is you in the present as, in part, "the observing perspective" which causes effects via your free will. You as cause is the very observing perspective addressed. Yet this free will that causes effect is always in part determined by its intents, or goals, in so causing - which, again, dwell ahead as that which one is nearing.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Incidentally, this is probably one reason why goal directed activity is so hard for physics to understand. Physics doesn't have the principles to understand one extended activity, which consists of many stops and starts (writing many different posts for example), these would be distinct actions in physics, therefore not necessarily in the same direction. But with goal directed activity, the activity may stop and start, while keeping going in the same direction (the same goal).

I agree with much of this. Yet still find that a goal is a state of affairs, or a state of being, one is attempting to make actual - rather than the activities one engages in toward this goal. Each goal is a potential end, or stop - and becomes an end or stop for all those activities striving to actualize it once the goal becomes actualized. And to complicate matters, not only are there subordinate and supraordinate goals but most goals are plastic, fluid, in their nature, sometimes appearing, changing, or disappearing based on a multitude of both conscious and unconscious factors. But in the vein of keeping things simple:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that this is the way "a goal" is commonly characterized, but I think it's a mistake. Suppose that you fix a goal in your mind, and you are what we call "determined" to achieve that end. I believe that this is not the best disposition to have. Consider that things change, circumstances evolve, and unknown factors become known. We must be willing to adapt our goals accordingly, as we move forward. So being hard set in one's ways, and to relentlessly seek to fulfill a fixed goal, is not good. We must be flexible.

I'm not in any way opposed to this. Its why I added "for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal".

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In reality, the goal and the activity mix together, and become one. The activity is directed toward a goal, but the goal then gets adapted to match what the activity is capable of. Then the activity must be readjusted to meet the new goal.

Goals can change. True. Yet a goal is still a potential state of affairs one wants to accomplish. No?

For any given goal, activities done for the sake of the goal can take innumerable alternative paths for so long as they're judged in one's ever-changing context to best approach the goal's actualization. So again, I yet find that for any given goal, the goal is fixed, or static, while the activities striving for the goal are not - again, this for as long as the goal is actively maintained.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The proposed endstate is what, death?

Notice that you're here equivocating between telos (potential end striven for) and endstate (actual end arrived at). Also that an endstate is the culmination of any activity - and not the ultimate cultimation of all of one's activities. But to be more forthright, death, as in a complete non-being of what once was, is only one of a number of possible ultimate endstate scenarios for any individual psyche. That we die is a certainty. That our mortal death equates to eternal non-being is a faith, for it cannot be demonstrated. An arduous topic, though.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The unmoved mover is a thinking which is thinking on thinking [...]

I have so far not found this in Aristotle (but I grant most of my readings are secondhand). Can you point out some references from Aristotle that substantiate this interpenetration of what the unmoved mover is for Aristotle?

Telos and teleosis have just reversed the role of cause and effect in the physical world. The effect proceeds the cause.

Quoting javra

Per Wiktionary, "moment" has two non-specialized definitions: a brief but unspecified duration of time and, potentially at odds with this, the smallest portion of time. But in both cases, there is a duration - rather than it being akin to a mathematical point on a linear diagram of time. I was using "moment" in the first specified sense. As to the divisions being arbitrary, they are in the sense that the experiential division between past, present, and future are fully grounded in the experiences of the arbitrator. Yet, as I previously mentioned with conversations, there is an intersubjectively experienced present whenever we in any way directly interact.

OK, I always understood "moment" to refer to a point in time, but we can define it that way, as a short duration, if you want. I just wish to ensure that there is no ambiguity, so that if we talk about a point, which divides one portion of time from another, this is not a "moment", as we hereby define it, a moment is not a point, it's a short duration. So if we posit a short duration, a "moment", as the divisor between the future and the past, what this means to me is that we assume a short duration of time which we cannot determine whether it has passed or not.

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology. I believe that the passing of time is something which occurs whether or not there are human beings in existence, and as I explained, the way that the world appears would be quite different to other types of beings which experienced a different duration of present. Therefore it is incorrect to assume that an intersubjective description of the present provides with a true description.

Quoting javra

I don't find this to be the case. For instance, natural laws determine things in a downward direction: from the source's form, i.e. the given natural law, to the many givens that are partly determined by it. Same can be said of a culture's form (or that of any subculture, for that matter) partly determining the mindset of any individual who partakes of it. These being examples of downward determinacy. In contrast, the type of forest that occurs (temporal, tropical, or else healthy or sickly, etc.) as a form will be significantly determined upwardly by the attributes of individual trees to be found in a given location. Or else the attributes of a given statue as form, such as the potential sound it would make were it to be hit, will be in part determined by the statue's material composition (wood, bronze, marble, etc.). These latter two are examples of upward determinacy. In both upward and downward determinacy, that which determines and that which is determined by it occur simultaneously. You can't have one occur before or after the other - if at all conceivable - and still preserve the determinacy in question. So the lengths of "now" would hypothetically only make a difference to this in terms of whether the given determinacy is at all discerned. But if discerned, the determinacy would be found to have the determiner(s) and determinee(s) concurrently occurring.

I have to reject this passage completely. I don't see that the proposal of "natural laws" has been justified. Laws are made by human beings, and are therefore artificial. Some people seem to think that the the laws of physics, which are descriptive laws, are representative of some sort of prescriptive "natural laws", which govern the way that inanimate things behave. But this really makes no sense to me, because prescriptive laws need to be interpreted and understood by conscious beings, to be followed, so I can't see how we can conclude that the motion of an inanimate object is somehow determined by a natural law.

Furthermore, I think you have the relationship between the individual human being, and the culture, backward. Individuals act to create a culture, so that the "culture" is just a reflection of the acts of individuals. The culture is not causally active in determining individual acts, the individuals are active in determining the culture. The entirety of the "culture" can be reduced to individual acts, because only the individuals are active, the culture is not. Being inactive, the culture itself has no causal force. The relation between the individual human being, and the culture, is really not different from the relation between the individual tree, and the forest.

So I believe your examples of downward causation are really upward causation, in disguise. This is why determining the true length of the present is so important. When your present "moment" is too long, you do not apprehend all the rapid activities of the smallest parts, which are responsible for creating the appearance of a whole. All you see is the whole, as a static thing, and you think that this static thing somehow has a magical force which might control the activities of the individuals, in downward causation, because you do not see the extremely fast activity of the parts, which actually act in an upward causational way, to produce the appearance of a whole.

Quoting javra

I'm confused here. Weren't you arguing that goals are not found in the future? Facing one's goals would then not be tantamount to facing one's future - as far I've so far understood your arguments.

I guess you misunderstand. The goals are not in the future, as I said. but facing one's goals is how a person faces the future, because this is our only means of relating to the future. So the goals are as a medium, an intermediary between the conscious mind and the future. To face the medium is to face the thing which lies beyond the medium, but the medium is not that thing, nor is the medium within that thing, it is between you and the thing.

Quoting javra

Two disagreements. My goal of, say, writing this post to my satisfaction does not cause the specific words that appear in this post. I could have chosen words that are different to those that now appear while still being determined by the exact same goal I hold or writing this post to my satisfaction.

I don't agree with this. You cannot write different words, without having a different goal. You are simply saying that you could, to back up your position, but you really can't. That is why "meaning" is defined as what is meant. To change the words changes the meaning, therefore what was meant, so it's necessarily a different goal. I think you are just free and easy in your writing as to what a "goal" is, but you haven't taken the time to determine through introspection what your goals are really like.

Quoting javra

This in the sense that one can do different things for as long as each of the two or more alternative paths yet lead to the fixed potential end one strives to make the actual end of ones given set of activities, this being the given goal. It is not my stated goal which causes these individual typed words but, rather, it is I as a conscious being (that is partly determined by my goal) who causes these specific words. Again, I could have chosen to cause different words than what appear while yet being driven by said goal.

This as well, is very doubtful to me. I do not see how two distinct activities could lead to the very same end state. I used to think in this way, but I've come to see it as false. Minute differences are still differences, and mathematical allegories don't suffice because "equal" is different from same.

So I really think that you are making up a falsity, saying that you could have chosen different words, while still being driven by the same goal. Obviously, if the words you chose were different, you'd have been driven by a different goal. I really do not think that you are taking the time and effort required to think about what goals are really like, as they exist within you. I find that they really do not take a form which is easy to name or describe as a desired end state. We seem to be trained to make long term goals which are describable as desired end states, so that we might be able to state them, but all the very short term goals, which we are acting on at the moment of the present, are not even stateable. So we fool ourselves, thinking that goals are these stateable long term plans, when in reality what really influences our actions the most are short term intentions which we haven't even the ability to state as goals.

Quoting javra

The second contention is that my typing words on this screen is perpetually under the sway of getting closer to my goal of writing this post to my satisfaction. My goal always dwells ahead of me while I type words. The end I pursue - technically, the potential end that I want to make actual - has not yet occurred. When and if the goal is actualized (I could erase all I've written and try again some other time), all activities that strive to actualize it end with its actualization (when I've written this post to my satisfaction, I no longer type words for this purpose). It is not until my goal is actualized that I might look back at what I once wrote and need to also then look back to what my intents were in so writing. But for every existing goal that I hold - every goal that has not yet come to fruition - it is never behind me but, instead, is found in front of me. So, I'm not currently looking back in time to remember my goal of finishing this post to my satisfaction; I'm instead looking forward to the time that this goal will (fingers crossed) become actualized. A time period I approach with every activity striving to accomplish it.

This is a fine description, but can you see that it is not "the observing perspective". To be always looking forward toward your goals, and intent on obtaining your goals, leaves no room for "observing". To observe requires taking note of what happened, and this is to look back and to remember. The observing perspective is very different from the goal oriented perspective, that's one of the principal points I've been arguing.

Quoting javra

But my initial point was that if you uphold free will, as I think you do, then it is you in the present as, in part, "the observing perspective" which causes effects via your free will. You as cause is the very observing perspective addressed. Yet this free will that causes effect is always in part determined by its intents, or goals, in so causing - which, again, dwell ahead as that which one is nearing.

So I disagree with this. I think the free will is tied to the goal driven, forward looking perspective, not the backward looking "observing perspective". The point of observing is to be passive, not active.

Quoting javra

Goals can change. True. Yet a goal is still a potential state of affairs one wants to accomplish. No?

Well, this is how you would define "goal", and it is how we have been trained to. What I am arguing is that it doesn't really represent what truly motivates us to act. I think that we are already motivated to act, and therefore are acting naturally. Goals will assist us in directing our actions, but this requires that they become integrated into the action, as part of the acting. To represent goals as desired end states is to separate them from the acting.

Quoting javra

Notice that you're here equivocating between telos (potential end striven for) and endstate (actual end arrived at). Also that an endstate is the culmination of any activity - and not the ultimate cultimation of all of one's activities. But to be more forthright, death, as in a complete non-being of what once was, is only one of a number of possible ultimate endstate scenarios for any individual psyche. That we die is a certainty. That our mortal death equates to eternal non-being is a faith, for it cannot be demonstrated. An arduous topic, though.

I don't agree here for the reasons given. I don't agree with your concept of actual end states. I don't think we ever get to end states, we keep goin until death. There is an end state in relation to the goal, if the goal is achieved, you can say you've reached an end state. But that's not a real end state in relation to the person, the person keeps going. Nor is there a real end state if the goal is not achieved, because the person could keep trying, or alter the goal. This is why your description of "goals", and end states upon achievement or failure is not accurate. The end state is a fictional position only existing in relation to the goal when "goal" is defined in this way. Since this definition of "goal" produces this fictional end state, we need to consider that it doesn't accurately represent what goals really are within human beings.


Quoting javra

I have so far not found this in Aristotle (but I grant most of my readings are secondhand). Can you point out some references from Aristotle that substantiate this interpenetration of what the unmoved mover is for Aristotle?

You'd have to read his Metaphysics toward the end of Book12.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I just wish to ensure that there is no ambiguity, so that if we talk about a point, which divides one portion of time from another, this is not a "moment", as we hereby define it, a moment is not a point, it's a short duration.

To conceive of a point that divides past from future is already an act of dealing with a conceptual abstraction of what time is ontotologically. It is not what we directly experience time to be - but is, instead, how some of us conceptualize the objective nature of time to be. Some claim our experiences of time to be an illusion, yet we nevertheless experience time as such.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So if we posit a short duration, a "moment", as the divisor between the future and the past, what this means to me is that we assume a short duration of time which we cannot determine whether it has passed or not.

Right, because it is experienced as the (extended) present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology.

Nor am I claiming that an "intersubjective experienced present" is sufficient for an ontology of time. But it is a necessary account of what our experiences of time consists of - if we are to be truthful about what we directly experience (be our experiences illusory or not).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I believe that the passing of time is something which occurs whether or not there are human beings in existence, and as I explained, the way that the world appears would be quite different to other types of beings which experienced a different duration of present. Therefore it is incorrect to assume that an intersubjective description of the present provides with a true description.

First, we experientially find that the ever-changing present we live in consists of befores and afters. Right now listening to crickets chirping in the backyard while at my laptop. At the very least every individual chirp I hear occurs for me in the extended present, not in the past and not in the future. Yet each individual chirp likewise has a starting state and an ending state, and the start of the chirp occurs before the end of the chirp, despite the total chirp again occurring for me within what I experience as the present moment (neither memory nor prediction, but a present actuality). When time is conceived of as a series of befores and afters, time passes even within the experiential present moment. This confuses our conceptualizations of what time is, but it is an honest account of what we (or at the very least I) experience to unfold withing the extended duration of the present moment.

Secondly, if there is causal interaction between an ant and a human - here presuming each to experience different magnitudes of the present's duration - there will then occur an intersubjectively experienced present moment between the two of them. This would take a lot to unpack, but how could you demonstrate the falsity to a shared present moment occurring between causally interacting agents?

Thirdly, I am not here attempting to express an ontology of time via these observations. Nevertheless, the notion that an intersubjectively experienced present occurs for all agents that causally interact while they are causally interacting can be viewed as holding certain parallels to the relativity of simultaneity.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So I believe your examples of downward causation are really upward causation, in disguise.

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This as well, is very doubtful to me. I do not see how two distinct activities could lead to the very same end state. I used to think in this way, but I've come to see it as false. Minute differences are still differences, and mathematical allegories don't suffice because "equal" is different from same.

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is a fine description, but can you see that it is not "the observing perspective". To be always looking forward toward your goals, and intent on obtaining your goals, leaves no room for "observing". To observe requires taking note of what happened, and this is to look back and to remember.

When I remember something I do not experience a perception obtained via my physiological senses' interaction with external stimuli; I instead experience a memory, which has many of the same perceptual qualities as an imagination but is instead felt to correlate to present moments I once experienced but no longer do, past present moments in which I then experienced perceptions obtained via my physiological sense's interaction with external stimuli. To observe is to take note of what is happening ... in the present. The observing perspective takes place in the experienced present, not in the experienced past. See my initial reply regarding the experienced extended present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Well, this is how you would define "goal", and it is how we have been trained to. What I am arguing is that it doesn't really represent what truly motivates us to act. I think that we are already motivated to act, and therefore are acting naturally.

Are you here equating "goal" strictly to a consciously held desired outcome? If so, then lets start using a less restrictive term, because this is not the only thing I mean by "goal". How about "intent" as that which one intends, be this consciously or unconsciously. If you find no difference in these terms, then what is it to you that "truly motivates us to act ... naturally" which is neither goal nor intent?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

To represent goals as desired end states is to separate them from the acting.

This consists of an assumption on your part regarding what I hold in mind that is erroneous.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't agree here for the reasons given. I don't agree with your concept of actual end states. I don't think we ever get to end states, we keep goin until death. There is an end state in relation to the goal, if the goal is achieved, you can say you've reached an end state. But that's not a real end state in relation to the person, the person keeps going. Nor is there a real end state if the goal is not achieved, because the person could keep trying, or alter the goal. This is why your description of "goals", and end states upon achievement or failure is not accurate. The end state is a fictional position only existing in relation to the goal when "goal" is defined in this way. Since this definition of "goal" produces this fictional end state, we need to consider that it doesn't accurately represent what goals really are within human beings.

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You'd have to read his Metaphysics toward the end of Book12.

OK. Familiarized myself with the cliff-notes, so to speak. Turns out I disagree with Aristotle on this.

Quoting javra

To conceive of a point that divides past from future is already an act of dealing with a conceptual abstraction of what time is ontotologically. It is not what we directly experience time to be - but is, instead, how some of us conceptualize the objective nature of time to be. Some claim our experiences of time to be an illusion, yet we nevertheless experience time as such.

I've been arguing that we do not directly experience time at all. It's conceptual, an abstraction. You end the paragraph with "we nevertheless experience time as such" , but you don't say what you think we experience time as. We've defined "moment" as a short duration of time, but what is duration? We've really said nothing about how we come to a notion of "time", or how we would distinguish a short duration from a long duration. Even the idea of "duration", the dimensional extension of time does not appear to be derivable directly from experience. It's more like a comparison of activities, one to the other, and noticing that one takes longer (extends past the other), that gives us a conception of time as duration.

This is why I proposed the difference between past and future, as something derived directly from experience, as the principal defining terms for "present", and also "time". I think that we directly experience a substantial difference between past and future, which is fundamental to the way that we view the world, and it inheres within us, and influences everything we do and think. You asked me, how do I distinguish between the experience of a memory and the experience of an anticipation, and I cannot answer this for you. It's something deep within my intuitions, as fundamental to my experience itself, that I recognize things remembered as distinct from things anticipated. I therefore have a fundamentally different attitude toward things anticipated than i do toward things remembered. How I can distinguish one from the other, I cannot say, but this is only because this distinction is so deep, at the base of my experience.

There is a way, I believe, towards understanding why this fundamental distinction exists within our minds, and why that difference is always evident to us. The separation between the two exists as the difference between the particular, and the general. Memories of the past are always of particular things which have occurred. Anticipations, being grounded in what you called potential, are always general. This is why anticipatory problems, like anxiety disorders are so difficult to deal with. There is never a particular thing which causes the anxiety, it's just a general feeling.

We can, as you do, name a particular goal, as that which causes the anticipation, but having what we might call "a particular goal" is really just to direct the anticipation in a particular direction. It does not address the question of what anticipation really is, like we might say that a memory is a representation of a particular incident in the past. We cannot say that anticipation is of a particular incident in the future (such as a goal), because it doesn't really exist that way. It's something general, and shaped by the conscious mind to be directed in a specific direction.

Quoting javra

Right, because it is experienced as the (extended) present.

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology.
— Metaphysician Undercover

Nor am I claiming that an "intersubjective experienced present" is sufficient for an ontology of time. But it is a necessary account of what our experiences of time consists of - if we are to be truthful about what we directly experience (be our experiences illusory or not).

In all truthfulness, I really don't believe that we experience time as passing at all, therefore what we experience as the present is not an extended duration of time. If you rid yourself of any conception of time, and think about what you are experiencing, there is a lot of things happening, but we cannot say that this is time we are experiencing, we are experiencing changes. We only derive a concept of time as passing when we compare changes, with measurement, and apply numbers. Then we start to talk about time as something passing. But if we start strictly with our experience, we have things changing (external observations), and intuitions of future and past (internal observations of memories and anticipations), but we don't have a passing time. We only construct a passing time when we put these two distinct types of experiences together, derive an independent future and past, and say that things change as the future becomes the past. But I still don't see the principles whereby you derive the idea of time as passing. It can't be from experience, because we don't in anyway sense time, and we don't experience it internally, we only seem to have intuitions of a distinction between past and future.

Quoting javra

First, we experientially find that the ever-changing present we live in consists of befores and afters. Right now listening to crickets chirping in the backyard while at my laptop. At the very least every individual chirp I hear occurs for me in the extended present, not in the past and not in the future. Yet each individual chirp likewise has a starting state and an ending state, and the start of the chirp occurs before the end of the chirp, despite the total chirp again occurring for me within what I experience as the present moment (neither memory nor prediction, but a present actuality). When time is conceived of as a series of befores and afters, time passes even within the experiential present moment. This confuses our conceptualizations of what time is, but it is an honest account of what we (or at the very least I) experience to unfold withing the extended duration of the present moment.

I can see your point, to think of your experience in terms of befores and afters, But this is to look at time from the perspective of memory. Notice that you only assign (judge) a before and after, after remembering the entire sequence. We can remove the need for this type of judgement if we look directly at our experience of memories and anticipations, to derive our conception of time. Now there is no need for such a judgement (a judgement which could be wrong), because we refer directly to our experience, of the difference between things remembered and things anticipated, to produce a conception of time, and we have no need to say that one is before the other, or after the other, they both exist within us, together, but are simply different. That's what experience tells us, that remembered things are different from anticipated things.

But when you make a judgement of before and after, you are already employing a preconceived notion of time in that judgement. So when I hear a cricket chirp, I notice it's in the past, a memory, and I might anticipate another, in the future, but without a conception of time, I can't analyze the chirp, breaking it down into parts, saying one part is "before" another part . I think that this is fundamental in experience, that we notice things as wholes, and breaking them into parts in analysis, or even making a relationship between one thing and another, such as the before/after relationship, is conceptualizing. The memory/anticipation separation is not a relationship, it's a distinction, as a first step toward breaking things into parts. It is an act of conceptualizing, but a first step, therefore not requiring prior conceptualizations.

Quoting javra

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds?

I disagree with you fundamentally on this issue, so I do not see any point really in discussing it. I think that assuming "a collective of individual psyches" as a whole, is a fundamental ontological error. derived from a category mistake which males a generalization into a particular. When we see things as similar, we class them as 'the same" in some respect, placing them in a collection, or set. But that set does not have real existence, as an object or a true whole, and despite the fact that you can point to all sorts of relations between the particular individuals, members of the collective, this does not justify the claim that such a collective is a true whole. So for example, we see a species as a whole, therefore you might call that whole a particular individual, but this is just making a universal into a particular. What is fundamental to a particular, as an individual, is difference, not sameness.

Quoting javra

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism?

I say this on the grounds of how a particular object, a thing, is defined, by the law of identity, each thing being different from every other. When you define "goal" in such a way, so as to make it a thing (the particular desired endstate), then you must respect the differences between particular things, what Aristotle called accidentals. Since the accidentals between two things are different, then despite being the same type of thing, the two things are distinct. And the existence of a contingent thing is inseparable from its causes,, as what is required for the existence of that thing. So we cannot say that two contingent things, being "two" because they exist under differing circumstances, are the same thing, because that would contravene the law of identity. The best we can say is that they are two of the same type of thing.

What I propose to you, is that we recognize "a goal" as a general type of thing, a universal rather than a particular thing. This would allow that two distinct sets of circumstance could lead to two distinct endstates consistent with "the same goal". "The same" being used in the sense of similar, meaning the same type, not in the sense of "the same" as in the law of identity. But then "a goal" cannot be a particular endstate, but a general, type of endstate, allowing that many different endstates might fulfill the criteria of that one stated goal..

I think that this is consistent with our experience of anticipations, desires, and intentions. Take hunger for example. In it's raw anticipatory form, it is simply an unpleasant feeling, an anxiety of want and need. When we apprehend this feeling we associate it with the very general need for food. The goal starts as most general, the desire to quell the uneasy feeling. But then to fulfill this goal, we specify general types of things which one might want to eat, or what is available to eat. In relation to the goal, we maintain its generality so as to keep many possibilities. But when we observe particular items of food available to eat, we rapidly narrow down the goal to a particular item which is readily available. So the shaping of the goal, is a narrowing done from the very general, to the more specific, then perhaps to the particular. But when we reach the particular, the goal to eat this particular hamburger, we cannot say that this is the same goal as the goal to eat another hamburger beside that one, even though the two goals can both be described as the same goal, to eat a hamburger.

In this sense, fulfilling a goal can be said to be bringing about a particular endstate from a general goal. In maintaining a separation between the goal, as something general, and the endstate as something particular, we allow that many different endstates can truthfully be said to fulfill the same goal. But if we say that the goal is a particular endstate, eg., I need that particular hamburger, then we misrepresent what a goal really is, and force upon ourselves an unrealistic need (the need for a particular endstate) in relation to fulfilling our goals. Fulfilling our goals does not require particular endstates, and creating this illusion that on particular thing is required to fulfill your goal is self-deception.

So I do accept that a goal can be fulfillrd in many different ways, and I understand this as the goal being something general, and each endstate as something particular, so that many different endstates might fulfill the conditions outlined by "the goal", as describing something general. This is the same principle we find when many different things are said to be the same type.

Quoting javra

When I remember something I do not experience a perception obtained via my physiological senses' interaction with external stimuli; I instead experience a memory, which has many of the same perceptual qualities as an imagination but is instead felt to correlate to present moments I once experienced but no longer do, past present moments in which I then experienced perceptions obtained via my physiological sense's interaction with external stimuli. To observe is to take note of what is happening ... in the present. The observing perspective takes place in the experienced present, not in the experienced past. See my initial reply regarding the experienced extended present.

I don't agree with this, and I don't believe you actually do experience things in the present the way that you claim to. Take your cricket chirp for example. By the time you recognize that it is a cricket chirping, is it not in the past, and you are dwelling on it as a memory? you are remembering it. And by the time you analyze it for a start and end, isn't it already in the past, a memory? Even if you think, "there's a start", after it starts, and before the end, the start is already in the past, and just a memory.

So I believe that you are simply denying the role that memory is playing in your experience at the present. Committing things to memory is not necessarily a conscious activity, so recalling things from memory, remembering, could take place without the person even knowing that the things were already memorized, and being recalled. Imagine that you are watching someone do something, or listening to a piece of music. You would have no idea as to what was going on, if your memory was not constantly providing you with what just happened before that moment. Because you are not consciously committing what si happening to memory, and recalling it, you do not want to say that the memory is active here. But it is.

Now you might want to extend the present "moment" beyond that quarter of a second which is human response time, to include things longer in the past as part of the present, but then I think that you would be simply using an inaccurate representation of the "moment" just for the sake of denying the role which your memory plays in your experience

And as for observation, to "observe" is to take note of what is happening, so remembering is obviously a necessary aspect. The thing observed is definitely in the past by the time the observation is made, so observation, as much as it is a part of the present, is always of the past. We take note of what has happened, so observation is in itself a recollection of what has already happened. It is not as you and many others seem to believe, a taking note of what is happening, it is a recreation of what has already happened, through the use of memory. As human beings we do not have the capacity to take note of things as they happen, we need to interpret first. So we remember, and take note after the fact, using our memories to the best of our ability, to recreate what has just happened.

Quoting javra

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional?

I still don't agree with this. The motivating desire is to run the marathon, not to finish the marathon. If the desire actually was, as you say, to finish the marathon, the most inspired marathoners would be looking for the best cheats, ways to finish without making the effort of running. But clearly the goal is to make the effort and actually run the marathon, not just to reach the finish line. The "finish" is simply the glory, or satisfaction of knowing that this particular desired activity has been carried out. The goal is not to finish, but to carry out the activity, but the activity is such that it has a clearly defined "finish". So the finish is not the goal, it just so happens that the desired activity is one which has a clearly defined finish. So the finish indicates that the goal of carrying out the activity, has been obtained.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Since its such a large part of our contention, I'm going to ask a few questions that I take to be relevant to what I find to be the experience of time:

Do you hold percepts that you deem to be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images obtained via the physiological sense of sight that pertains to your physiological eyes; sounds obtained via the physiological senses of sound that pertains to your physiological ears; smells obtained via the physiological sense of smell that pertains to you physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see that horse you're point to, and I can hear it neighing.

Next, can you hold any percepts that you deem to not be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images that you see with the mind's eye but not with your physiological eyes; sounds that you hear with the mind's ears but not with your physiological ears; smells that you smell with the mind's nose but not with your physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see the unicorn I am right now visualizing, and I can hear its neigh in my imagination.

If you honestly answer "no" to either of these, then we have drastic differences in what we experience, and I'd be inclined to find out more about our differences. Assuming that you can experience both as I can:

Next, are the memories you experience of the first or of the second type of perception?

Answering these I think would give me a better idea of where it is that we might differ.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds? — javra

I disagree with you fundamentally on this issue, so I do not see any point really in discussing it. I think that assuming "a collective of individual psyches" as a whole, is a fundamental ontological error. derived from a category mistake which males a generalization into a particular.

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism? — javra

I say this on the grounds of how a particular object, a thing, is defined, by the law of identity, each thing being different from every other. When you define "goal" in such a way, so as to make it a thing (the particular desired endstate), then you must respect the differences between particular things, what Aristotle called accidentals. Since the accidentals between two things are different, then despite being the same type of thing, the two things are distinct. And the existence of a contingent thing is inseparable from its causes,, as what is required for the existence of that thing. So we cannot say that two contingent things, being "two" because they exist under differing circumstances, are the same thing, because that would contravene the law of identity. The best we can say is that they are two of the same type of thing.

Pardon the crudity of this. If one were to skin a cat from tail to head rather than from head to tail then the given outcome of having skinned the cat would itself be different?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In this sense, fulfilling a goal can be said to be bringing about a particular endstate from a general goal. In maintaining a separation between the goal, as something general, and the endstate as something particular, we allow that many different endstates can truthfully be said to fulfill the same goal. But if we say that the goal is a particular endstate, eg., I need that particular hamburger, then we misrepresent what a goal really is, and force upon ourselves an unrealistic need (the need for a particular endstate) in relation to fulfilling our goals. Fulfilling our goals does not require particular endstates, and creating this illusion that on particular thing is required to fulfill your goal is self-deception.

What your thinking of in terms of particulars and generalities I'm thinking of in terms of subordinate intents relative to the given intent itself - and then of supraordinate intents to boot. In the example you've given, the intent is that of alleviating the hunger one experiences. A subordinate intent might be to intake a particular hamburger. And a subordinate intent of so doing might be to open up the fridge. And then, the supraordinate teleological reason for intending to alleviate one's hunger is, or at least can be, that of intending to survive. Before continuing, do you find so addressing the matter problematic? And if so, why?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional? — javra

I still don't agree with this. The motivating desire is to run the marathon, not to finish the marathon. If the desire actually was, as you say, to finish the marathon, the most inspired marathoners would be looking for the best cheats, ways to finish without making the effort of running. But clearly the goal is to make the effort and actually run the marathon, not just to reach the finish line.

Finishing the marathon is implied in running the marathon, otherwise one would either 1) run indefinitely without ever stopping or else 2) run for a few yards or so and consider one's goal actualized. And, as with most anything else, implicit in finishing a marathon is that of doing so honestly. If one were to finish a marathon by driving a car, how would that yet be a marathon? If one were to take a shortcut from the marathon's path, one again would cross the finish line without having run the given marathon.

Quoting javra

Do you hold percepts that you deem to be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images obtained via the physiological sense of sight that pertains to your physiological eyes; sounds obtained via the physiological senses of sound that pertains to your physiological ears; smells obtained via the physiological sense of smell that pertains to you physiological nose; etc.?

No, I do not agree with immediate "percepts". There is mediation between the sense organ and the image in the mind. That's why I argued that the thing sensed is always in the past. I feel pain in my toe, and I know that there is mediation between the feeling, and the organ which does the sensing. I believe this is the case with all senses. So the feeling, or "percept" is a creation of the mind, the subconscious part of the mind, in response to the sense organ, then presented to the conscious part of the mind as the "percept", image, or feeling.

My OED defines "percept" as a concept resulting from perceiving. This is what the ancients, like Aristotle described as the activity of abstraction. The mind abstracts certain properties from the object, through the use of the senses.

Quoting javra

Next, can you hold any percepts that you deem to not be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images that you see with the mind's eye but not with your physiological eyes; sounds that you hear with the mind's ears but not with your physiological ears; smells that you smell with the mind's nose but not with your physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see the unicorn I am right now visualizing, and I can hear its neigh in my imagination.

Since I understand all such images, to be creations of the mind, there is no clear dividing line between fictitious images (eg. unicorns), and the percepts created with the assistance of the sense organs. The existence of hallucinations, and dreaming (which is imaginary yet appears to the mind to be real sensing) supports my position. The conscious part of the mind, which I believe to be a relatively small part, provides us with the capacity to distinguish between fictitious images and true percepts, but it is limited in this capacity, and is not always correct, as hallucinations demonstrate.

Quoting javra

If you honestly answer "no" to either of these, then we have drastic differences in what we experience, and I'd be inclined to find out more about our differences. Assuming that you can experience both as I can:

I do not believe that these differences are "differences in what we experience". I think they are differences in the way that we each interpret our experience. I think that "what we experience" is fundamentally very similar, each of us being a very complex organism, which, when you take into account the extent of complexity, are extremely similar. We are very complex, and very similar, so I conclude that "what we experience" is very similar, as this is provided for by innate features, genetics etc. The "experience" I would say is mostly produced by the subconscious, and we could say that the conscious mind is what experiences the experience.

However, the interpretation of the experience is necessarily carried out by the conscious mind, as that which experiences. And the conscious mind is greatly influenced, shaped, by acquired features, i.e. learning. As you probably know, learning is very circumstantial, so it varies greatly from one person to the next. Now when we, each one of us individually, interprets our experience, respectively, we come up with a very large variety of differences in our explanations. This I believe is not indicative of a large difference in the way that we experience (according to innate features), but it is indicative of a large difference in what each one of us has experienced, the circumstances (learning) upon which the conscious mind becomes accustomed to making judgements.

Quoting javra

Next, are the memories you experience of the first or of the second type of perception?

So I think I've answered this one already. I see no clear division between the first and second type, as the first type is not grounded at all, and not a real acceptable category. So memories suffer from the same problem, they are often false, influenced by the creativity of the mind, and we have no real way to distinguish a true representation of the past from a false representation. This is why people can honestly insist "I remember it this way", and be demonstrated to be incorrect.

Quoting javra

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches.

Yes, I think that is a fair conclusion. I see the concept of "a language" as an ontological entity, to be fundamentally flawed. You can look at the way Wittgenstein breaks down language as an example. If we look at language as a game, for analogy, we see that "a language" as a game, breaks down into a multitude of smaller language games, and cannot exist as one coherent game, as the multitude of smaller games have rules which are inconsistent with each other. This denies the possibility of "a language' as a coherent whole. If we proceed further in the direction of breaking down language in analysis, we will find that each individual instance of use will assign a particular meaning to the words employed, which is unique to the particular circumstances of that instance, and this is the foundation of meaning, rather than a top-down imposition of rules determining how to use language.

Quoting javra

Pardon the crudity of this. If one were to skin a cat from tail to head rather than from head to tail then the given outcome of having skinned the cat would itself be different?

This is the point of the distinction between general and particular. The description of an activity is always general, running, walking, sitting, drinking, etc.. Until you mention the particular entities, individuals involved in describing a particular activity which has already occurred, the named or described activity will remain as something general. An activity is an attribute, or property, which may to predicated of numerous different individuals who may do the named activity.

However, we can narrow down the generality of the named or described activity by being more specific. So, to "skin a cat", is quite specific, it refers to a specific type of procedure which must be done with a specific type of animal. However, even in that degree of specificity there is still a vast amount of generality. You might for example specify the colour of skin required. Also, you might specify the technique, as your example, head to tail, or tail to head.

Of course the outcome will be different depending on the technique, as a different technique will provide a different product, even if the differences are minimal. That is why such differences are called "accidentals", because they are insignificant with respect to the named activity "skin a cat". But if we change the specification, because for some reason the differences which seemed insignificant before, are now viewed as important, one might specify "skin a cat from tail to head", and the differences are no longer viewed as accidentals.

Quoting javra

What your thinking of in terms of particulars and generalities I'm thinking of in terms of subordinate intents relative to the given intent itself - and then of supraordinate intents to boot. In the example you've given, the intent is that of alleviating the hunger one experiences. A subordinate intent might be to intake a particular hamburger. And a subordinate intent of so doing might be to open up the fridge. And then, the supraordinate teleological reason for intending to alleviate one's hunger is, or at least can be, that of intending to survive. Before continuing, do you find so addressing the matter problematic? And if so, why?

This is close, but not quite what I'm thinking. The difference between generalities and particulars is a category difference, The subordinates and supraordinates are all within the same category, as generalities. The difference between them is just like the difference of making things more specific, in the example above. The more general the goal, the more opportunity for different possibilities in fulfillment. As we move toward less and les general, i.e. more specific, the possibilities are narrowed down.

Here is the reason for maintaining the category separation. Suppose we get to the extremely specific. My goal is to eat that particular hamburger, now. Until the action is actually carried out, there is still possibilities, with a bun, condiments, etc.. It is only after the action is carried out, that it can be described as a particular, without any possibilities. This is the endstate, and it is categorically distinct from the goal, as a particular occurrence, having already occurred. The goal is a view to the future, with respect for possibilities, while the endstate is something which has happened and is now in the past, there are no more possibilities if truth is to be respected.

So that is the reason why we need a good understanding of "the present", because the present, "now" is what provides us with that category separation, and confusing the two categories is a category mistake. We have a difference between the activity described as a goal for the future, and the activity as described as a past occurrence (the endstate). What lies between these, within the medium, is the accidentals of the actual activity. No matter how specific we get with our description of the desired activity, we cannot include all the possibilities for accidentals, so the goal will always remain as something general in relation to the activity which will be brought about, allowing for a multitude of different possible endstates to fulfill the conditions of that goal.

Quoting javra

Finishing the marathon is implied in running the marathon, otherwise one would either 1) run indefinitely without ever stopping or else 2) run for a few yards or so and consider one's goal actualized. And, as with most anything else, implicit in finishing a marathon is that of doing so honestly. If one were to finish a marathon by driving a car, how would that yet be a marathon? If one were to take a shortcut from the marathon's path, one again would cross the finish line without having run the given marathon.

Yes, that is the nature of the named activity, to "run a marathon", that finishing it, and not cheating, are implied by the definition. That is a feature of the specification. What I was pointing out is that "run a marathon" is not exactly the same specification as "finish a marathon", and one might be defined differently from the other, with different things implied.

From your second to last post:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I can see your point, to think of your experience in terms of befores and afters, But this is to look at time from the perspective of memory. Notice that you only assign (judge) a before and after, after remembering the entire sequence. We can remove the need for this type of judgement if we look directly at our experience of memories and anticipations, to derive our conception of time.

And from your last post:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

No, I do not agree with immediate "percepts". There is mediation between the sense organ and the image in the mind. That's why I argued that the thing sensed is always in the past. I feel pain in my toe, and I know that there is mediation between the feeling, and the organ which does the sensing. I believe this is the case with all senses. So the feeling, or "percept" is a creation of the mind, the subconscious part of the mind, in response to the sense organ, then presented to the conscious part of the mind as the "percept", image, or feeling.

We seem to have come to a standstill. I find that you incorporate so much of neuroscientific knowledge and inferential reasoning into your understandings of percepts, this so as to accommodate your understanding of time, that you conflate what is immediately experienced with very abstract inferences concerning a hypothetical nature of time.

To sum up your stance as I understand it: We know from science that all our immediate percepts occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses first register data, and you thereby conclude that all our perceptions occur in the past. We however do not perceive expectations, so these are not of the past, being instead inferred to regard the future. There then must be inferred a transition between this non-past and past, an infinitesimal threshold of some sort, and this you demarcate as the non-experienced but purely conceptual present.

Please specify where I’ve characterized your stance badly, if I have.

To the average person on the street (who most likely doesn’t even have the learning to know that our immediate percepts of which we are consciously aware occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses register information) that all our “perceptions are remembrances” would be utter nonsense. To such, there is a clear distinction between “I am now seeing a house” and “I am remembering a house I once saw ten years back”. By the conclusions you've so far advocated, I'm tempted to speculate that this person should instead be saying, or at least conceptualizing, “I am right now remembering that house over there that I’m now point to (with our awareness of our so pointing also being a memory to us, since this awareness too is perceptual and therefore of the past)” and “I am remembering a house that I visually first remembered ten years back.” Again, to the average person so conceptualizing is nonsense, precisely because it contradicts the experiential nature of present perceptions as contrasted to what is commonly understood by memories.

I, again, was addressing what we directly experience, and not any reasoning regarding the mechanisms of our perceptions or the ontological nature of time.

But I accept that we will disagree on this.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches. — javra

Yes, I think that is a fair conclusion. I see the concept of "a language" as an ontological entity, to be fundamentally flawed.

I can only extrapolate from this that the proposition, "We are now debating in the English language," is to you untrue - this because the notion of "the English language" as something that exists is fundamentally flawed to you. Am I wrong in this?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This is close, but not quite what I'm thinking. The difference between generalities and particulars is a category difference, The subordinates and supraordinates are all within the same category, as generalities. The difference between them is just like the difference of making things more specific, in the example above. The more general the goal, the more opportunity for different possibilities in fulfillment. As we move toward less and les general, i.e. more specific, the possibilities are narrowed down.

Here is the reason for maintaining the category separation. Suppose we get to the extremely specific. My goal is to eat that particular hamburger, now. Until the action is actually carried out, there is still possibilities, with a bun, condiments, etc.. It is only after the action is carried out, that it can be described as a particular, without any possibilities. This is the endstate, and it is categorically distinct from the goal, as a particular occurrence, having already occurred. The goal is a view to the future, with respect for possibilities, while the endstate is something which has happened and is now in the past, there are no more possibilities if truth is to be respected.

So that is the reason why we need a good understanding of "the present", because the present, "now" is what provides us with that category separation, and confusing the two categories is a category mistake. We have a difference between the activity described as a goal for the future, and the activity as described as a past occurrence (the endstate). What lies between these, within the medium, is the accidentals of the actual activity. No matter how specific we get with our description of the desired activity, we cannot include all the possibilities for accidentals, so the goal will always remain as something general in relation to the activity which will be brought about, allowing for a multitude of different possible endstates to fulfill the conditions of that goal.

I've decided not to comment due to our disagreements regarding what the experienced present consists of, or, rather, of whether there is such as thing as an experienced present.

Quoting javra

We seem to have come to a standstill. I find that you incorporate so much of neuroscientific knowledge and inferential reasoning into your understandings of percepts, this so as to accommodate your understanding of time, that you conflate what is immediately experienced with very abstract inferences concerning a hypothetical nature of time.

You're missing the fundamental point though. I insist that we have no experience of time. Time is conceptual only, therefore any temporal notions are derived from abstract concepts.

Quoting javra

To sum up your stance as I understand it: We know from science that all our immediate percepts occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses first register data, and you thereby conclude that all our perceptions occur in the past. We however do not perceive expectations, so these are not of the past, being instead inferred to regard the future. There then must be inferred a transition between this non-past and past, an infinitesimal threshold of some sort, and this you demarcate as the non-experienced but purely conceptual present.

This is not quite right. What I said is that I distinguish between memories and anticipations as fundamentally different. I do not know how I make such a distinction, it's just a base intuition.

I do not use neuroscientific knowledge to justify my claim that there is mediation in sensation, just simple logic like Plato used in describing seeing. There is spatial separation between sense organs. The mind unifies these spatially separated places, and this requires that something traverses the gap. And traversing a spatial gap is not instantaneous.

In other words there is mediation, a medium, between the parts of my body, in the same way that there is a medium between you and I, it's just on a smaller scale. This is not a new idea, the ancient atomists proposed that bodies consisted of atoms and void. I replace void with medium because void doesn't make sense to me.

Quoting javra

To the average person on the street (who most likely doesn’t even have the learning to know that our immediate percepts of which we are consciously aware occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses register information) that all our “perceptions are remembrances” would be utter nonsense. To such, there is a clear distinction between “I am now seeing a house” and “I am remembering a house I once saw ten years back”. By the conclusions you've so far advocated, I'm tempted to speculate that this person should instead be saying, or at least conceptualizing, “I am right now remembering that house over there that I’m now point to (with our awareness of our so pointing also being a memory to us, since this awareness too is perceptual and therefore of the past)” and “I am remembering a house that I visually first remembered ten years back.” Again, to the average person so conceptualizing is nonsense, precisely because it contradicts the experiential nature of present perceptions as contrasted to what is commonly understood by memories.

The average person on the street is like Plato's cave dweller, believing that the reflections, or representations of reality, are reality. The philosopher has the task of leading those cave dwellers out of the entrapments of their false opinions. What Plato taught is that we build up layers of representation, and this is like a narrative. What I say is that the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created.

Quoting javra

I, again, was addressing what we directly experience, and not any reasoning regarding the mechanisms of our perceptions or the ontological nature of time.

Sure, but we do not directly experience time. Time is derived from abstraction. So you have no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event, because from experience you have no principles to substantiate the meaning of before or after. And you are proposing an ontology of goal driven determinacy. I propose that we move to substantiate "before" and "after" by referring directly to our experience of memories and anticipations.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

you have no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created

Reply to Luke
I revealed the basis for my conception of time as the difference between memory and anticipation. Before and after are not essential to this conception. Javra's conception is based in before and after, which is circular if before and after are not based in something other than time.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I revealed the basis for my conception of time as the difference between memory and anticipation. Before and after are not essential to this conception.

Does "the real thing which is being represented" come before or after "the time the representation is created", given that the former "must be in the past" of the latter? Or is there "no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event"?

Your conception, based in past and future, is just as circular.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Javra's conception is based in before and after, which is circular if before and after are not based in something other than time.

Quoting Luke

Your conception, based in past and future, is just as circular.

Luke, since I’m not sure what to make of your statement, I’ll take it at face value. So, out of curiosity, I’ll make this reply:

Circularity applies to reasoning that is circular. For example, one relies on X to explain Y and on Y to explain X. “Direct awareness of” is a brute fact, with no circularity involved. For example, one sees a pink elephant (whether or not what one sees is a hallucination is irrelevant to the reality that one sees a pink elephant; one’s so seeing is a brute fact to oneself). My own direct experience is that when I snap my fingers, I hear the one snap in the lived present; i.e., I neither experience it as an auditory memory nor as an auditory anticipation, but as a total sound which is happening concurrently with my direct awareness of the world external to me. As part of this brute experience, the snap has a beginning and an end, neither of which is memory to me when I hear the snap. Furthermore, the snap’s beginning occurs before the snaps end; this, again, at the very least in my own direct experience, is in no way a reasoned inference but an immediate observation (with no need to here address Kantian like innate intuitions required to so observe). This brute direct experience of the snap hence consists of a before and after, neither of which is memory or anticipation. From concrete direct experiences such as this, I then abstract before and after into the notion of time (with many more details involved in so abstracting).

Q: How does so abstracting what time is from the concrete particulars of direct experience consist of circularity of argumentation? Although I’m neither a philosophical empiricist nor a philosophical rationalist, but a bit of both, in this case this is what empiricism consist of: deriving generalized ideas from the concrete particulars of immediate experience. Does one then deem that all philosophical empiricisms are circular in argumentation?

Quoting Luke

Does "the real thing which is being represented" come before or after "the time the representation is created", given that the former "must be in the past" of the latter? Or is there "no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event"?

Your conception, based in past and future, is just as circular.

We haven't determined the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one. I would be inclined to say that the anticipation of an event is prior to the memory of an event, and since anticipation relates to the future, and memory to the past, the future is before the past, from my experiential perspective.

Quoting javra

Furthermore, the snap’s beginning occurs before the snaps end; this, again, at the very least in my own direct experience, is in no way a reasoned inference but an immediate observation (with no need to here address Kantian like innate intuitions required to so observe).

In the case of a "snap", also other quick sounds like a gunshot, I do not experience a beginning and end. It's all at once, a snap. Only by inference do I decide that there must be a beginning and an ending.

In the case of a longer sound, like a held tone, a horn or a bell, I do experience a distinct separation between a beginning and an ending. But this is only because the beginning is a memory by the time the end comes, And by the time the ending is anticipated the beginning is already a memory.

So, I find that the only thing which allows me to experience a separation between the beginning and the ending of a sound is memory and anticipation. And any quick sound, like a snap or a pop, is already ended by the time I notice that it has started, so it doesn't appear to me like I experience a beginning and ending of such a sound, though I know that it must have them.

Quoting javra

How does so abstracting what time is from the concrete particulars of direct experience consist of circularity of argumentation?

According to my described experience, above, I don't really believe that you experience a beginning and ending to an abrupt, quick sound like a snap. I think you experience it all at once, as a snap, because the human response time is not quick enough for you to separate the beginning from the end, in your perception. If you really think that you do, try to describe the difference between what the beginning sounds like, and what the ending sounds like, without the assistance of a recording device, or referencing reverberations which are not really part of the initial snap.

Nevertheless, if you actually can separate the beginning of such a sound from the ending of that sound, to prove that you experience them distinctly, this simply supports what I am arguing. I think that you can only make this distinction because the beginning of the sound has already registered in your memory when you hear the end of the sound. So your conclusion that a sound has a beginning and an ending really is dependent on the separation between memory and anticipation.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In the case of a "snap", also other quick sounds like a gunshot, I do not experience a beginning and end. It's all at once, a snap. Only by inference do I decide that there must be a beginning and an ending.

You're telling me that devoid of your conscious reasoning, aka inferences, what you would experience is an eternal sound, one that is thereby devoid of a beginning (a transition from no sound to sound) and an end (a transition from sound to no sound)?

A closely related question: You thereby consciously reason each and every instance of sound that you hear to determine its beginnings and endings as these stand relative to all other sounds that overlap? For instance, suppose you're blindfolded and a buddy snaps his fingers on both hands at approximately the same moment, with each hand being placed next to one of your different ears; without inferences (again, conscious reasoning) that you decide upon, you would be unable to discern which hand's snap ended first relative to the other, hence ending before the other?

(As can be confirmed with recordings and their analysis: An "all at once" sound, such as a snap, a hand clap, a car honk, a dog's bark, and so on a) holds duration (is not durationless, nor even of infinitesimal duration), b) is constrained, or limited, or bounded by a start and end, and, furthermore, c) the beginnings of such "all at once" sounds typically have different auditory qualities then the endings, in addition to the transitions from "no sound to sound" and from "sound to no sound" - again typically unless one is addressing certain synthesized sounds. But maybe this part in brackets is neither here nor there since we're addressing our direct experiences.)

... an interesting topic. I figure either one of us is in some way mistaken, or we experience things differently.

EDIT: Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that when I snap my fingers there's first a swooshing frictional sound made by rubbing my middle finger against my thumb that overlaps with a popping sound made when my middle finger touches my palm at a fast enough rate ... quite audible to me when I snap my fingers slowly. Evidencing that in my experiences there can be discerned a unique beginning sound from a different ending sound in an individual finger snap - with no memory utilized on my part to so discern (in my own experiences). Thought this to be an interesting tidbit to add.

Quoting javra

Luke, since I’m not sure what to make of your statement, I’ll take it at face value.

I was not being critical of you. I only meant to point out that MU's criticism could equally be directed at himself.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We haven't determined the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one.

Then how can you assert that: "the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created"?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I would be inclined to say that the anticipation of an event is prior to the memory of an event, and since anticipation relates to the future, and memory to the past, the future is before the past, from my experiential perspective.

What do you require in order to determine "the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one"?

Quoting javra

You're telling me that devoid of your conscious reasoning, aka inferences, what you would experience is an eternal sound, one that is thereby devoid of a beginning (a transition from no sound to sound) and an end (a transition from sound to no sound)?

The more I think about it the more I realize that it's not possible to separate basic experience from conscious reasoning in this way, as the two are deeply mixed and this route may not lead us anywhere.

But to answer your question, I'd have to say no, I don't think that's accurate. Remember, I place memory and anticipation as fundamental parts of experience, and the subconscious probably works with these without the use of conscious reasoning. I believe that such transitions are clearly noticeable, and simultaneous differences in sound are also clearly noticeable. What I do not believe is that they are noticed as "beginnings", and "ends".

Do you recognize that in such transitions, the beginning of one thing is always also the end of the other? So whether the noted instance is a beginning or an ending is completely dependent on which thing you are giving your attention to, as the significant thing. This issue becomes quite pronounced when we look at time itself, and apprehend the present as the divisor between future and past. The common practise is to say that the past ends at the present, and the future begins at the present. But that is just because we emphasize the past, and order furthest away things in the past as "before" closer things. When we see that time itself is a thing which is changing, a thing labeled as dates hours, etc., we have a different perspective. Then we can see the future passing through the present to become past, as the named part labeled by a date, moves from future to past. We see that the present is when the future becomes the past, so the present is when the past begins, and the future ends.

What I doubt, and dismiss, is the idea that the subconscious works with a concept of time, the conception of something called "time" which is passing. I think that this is a conscious judgement. And since the notions of before and after as we commonly use them, are derived from this idea, that time is a sort of medium which validates such judgements, I also dismiss the idea that the subconscious provides us with determinations of before and after.

Consider for example recalling numerous different events, and giving them a temporal order. How is that order determined? In this example, we are doing it consciously, consciously determining a temporal order of past events. But the type of inference used seems to be very sketchy, and it might be varied. For things close together in time, we might say this was required for that, as cause, and was therefore before, .and for things far apart in time, it might just come automatically, as obvious, this was recent and that was a long time ago. The latter, the judgement which comes automatically, would be the closest to a judgement made without conscious inference. How do you think such a judgement is made?

Quoting javra

You thereby consciously reason each and every instance of sound that you hear to determine its beginnings and endings as these stand relative to all other sounds that overlap?

I would only do this if I was thinking about beginnings and endings of sounds, but usually i do not think about that. I just hear the sounds, and act accordingly, without thoughts about how the sounds begin and end.

Quoting javra

For instance, suppose you're blindfolded and a buddy snaps his fingers on both hands at approximately the same moment, with each hand being placed next to one of your different ears; without inferences (again, conscious reasoning) that you decide upon, you would be unable to discern which hand's snap ended first relative to the other, hence ending before the other?

I would be much more inclined to attempt to determine which snap started before the other, I think that's an easier thing to determine than which one ended first. Don't ask me why, but I think we are sort of trained this way, if we are asked to judge which sound is first, we judge which one starts first. But that's a judgement based in anticipation, I would be expecting, and waiting for the sounds, prepared to make the required judgement. If it just so happened, that two pops suddenly went off, almost simultaneously, one beside each of my ears, I might not know which was first. And even if I could make that judgement accurately, it would require that I reflect on my memory. So either way, it supports my position, that such judgements of before and after are based in memory and anticipation.

Quoting javra

EDIT: Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that when I snap my fingers there's first a swooshing frictional sound made by rubbing my middle finger against my thumb that overlaps with a popping sound made when my middle finger touches my palm at a fast enough rate ... quite audible to me when I snap my fingers slowly. Evidencing that in my experiences there can be discerned a unique beginning sound from a different ending sound in an individual finger snap - with no memory utilized on my part to so discern (in my own experiences). Thought this to be an interesting tidbit to add.

How can you say "with no memory utilized on my part"? Wasn't your decision that there was a swooshing sound prior to the snapping sound, made after the entire sequence of sounds, therefore based in your memory of the sounds? Let's assume that it was not. Then wasn't it based in your anticipation of the sounds? Remember, I argue that judgements of before and after are based not only in memory, but in anticipation as well. Clearly when you say "closer scrutiny" this means that the event was highly anticipated, allowing you to make this judgement.

Now I think we've stumbled across a very important aspect of goal driven determinacy. It appears to me, that when making such judgements, as which comes first, or is the beginning distinguishable from the ending, it is far more effective to approach the object (event) from an anticipatory perspective, then from a perspective of remembering the event. If an event occurs, and then you are asked to make such a judgement, only from your memory, it would be very difficult. But if you are prepared for the event, anticipating it, you'll have far more success in noting what occurs.

Quoting Luke

Then how can you assert that: "the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created"?

Why not? I'm talking strictly about future and past, not before and after. And future and past are determined based on memory and anticipation. The point is that there is no need to bring before and after into this discussion at this point.

Quoting Luke

What do you require in order to determine "the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one"?

This would require definition I believe. So instead of defining before and after in relation to time (because this is circular if we are conceiving of time through the experience of before and after), we need to give "prior to" a different definition, such as logically prior to. When one concept is required logically, for another, the other being dependent on the one, then the one is logically prior. This creates a hierarchy of meaning, pointing to the most important, or significant things as first, prior to, or before the less significant, such that the highest goals, as most important, are prior to, the less important. And since the concept of time is to be derived from the designation of before and after, the highest goals are most causally effective, being prior in time to the lesser goals.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Then how can you assert that: "the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created"?
— Luke

Why not? I'm talking strictly about future and past, not before and after.

Then perhaps you could explain the basis of your claim that “the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created". Why must the one be in the past of the other?

Don’t we already know that the future is after the past?

Quoting Luke

Then perhaps you could explain the basis of your claim that “the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created". Why must the one be in the past of the other?

It's not "in the past of the other", it's "in the past", where "past" is defined as the things whose existence is demonstrate by memories. "Past" and "future" are not defined here in relation to each other, they are defined in relation to memory and anticipation.

;Quoting Luke

Don’t we already know that the future is after the past?

No, our understanding of time is very inadequate, so we do not know that, that's the point I'm making. Placing the past as before the future is a feature of the way that people conceive time. In a different conception of time, one based in a goal driven ontology, there is good reason to place the future as before the past.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Do you recognize that in such transitions, the beginning of one thing is always also the end of the other? So whether the noted instance is a beginning or an ending is completely dependent on which thing you are giving your attention to, as the significant thing. This issue becomes quite pronounced when we look at time itself, and apprehend the present as the divisor between future and past. The common practise is to say that the past ends at the present, and the future begins at the present. But that is just because we emphasize the past, and order furthest away things in the past as "before" closer things. When we see that time itself is a thing which is changing, a thing labeled as dates hours, etc., we have a different perspective. Then we can see the future passing through the present to become past, as the named part labeled by a date, moves from future to past. We see that the present is when the future becomes the past, so the present is when the past begins, and the future ends.

When we look at the question of how a goal can act to determine the activity which occurs at the present (free will activity) we need to consider how a thing can come into being at the present. Free will indicates that we must dismiss the idea that these things are determined by the past. However, the existence of the thing which comes into being at the present is in some way determined by the goal. If you understand things as coming into being at the present, then you can apprehend them as coming out of the future and moving into the past, just like time does. Therefore the future ought to be placed as before the past.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It's not "in the past of the other", it's "in the past", where "past" is defined as the things whose existence is demonstrate by memories. "Past" and "future" are not defined here in relation to each other, they are defined in relation to memory and anticipation.

How do you distinguish memories from anticipations?

Quoting Luke

How do you distinguish memories from anticipations?

Javra asked the same question, so I went through this already, I believe it's some type of intuition. There is I think, a noticeable difference though, in that a memory is something very specific, while anticipation is very general. Consider that if a memory gets very general, that's when it is fading away and being lost, but when anticipation is very general, that's when it is the strongest, as anxiety.

How do you think that you distinguish memories from anticipations?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

How do you think that you distinguish memories from anticipations?

Apart from the distinction already made by the relevant meanings of the two words, the short answer is: sense perception. I anticipate what I will see (or otherwise will sense), and I remember what I have seen (or otherwise have sensed). And I have sense perceptions in/of the present moment.

This doesn’t seem like an option for you given your position that we do not experience the present, and that the present is merely a conceptual or logical assumption that we use to divide the future from the past.

It is unclear to me what you are anticipating or remembering if not a perceptual experience. From what you’ve said, it seems that you can only anticipate and remember memories. This is all re-presentation and no presentation.

I’m unsure how you escape circularity here, since you’ve said that past and future are defined in relation to memory and anticipation. You haven’t said so, but it seems that you can only define memory and anticipation in relation to past and future.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Consider that if a memory gets very general, that's when it is fading away and being lost, but when anticipation is very general, that's when it is the strongest, as anxiety.

I don’t understand what you mean by memories or anticipations being “general”. I find that I anticipate and remember specific events or qualities.

Quoting Luke

Apart from the distinction already made by the relevant meanings of the two words, the short answer is: sense perception. I anticipate what I will see (or otherwise will sense), and I remember what I have seen (or otherwise have sensed). And I have sense perceptions in/of the present moment.

Yes, I forgot to state the obvious. a memory is of an event which I recognize as being in the past, and I anticipate events I recognize as being future events. I talked about this at the beginning of my involvement in the thread.

Quoting Luke

This doesn’t seem like an option for you given your position that we do not experience the present, and that the present is merely a conceptual or logical assumption that we use to divide the future from the past.

I don't see why you say this. I experience memories and anticipations. I do not experience the present. However, since there is a substantial difference between what I experience as memories, and what I experience as anticipations, which I understand as the difference between past and future, I conclude that something must separate the past from future, i.e. the present. I may even conclude that my experience is in the present, because past experiences are gone and future ones have not yet happened, but I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience. I have experienced some things which I remember, and I will experience some things which i anticipate, and I do experience memories and anticipations, but how do you think that I experience the present?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I forgot to state the obvious. a memory is of an event which I recognize as being in the past, and I anticipate events I recognize as being future events.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I experience memories and anticipations.

Then you experience the memories and anticipations of events, but you do not experience the events themselves (via sense perception). Otherwise, you are collapsing the distinction between memories that we recall and "memories" that are sense perceptions.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I may even conclude that my experience is in the present, because past experiences are gone and future ones have not yet happened, but I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience.

That is at least some concession, given your earlier statement that:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We sense the past, not the present.

So you can have experiences in the present but not of the present, and you can have experiences of the past (but not in the past)?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience.

I'm not sure about "principles", and this may be heading down the 'absolute' path, but if you accept that we exist in time, then our (veridical) experiences can only be of the time at which we find ourselves. And whatever time we find ourselves at is the present moment (for us).

Quoting Luke

Otherwise, you are collapsing the distinction between memories that we recall and "memories" that are sense perceptions.

Yes, that's what I've done, sense perceptions are basically memories. I've argued that there is a medium between the sense organ and the conscious perception, such that the thing sensed is is in the past by the time of the perception. Javra concurred that neuroscience supports this, but I do not base my opinion in neuroscience. Further, I argued that the subconscious uses the memory in presenting the "image" what you would might call the "percept", to the conscious mind, such that the image is already a memory by the time it is present to the mind, as it is a representation.

Memories that you recall, and memories that are sense perceptions is an untenable distinction, I believe, unless you intend this to be a distinction between conscious and subconscious use of memory.. It is just another form of the distinction between recent and long ago memories. Any distinction between the two would be completely arbitrary without further principles. However, we do have further principles in thi case. First, the conscious mind is doing the "recalling", and I am arguing that the subconscious is presenting the sense representations to the conscious mind, as memories, though the condvioud mind is not aware that they are actually memories. So that's a big difference. Also I would argue that memories are related to anticipations, and it is in relation to anticipation, that memories as sense perceptions are separated from other very short term memories in the subconscious activity of the mind. This is why, in an extremely active world, with activity occurring all around us, we remember better, what we direct our attention toward (anticipation at play). This example is of the conscious mind, but the subconscious is similar, I believe.

Quoting Luke

That is at least some concession, given your earlier statement that:

It's what I've been saying all along. We might conclude that our experience is in the present, but we cannot say that it is an experience of the present. You might call it a concession, but I haven't changed my opinion. Further, I'm prepared to proceed to the point of saying that we actually do experience the present, so long as we define "the present" in a way which is coherent, in the sense of making it something which can be experienced.

That's why I said "but I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience." I believe that it is in describing "the present" as something which can be experienced, which necessitates the conclusion that the future is before the past. When we understand that the passing of time is a real thing, which is experienced by us as "the present", then we see the present as the end of the future, and the beginning of the past. Consider that if the future is before us, and the past is after us, the past is always growing, becoming, as the future is shrinking, therefore the future is ending at the present while the past is just beginning at the present.


Quoting Luke

I'm not sure about "principles", and this may be heading down the 'absolute' path, but if you accept that we exist in time, then our (veridical) experiences can only be of the time at which we find ourselves. And whatever time we find ourselves at is the present moment (for us).

Yes, this would be the case, if we find ourselves "in" time. But most presentists I've talked to remove "the present" from time, making it a non-dimensional division between past and future, by which the past and future are distinct from the present, and illusory. Making the human mind outside of time. existing at the present, as distinct from time which is either past or future, supports the assumption of eternal properties of the mind, Platonic Ideas.

Now, Javra has stated that the present consists of a duration of time, the present moment is a duration. So within that duration some parts must be in the future relative to other parts which would be in the past. What this implies is that within the present, there is also future and past. And when we see that, within our experienced present, part is in the future, and part is in the past, then we can acknowledge that the part in the future is before (prior to) the part in the past.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Memories that you recall, and memories that are sense perceptions is an untenable distinction, I believe

I don't believe it is untenable. It is the distinction between perception and memory; between the experience of consciously perceiving an event via the senses, and (later) recalling that experience via the memory. These are very qualitatively different. You do not perceive memories (or anticipations) via your senses; you perceive the world via your senses. And I consider it a misuse of the word to say that we "recall" our perceptions of the world (while perceiving).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Now, Javra has stated that the present consists of a duration of time, the present moment is a duration. So within that duration some parts must be in the future relative to other parts which would be in the past. What this implies is that within the present, there is also future and past. And when we see that, within our experienced present, part is in the future, and part is in the past, then we can acknowledge that the part in the future is before (prior to) the part in the past.

To address what you've last written, a correction: I've repeatedly asserted that the experienced present has a duration. For clarity, implicitly requisite in this is that I'm referring strictly to conscious awareness as that which experiences - i.e., to the first person point of view - and not to the experiences of our own unconscious minds, of which we as first person points of view can only infer. Furthermore, yes, within this experienced present, there are givens that occur before other givens (else, givens that occur after other givens) but, from the vantage of the experienced present as experienced by the first person point of view, these occurrences that consist of befores and afters are yet the present - hence, are neither the experiential future (which consists of yet to be experienced experiential present moments) nor the experiential past (which consists of already-experienced experiential-present-moments that are re-presented to our conscious selves, either automatically relative to us as conscious selves or via our volition as conscious selves of so remembering, with the latter most often termed "recall"). The befores and afters that occur in the experienced present are neither our experienced past nor our experienced future. But before further engaging in explaining this:

First, you've repeatedly claimed that we do not experience time. One such example: Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I've been arguing that we do not directly experience time at all. It's conceptual, an abstraction. You end the paragraph with "we nevertheless experience time as such" , but you don't say what you think we experience time as.

This is direct contradiction to time perception studies - with the sole point to referencing such studies here being that we as first person points of view do hold subjective awareness of time. Hence, we experience time. To my knowledge, this experiencing of time is something utterly non-controversial among both academics and non-academics. Can you point to a reference of someone who affirms that we humans do not experience time? (Again, they might claim that our experiences of time are illusory, but not that we don't directly experience time, aka temporal order.) ((Also, note the amount of information on the linked Wikipedia page regarding the subjective experience of time.))

What I've called the "experienced, or experiential, present" W. James famously termed the "specious present": Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Philosophical_perspectives

James defined the specious present to be "the prototype of all conceived times... the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible"

The person he borrowed this term from, E. R. Kelly, is quoted to more elaborately comment: Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specious_present

The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past—a recent past—delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three ... nonentities—the past, which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their conterminous, the present; the faculty from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present.[1]

I have and will use "the experiential present" rather than "the specious present" precisely due to my disagreement with the inference that what I experience is "fictitious", as per the part of Kelly's quote I've boldfaced. (I am most certain of what I directly experience, and less certain of the inferences I abstract from such - this outlook being pivotal to my approach to philosophy in general; a different topic, maybe.) Nevertheless, there is yet mention of an experienced present in Kelly's inference of it being "fiction".

This quote by Kelly, quite likely, cuts to the marrow of our disagreement on this subject. Only that you go a step further and tell me that I don't experience time at all.

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Neuroscientific_perspectives

Experiments have shown that rats can successfully estimate a time interval of approximately 40 seconds, despite having their cortex entirely removed.[23] This suggests that time estimation may be a low level process.[24]

To emphasize, what this implies is 1) that conscious reasoning (which occurs in the cerebral cortex) is not a necessity to the discernment of temporal sequences - hence, the discernment of time - and (here overlooking the rest of the linked to article) 2) that lesser animals are quite capable of experiencing time - again implying that conscious reasoning is not essential to the activity.

As to memory, for the sake of brevity, I did and will for now continue to address memory as strictly that which is brought into consciousness by the unconscious which of itself re-presents a perceptual event that has already transpired and ended. To be as explicit as I currently can, this experiential memory (i.e., memory as it is experienced by the first person point of view) always consists of long term memory (e.g., a phone # I had ten years back); usually consists of short term memory and/or working memory (the memory of a phone # I have been exposed to 10 seconds after the fact), and on rare and extra-ordinary occasions of sensory memory (e.g., the experience of an afterimage). Complexities galore with all of this. And yes, I dully acknowledge the role of various memory types. Yes, having said this, what I do not agree with is that there is no experiential difference relative to the first person point of view in question between, for example, looking at an apple (this being the person's experiential present) and remembering once seeing an apple (this being the person's experiential past). Here, experientially, there is a clear distinction between what I deem to be the present perceptions I am aware of and what I deem to be former perceptions I am aware of - one whose threshold is fuzzy, granted, but experientially a clear distinction nevertheless.

(In some ways it's akin to watching a movie and claiming that what we are in fact experiencing is a series of still frames when, in fact, we are experiencing fluid motion while so viewing. Slow down the movie reel's motion and there will be a threshold where we witness both motion and still frames, true. Yet our perception of unadulturated motion is nevertheless experientially real when the movie progresses at its intended pace. In a roundabout way, the same allegorically applies to our experienced present (our seeing motion) and the nitty-gritty analysis of sensory and working memory (the still frames of a movie reel): the perceived present is to us experientially real, despite being made up in many a way by memory. Maybe this will help in getting across what I mean by "experiential present".)

Note, though, that by "experiential" I am neither addressing sub/unconscious experiences nor am I inferring what is experienced to necessarily be an objectively factual state of affairs - one that necessarily occurs in manners indifferent to one's experiences.

I would have furthered this post with more direct replies to your last post to me, but I realize that if we disagree on there being an experienced (or, else, specious) present, we then lack any and all common ground that would be required for further discussing this topic.

Quoting Luke

I don't believe it is untenable. It is the distinction between perception and memory; between the experience of consciously perceiving an event via the senses, and (later) recalling that experience via the memory. These are very qualitatively different. You do not perceive memories (or anticipations) via your senses; you perceive the world via your senses. And I consider it a misuse of the word to say that we "recall" our perceptions of the world (while perceiving).

As I explained, there is a medium between sense organs and conscious perception which needs to be accounted for. I called this the subconscious part of the mind The images, or percepts are not received by the conscious mind, directly from the senses, they are created by the subconscious and presented to the conscious. That's why when you are dreaming you do not know that you are just dreaming rather than actually sensing things. The subconscious is creating the same type of images without the senses.

Quoting javra

For clarity, implicitly requisite in this is that I'm referring strictly to conscious awareness as that which experiences - i.e., to the first person point of view - and not to the experiences of our own unconscious minds, of which we as first person points of view can only infer.

Do you agree with me, that what you call the unconscious mind, what I call the subconscious, acts as a medium between the sense organs and the conscious mind? If so, then you ought to be able to understand that what the subconscious presents to the conscious, as what is experienced by the conscious, is something created by the subconscious, as a representation, or even a symbol or sign, of what is sensed. This means that we must rid ourselves of the naive realist belief, that the first person perspective, conscious awareness, is an experience of anything other than a world created by the person's own subconscious system. That this is the truth is evidenced by hallucinations and dreams.

Quoting javra

Furthermore, yes, within this experienced present, there are givens that occur before other givens (else, givens that occur after other givens) but, from the vantage of the experienced present as experienced by the first person point of view, these occurrences that consist of befores and afters are yet the present - hence, are neither the experiential future (which consists of yet to be experienced experiential present moments) nor the experiential past (which consists of already-experienced experiential-present-moments that are re-presented to our conscious selves, either automatically relative to us as conscious selves or via our volition as conscious selves of so remembering, with the latter most often termed "recall"). The befores and afters that occur in the experienced present are neither our experienced past nor our experienced future. But before further engaging in explaining this:

What I'm trying to get you to do, is drop this notion of before and after, which is derived from a conception of time which sees time as a moving arrow, or something like that, moving from past to future, such that the things first encountered by the arrow are before the things later encountered. I want you to completely rid yourself of this idea, which puts time as something moving external to you, and then place time as within you. Only then, I believe, can you truly understand time as demonstrated by your experience. If you allow that time is something flowing within you, rather than an external arrow, you will be able to see that future things, goals and anticipations are before you, and past things, memories are after you.

Consider, "I am a being", and "a being exists at the present". Now imagine the possibility that the present is what is moving in time, and the rest of what is called "time", the future and past, are outside, external to the present. But the present, hence the being existing at the present as well, is moving through that medium. See, the future is before you, and the past is after, as you are moving into the future, and leaving the past behind. Now, exchange the idea that the present, along with the being at the present, is moving, for the idea that the being at the present is a static thing, and the external "time", the outside future and past are moving through the static being, at the present. Again, the future is before you, as that which is approaching, and the past is after you, as that which has gone by, when time passes through you in this way.

Quoting javra

This is direct contradiction to time perception studies - with the sole point to referencing such studies here being that we as first person points of view do hold subjective awareness of time.

I checked your reference here, and see that both of the two presented theories of how a person experiences time, utilize a conscious judgement. The first, "the strength model", describes a conscious analysis of a memory, to judge the strength of the memory, and the second, "the inference model" describes consciously comparing different events.

As I said before I don't think this subject of debate will be fruitful, as there are too many differences of opinion as to what constitutes basic perceptual experience, and what constitutes conscious judgement. The issue I believe is that we have a constant, very rapid interplay, back and forth feedback relation between the conscious and the subconscious. I think that scientific studies of this "time perception" fail in their inability to observe and account for anticipation, which by its nature relates to non-existent, unobservable things. So there is another complete dimensional aspect of time experience which involves the anticipation of something, and the actual occurrence of that something, which scientific studies cannot access. Since an extremely rapid interplay between anticipation of the event and actual occurrence of the event might be occurring at a subconscious level, the people doing the studies could not access this through conscious anticipation.

Quoting javra

I have and will use "the experiential present" rather than "the specious present" precisely due to my disagreement with the inference that what I experience is "fictitious", as per the part of Kelly's quote I've boldfaced. (I am most certain of what I directly experience, and less certain of the inferences I abstract from such - this outlook being pivotal to my approach to philosophy in general; a different topic, maybe.) Nevertheless, there is yet mention of an experienced present in Kelly's inference of it being "fiction".

But do you see the reason why Kelly calls this fictitious? It's exactly the same thing that I've been telling you. He says it is not the present at all, but the past, and to think that the specious present is really the present is a delusion. "The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past--a recent past--delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the future and the past." Hence, your "experiential present" is really a part of the past, according to Kelly, and as the principal for defining of "the present" it suffers the same problem mentioned above. It does not incorporate as part of the "experiential present", the role of anticipation, being concerned only with that "recent past", leaving out the equally important, near future.

Quoting javra

This quote by Kelly, quite likely, cuts to the marrow of our disagreement on this subject. Only that you go a step further and tell me that I don't experience time at all.

This is because I think accepting the truth of "I don't experience time at all" is key to understanding time. Once we realize that "time" is completely conceptual, an imaginary, made up thing, with absolutely nothing experienced which corresponds, then we can apply healthy skepticism and demolish the entire concept to start again in conception of "time", from scratch.

Quoting javra

To emphasize, what this implies is 1) that conscious reasoning (which occurs in the cerebral cortex) is not a necessity to the discernment of temporal sequences - hence, the discernment of time - and (here overlooking the rest of the linked to article) 2) that lesser animals are quite capable of experiencing time - again implying that conscious reasoning is not essential to the activity.

I don't know the extent of what occurs in the cerebral cortex, so I can't comment on this, other than to say that rats and other lesser animals are conscious. So when I refer to a conscious judgement, I'm not necessarily talking about applying formal logic.

But I don't see how one could demonstrate that a rat can estimate a 40 second interval. Can you say to the rat, show me forty seconds, and the rat counts it out accurately? Then you say show me 36 seconds, and the rat demonstrates an interval of 36 seconds. And then the rat could demonstrate the difference between 39 seconds and 40 seconds? Needless to say, I'm very skeptical of this report.

Quoting javra

As to memory, for the sake of brevity, I did and will for now continue to address memory as strictly that which is brought into consciousness by the unconscious which of itself re-presents a perceptual event that has already transpired and ended. To be as explicit as I currently can, this experiential memory (i.e., memory as it is experienced by the first person point of view) always consists of long term memory (e.g., a phone # I had ten years back); usually consists of short term memory and/or working memory (the memory of a phone # I have been exposed to 10 seconds after the fact), and on rare and extra-ordinary occasions of sensory memory (e.g., the experience of an afterimage).

I think I see the root of the problem right here. Experience appears to be continuous. Any startings or endings must be assigned by some sort of judgement, to a particular aspect of the experience. This is a type of individuating. So when you say you will address "memory as strictly that which is brought into consciousness by the unconscious which of itself re-presents a perceptual event that has already transpired and ended", you don't even allow that the real conscious experience is a continuous process which has memory already inherent within it. And you are assuming endings which are only assigned arbitrarily by the conscious mind.

Suppose for the sake of argument, that the subconscious mind already individuates. producing separate events with a beginning and an end, and presents these to the conscious as still frames, appearing like a continuous movie. The conscious mind then chooses its own beginnings and endings. and commits the discrete individual events to memory. If this is the case, then the continuity of experience is an illusion. But why would our bodies create this illusion for us? Well, we haven't accounted for anticipation yet. Perhaps, the future is apprehended by anticipation as continuous. Now the conscious mind, having its attention first and foremost directed forward at anticipating the future, requires that the representation produced by the subconscious be continuous, in order for it to be consistent with the anticipatory perspective it naturally has. So the subconscious presents the past (which consists of discrete individuals, memories) as a continuous process

The point now, in relation to the quoted passage, is that you define "memory" as the discrete, individuated instances produced by the conscious mind. The conscious mind commits to memory specific experiences with distinct beginnings and endings which have been assigned by conscious judgement. However, in restricting "memory" in this way, you exclude from your knowledge of "memory" all the millions and billions of years of evolutionary processes which have given rise to the memory processes employed by the subconscious mind. Therefore you will only get a very primitive conception of "memory" because you are limiting yourself to conscious memory which is only the tip of the iceberg of memory as a whole.

Quoting javra

Yes, having said this, what I do not agree with is that there is no experiential difference relative to the first person point of view in question between, for example, looking at an apple (this being the person's experiential present) and remembering once seeing an apple (this being the person's experiential past). Here, experientially, there is a clear distinction between what I deem to be the present perceptions I am aware of and what I deem to be former perceptions I am aware of - one whose threshold is fuzzy, granted, but experientially a clear distinction nevertheless.

I think you ought to have respect for what Kelly says in your quoted passage. The instance of "looking at an apple", is really an experience of what has been, not of what is. The subconscious, with its billions of years of evolutionary experience of producing memories creates from this experience a representation of the apple. And as Kelly says, this is a fictitious present, because he describes it as a delusive present, being really memory. The role of memory here is obvious, and evident through observational scientific practise. However, what we have very little, if any understanding of, is the other side of the coin, the role of anticipation. So we cannot really, truthfully say, as Kelly does, and what I said earlier, that the specious present, the experience of "looking at an apple" is simply a recent past experience, because we need to take into account the role of anticipation when the subconscious create the image which is presented to the conscious, and we call looking at the apple.

Quoting javra

(In some ways it's akin to watching a movie and claiming that what we are in fact experiencing is a series of still frames when, in fact, we are experiencing fluid motion while so viewing. Slow down the movie reel's motion and there will be a threshold where we witness both motion and still frames, true. Yet our perception of unadulturated motion is nevertheless experientially real when the movie progresses at its intended pace. In a roundabout way, the same allegorically applies to our experienced present (our seeing motion) and the nitty-gritty analysis of sensory and working memory (the still frames of a movie reel): the perceived present is to us experientially real, despite being made up in many a way by memory. Maybe this will help in getting across what I mean by "experiential present".)

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about above. We need to take into account both the appearance of still frames, and the appearance of a continuous movie. We see that the still frames are created by the act of committing things to memory. In the example of conscious remembering, the conscious mind assigns a beginning and ending to the event, and memorizes it that way. But why is the subconscious presenting us with the appearance of a continuous experience, if its presentation consists of discrete memories? If we take the principles of the conscious memory, the production of discrete memories, and apply this at the subconscious level, then we can understand that the subconscious mind is producing memories as discrete individuals. Then it presents these to the conscious mind as the appearance of a continuous process. Why would it do this? As I said above, the only thing which seems reasonable to me, is that it needs to do this in order to be compatible with the conscious mind's focus on the future, anticipation. So the conscious mind is actually within the continuous future, and can only comprehend what the senses are giving it, discrete individual memories, if the subconscious presents these discrete individual memories in the appearance of a continuous process.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

As I explained, there is a medium between sense organs and conscious perception which needs to be accounted for.

And, as I asked, what logical reason is there for locating the present at the beginning of this "medium" (or "gap") instead of at its end? We know that the end point of this "medium" is the time of our current conscious awareness, but at what point in time is the beginning (and why)?

Anyway, do you not acknowledge any distinction between perception and memory?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I plan on replying in further detail later on. For now:

Without in any way denying the reality of conscious experience, down the line of my reasoning I fully acknowledge that conscious experience is the product of a commonwealth of subconscious agencies that hold their own subconscious experiences. And, even more, that conscious agency, which includes conscious experience, is itself a unified bundle of subconscious agencies, such that the sum is greater than its parts. But the issue here is that of conscious experience per se.

Whereas conscious experience is a brute fact, subconscious experiences are inferred, and this by none other than conscious experience.

On what grounds would you disagree with the previous sentence?

Quoting Luke

And, as I asked, what logical reason is there for locating the present at the beginning of this "medium" (or "gap") instead of at its end? We know that the end point of this "medium" is the time of our current conscious awareness, but at what point in time is the beginning (and why)?

I don't think that the present is a "point" in time. We went through this already with your use of "moment". What I think is that what we refer to as "the present" is a type of duration (not quite in the same sense as Javra, because I give time a second dimension to account for this type of duration which is the duration of the present). So "the present" is not a point, but it consists of some past and some future. And I believe that the conscious awareness, being goal oriented, is most likely in the future part, like i believe that the sense apparatus is in the past part of the present.

Quoting Luke

Anyway, do you not acknowledge any distinction between perception and memory?

No, as I explained there is memory inherent within perception, so I think that trying to make such a distinction is misleading. It's like what E.R. Kelly says is "delusive" in Javra's quoted passage: "The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past--a recent past--delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the future and the past." So perception, as the signature feature of the "specious present", which is really a fictitious present, is actually a form of memory.

Quoting javra

On what grounds would you disagree with the previous sentence?

It's difficult for me to grasp "subconscious experiences", because "experience" is what we commonly assign to conscious beings. However, I see the need to posit something like subconscious experience, because for example, I myself described, "memory" as an aspect of the subconscious, developed over billions of years of evolution. If memory isn't of experience, then what is remembered? We have a very similar problem with "Intention". We commonly associate intentional actions with conscious free willing human beings. And since this is the common association then we start to think that only human beings make intentional acts. But then we have no words to describe all the purposeful actions of the lesser beings.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I think that "experience", like "intention" is a property of a whole being. These two terms express something which cannot be said of a part, but refer to aspects of the unifying feature, which makes parts exist as a whole. This I think, is one reason why we say that the sum is greater than its parts, there are properties which cannot be associated with the individual parts, and can only be associated with whatever it is which unifies the parts to make a whole. . So we can say that the whole being, as a being, experiences, but it doesn't make sense to say that a part of a being experiences. And also, I think it would make sense to say that a living being which doesn't have consciousness, like a plant, still experiences, but it doesn't make sense to me to say that the subconscious part of a conscious being, experiences. This has to do with what type of things we can attribute to a part, and the type of things we can attribute to a whole, and the reason why a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And, as I asked, what logical reason is there for locating the present at the beginning of this "medium" (or "gap") instead of at its end? We know that the end point of this "medium" is the time of our current conscious awareness, but at what point in time is the beginning (and why)?
— Luke

I don't think that the present is a "point" in time.

I didn't refer to it here as a point in time. I referred only to the beginning and end points of your "medium" or "gap", and I asked you at which end of that "medium" you located the present.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What I think is that what we refer to as "the present" is a type of duration (not quite in the same sense as Javra, because I give time a second dimension to account for this type of duration which is the duration of the present). So "the present" is not a point, but it consists of some past and some future. And I believe that the conscious awareness, being goal oriented, is most likely in the future part, like i believe that the sense apparatus is in the past part of the present.

If the present has a duration with its own beginning and end points, then why is your view that the present "consists of some past and some future"? Where (or when), in the duration of the present, is the past separated from the future? Are the past and future separated by the entirety of the duration of the present such that the past and future do not meet (option 1 below)? Or are they separated at some point within the duration of the present such that the past and future do meet (option 2 below)? Or are they separated at some point within the duration of the present such that the past and future do not meet (option 3 below)?

Here is a pictorial representation (including a third option):

1. [Past][Present][Future]
2. [Past Pres][ent Future]
3. [Past Pr]ese[nt Future]

If it is option 2 or 3, then why does the present overlap the past and the future?

If it is option 2, then what do you call the point/line that separates the past from the future?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Anyway, to make a long story short, I think that "experience", like "intention" is a property of a whole being. These two terms express something which cannot be said of a part, but refer to aspects of the unifying feature, which makes parts exist as a whole. This I think, is one reason why we say that the sum is greater than its parts, there are properties which cannot be associated with the individual parts, and can only be associated with whatever it is which unifies the parts to make a whole. . So we can say that the whole being, as a being, experiences, but it doesn't make sense to say that a part of a being experiences. And also, I think it would make sense to say that a living being which doesn't have consciousness, like a plant, still experiences, but it doesn't make sense to me to say that the subconscious part of a conscious being, experiences. This has to do with what type of things we can attribute to a part, and the type of things we can attribute to a whole, and the reason why a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Maybe (?) this plays a significant role in how we diverge.

By subconscious experiences (which I grant is not a mainstream usage of terms) I in part am address things such as this: When we forget an item, ask ourselves "where did I place it" with our inner voice, and then consciously experience an intuition regarding where the item is that reminds us, it is not us as a consciousness that knew of the answer but aspects of our subconscious mind that informed us after we as consciousness sent out a request to our subconscious mind to be so informed. It is the subconscious mind's agency (here simplistically abstracting a unified subconscious) which informs us as consciousness - and not our conscious agency. In this example is inferred that aspects of our subconscious mind hold an awareness of what we as consciousness desire to know, along with a subconscious awareness of the answer that we are momentarily ignorant of consciously - and this inferred awareness of the subconscious can be termed the non-conscious experience of one total psyche, or sub/unconscious experience. Same can be said of one's conscience, which is aware of what one as consciousness is aware of but informs (or even goads) one as consciousness of alternative avenues to that which one as consciousness intends; one's conscience then being another example of a subconscious agency that can be inferred to experience.

To me consciousness is a unified agency composed of an ever-changing plurality of subconscious agencies. (With some subconscious agencies, such as one's conscience, not being unified with it; minimally, while a conscience is sensed by a consciousness.)

So, to me consciousness is exactly one part of a total psyche - which consists of parts in addition to that of consciousness.

I grant that this is a complex subject, but I'm not sure how to proceed from here if we in fact disagree in regard to what conscious experiences and conscious intentions entail.

At any rate, by the experiential present of consciousness I, again, am not referring to a total psyche, but to strictly consciousness as a first person perspective - which holds first person awareness and which infers about matters such as the mechanisms for its first person awareness.

Quoting Luke

I didn't refer to it here as a point in time. I referred only to the beginning and end points of your "medium" or "gap", and I asked you at which end of that "medium" you located the present.

You are asking me to locate the present at a point. I already said that the present cannot be located at a point. The conscious part is future, the sense part is past, relative to each other, though we might say they are both at the present. Without a second temporal dimension, grounded in real physical evidence, locating the present as any particular duration is arbitrary.

Quoting Luke

If the present has a duration with its own beginning and end points, then why is your view that the present "consists of some past and some future"?

Time is continually passing. Why would I think that the present has beginning and end points? That doesn't make any sense.

Quoting Luke

Where (or when), in the duration of the present, is the past separated from the future? Are the past and future separated by the entirety of the duration of the present such that the past and future do not meet (option 1 below)? Or are they separated at some point within the duration of the present such that the past and future do meet (option 2 below)? Or are they separated at some point within the duration of the present such that the past and future do not meet (option 3 below)?

Do you see that the passing of time is a process? And any process requires a duration of time. So the process whereby the future becomes the past (this is how I describe the present) must itself require a duration of time. As I said already, this requires a second dimension of time, what is sometimes called thick time, I call it the breadth of time.

If the passing of time is a real physical process, then there must be a corresponding change to the universe. That is, the universe as it is in the future is different from the universe as it is in the past. I assume there is a process whereby the universes changes from being in the future, to being in the past. And, since the universe has a vast array of different types of objects, large and small for example, it makes sense to think that some types of objects might be affected by the passing of time before others are. This would mean that at any given time (if we could assume a point on a time line) some types of things are in the future while others are in the past.

So the second dimension of time is required because the common modeling of time shows such a continuous timeline, which can theoretically be divided at any point. But if we take such a point to represent the physical reality of "the present", we'll find that at any proposed point of the present, some things are in the past while others are in the future. Now we need to be able to map this process, whereby somethings are in the future and other things are in the past, relative to the one dimensional continuous timeline. And, since this is a process, it requires "time", and this "time" is not represented by the continuous one dimensional time line, so we need another dimension of time. We need to give the timeline breadth.

This is most like your option 2. I believe that past and future actually overlap, with time having breadth. So your first question 'why do future past overlap?'' is explained by the present being a process which itself requires time, and the theory that not everything in the universe is affected by this process simultaneously. And the answer to the second question is that there is a process which separates the future from the past. This process is the coming into existence of the past, it is a becoming of the past, and it comes from the future.

Quoting javra

By subconscious experiences (which I grant is not a mainstream usage of terms) I in part am address things such as this: When we forget an item, ask ourselves "where did I place it" with our inner voice, and then consciously experience an intuition regarding where the item is that reminds us, it is not us as a consciousness that knew of the answer but aspects of our subconscious mind that informed us after we as consciousness sent out a request to our subconscious mind to be so informed. It is the subconscious mind's agency (here simplistically abstracting a unified subconscious) which informs us as consciousness - and not our conscious agency.

I wouldn't describe this in the same way. I agree that there is in a sense, subconscious agency, but such agency is not independent, it is at the direction of the whole. So in your example, the conscious mind is the representative for the whole, and it is what directs the subconscious to act that way. And if we go back to our explanation of sensation, in which the subconscious is actively creating images, presenting them to the conscious, again, the subconscious is acting this way at the direction of the whole. This is really no different from the physical organs which all have functions in relation to the whole. All such purposes, or functions, are in relation to the whole, in support of the whole. The individual systems, which have agency themselves, do not have independence. they receive their agency from the whole, being dependent on the whole for it..

Ontology is extremely important here because we need to be very careful concerning our designation as to what constitutes the "whole". We are prone to thinking that the conscious mind is representative of the self, and is therefore the spokesperson for the whole. But this is really an illusion that the conscious mind creates for itself, to make itself feel important. We know that the conscious mind can very easily be corrupted by minor chemical imbalances, mental illness, and simple forms of moral corruption, just like physical organs might get corrupted in their functions, by illness. So we can see that the conscious mind is really just another part, though it likes to act as the representative for the whole. We really do not seem to have the vaguest notion as to what really constitutes the "whole".

And the ontology gets worse still. Many conscious minds like to congregate, and communicate, existing as a culture, or society. and then they will insist that the culture, society, or even the species is itself a whole. That's the ontology of Darwinism, it makes a species a whole. But these conscious minds who get together and claim the existence of such a "whole" have no principles, criteria or justification, as to what constitutes a whole, so such designations have no validity whatsoever. These conscious minds must feel some emptiness, imperfection, or deprivation, recognizing that the conscious self is not properly a whole, so they seek fulfillment elsewhere, trying to create a whole out of a group of conscious minds. But what is really required for a good ontology is for these conscious minds feeling imperfect, to turn inward, and recognize that the "self" which represents the conscious mind is only a small part of the whole person.

Quoting javra

To me consciousness is a unified agency composed of an ever-changing plurality of subconscious agencies. (With some subconscious agencies, such as one's conscience, not being unified with it; minimally, while a conscience is sensed by a consciousness.)

So, to me consciousness is exactly one part of a total psyche - which consists of parts in addition to that of consciousness.

This, is quite similar to what I've said above. The only real difference is in the way that we each describe "agency". I assign "true agency" only to the whole. This means that although the parts are active in agency, they are subservient, or directed by the whole, according to their respective functions. So, from my perspective, when we say that "consciousness is exactly one part", then we remove "true agency" from consciousness. That the conscious self is the director of the living organism is just an illusion. And this we know is the truth because the conscious mind has no power to direct the vast majority of the living systems within the body, which are said to be involuntary.

This opens up a hole which is the lack of a whole. If the conscious mind is not the proper representative of "the whole" then what is? We need to assume that there is a whole, which serves to direct all the parts in their respective functions, or else nothing unifies. All the subconscious agencies need to be directed by the "true agency", or else there is no unity, but we cannot assign "true agency" to the conscious mind, as this is just another part.

Quoting javra

At any rate, by the experiential present of consciousness I, again, am not referring to a total psyche, but to strictly consciousness as a first person perspective - which holds first person awareness and which infers about matters such as the mechanisms for its first person awareness.

Let's say that the first person perspective, being the conscious mind, places itself at the highest point in the hierarchy, the first in the temporal perspective, as being capable of causing free willing activities, as time passes. However, this is an illusion it creates for itself, because it only wants to look at all the physical parts downstream (in time) from it, which it has some control over. When it looks upstream, toward the true controlling whole, therefore what controls it, it is completely lost, and cannot see anything. It doesn't even know what things look like up there. Even to say "look" up there, is a misnomer, because this implies using the eyes to see, but to see is to look downstream into the past.

Here's a little thought experiment to see what I mean. Consider your perspective at the present. You can look backward in time, and see from your memories all about the past, what it looks like, sounds like, etc.. This is all in the past, everything you know. Now look forward, toward the future with your mind. There is absolutely nothing there. It's like a black hole of emptiness in front of you you cannot sense anything there. This is what the passing of time is, the world goes from being composed of nothing sensible, to being composed of everything which exists, at each moment of passing time. So whatever it is which is in front of us in time (the future) is extremely difficult for us to comprehend because it is in no way at all sensible, it seems like there is nothing there. We cannot sense into the future because the world is such that whatever it is that is in the future cannot be sensed. And since we get the majority of our principles of knowledge through sensation, we are lost when we look with our minds toward the future, and try to understand the future. This is why we cannot grasp the principles of what unifies the whole, these are in the future even relative to the conscious mind, which is in the future relative to the sense organs.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The conscious part is future, the sense part is past

Where in the past? At what point/event does the sense part begin?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Why would I think that the present has beginning and end points? That doesn't make any sense.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the process whereby the future becomes the past (this is how I describe the present) must itself require a duration of time.

A duration of time has beginning and end points.
You claim that the present has/is a duration of time.
Therefore, the present has beginning and end points.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

As to "true agency", in a slip of the tongue where the conscious mind intends X and the subconscious mind intends Y, which of the two if any hold the "true agency" of the whole? I say both hold (true) agency to the degree that agency occurs, each in this case being a discordant aspect, or part, of the whole psyche.

But, as with our discussion of our awareness of time, I find that you are quick to superimpose ontological principles obtained from inferences upon what we consciously experience. Nothing wrong with that, only that it diverges from the perspective which I'm doing my best to work with, which is as follows: That we (as conscious minds, i.e. as first person perspectives) experience what we experience is the strongest form of certainty regarding what takes place that we can obtain; everything which we (as first person perspectives) infer - including about why we experience what we experience - is of a lesser degree of certainty. And, implicit in all this, we can only hold a first person perspective awareness.

Going back to the principle topic of the experienced present, that we experience a present that is neither memory of former present times nor extrapolation of upcoming present times is an occurrence of the strongest degree of certainty. That this experienced present is specious, fictitious, illusory, etc. is a conclusion drawn from inferences made by the conscious mind that wells within the experienced present which, as conclusion, is less certain than that which is experienced - here, namely, the present moment. And, furthermore, a conclusion that requires there first being an experienced present which is then to be labeled "specious, or fictitious, or illusory".

All the same, because I feel like we're going around in circles in regard to the experienced present, I'm tempted to let things be for now.

Quoting Luke

Where in the past? At what point/event does the sense part begin?

I don't really know what you're asking. I'm not talking in terms of points.

Quoting Luke

A duration of time has beginning and end points.
You claim that the present has/is a duration of time.
Therefore, the present has beginning and end points.

Only when we measure a specific duration, points are required. We can talk about a duration in the general sense, such as "an hour", and no points are required because no specific hour is to be separated from the rest of time. Talking about "the present" as a duration in a general way, is the same principle. Points would be required to say that the present is a specific duration, but not to say that it is a duration, because i am not trying to measure that duration.

Quoting javra

As to "true agency", in a slip of the tongue where the conscious mind intends X and the subconscious mind intends Y, which of the two if any hold the "true agency" of the whole? I say both hold (true) agency to the degree that agency occurs, each in this case being a discordant aspect, or part, of the whole psyche.

I think I tried to express in the last post, that we do not know what holds the "true agency" of the whole. but it is I believe the same principle which is responsible for unification. Aristotle designated "the soul" as that first principle of agency of a living being. Then he named the potentialities of the soul, consisting of things like self-nourishment, self-movement, sensation, and intellection. Each of these capacities, he explained, are best known as potentialities because they are not all the time active, so they need to be activated each time they become active. This implies the need to assume a first actuality of the living being, the soul.

Quoting javra

But, as with our discussion of our awareness of time, I find that you are quick to superimpose ontological principles obtained from inferences upon what we consciously experience. Nothing wrong with that, only that it diverges from the perspective which I'm doing my best to work with, which is as follows: That we (as conscious minds, i.e. as first person perspectives) experience what we experience is the strongest form of certainty regarding what takes place that we can obtain; everything which we (as first person perspectives) infer - including about why we experience what we experience - is of a lesser degree of certainty. And, implicit in all this, we can only hold a first person perspective awareness.

I think that I agree with this. But I will stress (and perhaps you still disagree). that time is not something which we experience. So anything we say about time, what it is, how it passes, etc., is inferred. Therefore our knowledge of time cannot obtain that strongest form of certainty, so it will always remain, to some degree, speculative.

Quoting javra

Going back to the principle topic of the experienced present, that we experience a present that is neither memory of former present times nor extrapolation of upcoming present times is an occurrence of the strongest degree of certainty.

Whether or not "the present" is something experienced, is as I've said, dependent on how "present" is defined. If it is defined in relation to time (the division between past and future for example, or a specific part of time) then the present is not something experienced, but something conceptual, derived from a concept of time. But if we define it without reference to time, (what does it mean to be present, for example), describe this, and then perhaps proceed toward a conception of time if necessary, we cam make "the present" refer to something experienced.

Quoting javra

That this experienced present is specious, fictitious, illusory, etc. is a conclusion drawn from inferences made by the conscious mind that wells within the experienced present which, as conclusion, is less certain than that which is experienced - here, namely, the present moment.

By referring to it as "the present moment", you seem to be defining "present" as something temporal, therefore not something experienced, and not obtaining that highest degree of certainty. That this is true is very evident from the fact that we first had to clarify whether "moment", as a temporal term refers to a point in time, or a duration of time. Then when it was ascertained that we were talking about a duration of time, there was no indication as to how long this duration is. Obviously, "the present moment" is not something known with a high degree of certainty, and it is not something experienced.

Quoting javra

All the same, because I feel like we're going around in circles in regard to the experienced present, I'm tempted to let things be for now.

What I think we might do is remove any temporal references from our description of "the experienced present", which are loaded with third person prejudices and biases, which we have learned from others, rather than directly from personal experience, and start from a clean slate. Do you agree that when we are experiencing the present, we are experiencing things happening, like events? And do you feel as i do, an inclination to interfere with, change, and even create, things happening? If so, we might proceed to look at what motivates and supports such an inclination.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Only when we measure a specific duration, points are required. We can talk about a duration in the general sense, such as "an hour", and no points are required because no specific hour is to be separated from the rest of time. Talking about "the present" as a duration in a general way, is the same principle. Points would be required to say that the present is a specific duration, but not to say that it is a duration, because i am not trying to measure that duration.

That analogy does not hold because an hour has a specific duration of an hour, which begins at 0 minutes and ends at 60 minutes. There is no “general duration” of an hour with an unspecified duration. There is likewise no such thing for the present. If the present has a duration then it can be specified by its beginning and end points.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What I think we might do is remove any temporal references from our description of "the experienced present", which are loaded with third person prejudices and biases, which we have learned from others, rather than directly from personal experience, and start from a clean slate. Do you agree that when we are experiencing the present, we are experiencing things happening, like events? And do you feel as i do, an inclination to interfere with, change, and even create, things happening? If so, we might proceed to look at what motivates and supports such an inclination.

Not sure how to proceed. An event is not eternal but has a beginning and an end, with the former preceding the latter; otherwise expressed, with the beginning occurring before the end and the end occurring after the beginning. Again, I find this intrinsic to awareness when addressing specific, concrete events - and not something ascertainable only after inferences are made. And to address befores and afters is to address temporality.

Then there are a) events (in the plural) I sense myself to be actively partaking in - even if only as an observer - some of which I feel myself capable of changing to some extent were I to so want, b) events that I can remember which have already transpired and which I sense myself to no longer have any capacity to affect, and c) events I can for example foresee happening or that I intend to bring about through some form of effort. But here, again, I find the experiential nature of what I can only term "time": the progression into (c) with (a) and with the perpetual passing away of an ever-changing (a) into realms of (b). Experiential because I don't need to put it into language or infer it in order to immediately experience it. Temporal because I can only linguistically describe (c) as the future (b) as the past and (a) as the (lived, experiential) present.

So I don't know how to remove all temporal references from what is directly experienced nor from activities one engages in.

BTW, have you never experienced time slowing down for you when, for one reason or another, you paid extra-close attention to details (e.g., a first kiss or a near car crash) - and, conversely, time speeding up for you when you were so engaged in some activity that you hardly payed any attention to the environmental details you'd normally take into account (e.g., an enthralling festivity or an intense preoccupation with a hobby)? This relative to the time clocks keep.

Quoting Luke

That analogy does not hold because an hour has a specific duration of an hour, which begins at 0 minutes and ends at 60 minutes.

No that's not true, an hour does not need to start at 0 and end at 60, it could start any time. There is a specified duration, a length of time, but no requirement of a starting or ending point. This is the case for all units of measurement, a meter, a gram, even a numeric quantity. That's what makes these so-called "units" universals rather than particulars; in themselves there is no particular ending or beginning point. . Only in application, the act of measuring a particular thing, are points required

Quoting javra

Not sure how to proceed. An event is not eternal but has a beginning and an end, with the former preceding the latter; otherwise expressed, with the beginning occurring before the end and the end occurring after the beginning. Again, I find this intrinsic to awareness when addressing specific, concrete events - and not something ascertainable only after inferences are made. And to address befores and afters is to address temporality.

We disagree here, and we went through this already with your "snap" example. If I am meditating, or doing anything really, and there is a snap noise, it passes through me as a noise, and I hear it, but I do not recognize a beginning and an ending to it. It is only on reflection that I realize that it must have had a beginning and an ending. And in all my experience of simple awareness, I never experience one thing as before or after another thing, this is always a conscious judgement I make upon reflection. It may be the case, that within my evolved intuitions, this capacity has not been developed, as important, yet within your evolved intuitions it has been developed, so you have intuitions which judge before and after subconsciously, while I have to judge this consciously.

In my experience of simple awareness I find a continuous stream of differences, changes, things which are distinct from each other, in many different ways, but I do not seem to have any awareness of how they differ from each other, they are simply different. So without conscious judgement I do not recognize one thing as bigger than another, as greener than another, louder than another, or before another. I do not even distinguish the end of one thing and the beginning of another thing because I do not even separate things. These are all judgements which require associating words with what is happening, and for me this requires conscious judgement.

Quoting javra

Then there are a) events (in the plural) I sense myself to be actively partaking in - even if only as an observer - some of which I feel myself capable of changing to some extent were I to so want, b) events that I can remember which have already transpired and which I sense myself to no longer have any capacity to affect, and c) events I can for example foresee happening or that I intend to bring about through some form of effort. But here, again, I find the experiential nature of what I can only term "time": the progression into (c) with (a) and with the perpetual passing away of an ever-changing (a) into realms of (b). Experiential because I don't need to put it into language or infer it in order to immediately experience it. Temporal because I can only linguistically describe (c) as the future (b) as the past and (a) as the (lived, experiential) present.

Referring to your divisions here, I do not see a clear separation between a) and c). Whenever I am actively partaking in an event, (a), there is always a view toward what I intend to bring about (c). However, I can make a clear division within a), between actively participating, and observing. This is like the difference between playing a game, and watching a game being played. The two are very distinct, and I think a division is called for here. Sometimes at a sporting event, fans will get very loud and actually try to influence the game, but this is not the same as participating in the game. Likewise, at a rock concert, some fans get very excited, and try to somehow influence the performance. Do you agree that there is a very big difference between participating in (active), and observing (passive), events?

If we start with this distinction we can proceed toward b) and c) in a slightly different way. From the perspective of a passive observer, we can see past events, b), as requiring no action, and we can continue to observe indefinitely, in the attempt to deny the need for an activity, c) on the part of the observer. In other words, as a passive observer we have no view to the future, all is past and there is no requirement for action. That is to make c) irrelevant. But from the perspective of an active participant, we already have invested interest, goals we intend to bring about, c), as we are actively making that effort, and we cannot just step out of this position to become an observer, without forfeiture.

Quoting javra

BTW, have you never experienced time slowing down for you when, for one reason or another, you paid extra-close attention to details (e.g., a first kiss or a near car crash) - and, conversely, time speeding up for you when you were so engaged in some activity that you hardly payed any attention to the environmental details you'd normally take into account (e.g., an enthralling festivity or an intense preoccupation with a hobby)? This relative to the time clocks keep.

I've been involved in a number of vehicle accidents. They all happen extremely fast, but afterwards I remember everything happening in every smallest fraction of a second, as if there was a long time span between them. This is how I remember the incidents and I'm quite sure that this is how the events occurred to me at the time they happened. I attribute this apparent "time slowing down" to a heightened sense of anticipation, anxiety, what you call paying extra close attention.to details.

I believe that this heightened sense of awareness, this type of anxiety can be trained into oneself, cultured, and this is done by high level athletes involved in fast games like hockey. There is also probably a significant difference amongst human beings at the innate level, and this partially accounts for what we call gifted athletes. When you watch someone like Alex Ovechkin play hockey, he appears to be always one step ahead of the game (the rest of the players) in his anticipation, so he must be able to process an extremely rapid succession of events, in the same way that you and I would process a much slower succession of events. This I think is what they call being on top of your game, being in the zone.

We might look the other way too, toward "time speeding up". You can see that these two roughly correspond to the way I divided a). For the active participant with a vested interest, each detail matters, so time slows down, but for the passive observer who just wants to see it all and do nothing about it, time speeds up.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

No that's not true, an hour does not need to start at 0 and end at 60, it could start any time.

What do you mean "it could start any time"? I wasn't talking about when it started. I was talking about the duration of an hour, which has the temporal length of one hour. A length is the distance between two points. What do you think the length of one metre is?

Quoting Luke

A length is the distance between two points. What do you think the length of one metre is?

A metre is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second. It is not the distance between two points. You are making the classic category mistake of confusing the particular with the universal. A particular, measured metre is the distance between two points, like a metre stick has two ends, as an instance of a particular measured metre. But the universal, "metre" refers to a defined length, not a distance between two specific points. .

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And in all my experience of simple awareness, I never experience one thing as before or after another thing, this is always a conscious judgement I make upon reflection. It may be the case, that within my evolved intuitions, this capacity has not been developed, as important, yet within your evolved intuitions it has been developed, so you have intuitions which judge before and after subconsciously, while I have to judge this consciously.

Awareness can greatly differ between individuals, yet I still take this quote with a grain of salt. Maybe we're using words differently? By "conscious judgment" I understand deliberation between alternatives that one then settles on in the form of a conclusion. This deliberation often takes significant time, such that by the time a deliberation is made regarding what is observed, that observed (and deliberated upon) has usually already transcended into either the far reaches of short term memory or else into the first instances of long term memory. But, by then, a plethora of new observations have already occurred. Where each such novel observation to require conscious deliberation to discern, one would never be able to react more or less instantly to a stimulus. Such as in turning one's head automatically milliseconds after hearing an unexpected loud boom ... one that distracts one from all the deliberations one engages in. Here, this loud boom would serve as one sonic event. And one would know that one turned one's head after one hears the boom - rather then before - in manners devoid of deliberation, I would assume.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In my experience of simple awareness I find a continuous stream of differences, changes, things which are distinct from each other, in many different ways, but I do not seem to have any awareness of how they differ from each other, they are simply different. So without conscious judgement I do not recognize one thing as bigger than another, as greener than another, louder than another, or before another. I do not even distinguish the end of one thing and the beginning of another thing because I do not even separate things. These are all judgements which require associating words with what is happening, and for me this requires conscious judgement.

I can't help but think of how lesser animals discern comparative sizes, colors, loudness, and which events occur before others (with this discernment being requisite in, for example, both classical and operant conditioning) without associating words with what is happening. As adults we're accustomed to using language for many if not most activities, yet certainly we were able to discern the items listed when we were pre-linguistic children - otherwise we could not have learned what words signify. Again, although awareness can greatly differ between adult human individuals, I can't help but take what you here say with a grain of salt.

Still, I'll take your word for it if in your reply you maintain the same.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Referring to your divisions here, I do not see a clear separation between a) and c). Whenever I am actively partaking in an event, (a), there is always a view toward what I intend to bring about (c).

While this muddles the picture, the same can be said regarding how almost all occurrences of both (a) and (c) are contingent upon what takes place within realms of (b). As one simplistic example, one cannot anticipate that the sun will rise again tomorrow without memory of the sun's activities in past days. The same applies to predicting what another person will do. And so forth. Anticipation is conjoined with (long term) memory.

That said, my ability to influence occurs within realms in which I am actively observing; plans of what to do in case of X, Y, and Z so as to satisfy intent i, are themselves formulated, changed, and maintained by the conscious mind within realms of (a). So, while I agree that all conscious activities that occur during (a) extend toward (c) in one way or another - this being the theme of intent-driven determinacy regarding what occurs within (a) (to not say "within the experienced present") - I yet find a clear distinction in that (c) hasn't yet happened physically whereas (a) is happening physically (and, to complete the list, (b) has already happened physically).

[Edit: for clarity, "hasn't yet happened, is happening, and has already happened physically" strictly relative to one's immediate awareness of occurrences - rather than relative to one's abstract ideas regarding the ontological nature of physicality and time. And I get that I'm repeating myself in expressing "immediate awareness/experience of," which I know you find contentious. Hence the feeling of going in circles ... ]

There would be more to say but, here again, there is use of a temporality which we so far disagree upon.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, I can make a clear division within a), between actively participating, and observing. This is like the difference between playing a game, and watching a game being played. The two are very distinct, and I think a division is called for here.

Sure, but then, granting this basic distinction between consciousness's receptivity and consciousness's activities, do you yet agree that they both occur within (a)? Consciousness's activities are pervasive throughout consciousness's receptivity: from turning our gaze to analyzing what we see, these are all events that intertwine what we passively observe with what we voluntarily do as consciousnesses at any given moment.

BTW, I qualify this with "consciousness's" because perception is, as you've previously commented on, creative from the point of view of the subconscious mind, and is therefore an activity in and of itself when looked at from the perspective of a total mind. Arguably, an activity that holds its own sub/unconscious intents - with these being involuntary from the pov of consciousness.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We might look the other way too, toward "time speeding up". You can see that these two roughly correspond to the way I divided a). For the active participant with a vested interest, each detail matters, so time slows down, but for the passive observer who just wants to see it all and do nothing about it, time speeds up.

Forgot to address this part:

Do you then not find this slowing and speeding up of time to be experiential in nature? What is commonly termed "time perception". I'm asking so as to clarify where we stand on the capacity of experiencing time. Again, not philosophical time which can only be an abstraction obtained via inference but lived time as it's innately experienced.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

A metre is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second. It is not the distance between two points.

How is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second not the distance between two points?

Quoting javra

By "conscious judgment" I understand deliberation between alternatives that one then settles on in the form of a conclusion. This deliberation often takes significant time..

I don't think that conscious judgement requires deliberation between alternatives. Nor does it always require "significant time". Some judgements take weeks, some days, some hours, some minutes, some seconds, but many are very simple and seem almost instantaneous. If someone holds up three fingers and asks how many fingers is this, is the answer not a conscious judgement? What about holding up an object and asking what colour it is? To answer such simple questions requires conscious judgement, but usually not deliberation between alternatives, nor does it take "significant time".

Quoting javra

But, by then, a plethora of new observations have already occurred. Where each such novel observation to require conscious deliberation to discern, one would never be able to react more or less instantly to a stimulus. Such as in turning one's head automatically milliseconds after hearing an unexpected loud boom ... one that distracts one from all the deliberations one engages in.

A reaction like turning one's head in response to a boom does not require the judgement that the sound had a beginning and an end. Nor does it require the judgement that the turning of the head will be after the boom. So I really don't see that you have any sort of argument here. Notice that such a milliseconds response of turning one's head is generally accompanied by a thought like "what was that?", not "that was a loud boom". The latter is a conscious judgement which probably would not occur in the time frame of that reaction.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this matter because it doesn't seem like either one of us will be convincing the other.

Quoting javra

I can't help but think of how lesser animals discern comparative sizes, colors, loudness, and which events occur before others (with this discernment being requisite in, for example, both classical and operant conditioning) without associating words with what is happening. As adults we're accustomed to using language for many if not most activities, yet certainly we were able to discern the items listed when we were pre-linguistic children - otherwise we could not have learned what words signify. Again, although awareness can greatly differ between adult human individuals, I can't help but take what you here say with a grain of salt.

I'm beginning to see that you and I have completely different ideas as to what constitutes a "conscious judgement". The examples I've used, of applying language in the description of something, I use because I think that it is obvious and clear that if words were used to describe something, then necessarily conscious judgement was used, because we might agree that to use language in description requires a conscious judgement concerning the thing described. But not all conscious judgements involve language. Many lesser animals are conscious, yet they do not use language. Would you not agree that they make conscious judgements? But I can't say that I know what the conscious judgements made by lesser animals would be like. I watch my dogs and cats when they seem to make judgements about where they are going, and things like that, but I can't say I know what such a judgement would be like. Nor can I say that I know what my conscious judgements were like prior to me learning to use language, because I can't remember that time. There seems to be a correlation though, between learning language and increased memory power, so I wouldn't be surprised if these two factors facilitate a change in the way that conscious judgement is made also.

Quoting javra

While this muddles the picture, the same can be said regarding how almost all occurrences of both (a) and (c) are contingent upon what takes place within realms of (b). As one simplistic example, one cannot anticipate that the sun will rise again tomorrow without memory of the sun's activities in past days. The same applies to predicting what another person will do. And so forth. Anticipation is conjoined with (long term) memory.

I don't agree that both a) and c) are contingent on b). This is one point where I strongly disagree with conventional determinist principles. And this is why I've argued to place anticipation and future as prior to, or before past. When I described anticipation as a general feeling of anxiety, not directed toward any particular goal, this description denies the need for anticipation to be based in a past memory. This is what allows for what I would call the true forward looking perspective.

The physical world, as it is (which really means as it has been up until now) places restrictions on our possibilities for the future. We cannot do something which is beyond, or outside the range of what is allowed for by the conditions of the past, and we may say that these limitations are the basis for what we deem as "physically impossible". This inclines us to be always looking into the past, to see how we are constrained by the past. But with an understanding of free will, and a slightly different conception of time, we can dismiss the continuity between past and future, which we take for granted (eg. Newton's first law), as not necessary. There is a continuity between future and past, through the present, which we observe and demonstrate the reality of, through prediction, but the continuity is not necessary; as Newton said I believe, it's dependent on the Will of God. When this continuity is understood as not necessary, then the constraints which the past place on the future are not necessary either.

It is this perspective, which allows anticipation, and forward looking thinking to be unconditionally free from the constraints of the past this provides us with the true possibility of freedom. And that this perspective is the true perspective can be logically derived, if it is true that time had a start. If time had a start, then at that instant, when time was just beginning to pass, there was only future, and no past. Time could not have begun to pass unless there was a future, but at this beginning there would have been no past. So if time did have a start, then the perspective which places the future as before the past is the true perspective because there was necessarily a future before there was any past.

Quoting javra

That said, my ability to influence occurs within realms in which I am actively observing; plans of what to do in case of X, Y, and Z so as to satisfy intent i, are themselves formulated, changed, and maintained by the conscious mind within realms of (a). So, while I agree that all conscious activities that occur during (a) extend toward (c) in one way or another - this being the theme of intent-driven determinacy regarding what occurs within (a) (to not say "within the experienced present") - I yet find a clear distinction in that (c) hasn't yet happened physically whereas (a) is happening physically (and, to complete the list, (b) has already happened physically).

I pretty much agree with this, but I would still like to insist on a division of a), between the passive and active aspects of the person in the situation of a) (to not say experiencing the present). The passive "observer" is not consistent with c), but in many ways is consistent with b), while the active participant is consistent with c) but in many ways not consistent with b).

Quoting javra

Do you then not find this slowing and speeding up of time to be experiential in nature? What is commonly termed "time perception". I'm asking so as to clarify where we stand on the capacity of experiencing time. Again, not philosophical time which can only be an abstraction obtained via inference but lived time as it's innately experienced.

No, I definitely do not find this to be experiential. In all my experiences of time slowing down, my experience seemed completely normal at the time, except for a feeling of being hyper-aware, in the sense of anticipatory. It was only afterwards, when going through my memory as to what occurred, that I would think how was I capable of doing all those things in what I now understand to have been an extremely short time. In other words, I was very aware, and I was reacting very quickly, but it never occurred to me at the time that time was going slower. And afterwards I was amazed at how much I could remember happening, and doing, in such a short time, but I never thought of it as time slowing down until you mentioned it now, and I think that's a good way of describing it. However, it doesn't describe what I experienced, only what I determined afterwards.

Likewise, for time speeding up. We used to have a saying, "time flies when you're having fun", but I take that as a metaphor. When I get involved in something extensive, suddenly it's later than I thought. It's not the case that I experience time going faster, it's just that I am so involved in what I am doing, that I pay no attention to the clock, and I do not realize how much time has passed.

Those examples, time slowing down, and time speeding up, are really more evidence that we do not experience time. If we do not pay attention to the clock we quickly lose track of how much time has passed. Then when we try to make the judgement as to how much time has passed, simply by referring to what we remember as having happened, we are very wrong. Gotta go---where has all the time gone?

Quoting Luke

How is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second not the distance between two points?

The "distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second" is a metre, and "the distance between two points" could be any distance. Obviously one is not the same as the other. You can continue in your category mistake all you want, I really don't care if you refuse to correct it.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

How is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second not the distance between two points?
— Luke

The "distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second" is a metre, and "the distance between two points" could be any distance.

I asked how a metre is not the distance between two points.
I did not ask how the distance between two points is not a metre.
Obviously the distance between two points “could be any distance” (including a metre).
That does not explain how a metre is not the distance between two points.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I'm beginning to see that you and I have completely different ideas as to what constitutes a "conscious judgement".

Thanks for the reply. Yes, what you term "conscious judgement" I would term "conscious discernment". To me a discernment can be automatic from the pov of consciousness whereas a judgment is an act of judging, which in turn is the process of forming an opinion, which takes time to come to a conclusion. But there is no fixed set of rules for use of linguistic expressions in cases such as this. Yes, I think more intelligent lesser animals can make conscious judgments as I've just described the term, and, more so, that all animals can make discernments. A favorite example of mine: ameba (which are far simpler than animals) can discern predators from prey - but in my lexicon I wouldn't say that ameba can make judgments about what is predator and what is prey.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So if time did have a start, then the perspective which places the future as before the past is the true perspective because there was necessarily a future before there was any past.

But was there a future before there was any present? Personally, I find that whether time had a start is unknowable in principle. Still, I think I can understand what you're expressing. If so, I find that there is in this statement an equivocation between that which is physical and that which is, for lack of better words, metaphysical. For instance, an ultimate final cause can only be metaphysical, and, when hypothesizing the reality of such, here we can simplistically express that such predates all that physically is, including all physical past. That said, I continue to maintain the mainstream view that the physical future can only occur after the physical past.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Those examples, time slowing down, and time speeding up, are really more evidence that we do not experience time. If we do not pay attention to the clock we quickly lose track of how much time has passed. Then when we try to make the judgement as to how much time has passed, simply by referring to what we remember as having happened, we are very wrong. Gotta go---where has all the time gone?

I can remember being bored out of my wits while in after-school detention without being allowed to look at any clock, and that one hour going by very, very slowly for me. But I'll drop the subject.

Quoting Luke

I asked how a metre is not the distance between two points.
I did not ask how the distance between two points is not a metre.
Obviously the distance between two points “could be any distance” (including a metre).
That does not explain how a metre is not the distance between two points.

No, actually you asked "how is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second not the distance between two points".

Anyway, the answer to your question of how a metre is not the distance between two points is very simple. I gave the definition of a "metre", and it does not mention "the distance between two points", or anything about points. And, in no way is "the distance between two points" implied by that definition I gave. Therefore it is very clear that "metre" means something other than "the distance between two points", and a metre is not the distance between two points.

For some reason you seem to believe that the definition of "metre" implies "the distance between two points". As I've been telling you though, this belief is only supported by a category mistake. But if you're really insistent in your belief, and not ready to face your category mistake, then I think the onus is on you, to demonstrate your logic. Show me why you believe that "metre" implies "the distance between two points". Then I think I will be able to pinpoint, and show to you, the precise location of your category mistake. I think maybe there are two category mistakes in your reasoning, so lay it out for me to see. I've already told you why a metre is not the distance between two points, now it's your turn to tell me why you think it is.

Quoting javra

Thanks for the reply. Yes, what you term "conscious judgement" I would term "conscious discernment". To me a discernment can be automatic from the pov of consciousness whereas a judgment is an act of judging, which in turn is the process of forming an opinion, which takes time to come to a conclusion. But there is no fixed set of rules for use of linguistic expressions in cases such as this. Yes, I think more intelligent lesser animals can make conscious judgments as I've just described the term, and, more so, that all animals can make discernments. A favorite example of mine: ameba (which are far simpler than animals) can discern predators from prey - but in my lexicon I wouldn't say that ameba can make judgments about what is predator and what is prey.

I've considered this issue many times before, because I would question whether an habitual act is a conscious act. It appears to be automatic. In the case of habit, there seems to often be a conscious decision, which sets in motion many subservient automatic, habitual actions. So if I decide to walk to the store for example, that is a conscious decision, but then my feet moving, and opening the door etc., are all automatic.

However, it may not be possible to class my examples of holding up a number of fingers, and an object and asking what colour it is, as automatic, or habitual. This is because the reply cannot be known in advance. In the case of habit, the required action is known in advance, and I believe that this is what facilitates the habit's expression as automatic. The anticipation has been subrogated from conscious anticipation to subconscious anticipation. In other words, the habitual action remains ready to kick in when called upon. In the case of my examples, the reply to the question cannot be known in advance, so the anticipation must be right there at the conscious level. The conscious mind remains at the ready, to make a decision when called upon This is why I classed it as a conscious judgement. It's just an easy decision, and made quickly because the conscious mind is prepared in anticipation. We are trained as children to make these decisions quickly, with the use of flash cards and things like that. It is a useful trait, because in many situations, such as dangerous ones, the ability to make quick decisions and not get all flustered is important.

Quoting javra

A favorite example of mine: ameba (which are far simpler than animals) can discern predators from prey - but in my lexicon I wouldn't say that ameba can make judgments about what is predator and what is prey.

Obviously we need more distinctions then simply conscious judgements and non-conscious discernments, because we have to account for all sorts of different habits, both innate and learned. I think you would agree that there is a big difference between the response to a flash card, and the response to the tap on your knee when the doctor tests your reflexes. And as well, a big difference again between the reflex of your knee, and the behaviour of the ameba.

I believe that the difference lies in the mode of anticipation. I think that the different systems of living beings have built into them different anticipatory mechanisms. Scientific theories and principles, being validated by observation, describe the anticipatory mechanisms as response mechanisms, being unable to observe anticipation. So science doesn't really get to the true nature of these systems as fundamentally anticipatory

Quoting javra

That said, I continue to maintain the mainstream view that the physical future can only occur after the physical past.

I think you ought to consider that there is no such thing as "the physical future". Physics is based in observation, and all observation is of things which are in the past. I know you disagree and say that observations are of things at the present. Nevertheless, everything observed is in the past by the time the observation is made, so physics concerns things which are all in the past. We make predictions about the future, but these are supported by the continuity of time at the present, as I explained already. This continuity is very real or else the predictions would fail, but as I also explained, it is not necessary. Because of this, we can say that it is not necessary that anything will continue being in the future, as it has in the past, although we observe that things do. And if such continuity is not necessary, then it is impossible that any physical thing could be existing in the future because it is possible that any physical thing could cease being at any moment of the present. Therefore no moment of the future coud have any physical things within them.

From this perspective, physical things are coming into being, being recreated, at every moment of the present, from a future which has no physical things. Our perspective is somewhere in the middle of this becoming, we see it as things happening, objects moving and changing. So we do not see the part in front of us, furthest in the future, where the objects are coming from nothing physical, nor the part behind us, furthest in the past, where the objects become entirely static.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I asked how a metre is not the distance between two points.
— Luke

No, actually you asked "how is the distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second not the distance between two points".

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The "distance traveled by light in 1/299 792 458 of a second" is a metre,

What’s the difference?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I gave the definition of a "metre", and it does not mention "the distance between two points", or anything about points. And, in no way is "the distance between two points" implied by that definition I gave.

“Traveled” implies having gone from point A to point B.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, it may not be possible to class my examples of holding up a number of fingers, and an object and asking what colour it is, as automatic, or habitual.

Think of the movie "Rain Man", a movie based on real cases of autistic savants. The guy could instantly visually discern complex numbers. Though I'm no savant, when you hold up two fingers, I don't need to count them analytically to discern they are two rather than one or three. I discern, hence know, this instantly. Same with discerning yellow from red. It's automatic. Placing what one discerns into language on occasion does require conscious deliberation that may not take very long at all. But the discernment can very well occur innately as that which one experiences in manners devoid of conscious thoughts regarding what is.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Obviously we need more distinctions then simply conscious judgements and non-conscious discernments, because we have to account for all sorts of different habits, both innate and learned.

We conceive of things differently. What I directly observe as a first person perspective I consciously discern instantaneously (relative to the conscious experience) on most occasions. It's only when there are uncertainties of what it is I am observing that I then analyze alternatives so as to arrive at a conclusion - or else change my focus. These uncertainties are most often emotive, stemming from the subconscious. But my apprehension of these uncertainties as a first person perspective is a conscious experience.

I don't assume any division between consciousness and sub/unconsciousness as though they were two separate entities. Rather consciousness to me is again a unified plurality of subconscious agencies that interacts with, among other things, subconscious agencies it is not momentarily unified with. One's conscience and one's emotions that seek to influence one's behaviors (e.g. pangs of anger, or envy, or romantic attraction, etc., which one as a consciousness is antagonistic to) are two examples of such subconscious agencies of one's total psyche. Lots to explain here, but to keep things relatively simple, one's conscious experiences are perpetually constructed from, so to speak, one's subconscious activities of mind. I can infer that my subconscious mind might make deliberations whose concluding verdicts are then kicked up to the level of consciousness, but at the level of consciousness what I experience most of the time are instantaneous (conscious, rather than non-conscious) discernments. These conscious discernments are of course greatly influenced by past experiences, from memories that can be consciously recalled to habits of behavior to associations regarding pleasure and pain in relation to certain stimuli, and so forth. But there are mostly held subconsciously. Nevertheless, consciously they manifest automatically as part of the very process of consciously experiencing.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think you would agree that there is a big difference between the response to a flash card, and the response to the tap on your knee when the doctor tests your reflexes. And as well, a big difference again between the reflex of your knee, and the behaviour of the ameba.

I believe that the difference lies in the mode of anticipation. I think that the different systems of living beings have built into them different anticipatory mechanisms.

Here's what I find wondrous about ameba: they need to successfully anticipate the behaviors of their prey - and this differently from how they successfully anticipate the behaviors of their predators - if they are to live. So I can't place the total organism of an ameba as having less complex anticipatory mechanisms that the knee jerk you refer to.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That said, I continue to maintain the mainstream view that the physical future can only occur after the physical past. — javra

I think you ought to consider that there is no such thing as "the physical future".

I don't assume the block cosmos of eternalism. I so far give my ontological beliefs the label of presentism, for lack of a better term. But the details are complex (e.g., laconically, and for all intended purposes, the past is yet static due to causal reasons that are conjoined into the realities of the present - and it is remembered as having been physical, hence "the physical past"), and, besides, I did say I'd drop the subject of time.

That said, although we'd both agree that there currently is no physical future, would we nevertheless agree that there will be a future physical present as a consequence of what occurs in the present? If so, as shorthand, I termed this future physical present the physical future.

Restating my affirmation to be more in line with my own presentist beliefs: What will physically be can only occur after what once physically was.

Quoting Luke

“Traveled” implies having gone from point A to point B.

No, "traveled" does not imply points. A "point" is a non-dimensional precise location which has no real corresponding place in the world that we travel in. That is your category error., points are theoretical only. This mistake is significant in our discussion of duration. If time passage is continuous, then there are no points within any duration, which would separate one particular duration from another, and assuming that there are points within that medium would only lead to problems like Zeno's paradoxes.

But this does not prevent us from talking about distinct durations in time. We just need to bare in mind that any beginning or end is theoretical only, if time is understood as continuous, so any proposed duration cannot be mapped into the real world in any precise way. That's why I objected to you asking me about what point does the present begin and end.

Quoting javra

Same with discerning yellow from red. It's automatic.

I would not call this automatic (though it seems to be) for the reasons I explained. I wouldn't even say it's obtained the status of "habitual", for the reasons I gave. I think there is a type of anticipation which differs

edit: Sorry premature posting, will finish later.

As I said, answering flash cards and such things requires rapid response, which is specific to the particular situation, when the required response was completely unknown until that time. That's why I don't categorize it as automatic or habitual. If however, it is the case that acquiring the capacity to make such a rapid response requires being subjected to the same flash cards, or colours, a numbers of times, so that the person gets familiarized with that particular response to that particular question, then I think it might be habitual.

Quoting javra

So I can't place the total organism of an ameba as having less complex anticipatory mechanisms that the knee jerk you refer to.

I wouldn't necessarily say that the ameba's anticipatory mechanisms are' "less complex". In fact, with anticipation, it appears to me like the less complex is the more highly developed. This is because, with rapid discernment, as we've been discussing, the simpler it is, the faster it is. This actually may be what differentiates higher levels of consciousness from lower levels, that the process of discernment, gets simpler and simpler. So when you talk about a conscious judgement requiring a deliberation period, this is really a sign of weakness in that consciousness.

Consider what conscious judgement requires. First, we need to suspend the habitual, the automatic, to free ourselves from that influence of such causal mechanisms. In a general sense, this is what we call "will power", it enables us to resist the temptation of following subconscious inclinations. Then, the conscious mind is free to consider options. However, we ought to also consider that the conscious mind itself will add another layer of habitual, or automatic responses to deal with simple problems which do not require extended deliberation, like learning the flash cards. And there might be many layers like this within a living being.

This scenario would create multiple levels with the stop (will power) required at each level to allow discernment which is not causal in the determinist sense. This would be cumbersome and time consuming, so I think that the conscious mind must have the capacity to bypass multiple levels, and place the stop at the bottom of the chain of causation. This would allow the conscious mind to avoid the complex causal structure, allowing its habits, automatic response to take precedence when required, and also forced deliberation if required.

So in general, what I'm suggesting is that the subconscious level is complex, created with many levels of stops (inherent will power), which is required to allow the being to act in a way which is not causally determined. Then the conscious mind short circuits this whole complex system, implanting itself as close to the bottom of the causal chain as possible, rerouting the activity directly to the top, when it deems necessary. In this way it has found a way to simplify the complex anticipatory system which was required to be complex in the first place to avoid costly mistakes.

Quoting javra

I don't assume the block cosmos of eternalism. I so far give my ontological beliefs the label of presentism, for lack of a better term. But the details are complex (e.g., laconically, and for all intended purposes, the past is yet static due to causal reasons that are conjoined into the realities of the present - and it is remembered as having been physical, hence "the physical past"), and, besides, I did say I'd drop the subject of time.

The difficult thing, is that if the present is active, and the past is static, how can we account for a transition between these two? This is the issue which has tied Luke up now, he asked me at what point does the present end and the past start, or something like that, and I said that to talk about "points" here does not make sense. This is why I suggested that further and further into the past there is something like slowing down, until we get to what we call the beginning of time, when things would have been static. So I see the past as the end of motion, and facing the future, we see that motion begins in the future. Our perspective is in the middle somewhere.

Quoting javra

That said, although we'd both agree that there currently is no physical future, would we nevertheless agree that there will be a future physical present as a consequence of what occurs in the present? If so, as shorthand, I termed this future physical present the physical future.

No, I wouldn't agree with this, as I explained, I see reason to remove the necessity here. The entire future is possibility, so there is nothing necessary which will come to be at a future present. Even the future present is not necessary, being contingent on the passing of time.. What occurs at the present, we say is a consequence of what has occurred in the past, but this is just the result of our faulty, backward way of understanding causation. The real cause of everything we experience is the passing of time. and we know of nothing which necessitates this. This is why the true cause is always in the future from us, as I described. The passing of time requires future, and the past is a consequence, the effect of time passing. Until we understand and grasp what necessitates the passing of time, we cannot assume that it is necessary.