At The Present Time
Has it been possible to grasp the meaning of the present time? When one says: “time nowadays, time today, or time now” there is a hidden paradox: now is a time designator, a deictic indexing time. It performs like the operator, referring to an exact time, given by a calendar. Yet, after being related to a single diachronic line, the saying has inevitably lost its singular, unrepeatable quality of the present moment of its utterance.
Comments (49)
For example, in the saying "Kids nowadays . . ." people might mean a generation or two of young folks, depending on just what behavior they're talking about, just how old the person who said "Kids nowadays" is, etc. A 50-something guy saying "Kids nowadays do not know how to dress" might have in mind people over a 30-something year time span.
at 1:45 p.m.”. Therefore, there has been the operation of objectification of sentence #1. The particular meaning of sentence #1 has been transformed and reduced to an objective and common sense.
Tell you later.
In the mean time, consider that you already grasp that meaning, as is evidenced by your ability to make use of it in your everyday world,
Why look for some words to set out what you already know?
That is, forget the meaning and look at what you, and we, can do.
You can see where you have been, but not where you are going.
I kinda like that.
Quoting Banno
I haven't known yet.
What?
That's right, precious few of us will ever actually turn and face the future, because it's way too scary. So we just keep looking at the past, attempting to employ some principles of logic to determine what's coming at us from the future. What most of us don't realize though, is that we're naturally inclined through evolutionary forces, to face the future. So we're actually facing the future, and going forward. That we seem to be facing the past and walking backward into the future, is really a matter of walking forward, but facing a giant mirror showing only what's behind. So we're really going forward, while looking at a giant rear view mirror. It's quite complicated I know, but we won't take our eyes off that rear view mirror to actually face the future, because the future itself is way too scary.
Actually concepts about time have regressed over the last two thousand years. The ancient greeks had two different words for time: chronos and eon. Chronos implies ordered and counted time, as in clocks. eon refers to more generalized concepts of timespans that do not have well defined edges, such as epochs. Due to the spread of science over the last few centuries, the importance of the second concept has largely been lost.
If you are interested in ideas of subjective time, the landmark scientific study is by Benjamin Lee Whorf, who observed that the Hopi indians have three verb tenses: one for the present, one for recent events for which sense data still exists, and one for everything else, including hopes, promises, the far past, the future, and emotions. As a consequence, Hopi indians have trouble understanding clocks, which was a substantiation for his theory that language precedes thought, but that notion was later rejected by american scientists as being racist when it was applied to the school system.
:clap: :up: interesting
So, methinks the problem is more fundamental than just a difficulty with the concept of now.
That scientists are satisfied with their operational definition of time says a lot; that it is adequate for all purposes as of now.
Well, considering science is the archetype of clarity, precision, logical rigor, it's odd that they don't have a theoretical definition of time. I surmise that science simply doesn't need one at the moment. I'm fine with that; it's a decision that must have been arrived at through careful deliberation.
However, I'm curious as to why time is not so easy to define. Perhaps the right word is ''impossible''.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you. Since we cannot predict and foresee our future, we are inclined to eliminate it, to substitute it for familiar images and identifications from the past. As a result,the cyclic model of time has been reproduced over and over again.
Probably, for the Hopi Indians experience of time and its language forms had been inseparable
from the rhythms of their social and natural environments. In contrast, the clocks and calendars had imperialistically and systematically suppressed anterior expressions of time.
When one tries to define time, one applies various logical and language recourses.
Therefore, the fundamental features of time, related to change and becoming,
have escaped the definition. It has been possible to assume that any scientific or/and objectified approach to time reduces it to spatial representations and forms.
become the presented, mediated, and objectified time.
What I'm thinking of, is more of a linear model of time. The problem being that the model really only takes into account the past. All of our experience is in the past. We proceed with inductive reasoning and draw conclusions about the past. The problem being that instead of recognizing that the past begins at the present, and that the future is fundamentally different from the past, we draw a line of temporal continuity in the model, through the present into the future. So we end up with a linear model of time which extends from past through future, with the present being a point somewhere on this line, without accounting for the fact that the future is substantially different from the past, and such a continuity is a misrepresentation.
So, the political present is about 50 years long.
I'd call the "technical present" about 120 years long, minimum. How could that be? 120 years ago weren't we still using horses as the main source of traction and transportation, outside of the railroad? We were, true. But look at it this way: Lincoln used electronic communication (the telegraph) to manage his generals during the Civil War. That was a huge innovation -- the top guy jerking the chain of a general at a distance of 1000 miles in real time. That's 1861-1865. Photographs of Civil War battlefields shocked civilians in the north. Sort of like Vietnam a century later. By 1900 the telegraph was ubiquitous and telephones were becoming more common. Radio communication had commenced (not broadcasts quite yet). Recorded sound was available--not great, but compared to nothing it was amazing. Moving pictures had arrived. The auto had made its appearance.
Röntgen won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery of x-rays. Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, and Pierre Curie won the Nobel prize for their discoveries in radioactivity in 1903. Einstein published his paper about relativity in 1915. And so on...
Presentism versus eternalism, which is correct and why?
As you wrote in your previous post:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Doesn’t it mean that we project our past into our future?
And, by doing so, subjectively, we reproduce our past and a cyclic model of time.
I think that you write about two different experiences of time: "real"(objective), and "subjective", and sometimes you do not differentiate between them.
I mean "subjective".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you, a linear model does not reflect our subjective experience of time.Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There are non-linear contemporary philosophies of time
Orthogonal vs. perspective, which is correct and why?
I do not know what eternity is. Could you explain it to me?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree with you. For me, my present is a whole, conscious experience, it can last from a few seconds to a few hours. I think, that my life is given to me through my "presents".Quoting Bitter Crank
There are too many answers.
I don't see where the cyclical aspect comes from.
Quoting Number2018
Yes, cyclical perhaps, but I don't see how that would be grounded. Any others?
Quoting Number2018
Yes, people would mark out their political, or technical, or romantic or current cat present however they wish. The point is that "present" is a fleeting moment only in some descriptions. In other descriptions, the present may be years long.
When someone says, "be in the present" they don't mean a 20 year present. They mean a few minutes, at least. Maybe 1/2 hour. Everyone who has read anything on this forum has lived in a fairly long techno-present time. Even if they are 85 years old, they have always lived with steady technical progress.
If you think about being situated in the history of Western Civilization (or Chinese or Indian civilization) you are talking about a present that is 2500 years long. I haven't been around for 2500 years, and nobody else has either, but our cultures have been developing over that period of time. We are part of that development. Western Civilization didn't die along the way, only to be resuscitated later. It's been alive and growing all that time. Same for other cultures.
Nothing has a "sole significance." Meaning is something that individuals do --it's an active, dynamic process executed by individuals, and it's done variously, by different people, at different times, in different contexts, etc.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here, but it seems to be that reality is just a matter of perspective, perhaps denying an objective reality. You'll have to clarify that.
In the context of our discussion, you rhetorically asked what there was we didn't know about time, suggesting that we all have this complete and intuitive grasp about time so that a conversation wasn't even worthy of being had. I'm not sure why time stands out as the instantly knowable and undefinable term, but that seemed to be your thesis. To the extent physicists attempt to better understand the meaning of time, is that a waste of time, considering they are studying what they already fully know?
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.
Staring with the relativistic energy-momentum equation:
KE = mc² ? ? (1 - v² ? c²)
So
m = KE × ? (1 - v² ? c²) / c²
So time (in the v term) determines mass. So something in the universe must be aware of time else it could not assign a mass. So time seems to be more than just an illusion?
I think this is an amazing quote: Today is a gift and yesterday is past. That's why we call it a past present.
I got another one. Time has passed since yesterday and could not have been better, and all the tensions and stresses of yesterday have been left behind in those past days. It's for that reason that we call it the passed past perfect tense.
Quoting Devans99
This makes sense in light of my quotes above. The past particles are always used when speaking of the perfect past.
Nothing like grammatical humor.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/244990
I agree with you. I tried to make a point that “my present time” or “your present time,” in spite of being singular and individual, have regularly been objectified, transformed and reduced from “this present time” to “that present time.”
I agree with you. There are so many different “present times,” at which we
live our lives. Probably, one could live simultaneously (consciously or not) at a few different “presents” of various time intervals. Your example of techno-present
time – who or what in control of it? Am I consumed entirely while being “in the present” of a gigantic cyber-machinic environment?
The perfect example of the cyclic model of time is a religious life, organized by following the same festivals and rituals throughout each year. When the year is over, the cyclical repertoire will be repeated again. Let assume that one is an atheist, reproducing the same habitual, speaking, working, and thinking patterns from the past. One is afraid of an unpredictable future and organizes the routine of life by what has been already proven as a safe and reliable reiteration. One does not follow an external religious cyclic calendar but nevertheless reactivates the circular rhythms over and over again.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Lyotard proposed a few comprehensions of time. First is the “psychoanalytical” model, based on the exceptional, founding event in the past. Another one uses a narrative and discursive approach. Lastly, he proposed a techno-monadological model. Also, Deleuse developed the different philosophy of time in his book “Difference and Repetition.”
Not at all. It is a simple matter to move from orthogonal to perspective; two drawings of the same thing. Similarly it's simple to move from the present to the eternal.
In the context of this discussion, I'm asking that the question be set out more clearly - literally, what is it about time that is not understood; Perhaps we know everything about time, perhaps not.
But we should take some time to be sure what it is we are asking. Otherwise, the answer will always be 42.
When is the answer ever not 42?
No, of course you are not being consumed by a gigantic cyber-mechanical monster.
You are merely a meaningless cog in the remorseless extraction of profit by capitalists. Cogs, however, are needed to make the gears work -- so you have a bright future before you. (My cog years are behind me; I'm just waiting to be recycled--the final extraction of surplus value).
That's not time which is being cyclical, it's the actions of people which is cyclical in that description. That some people are repetitive in their activities doesn't mean that time itself is cyclical.
Does it mean that while being on this forum, and so living "in the cyber-technological present" I just
bring profit to the capitalistic system?
So, what is your understanding of “time itself”? Do you believe that there has been the real, true time so that different models and theories can no more than approach it, represent it or distort it?
What we refer to as "time", and what is measured as time, is the process by which what is in the future becomes what is in the past.
Quoting Number2018
I don't think we presently employ any models of time which recognize that there is a substantial difference between past and future. All models that are used imply a continuity through the present, but the substantial difference between past and future, which is evident to us, invalidates this continuity.
St. Augustine has laid out brilliantly that there has not been such a thing as “the substantial time”: our only experience is in the present time. Therefore, if the past and the future exist in the physical way that the present does, we have no way of knowing it, because we only experience the present. And yet, if the past and future don't exist, then what exactly are we measuring when we measure time? Remarkably, St. Augustine has not resorted to any theological argumentations, though he intended to show
that time entirely belongs to the faculties of the soul. And, if so, one is not able to explain time without theology. How could one refute St. Augustine’s arguments?