Perception of time
Hello everyone,
In order to comprehend well this post you will need to use your imagination and embark on a journey with me. Let me explain further. We are humans. One side we have the quantic world where only probability of existence matters and the other the macroscopic world of planet, galaxy and universe. Let's come back to the human perception. In order to comprehend well the situation at hand I will use a really simple context. Let's say there is a really small bug on the table and you smash it. Now for our perception the bug dies instantly. But let's use the perception of the bug. Considering that it is really small compared to us, do you think that it sees us moving slowly? Could it be possible that his death is premeditated but not occurring at the same time as he perceives it really? On this issue my mind is clouded and I simply cannot establish the truth. As always Im open for debate.
Awaiting your reponses with great curiosity.
Sincerely,
Paul
In order to comprehend well this post you will need to use your imagination and embark on a journey with me. Let me explain further. We are humans. One side we have the quantic world where only probability of existence matters and the other the macroscopic world of planet, galaxy and universe. Let's come back to the human perception. In order to comprehend well the situation at hand I will use a really simple context. Let's say there is a really small bug on the table and you smash it. Now for our perception the bug dies instantly. But let's use the perception of the bug. Considering that it is really small compared to us, do you think that it sees us moving slowly? Could it be possible that his death is premeditated but not occurring at the same time as he perceives it really? On this issue my mind is clouded and I simply cannot establish the truth. As always Im open for debate.
Awaiting your reponses with great curiosity.
Sincerely,
Paul
Comments (75)
I don't think there is a way to know this for sure, because it requires that we take the place of multiple minds/perceptions rather than just one's own, but I do think that if you are seriously interested in the perception of time you try to run a rope around Einsteins theory of relativity. I am not saying the theory can tell us if a bug experiences time at lower rates than human's but it does have some explanatory power over the nature of time itself.
Do insects have this structure of retention of the immediate past as they experience the now? If not, then time would not be experienced as flow for them, and they would have no perception of speed of time.
As far as human perception of the speed of the flow of time, notice that we only notice time as time when we are interrupted from a task we are involved in. If we are completely immersed in something of interest to us, we often dont notice time at all as a 'thing'. That's when time seems to 'fly'. It is when we are unable to absorb ourselves completely into an activity that time seems to 'drag' because we are impatiently waiting for something to happen rather than being immersed in the happening.
When it comes down to it, what we call objective, or clock time, is only useful to us at certain points in our activities
Likewise, we can talk of perceptual resolution of time. The human time perceptual limit is probably in the milliseconds. Isn't that why motion pictures work? The frames of a film move just fast enough that the frames merge into a smooth motion. We can't perceive the actual individual frames. It's just too fast.
However, an eye of a fly may have a ''higher'' resolution allowing them to see each frame separately. The illusion of motion in a motion picture is not there.
Also, there are things that are both fast and slow. A lightning travels at the speed of light. We don't see the light arc travelling; instead we see the entire track the lightning follows as a single, albeit, brief image.
A glacier moves a few meters in a year. This is imperceptible to us humans. We don't see such slow events.
You could be right, then, that the bug in your story experiences time differently and what is to us a blurred image may be a hi-def movie to the bug.
I don't understand what you're asking here.
The problem with this idea is that we notice a very distinct difference between past and future. Things in the past are determined, fixed, and there is no possibility of changing them. Things in the future are to some extent undetermined, and there is possibility involved with what will or will not occur. It is this difference which give "the present" meaning. It is not the appearance of "flow" which gives the present meaning, because if there were no difference between past and future, "the present", with the associated flow, could be at any point on the time line, with a flow occurring.
So the idea that "flow" is the defining aspect of the present, is flawed and misleading. Once we reject this notion, and see the present for what it is, as the division between future and past, we get a completely different perspective on the apparent "flow". The change from future to past, as time passes, no longer appears as a flow, but it appears as a change. The two are radically different because "flow" is represented as a continuity, and change is represented as a discontinuity
Past may be determined and fixed, but it must also enter into the very horizon that we experience as the 'present'. Otherwise there would be no sense of the continuity of meaning and purpose from moment to moment. The present arises out of a background context that it is at the same time continuous with and differs from.
William James put it thusly:
"Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. But now there appears, even
within the limits of the same self, and between thoughts all of which alike have this same sense of
belonging together, a kind of jointing and separateness among the parts, of which this
statement seems to take no account. I refer to the breaks that are produced by sudden contrasts in the
chain, making often explosive appearances and rending each other in twain. But their comings and
goings and contrasts no more break the flow of the thought that thinks them than they break the time
and the space in which they lie. A silence may be broken by a thunder-clap, and we may be so
stunned and confused for a moment by the shock as to give no instant account to ourselves of what has happened. But that very confusion is a mental state, and a state that passes us straight over from the silence to the sound. The transition between the thought of one object and the thought of another is no more a break in the thought than a joint in a bamboo is a break in the wood. It is a part of the
consciousness as much as the joint is a part of the bamboo.
The superficial introspective view is the overlooking, even when the things are contrasted
with each other most violently, of the large amount of affinity that may still remain between the
thoughts by whose means they are cognized. Into the awareness of the thunder itself the awareness of
the previous silence creeps and continues; for what we hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder
pure, but thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting-with-it.[12] Our feeling of the same
objective thunder, coming in this way, is quite different from what it would be were the thunder
a continuation of previous thunder. The thunder itself we believe to abolish and exclude the silence;
but the feeling of the thunder is also a feeling of the silence as just gone; and it would be difficult to find
in the actual concrete consciousness of man a feeling so limited to the present as not to have an
inkling of anything that went before. Here, again, language works against our perception of the truth.
We name our thoughts simply, each after its thing, as if each knew its own thing and nothing else."
Space-time continuum is a conceptual structure we use for measuring. That it is based in an assumption of continuity is really irrelevant. I assume that time will continue to pass, as it has for all my life, but this is irrelevant to the fact that I believe there is a radical difference between future and past.
Quoting Joshs
I agree that past enters the horizon of experience, but we cannot deny that future also enters this horizon. In consciousness these two are represented by memory and anticipation respectively. I disagree with the quote from James, saying "Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows." Consciousness is chopped up, but not in the way described. We are torn between our past selves, and the future we want for ourselves, and so we are divided. Our past actions and habits force us in a determinist sort of way, but we are always trying to break free from this determinism to will ourselves into a better future.
The continuity we adhere to is created, synthesized, constructed in order to allow us to apply past experience toward future actions. Without an assumed continuity between past and future, no logic could prepare us for the future. The continuity is supported by the inertia of massive existence. We have observed, through the past, that massive existence has the power of inertia, and this supports the assumption of continuity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The source of the confusion in different comprehensions of time is the systematic substitution for differently experienced times, the absence of the rigorous clarification of the
concepts applied. One can have an experience of the âflowâ even without reflection
on time, without applying the notion of the past and the present. It is a basic experience of some change, a passive synthesis, the living present. Something has just passed, something will have come, and both have been grasped at one present moment. So, we can define âflowâ as âthis living present.â The continuity of the âflowâ is an abstract concept; in fact, various presents actualize different qualities of life. So, there is the first time of the âflowâ (leaving present). When one starts considering properties of time, reflecting on it, one utilizes a variety of thinking and logical recourses. One keeps leaving in the present while doubling this present by intellectual means of representation, reproduction, and a priory knowledge. Even when one uses the notion of âfuture,â one does it as not the invention of something radically new, so that oneâs modi of life and thinking will have become entirely different.
Therefore, we can distinguish the second synthesis of time, and since the memory is the most crucial factor in this synthesis, it can be called the synthesis of the past. Finally, there is a time of the creation of the new, which is inseparable from death, wreck, taking a risk, and becoming â this time can be called the time of the future, the third synthesis of time. The change and the becoming are its main determinants.
Each of the three kinds of time has its own âpast,â âpresent,â and âfuture.â
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The Stoics had developed the notion of the present as just the gap between the past and the future, represented by Aion. But, they also did not forget about Cronus, the god of the living present.
I think James is understanding continuity in a different way than you are. If we look at the contents of consciousness, whether past actions and habits , present or anticipative experieincing, as conceptual objects, then continuity has to be understood in terms of a logic of objective causation and its determinations.
There is a very different way to understand continuity that does not operate under the terms of the causality of conceptual logic.
The key quote from James is :"What we hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder
pure, but thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting-with-it. Our feeling of the same
objective thunder, coming in this way, is quite different from what it would be were the thunder
a continuation of previous thunder."
The thunder in this example is not a concept that is either true or false in its meaning, but a way of being thunder whose sense in consciousness changes in continuous fashion over time.
A way or sense of being something understood this way is not definable by predicative properties or attributes of a concept. It must be understood instead as akin to a fabric changing its textural shape as a whole, in a breeze .It is not a matter of reductively determining each state of the fabric by reference to a previous state, because the attempt to do so further transforms the sense of that past. There is a way of continuing to be the same differently that eludes the reifications of conceptual logic, a kind of referential but not deterministic consistency, that accrods better with actual phenomological experience of the world
I don't see how this is possible. In order to notice a flow one must recognize a past. And this is the same with "change", in order to notice change one must have memory of the way things were. So without bringing the past to bear upon the present, all that would be evident would be what is present, and there would be no indication of flow or change.
Quoting Number2018
So I disagree with this. If there was only present, there would be no flow at all. The flow is the activity which is the future becoming the past. These, future and past, are necessary for flow.
Quoting Joshs
What you describe here is a discontinuity. But it doesn't make sense to understand continuity in terms of discontinuity, because discontinuous is just a negation of continuous, something deficient in continuity. So we need to define continuous first, and understand continuity first, before we can proceed toward understanding a lack of continuity.
Thunder breaking the silence is a discontinuity. It is a description of breaking the continuous silence. The key to understanding what this is, this breaking continuity, is to understand first, what continuity is.
Quoting Joshs
This change you describe here, "a fabric changing its textural shape", is a discontinuity. It had a shape, and that shape comes to an end. It's a discontinuity. We cannot proceed to understand this change, this discontinuity, until we first understand what it means for something to have a shape, and this would be to hold a shape for a period of time, a continuity.
Quoting Joshs
I think that is exactly what it takes to determine continuity, reference to previous states. One must determine something which remains unchanged for a period of time, and this is continuity.
Quoting Joshs
But this is nonsensical contradiction. To continue to be the same, differently, is just contradiction, and that's why it eludes conceptual logic. It's nonsense, and meaningless to talk in such a contradictory way. .
As far as continuing to be the same differently, if you repeat a word to yourself over and over(or glance at it on a page), the sense of the word will change. This effect applies to any meaning we attempt to repeat. If you want to preserve 'same' to mean pure mathematical identity, then, what we intend to mean when we repeat a meaning continues to be similar to itself by at the same time differing from itself. This is non-logical continuity, the way our unfolding experiences belong to patterns and themes while always transforming in subtle ways the very meaning of those patterns and themes.
Right, that's what I am saying, continuity is something synthetic, it's constructed conceptually. I would agree that there is something apparently paradoxical, or appearing to be inherently contradictory about constructing something continuous, just like "being the same differently" is contradictory. But take a look at the different ways that we come across the notion of continuous. They all involve infinity, because to be bounded, or to have an end would destroy the continuity. We define "continuous" by referring to a never ending action, counting, dividing, or in the natural world, something like the earth circling the sun forever.
But all of these continuous activities are imaginary, in the sense of continuing without an end is imaginary. And, each of the continuous activities involves doing something with individual units. It is not to the units themselves, or the collection of units, that we assign "continuous" to, it is what is being done with those individual units, the activity, which is called "continuous". So "continuous" is conceptual, it is a feature of the description of what is occurring. We see an activity, and we describe it as continuous.
Quoting Joshs
Here you are mixing up the action which is continuous, with the individual units involved in the continuous action. So you are repeating a word, with a meaning. The word, and the meaning are the entities involved in the activity. (This is like the game "Whisper Down the Valley", in which you whisper a phrase to the person next to you, and they whisper it to the next person, so on, around a circle of people, until it gets back to the first person who notices how much the phrase has changed.) Notice, that regardless of how the entity involved in the activity changes, the activity itself remains the same, as continuous.
However, this is just a property of the way that we describe activities. Close examination of the activity will reveal that the activity itself, necessarily changes when the entities involved in the activity change. But when we make the description, we abstract, and claim that the activity remains the same, despite the minute changes involved. It is really quite difficult to place the idea of continuity in relation to the abstraction. It seems to be fundamental to the abstraction, as required for abstraction, a continuity of sameness through different things, but it is not actually part of the description (or abstraction), only an underlying assumption which supports the abstraction.
I think that our disagreement is caused by different applications and meanings of the terms of âflow,â and âthe living present.â Your comprehension of âflowâ belongs to a reflective conscious experience of time. Whereas I think of âthe living presentâ as related to the different subjective time - at the level of the first passive synthesis.
Deleuze laid out how one (it can be an animal as well as a human) is able to experience time at this level:
âHume takes as an example the repetition of
cases of the type AB, AB, AB, A .... Each case or objective sequence AB is
independent of the others. The repetition (although we cannot yet properly
speak of repetition) changes nothing in the object or the state of affairs AB.
On the other hand, a change is produced in the mind, which contemplates:
a difference, something new in the mind. When A appears, we expect B
with a force corresponding to the qualitative impression of all the
contracted ABs. This is by no means a memory, nor indeed an operation of
the understanding: contraction is not a matter of reflection. Properly
speaking, it forms a synthesis of time. A succession of instants does not
constitute time any more than it causes it to disappear; it indicates only its
constantly aborted moment of birth. Time is constituted only in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition of instants. This
synthesis contracts the successive independent instants into one another,
thereby constituting the lived, or living, present. It is in this present that
time is deployed. To it belong both the past and the future: the past in so
far as the preceding instants are retained in the contraction; the future
because its expectation is anticipated in this same contraction. The past
and the future do not designate instants distinct from a supposed present
instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself in so far as it is a
contraction of instants.â
So, there is the passive synthesis of time, without involving recognition, memory,
and other conscious cognitive abilities. This âliving presentâ is fundamentally asymmetrical: it contains the transition from the repeated particular stimuli (the past) to the more general level of the expected (the future). Therefore, there is the foundation for the direction of time, and for the different meaning of âflow,â which can be understood as the motion from the particular to the general. Also, it is possible to understand how an insect can live in a âperpetual living present,â in spite of having consecutive presents of entirely various qualities.
OK, so you already have a synthesis built into your concept of "present", that's why you denied my need for a synthesis. But what do you mean by "passive synthesis"?
Quoting Number2018
There is a problem with this, and that is that there is no such thing as a repetition of the very same AB, AB, over and over again. Each new moment is particular, and brings something new, something changed. So there is no such thing as a pure repetition of AB, and this is why a mind is necessary right at this point. The mind abstracts and creates the repetition of AB, by removing the unnecessary differences which distract..
Quoting Number2018
So according to what I said above, it actually is the mind with memory, that synthesizes time. A mind must create the repetition through abstraction. Time as such, is entirely in the mind. But to truly understand time itself we need to go back to the occurrences which the mind abstracts from, when it creates the repetition of AB, and understand the nature of these.
Question: do we really want to hold with either Kant or Husserl concerning a trancendental justification of ideality? IS there something in the self that comes back to itself identically moment to moment as it interacts with a world? If not, then pure ideality never is able to constitute itself in consciousness.
Outside of number itself as empty self -identical counting, is there anything in the mind's abstractions that meaningfully returns to itself identically? This was Derida's argument , as well as Merleau-Ponty's. The idea in the Kantian sense is a solpsism, ignoring the embodied basis of thought.
It's hard for me to grasp how you are using "transcendental" here. Categories are produced through judgement, distinctions, so categories which transcend human judgement (transcendental categories) doesn't seem possible. If this is what grounds the objectivity of science, then it is a false objectivity, grounded in subjective judgements rather than being grounded in the object which we seek to understand. Therefore, I can see why Husserl would want to modify this, but "the tripartite structure of time consciousness" seems to be just another representation of categories.
Doesn't Heidegger get beyond this problem by looking at the horizon itself, and "that which regions". It's been a long time since I read "Being and Time", but if the horizon is the present itself, then perhaps the regions are past and future. This is not a categorization, because it is not classifying things by their properties, or producing categories based on properties, it is more like setting out the grounds for classification, by looking directly at the divisor, the horizon, to determine the grounds for division. That is what I think is necessary, to look directly at the division, the boundary, which is the present, to formulate objective principles for describing what exactly it is which is being divided, then the categories can be produced based on these principles.
Quoting Joshs
I think the problem here is that the ideal is impossible to replicate. We hold an "ideal" as a goal of perfection or some such thing, but the true ideal, by its very nature, cannot be obtained due to the implied perfection. Therefore there is nothing which comes back to itself identically within consciousness, moment to moment. That is an ideal which due to the imperfections of human disposition is impossible to obtain. We know that the key to the nature of reality is found in the particularity, uniqueness of one moment to the next. And, it appears like there is nothing which escapes this, the whole of the universe changes at each moment of passing time. As much as we might notice aspects which do not change, "the whole" reaches from its implications of wide extension, right into the most narrow extension, into the inner most aspects of that thing which appears not to change, so that thing really changes and we just don't notice the change.
In the Platonic tradition, the ideal becomes the particular, the One, or the whole, because each individual thing is seen to have its own perfect Form, proper to itself, despite the fact that it changes from one moment to the next. The moment to moment change to the individual thing's Form, might be considered by us as an imperfection to the thing, but this is accounted for by its context which puts it into a larger whole. The larger whole in turn has its own moment to moment changes and this puts it into an even lager context, to account for those apparent imperfections, until we reach the One, which as the ideal, becomes the starting point as the goal or objective.
So I believe that the exercise of looking for the moment to moment repetition of something identical is a very useful exercise, in the sense that it will bring to one's mind the futility of seeking the ideal in this way. Even counting is unsuccessful because each number is different than the last, as the numbers get higher and higher, and this demonstrates the asymmetrical nature of time. Then, if we assume that the thing counted, a moment of time, is the very same from one to the next, all we need to do is look around us to see that this assumption is not true, things change. So when we count, and assume that there is something unchanged which is being counted, this is just a fictitious assumption, there is really nothing there being counted, if this is the condition. And nothing cannot be counted.
I'm using transcendental as metaphysical a-priori (not derived from experience). "The Transcendental Deduction is Kantâs attempt to demonstrate against empiricist psychological theory that certain a priori concepts correctly apply to objects featured in our experience. For Kant a concept is a priori just in case its source is the understanding of the subject and not sensory experience. The specific a priori concepts whose applicability to objects of experience Kant aims to vindicate in the Transcendental Deduction are Unity, Plurality, and Totality (the Categories of Quantity); Reality, Negation, and Limitation (the Categories of Quality); Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, and Community (the Categories of Relation), and Possibility-Impossibility, Existence-Nonexistence, Necessity-Contingency (the Categories of Modality)."
Heidegger:"Kant was the first to articulate explicitly the characteristics of nature as represented in the natural sciences. He was therefore also the first to state what a law means in the natural sciences
Nature is understood as the law-governed changes in location within a homogeneous
space and within the sequence of a homogeneous time. This is natural
science's supposition. In this supposition, that is, in this assumption of "nature" determined
accordingly, there lies simultaneously an acceptio. In such a supposition,
the existence of space, motion, causality, and time is always already accepted as an unquestionable fact. Here accepting and taking mean immediate receiving-perceiving. What is accepted in natural science's supposition is a homogeneous space."
The objectivity of objects is the function of a synthetic construction on the part of the subject. The objectivity of nature is determined in reference to the kind of knowledge the knowing subject possesses regarding himself. Objectivity is a determination on the part of the subject. Kant formulates
this situation in the proposition he called the supreme principle of all synthetic judgment, which reads: "The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience and that for this reason they have objective validity in a synthetic a priori judgment."
Notice that Kant is not not claiming that the content of objects is a -priori, rather the conditions of possiblity of causal determination are a=priori. The idea that beneath the veil of the appearance of things lies underlying unities that science can grasp through successive approximations(constructions) toward an assypmtotic horizon of empirical truth is founded on a priori suppositions. Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability rests on Kantian presuppositions concerning the conditions of possibility of causal objectivity.
Heidegger questioned the justification of Kant's transcendental categories, saying that they were not a-priori but rather invented . He also questioned Husserl's(and Sartre's and Marx's and Hegel's) notions of consciousness as self- consciousness, the idea that there is such a thing as immediate pre-reflective self-awareness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This synthesis is passive because it is not carried out by the mind, but occurs in mind, which contemplates, prior to all memory and all reflection.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If there were not a repetition of physical stimuli in the surrounding environment, there would be just chaotic and quick changing, so that the basic living organisms would not be able to sustain any kind of the necessary stability and succession. So, there is the external material repetition of a kind AB, AB, AB⌠Or, 123C4, 123C4, 123C4âŚwe can call
this repetition âa bare material repetitionâ. There is no time yet. What mind creates is not a pure repetition of AB, but the contraction â getting just A from outside, in one single moment, it grasps both A and B, so that the stimulus A causes in mind something corresponding to the external group AB. As a result of this passive synthesis, the fundamental difference between âa bare material repetitionâ and the repetition of a mind in âa present living timeâ has been established. Mind repeats differently from nature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the first passive synthesis constitute âthe living present of now,â and the fundamental property of this particular present time is to pass, to become substituted for another present. To grasp the former present in âthe current present,â the mind has constituted the new instance of memory.
"Memory is the fundamental synthesis of time which constitutes the
being of the past (that which causes the present to pass).
At first sight, it is as if the past were trapped between two presents: the
one which it has been and the one in relation to which it is past. The past is
not the former present itself but the element in which we focus upon the
latter. Particularity, therefore, now belongs to that on which we focus - in
other words, to that which 'has been'; whereas the past itself, the 'was', is
by nature general. The past, in general, is the element in which each former
present is focused upon in particular and as a particular. In accordance
with Husserlian terminology, we must distinguish between retention and
reproduction. However, what we earlier called the retention of habit was
the state of successive instants contracted in a present present of a certain
duration. These instants formed a particularity - in other words, an
immediate past naturally belonging to the present present, while the
present itself, which remains open to the future in the form of expectation,
constitutes the general. By contrast, from the point of view of the
reproduction involved in memory, it is the past (understood as the
mediation of presents) which becomes general while the (present as well as
former) present becomes particular. Now the former present cannot be represented in the present one without the present one itself being represented in that representation. It is of the essence of representation not only to represent something but to represent its own representativity. The present and former presents are not,
therefore, as two successive instants on the line of time; rather, the present one necessarily contains an extra dimension in which it represents the former and also represents itself. The present present is treated not as the future object of memory but as that which reflects itself at the same time as it forms the memory of the former present. Active synthesis,
therefore, has two correlative - albeit non-symmetrical - aspects:
reproduction and reflection, remembrance and recognition, memory and
understanding. Every conscious state
requires a dimension in addition to the one of which it implies the
memory. As a result, the active synthesis of memory may be regarded as
the principle of representation under this double aspect: reproduction of
the former present and reflection of the present present.â
According to this comprehension of the active synthesis of memory,
each conscious act of mind has the dimensions of reproduction and
reflection. The problem now is that the activity of mind has been
pre-designed and pre-constructed, so that the Past has become
the dominating instance, so that âpresentâ and âfutureâ has converted into the dimensions of this time, and the active synthesis of the mind
has become the transcendental a priory of the Past.
How would you show that there is a non-ideal instance in the mind,Quoting Joshs?
As soon as a concept is animated with the intention to say something, it exposes itself to context.
Iâd like to refute your point by using your own example.
Quoting Joshs
If all my past experiences are present in my current âcontentâ, doesnât it mean that
I am still enclosed in the totality of my mind?
Quoting Joshs
Even my intention to say something is no more than a simple repetition of the similar past intention.
When Descartes stated âI think therefore I am,â did he breakthrough the solipsistic circle? What is the nature of this âtherefore"?
As far as I can tell, things carried out within a mind, are carried out by that mind, so this doesn't make sense to me.
Quoting Number2018
Why would you say that stability is a repetition rather than a continuity. It appears to me, that things which stay the same through time do so by means of a continuity like inertia. So the continuity demonstrated by inertia, providing stability, is distinct from any repetition of moments, which is the means of change.
Quoting Number2018
There is no reason to consider this as a repetition rather than the continued temporal existence of AB. And if A and B are distinct, such that one follows the other, and the continued existence of either one is broken, then there is no reason to assume that a second occurrence of A would be the same identical A as the first.
Quoting Number2018
I don't know where you pulled this quote from, but I find it to be off the mark. The author does not consider the role of the future here. If you look closely at the nature of time, you will see that it is the future which causes the present to pass. A new moment is always pushing in, from the future, to take the place of the existing moment, at the present, and this forces that present moment into the past. So the future is always a force, which is forcing the presentmoment into the past. We as living beings must adapt, and figure out ways to deal with this force which is always upon us. If not, we are ourselves, forced into the past (death).
Quoting Number2018
I pretty mush agree with this part. The past consists of particulars, instances of existence. But since the mind and memory are deficient, there is a vagueness about the past so that we may look at it in terms of logical possibilities. It is possible that X or that not X is the particular thing which actually occurred, if we cannot remember it. This induces a certain sense of generality of the past. But true generality, in the sense of real ontological possibility belongs to the future. However, we reduce that general "possibility" of the future, to particular possibilities when we relate to the future logically, in the case of decision making for example.
Quoting Number2018
I believe that there is a problem in this passage, which is a conflation of the being which is experiencing the passing of time, with the passing of time itself. It is only the conscious being which brings back the past moments of present to have them continue existing at the present. This is what creates the illusion of a double present. But if you separate the continuity of continued existence (the continuity supported by inertia), from the passing of moments, then the dual nature of the present is seen in a different way. Not only is there a succession of moments, as time passes, but there is also a continuity of existence, being, which carries through the present.
Quoting Number2018
Yes, I see this as a problem, because what has been described is reducible to an everlasting, eternal cycle of repetition of moments. It's really a circle. The way to escape this circle is to see the future as radically different. We can begin with the assumption, for argument sake, that every new moment coming from the future is completely different, and there is nothing to make anything the same from one moment to the next. Each moment the future could be throwing us something completely new. Then, recognize that there actually is continuity, inertia, and seek the reason for this. The reason for it is that some things in the past, (massive things) have the power to act in the future. So when the future is forcing a new moment upon us, the massive existence which we've observed in the past appearing as a continuity distinct from the repetition of different moments, is acting within the imposition of that future moment, such that it acts upon us from the future, as a force from within the moment of the future which is now upon us. You can see that this requires an inversion in the concept of causation. No longer would you see a thing in the past having caused something in the present, or causing something in the future, It is always the moment of the future, coming upon us which is causative, and massive things with continued existence demonstrate that they have a causal power within that moment.
Quoting Joshs
So how could there be transcendental categories then, if they're not derived from experience? Wouldn't they be completely arbitrary? Is this why Heidegger says they are invented?
"The past reshapes itself in the course of the body's(and mind's) present performance. Of course the past exists and functions in and as our new present. But the present must be capable of something new, otherwise past experience could not have happened either. The past might have been based on a previous past, but at some point it had to be new. And not only at an earlier point. Present experiencing
is always capable of something new that reshapes the past.
The present living process reshapes its past by reshaping itself, reshaping what it
was. In every living process each next bit reshapes the previous. We could say that the past
reshapes itself as present living. Or, we could say that present living generates a âpastâ by
reshaping itself.
The past is not past because an observer determines that it happened at an earlier
position on Newton's absolute time line. The past is the living process's own past, made past by
its new present. Or, we can say the past makes itself past by functioning to shape a new
present. If one living process is both (and I agree it is), we have to say that it is a constantly
self-reshaping process."
For example the photograph must be compared to another photograph, or inspire a personal recollection from a person and so on. As with photographs, it doesn't make sense to say that the content of individual memories are past-referring in and of themselves . Rather the concept of the past is actively constructed out of memories , together with reason, current observations and experimentation, without being reducible to memories themselves. But this implies that the past is also uncertain and changing, and not merely in a dead epistemological sense but in a living sense. Therefore the psychological past and the psychological future appear to be heavily overlapping concepts that cannot be ordered using cartesian coordinates.
Would you say that a photograph (and memory as well) could represent something in the past. I don't see any problem saying that. It is not a matter of how the photograph (memory) is used, it is a matter of how it is produced. The capacity to be used in a certain way is dependent on how the thing is created.
Quoting sime
What do you mean by content of memories? In the mind, memories are content. Why are you seeking to give content to content? If you look for the content of a photograph, perhaps it is the past thing which was photographed. So if you look for the content of a memory, wouldn't that be the experience which was remembered? But can we truthfully say that the thing represented by a symbol is really the content of that symbol? Within the mind, the symbol is itself content.
Yes memories have content, in the same way that a digital image has pixel values, but it is a vacuous tautology to say that information is intrinsically past-referring. unless that content is related to other content in a particular way.
Consider false memories and deep-fake photographs. What does it mean to say that they are false, in the sense of having no referent in the past? In a causal sense all phenomena could be said to represent the past, whether the phenomena is considered to be genuine or fake, and whether the phenomena is recalled into mind or externally perceived in the world.
In practice, we verify the truth of memories and photographs and it is our process of verification that decides whether the memory is "true" or "false". Orthodox opinion interprets past-contingent propositions as being intrinsically past-referring and purely by the force of their expressed content and independently of the process of their verification. In contrast, I'm saying it is the process by which a proposition is verified that determines whether the content of the proposition is past, present or future referring.
I don't see how you can say this. To say that a digital image has pixel values, is already to relate that image in a particular way. So to say that memories have content is to already assume that they have the relationship, which you deem is necessary. Therefore they do not need to be related in any further way as you seem to be saying.
Quoting sime
I don't think it is possible to have a memory with no referent in the past. Then it would not be a memory at all, but an imagination. An incorrect, or false memory is to remember something incorrectly, it is not to completely invent something in an absolute way, because that would not be a memory at all, but an instance of imagining something.
Quoting sime
Even this I disagree with. There is a difference between determining the meaning of a proposition, and verifying the proposition as to true or false. To determine the meaning is to determine its content, and this is the process which determines whether it refers to past, present, or future. But this is completely different from verifying whether it is true or false.
Quoting Joshs
It is a perfect question. Who or what is the agent
of repetition of a thought in consciousness? Am I the agent, the operator of this repetition? How is this repetition related to time? Is there any difference between the two repeated thoughts? Am I aware of these differences?
Quoting Joshs
Is âmy intentionâ the source of repetition?? What is the relation between time and my thought?
Between time and âmy intentionâ?
If â a concept is animated with the intention to say something,â donât we confuse between the two heterogonous presuppositions: of the concept as the part of the transcendentally determined thinking subject, and the psychologically evident reality of âmy intention, related to the content of my existence?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You state this truth as an evident and common knowledge!
It reminds me what St. Augustine wrote: âWhat, then, is time? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as
yetâ?
My point is that in so far as we do not clarify rigorously the ontological status of our statements about time, we can always produce, by applying logical and dialectical recourses, contradictory propositions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For me, it is not about illusion! As you write: âIt is only the conscious being which brings back the past moments of a present to have them continue existing at the presentâ â I see this operation as the fundamental and absolutely necessary condition of any conscious act! Therefore, the conscious being has always been enclosed in the transcendental a priory of the Past. That is why comprehension, thinking, and speaking about Future have constituted a real problem.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand your âcontinuity and inertiaâ fas the fundamental power of the transcendental Past over our way of being and thought. The problem is that when we need âto recognize something, how can we differentiate, make any distinctions within ourselves?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I like that you apply terms of forces and clash; yet, there is the same drawback of using our cognitive abilities: âobserve, appearance.â To sum up: how can we realize
in our individual minds, that the radically new forces are coming from the Future? If we are constituted by pre-designed and pre-constructed cognitive, social, and habitual patterns, what should we do by ourselves to counter the Future?
According to Deleuze's comprehension of the third, active synthesis of time as the most radical form of change:
âThe present and past are no more than dimensions of future: the past as the condition, the present as an agent. They possess a secret coherence which excludes that of the self; they turn back against the self and smash it to pieces, as though the bearer of the new world were carried away and dispersed by the shock of the multiplicity to which it gives birthâŚ.The I which is fractured according to the order of time and the Self which is divided according to the temporal series correspond and find a common descendant in the man without a name, without family, without qualities, without self or I, the already-Overman.â
It looks like Deleuze wants to show how the I, the self, and the ego are produced by impersonal heterogenic forces from the future so that our identities and personalities are no more than effects.
This is consistent with Heidegger's argument that past is "what has been as what is
still present and still determining the present and the futureâthis is
not a mere retaining." The past as having been, present and future are simultaneous and equiprimordial.One never occurs without the other. What is present constantly 'is' as having been.
But does this mean the past dominates the present? Not for Heidegger. The past is always a new past, a past prefigured by the present and the future. "Primordial and authentic temporality temporalizes
itself out of the authentic future, and indeed in such a way that, futurally having-been, it first arouses the present. The primary phenomenon of primordial and authentic temporality is the future.
Right, I agree, but this is a defining aspect of consciousness, not a defining aspect of time. The dual present you described might be fundamental to consciousness, but if you deduce that it is therefore fundamental to time, you have an invalid deduction because you have no premise to state the relation between consciousness and time. The present may be fundamental to time. And the dual present is fundamental to consciousness. That's why I say the impression that the dual present is an aspect of time is an illusion, it's consciousness wrongly imposing itself on time.
Quoting Number2018
It think that how we make distinctions is a secret of the soul itself. No one knows exactly how we differentiate.
Quoting Number2018
This comes about from a logical analysis of the nature of time. Time is passing. And with the passing of time, there is past time which is coming into existence. This is a "becoming". A becoming requires a cause. The cause of past time cannot be the present, because if the present were actively creating past time there would be no future, just the present creating the past. So it must be the future which is the cause of past time. Imagine the present like a static membrane, a plane or something, The future is being forced through, or forcing itself through, the present to create the past. So unlike Deleuze, I look at the future as the agent. And although activity occurs at the present, the present is essentially passive in the sense that the activity is cause by the force of the future. So the activity at the present is like passive matter being moved by the cause which is time passing, and the future is the cause of that.
of repetition of a thought in consciousness? Am I the agent, the operator of this repetition? How is this repetition related to time? Is there any difference between the two repeated thoughts? Am I aware of these differences?"
Let me construct a model of consciousness based on the work of Merleau-Ponty and contributors to 4ea approaches(embodied, embedded, enactive, affective ) to cognition.
The mind functions as an inseparable interaction with environment and body. It is nothing but this interaction. There is no self-identical self in this model. Self is a bi-product of the constant constructive interactive activity of the organism-envirnmental interaction. Consciousness is not self-conscious in the sense of being able to turn back on itself and grasp itself identically. To reflect back on the self is to alter what one turns back to. The impression we get of consciousness as the commander of decision, as unfolding meaning as a linear causal sequence of nows (one damn thing after another), is the result of the way linguistic grammar is constructed , But rather than a single linear causal intentional vector, consciousness can more accurately de described as a site of competing streams of fragmented perceptions and conceptualizations jostling for attention. Consciousness, far from being the self-knowing commander, is besieged from unconscious processes and bodily affects that interact with and shape consciousness outside of its awareness. So the notion of agent is a bit of an illusion, there is no ghost in the machine, it is more of a community.of interaffecting agents. Consciousness performs a momentary synthetic function, making it appear that this community is a single 'I' . But the unfolding of time for this constructed 'I' is always a bit disjointed, a past that is always reconstructed by the present that it is supposed to frame, and a futuring that pulls the present into an anticipative orientation ahead of itself. There is no room for the transcendental in this model.
I don't know about bugs, but my cat is pretty small and she seems to move in hyper speed, so that would support your theory that maybe she sees me moving really slow so she's able to swat me faster than I can swat her. On the other hand, I find that worms are really slow, so I can't really find any rhyme or reason to this other than maybe some things are fast and some slow and some have quick perception and some are dull and dimwitted, like a worm.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, nevertheless it is fundamental that the subjective time occurs in mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover.
During our discussion, I tried to lay out the philosophy of time, based on the three syntheses of time. Accordingly, consciousness is born, develops, lives and dies in the subjective time; and conversely, this time exists through consciousness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The relations between âobjective, idealized time,â and âthe subjective time of mindâ
are incredibly complicated, and cannot be clarified unless we comprehend the latter one.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If so, instead of philosophy, we need to go to wizards, magicians, or augurs.:smile: :smile:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a perfectly logical analysis; nevertheless, I entirely disagree! Logical analysis of time lays out the past, the present, and the future at the same plain, created by few
founding presuppositions, axioms, norms, and a few more discursive means. The main problem with this kind of analysis that it does not allow us distinct and differentiate between the different times in which we live and think. And, by applying just logic-discursive means, one is able to show that the past and the future do not exist (as St. Augustine did), or to state thatâ the future which is the cause of past time.â(as you did) So, if we assume (with a great caution, and after doing all preliminary work), that there are three different times, functioning differently
and even coexisting in the same mind, we can try to understand the nature of
âthe becomingâ, and the forces of the future, knocking to our doors.
There are no causal(predictable) relations in the becoming! Whatever is causal, logical, discursive, etc. â all of these are already existing! On the contrary, the future forces
are not recognizable or known(yet!). So, âbecomingâ is the transition from known to unknown, or existence in between the two knowns. Probably, to think of future requires from us not just to leave what is already known and take the risk of failure,
but also to change the ways we are. That is what Deleuze wanted to say:
âThe present and past are no more than dimensions of future, of the third active synthesis of time: the past as the condition, the present as an agent. They possess a secret coherence which excludes that of the self; they turn back against the self and smash it to pieces, as though the bearer of the new world were carried away and dispersed by the shock of the multiplicity to which it gives birth.â
Quoting Joshs
I am not sure if the whole notion of the authentic temporality presupposes a kind of transcendentalism. Could you clarify it?
I agree with all this, I just want to add to your definition of self and consciousness, that our bodies and unconscious processes are far more complicated, than it can be understood from biology or from classical psychoanalysis. We take part, often without knowing about it, in numerous technical and social assemblages, so when you write: âConsciousness, far from being the self-knowing commander, is besieged from unconscious processes and bodily affects that interact with and shape consciousness outside of its awarenessâ, it is absolutely necessary to describe the nature of terms used.
I think that these âinteractions and shaping consciousness outside of its awareness,â are entirely different from Merleau-Ponty's comprehension.
âSo the notion of an agent is a bit of an illusion, there is no ghost in the machine, it is more of a community.of interaffecting agents. Consciousness performs a momentary synthetic function, making it appear that this community is a single 'I.'â
Good point! I think it is entirely matching to what Deleuze wrote about the active
synthesis of future: âThe I which is fractured according to the order of time and the Self which is divided according to the temporal series correspond and find a common descendant in the man without a name, without family, without qualities, without self or I, the already-Overman.â The future has already arrived!
I thought we were talking about time itself, not "subjective time".
\
Quoting Number2018
I disagree, I don't think there is any such thing as "the subjective time of mind". I think that this route of inquiry is therefore misleading, because "subjective time" is an illusion.
Quoting Number2018
Why would that be? It is philosophy which deals with matters of the soul.
Quoting Number2018
There is no such thing as "the different times in which we live and think". Our entire lives are lived at the present, everything we do, we do at the present. But just because our lives are at the present, this does not mean that the past and future are not real parts of time. That's the problem with the premise of "subjective time", it provides us with a misunderstanding of time right from the beginning. We place all of our past experiences in the past, as if they occurred in the past, but they really occurred at the present. This produces a very confused way of looking at time which can only be resolved by removing this "subjective time" from our perspective, and starting with a new premise, to look at time itself.
I could not open this link.
Quoting Joshs
A few things remain unclear in this model. First, its explanatory power is not evident: can it be applied to explain the known theories of consciousness and memory? Second, the role of time looks like a metaphorical description instead of a rigorous elaboration. When one describes the present as the interface of the interaction between the past and the future (or âthe place of the clash between the forces of the future and the pastâ), one makes a mistake of confusing and equaling the ontological status of both. As a result, there wonât be any place for the creation of the new, and there will be just repetitions and reiterations, obeying the casual patterns. Therefore, the transcendental as an external creator (or as a universal casual principal) could have imposed again.
Another approach is based on the distinction between the actual and the virtual, the duality of actual individuation and of virtual subjectivation. The movement of actualization, involving stable forms and organizations, occurs in the field of intensive singularities, so that chance is reintroduced at every moment. As the result, there is the emergence of self, or its ceaseless re-emergence and reconstitution. This process happens in the zone of indiscernibility, of indeterminacy, of the becoming, where the future is just coming into itself
As to the question of the role of the new in the structure of time, the new is the place where an inside is exposed to an outside to challenge, destabilise and transform that inside. Bodliy affect serves that role for Deleuze in relation to linguistic consciousness. It exposes a self-enclosed schematism to a radical otherness. Merleau-Ponty's position isn't that different, except that for him inside and outside are not so easlliy determined, because each inflitrates the other(when my left hand touches the right, which is the perceiving and which is the perceived? Future present and past interprenetrate in the same way.
The past is repeatedly recast by a future that can never be anticipated in a
present that cannot be fixed. Anticipation re-figures recollection as much
as recollection shapes expectation.
Well, shucks. Thatâs easy. Smashee and smasher are in the same reference frame, smashee is obviously not in a gravity well, smasherâs smashing device is not moving anywhere near the SOL.....wait.....whatâs the sense of a bugâs perception again? Whatâs it like to be a bug?
No wonder thereâs a dearth of paradigm-shifting thinkers these days. (Sigh)
Kidding, of course. Itâs fun reading you guys, witnessing the current state of philosophy. That you understand each other is just short of amazing, if you ask me.
Anyway.......carry on.
Thank you for your advice! Definitely, Marleau-Pontu is a great thinker.
Yet, I am not sure that his phenomenology can be applied to some things that I am interested in. I mean that our time has become the âcinematographic, telecommunicational Timeâ, so that âthe momentary synthetic synthesis of competing streams of fragmented perceptions and conceptualizations â as well as âa community.of interaffecting agentsâ that you wrote about occur in a radically novel environment. Therefore, our memory, consciousness, perception, and language have been entirely transformed. Has the nature of these momentary syntheses, determining the ways of our being and thought, changed since Marleau-Pontu laid out his philosophy?
Quoting Joshs
It is an impressive model. Is that possible to assume that we exist in different temporalities? (You described one of them). Nevertheless, does the newest one prevail the others?
"Formed, qualified, situated perceptions and cognitions fulfilling functions of actual connection or blockage, are the capture and closure of affect. Emotion is the intensest (most contracted) expression of that capture â and of the fact that something has always and again escaped. Something remains unactualized, inseparable from but unassimilable to any particular, functionally anchored perspective. That is why all emotion is more or less disorienting, and why it is classically described as being outside of oneself, at the very point at which one is in most intimately and unshareably in contact with oneself and one's vitality. If there were no escape, no excess or remainder, no fade-out to infinity, the universe would be without potential, pure entropy, death. Actually existing, structured things live in and through
that which escapes them. Their autonomy is the autonomy of affect.â
"The escape of affect cannot but be perceived, alongside the perceptions that are its capture. This side-perception may be punctual, localized in an event (such as the sudden realization that happiness and sadness are something besides what they are). When it is punctual, it is usually described in negative terms, typically as a form of shock (the sudden interruption of functions of actual connection). But it is also continuous, like a background perception that
accompanies every event, however quotidian. When the continuity of affective escape is put into words, it tends to take on positive connotations. For it is nothing less than the perception of one's own vitality, one's sense of aliveness, of changeability (often signified as âfreedomâ).
One's
âsense of alivenessâ is a continuous, nonconscious self-perception (unconscious self-reflection or lived self-referentiality). It is the perception of this self-perception, its naming and making conscious, that allows affect to be effectively analyzed â as long as a vocabulary can be found for that which is imperceptible but whose escape from perception cannot but be perceived, as
long as one is alive."
"Simondon notes the connection between self-reflection and affect. He even extends the capacity for self-reflection to all living thingsâ although it is hard to see why his own analysis does not constrain him to extend it to all things (is not resonation a kind of self-reflection?). "At this point, the impression may have grown that affect is being touted here as if the whole world could be packed into it. In a way, it can, and is."
Notice that the âinsideâ here is the self-consistent pattern of perceptual perspective that is disrupted from without. You could say that the âwithoutâ as affect is already alongside as background, keeping perception from being purely self-enclosed, and therefore the inside is already outside itself.
Question: when Deleuze talks about the effect of cinema on our understanding of time, does he mean that it makes us realize what was always already true about time that we just never realized before, or does he mean that technologies like cinema create an absolutely new experience of time?
I think he means the former.
Quoting Joshs
I agree with all this, and I do not see how the quote and your commentary contradict with what I wrote about âinsideâ and âoutside.â
I do not think that Massumi intended to isolate affect and then to elevate its status up the level
of the universal explanatory principle. When he wrote: âthere are affect modulation techniques accessible in the event. They become accessible
to the event through reflex, habit, training and the inculcation of skills â
automaticities operating with as much dynamic immediacy as the eventâŚ
Affective techniques of thinking-feeling improvisationally are relational
techniques that apply to situations more directly than to persons,â he followed the strategic approach which was laid out by Deleuze and Guattari:
âThere is no such thing as either man or nature now, only
a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together.
Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all
of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any
meaning whatsoever.â
Therefore, when you wrote: âThe mind functions as an inseparable interaction with environment and body. It is nothing but this interaction. There is no self-identical self in this model. Self is a bi-product of the constant constructive interactive activity of the organism-environmental interaction. Consciousness is not self-conscious in the sense of being able to turn back on itself and grasp itself identicallyâ, I agree with all this. I just want to add that the meaning
of notions âenvironment,â âbody,â and âinteractionâ has changed.
Quoting Joshs
I agree with you. The fundamental question is whether âan absolutely new experience of timeâ should be attributed to someone, watching a movie at the cinema, or the Deleuzeâs cinematographic time-image
has also unfolded at our offices, schools, medical institutions, etc.?
I think that just a few scholars support a more radical version of the answer.
Maurizio Lazarotto writes: âEnslavement does not operate through repression or ideology. It employs modeling and modulating techniques that bear on the âvery spirit of life and human activity.â It takes over human beings âfrom the inside,â on the pre-personal (pre-cognitive and preverbal) level, as well as âfrom the outside,â on the supra-personal level, by assigning the certain modes of perception and sensibility and manufacturing an unconscious. Machinic enslavement formats the basic functioning of perspective, sensory, affective, cognitive, and linguistic behaviorâ.
Should this approach be considered as too militant and far-reaching?
I can see his approach as Nietzschean in spirit. There is a critique of Deleuziam thought on affect and body that I agree with. Ruth Leys argues âDeleuzian affect theorists tend to put everything that is not a question of âmeaning,â defined in some highly limited sense, over against the body or affect. What seems wrong or confused about this is the sharpness of the dichotomy, which operates at once with a highly intellectualist or rationalist concept of meaning and an unexamined assumption that everything that is not âmeaningâ in this limited sense belongs to the body. This too is a false dichotomy, one thatâin spite of a professed hostility to dualismâthreads its way throughout much of the new literature on affect.â
Ruth Leys says Massumi argues the affects must be viewed as independent of, and in an important sense prior to, ideologyâthat is, prior to intentions, meanings, reasons, and beliefsâbecause they are non-signifying, autonomic processes that take place below the threshold of conscious awareness and meaning. Affects are âinhuman,â âpre-subjective,â âvisceralâ forces and intensities that influence our thinking and judgments but are separate from these. Whatever else may be meant by the terms affect and emotion, the affects must be noncognitive, corporeal processes or states. Affect is, as Massumi asserts, âirreducibly bodilyand autonomicâ(PV,).
Merleau-Pontyâs chiasmatic intertwining approach to affect is a corrective to this dualism.
He and the enactivists recognize a certain self-consistency to the organism in its interaction with environment that is missing from Deleuze. How does Deleuze explain stable personality features?
What about use of theological tropes by writers like Zizek, Vattimo, Jean-Luc Marion, Caputo?
Or Marxist influenced approaches(Habermas, Adorno)?
Some would argue that Deleuziam thinkiking deconstructs theological , psychoanalytic and Marxist critical theory.
Quoting Joshs
For me, Massumi is one of the leading thinkers of our time, but one should read his texts with great caution.
I think that a few distortions and misrepresentations allowed to Ruth Leys (as far as I see from your note)
to misinterpret Massumiâs project. I would challenge a few things that could change the whole meaning of Leysâs assertions. First, I do not think that Massumi insists on independence and autonomy of âthe affects,â from one side, and âideology,â from another. Both are irreducibly social, technological, and vital. Second, both are not merely separated and isolated but interrelated in a much more complicated way. Third, to better understand how they work together, one should apply much more appropriate concepts. Fourth, mentioned terms are used not in the traditional manner. Finally, Deleuze and his followers often intentionally use a dichotomy and dualism - as a provocation, a tool for deconstruction, or just a preliminary notion that should be worked out later.
Quoting Joshs
In principle, Deleuze avoided using this kind of discourse. His project was to consider things in their interdependency, endless variation, and immanence.
Donât you think that âstable personality features,â after all, are related to keeping untouched a substantial I and a transcendental ego?
Marlo-Ponte stated that our perception is built so that we simultaneously perceive and are perceived. For Deleuze was essential to find out
the ontological and epistemological conditions of this process. It does not happen in a vacuum, just in somebodyâs mind. How is that possible? Is that a universal truth? If not, what its genealogy (genesis)? What are the limits of its use? Exceptions? For solving of what problems was it designed?
I think that neither Lacan nor Zizec reflects what we deal with
in our lives. In my opinion, they have still stayed at the plain of the Signifier, which is not appropriate anymore.
Quoting Joshs
I am not sure about Marion,I need to check it.
Quoting JoshsMay be I will reread some texts of Adorno (is his aesthetics still working?), not of Habermas.
Quoting Joshs
I think it is not the matter of deconstruction. (By the way, the easiest way to nullify Deleuze is to start identifying and classifying him).It is a matter of taking account of our time.
Quoting Joshs
In my opinion, Guattari is not less important than Deleuze. Also, I found that Massumi, Lazarotto, Goodchild, Raunig and de Landa are interesting. Goodchild, Smith, and Sauvagnargues are indispensable for anyone who wants to understand Deleuzian thinking. Foucault, Lyotard, Luhmann are still relevant.
I used to read some texts of Vygotsky, Blanchot, Bachtin, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Arendt, but I am not sure that they help me now. Is Kafka a thinker?
I like him so much. Anyway, texts, reading, and authors compose a kind of a sealed universe, so that the process of the endless reading and interpretation can consume all of our time. So, I try to read just what helps me to solve a problem that currently preoccupies me.
Embodied Perception. Redefining the social
It is a matter of choice - what you find more relevant. I will read your paper.
OK, welcome to the club. Have you read the thread?
I offered a brief starting point. Time as a concept is derived from our apprehension of a separation, division, between past and future.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321554337_An_Elementary_Note_Playing_With_Complex_and_Distorted_Time_in_C
:cool:
I believe in change, in process, in events, in the creative becoming of the world. Can't find time in physics. Can't find time in experience, just the relative ordering of events as seen from a specific point of view. Time is just the relative rate of change, nothing more and that is why philosophers and physicists keep searching and finding not.
But Iâd be interested to hear your thoughts on Carlo Rovelliâs book âThe Order of Timeâ, if youâve read it...
Do you believe that there is a difference between past and future? If you belief in a real difference between past and future, how can you make that compatible with the non-belief in time?
Quoting prothero
How can you not find time in experience? Isn't this so-called "specific point of view", which underlies experience obvious evidence of time? Would you expect to be able to bring events from your past, and put them into the future, so that you might avoid the bad experiences, or take possible events from the future and put them into the past, so that you might ensure good experiences? The "specific point of view" which you refer to is a brute fact of reality, and clear evidence that time is, as well..
I wish you would have wrote that in Bb minor, then maybe I would have understood it...LOL
Welcome John! Looking forward to your thread on the abstract's of time... .
What is time?
The operational definition of assigning a time to an event as mentioned by A. Einstein in his 1905 paper is essentially what it is, and how it's been done since humans appeared.
It is a correspondence convention, i.e., assigning events of interest to standard clock events, a measure and ordering of activity, with 'time' always increasing/accumulating.
It is an accounting scheme developed out of practical necessity, for human activities like agriculture, business, travel, science, etc. The unit of measure for time initially referred to relative positions of astronomical objects, stars, sun, and moon, which implies earth rotations and earth orbits. The year equates to the periodic motion of the earth relative to the sun, the month, the moon relative to the earth, and the day, the earth rotation relative to the stars. All units of time are by definition, involving spatial motion or distance. The clock further divides the day into smaller units of measure. The reference in the 1905 paper of the watch hand to a position on the watch face involves nothing more than counting hand cycles (hand motion of specific distances representing subdivisions of a day). Current scientific research requires clocks that generate smaller and more precise periods than those of the past. The second is defined as n wave lengths of a specific frequency of light. Note "n wave lengths" is a distance, but labeled as "time".
If we use a light based clock to time the speed of an object along a known distance x, what are we actually doing?
We are comparing the simultaneous motion of an object to the motion of light for a duration (number of ticks). The result is a ratio x/s = vt/ct = v/c or speed. It should be obvious that the ticks serve to correlate the positions of the object with the positions of the light signal, for simultaneous comparisons. If you use Minkowski space-time diagrams the vertical scale is not 'time', but ct, light path distance, i.e. they plot speed. This allows a simple comparison of equivalent entities, without consideration of the nature of those entities.
In summation: A clock provides a beat or rhythm via a periodic process, to coordinate and measure events.
quotes by the author of SR
From 'The Meaning of Relativity', Albert Einstein, 1956:
page 1.
"The experiences of an individual appear to us arranged in a series of events; in this series the single events which we remember appear to be ordered according to the criteria of "earlier" and "later", which cannot be analyzed further. There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time."
page 31.
"The non-divisibility of the four-dimensional continuum of events does not at all, however, involve the equivalence of the space coordinates with the time coordinate."
page 32.
"Finally, with Minkowski, we introduce in place of the real time co-ordinate l=ct, the imaginary time co-ordinate..."
time and perception
Subjective time requires memory, which allows a comparison of a current state to a previous state for any changes, which lends itself to an interpretation of time flowing. Patients with brain damage to specific areas involved in maintaining a personal chronology, lose their ability to estimate elapsed time, short or long term. Consider the fact that people waking from a comatose state, have no memory of how much elapsed time, whether hrs, days, or even years.
Consider one of the greatest misnomers ever used, 'motion pictures' or 'movies', where a person observes a sequence of still photos and the mind melds them to produce moving objects where there is no motion. These cases show time as part of perception. Special Relativity then predicts alteration of measurement and perception via motion.
misc.
It was Minkowski who advocated the mathematical manipulation of the expression for the invariant interval from an equality to a generalized form of four variables, producing space-time. I refer to the Minkowski version of SR as a 'lines on paper' theory. Time is represented as a line, removing any attributes that would distinguish its identity from other variables, a line is a line.
Math equations that express a behavior as a function of time, are misleading when the time is interpreted as a causative factor. The time of an event must be assigned after the event occurs, i.e. after awareness! If a nova is observed in 2010, and is 100 ly distant, it didn't happen because it was 1910 on earth. It was the physical processes already in place that reacted to an unstable state. A person dies, not because it's his 'time', but because his biological system reaches a state that can't be maintained.
Which brings us to the real issue (for me) perpetuating the millenia of debating 'time'.
No one wants to be informed "atomic clock at NIST has a hole in it and time is running out". Time implies longevity. People gain some sense of security if they think there is an invisible entity behind the scenes arranging and scheduling more events.
Not quite sure of what you are getting at. Newtonian physics gives distance as a function of time, but this is purely descriptive and time is not interpreted as causative. Probably just me, so ignore. I haven't read through all the posts on the subject.