Intuitions About Time
Take these two:
1. Reality is fundamentally flux, and permanency is constructed
2. Reality fundamentally is, and change is an illusion
Of those two postulates, which one is less offensive to you? That is, which one seems fundamentally more plausible and less counterintuitive? I want to know your intuitions.
I find that 2 is easier to believe. 1 seems like a cop-out, as if refusing to really consider the question. But, perhaps I have it backward: maybe the refusal to consider the question springs from having 2 as an intuition, and not the converse. 2 seems more plausible to me because it seems to line up with relativistic physics, and overall woobly-wobbly subjective nature of time that philosophers long before Einstein have suspected for centuries.
Thoughts? Intuitions?
1. Reality is fundamentally flux, and permanency is constructed
2. Reality fundamentally is, and change is an illusion
Of those two postulates, which one is less offensive to you? That is, which one seems fundamentally more plausible and less counterintuitive? I want to know your intuitions.
I find that 2 is easier to believe. 1 seems like a cop-out, as if refusing to really consider the question. But, perhaps I have it backward: maybe the refusal to consider the question springs from having 2 as an intuition, and not the converse. 2 seems more plausible to me because it seems to line up with relativistic physics, and overall woobly-wobbly subjective nature of time that philosophers long before Einstein have suspected for centuries.
Thoughts? Intuitions?
Comments (49)
My thoughts ( where we just sort-of been finishing-up over on another thread) is that CHANGE is real, where on the other hand, TIME is the illusion.
I would say the first. I find it easier to mentally construct the appearance of permanence out of a fundamentally flowing reality.
For clarity, please provide your definitions of the key terms here--time, reality, flux, permanence, constructed, change, illusion. Also, why not consider as a third option that the reality of time includes both permanence and change--enduring things and their varying qualities, not to mention the fixed but growing past and the constant but advancing present.
What question?
In my stillness, I experience flux, in my variation, I see permanence. Each needs to assume the other as fundament.The same eye sees the hands of the clock move, and the ever-changing self sees always the same present. Don't make me choose.
I don't even know what either of these statements are saying. It seems like they make some substantive claims about reality, but when I try to nail these claims, they just slip out of my hands.
Interesting. What happens if I put on my transcendental idealist hat?
Time is the form of our internal intuition, says Kant. My consciousness of my apperceptive unity as mine happens upon reflection, because I become conscious of the manner in which I am affected by my own reflection, but only as a posterior consequence, giving rise to the timeline whereby I organize my experiences.
The data stream would appear to be pure flux, if anything, although ultimately noumenal. The source of the form of intuition that I impose on it would appear to be eternal and static because necessary, although that too is noumenal, or at least, its source is.
Quoting SophistiCat
Think Heraclitus and Parmenides. Unless this is a lead up to saying that both are nonsense, in which case we can just go outside and play golf or something.
Care to elaborate on this some more? I'm not sure what question you think 1) is avoiding.
In 1, why is it not "and permanency is an illusion"?
Sounds like change is "apparent" either way, which is a good basis for an intuition. What basis is there for the intuition of permanence?
What I mean is: in the first case, permanence is apparent because it always goes away after a while, no matter how permanent it looks. Whereas, in the second place, change is an illusion because it was never there to begin with.
2 is more of a comfort to believe, particularly considering the relativity of time, and the uncertainty it lends to our notion of reality. In my opinion, it is 2 that’s a cop-out, and 1 lines up better with quantum relativity as I understand it (Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’ outlines this quite well). But I think that both raise inevitable questions:
If permanency is constructed, where are we getting the idea from in the first place?
If change is an illusion, what purpose does it serve as such?
:up:
Quoting Pneumenon
Think Democritean / Epicurean atomism.
Quoting Possibility
:100:
Perhaps: these are translatable, transposable. Each stands in a peculiar relation to the other. Can an illusion fall out of a construction, which is constructed from that illusion? No - neat and dialectical and all, but that just stands us at square one. It does not satisfy. It's not a ship we can sail on. There are waters, yes, but there must be a reason to sail.
Perhaps: neither is valid from the point of the other, but this need not bother us because we're not shackled to one or the other. We can move freely (flux) but any such move requires an antecedent reason (being). But, this does not satisfy either. Just a glorified description of change disguised as progress.
Perhaps: we cannot put everything into one box. But, we are free to require some globalizing/universalizing apparatus to justify any move from flux to being or back. We need not globalize the same way every time. But, what does "globalize" mean here? I could say that it means we demand some context besides "useful for this one thing right now." But this requires a substantive ethics to make sense of. And without that, we're marooned again.
Puzzling.
It all depends on how you choose to interpret both theories. 2) has trouble if you understand quantum mechanics as being inherently indeterministic as it is traditionally understood, but there are other interpretations that don't involve fundamental chance. Similarly 1) has trouble with the traditional interpretation of relativity, but that isn't the only way to interpret the theory and there are versions of the theory that incorporate an absolute order of time.
All this is just to say that the science is unclear when placed in a philosophical context. Hence why I roll my eyes when people talk about "science vs. religion", as if there is only one religion and one scientific way of looking at the world.
Thanks 180. It does seem pretty much common sense-like.
Oh, and regarding time: there's no one time, but multiple times, emerging temporalities, indexed to the relations of rhythms established between locally and globally persistant invariations.
Same here, but mostly the second half of what you've said. Emphasis on flux is good as a counterbalance to an overemphasis on permanancy, but neither are comprehensible without the other. Which, I guess is boring, but seems all you can really say at this level of generality.
@Pneumenon
As a general, like, methodological thing - I always feel like once the term 'illusion' crops up, that signals there's a fork in the road, where there are two paths opened up:
One way is to 'delete' the illusionary thing, to make room for the 'real' thing. But that leaves you with a situation where you have to account for the reality of the illusion, as illusion. And that gets almost impossibly sticky, if you deny reality to the illusion.
The other is to see what's being called 'illusion' as a symptom of a widening of scope. What's called an 'illusion' is still real, as the thing it is, it just can also be understood in a different way by shifting context.
Yes! Even im the mundane sense of say, seeing an illusion in the desert (mirages), those illusions are always real: other people can see them, they're an effect of the play of light and angle of incidence and so on. Even illusions must be accounted for, perhaps especially so.
Regardless, though, flux-as-flux cannot be absolute. At the point where it all becomes white noise, you no longer really have a flux, so much as a nothing.
I suppose I don't agree with the sufficient reason bit, if only because consistency of behavior between invariant structures begs the question of an organizing principle. I am guessing that the assertion that flux provides sufficient reason for permanency hangs on the reducibility of organizing principle to descriptions of flux - but that relies on brute facticity, at which point sufficient reason is out as a methodology. If you want sufficient reason, then permanence has to inhere somewhere, or rather, something must inhere somewhere.
Reality is. Change is a part of that reality. Time is a part of that reality.
Don't think this is necessary. One of my favourite examples is the soap bubble: why does it have the form it does? Because the sphere is the shape that best minimizes surface tension. But the minimzation of surface tension is a 'local' phenomena: each molecule of the soap bubble only interacts with the molecules next to it, and the bonds that form are indifferent to the global structure: yet the sphere nonetheless emerges from the sum of these local interactions. Finally, 'minimization of surface tension' is of course a modulation of difference.
Another well-known example might be the behaviour of swarms of birds, which can be said to be roughly governed by similar 'local laws': move in the same direction as your neighbours; remain close to your neighbours; avoid collisions with your neighbours (note that as with the bubble, all three 'rules' have as their 'content' regulation of change, which is primary). Modulate correctly, and you get:
More generally and simply: this all still relies on the laws of physics working a certain way. Hence my comment about organizational principles.
Swarm intelligence and pendulum entrainment and so on, that stuff is all very fascinating. But you're still left appealing to general laws to make any of it work. The laws of gravitation, or of interaction of particles, or the instincts of starlings, do not admit of reduction to flux without relying on brute facticity.
I didn't say this: I said they were indifferent to global structure, which they are. Swat a soap bubble and you get a cascading wave of local bond-breaking which travels across the bubble. The bubble doesn't pop instantaneously: it takes time.
And there's nothing about the laws of physics which the primacy of flux denies: indeed, what do the 'laws of physics' bear upon? Change. Without which they would be laws of nothing at all.
The question isn't about what the laws of physics bear upon, but what explains them. Your claim was:
Quoting StreetlightX
To substantiate this, the vital thing is to show how e.g. the individual molecules provide sufficient reason for the laws of physics, which are, after all, permanent.. Saying that the laws of physics govern molecules, such as those of soap bubbles, does not show that flux provides the sufficient reason for permanency. To explain the actions of flux (e.g. the change in the atoms of the soap bubble) you still have to appeal to general laws. But in that case, the general laws are supplying the sufficient reason for the flux in particulars, not the reverse.
No, no. It's not about the 'individual molecules'. Individual molecules are not 'change' (what would that even mean?) It's about the relations between them, the minimisation of forces between molecules. In other words: regulated change. Not relata but relations are primary.
I may be deeply misunderstanding you, so let me back up here a moment.
You said, if I have understood you correctly, that flux (change) provides sufficient reason for permanency, or any appearance thereof. My question is, what is it in flux, or change, that provides sufficient reason for the permanence (or apparent permanence) of general laws, e.g. the laws of physics? The Second Law of Thermodynamics would appear to be permanent, for example. I grant you that the Second Law bears on change, but this does not locate the suffient reason for that law in change.
It's a question here of how to interpret the standing of such laws. There are two ways to do this: one, by understanding the law as a pure prohibition: entropy in a closed system cannot decrease over time. This is the law understood in a juridical fashion, as it were, a statute written in the Book of Nature (where exactly?). But this is not the only or even most perspicacious way of looking at it. The other, inverse, way of understanding it is as the expression of a positive fact about nature (and not just a negative limitation upon it): energy differentials are productive of order. That is, the second law attests to the fact that every form of organisation (structure, identity) requires the maintenance of difference without which it would collapse into nothingness. Or to quote Levi Bryant on this:
"Substances, entities, or objects are negentropic systems. An object is a highly ordered system. Or, amounting to the same thing, an object is a highly improbable being. I am deeply interested in questions of how there’s any order in the world at all and of the sort of work required by negentropic systems to stave off entropy. How do they do it? Why do improbabilities (highly ordered objects) persist? And if my hypothesis that objects are negentropic systems, it also follows that objects are not stupid clods that just sit there. Rather, objects must be a work, an activity, a process. A brute, motionless clod that sits there would be the exact opposite of negentropy, for entropy is the evaporation of all work, its disappearance, or the descent into equaprobability. Work is the maintenance and continuation of improbability; the unlikely arrangement of parts in a particular order" (cite).
The 2nd law, interpreted negatively, is derivative of this primary fact of nature, which, again, attests to the primacy of flux. The 2nd law is 'permanent', but it's permanence is parasitic upon the permanence of - you guessed it - change.
I was looking for something in the way of critical reflection, but I find only free-floating metaphors here. I've also been thinking about the metaphysics of time lately, but I prefer a more grounded approach.
There is a glass of water on my table, what about it do you call "flux"? The glass was full few days ago, now it's half empty, what about that change you call "illusion"? Flux is change, why is your second statement contradicting the first one?
Flux means flow / motion. What is flowing? What are you trying to say, do you even know?
I guess I don't see how re-interpreting it like this solves the problem. It is a positive fact about nature that organized systems require difference. But this is no less juridical than the negative interpretation.
And, importantly, this does not find sufficient reason for the law in the flux. Remember, the initial claim was that permanent principles have their sufficient reason in change:
But there is nothing about change that provides sufficient reason for this; the flux could just have easily
have worked differently. Why does the flux have this positive property, and not another? There is, as of now, no sufficient reason for this - which means there's no sufficient grounding for organizing principles in flux.
Huh? That systems are maintained by energetic difference is not some kind of stipulative rule: systems not maintained because they require difference but because without such difference they would dissapate. To cast this in the form of a 'law' would be nothing but an anthropormorphism, putting the legal cart before the perfectly natural horse, as it were.
Quoting Pneumenon
I don't understand your question: I said the flux provides the sufficent reason for structure, not that the flux (I really dislike this word btw!) is accountable for in terms of sufficient reason (confusion of expalnanda with explanandum here).
Why in the world would you appeal to a principle of sufficient reason, if change is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason?
The big problem here, as I see it, is methodological: there is no reason to appeal to a principle of sufficient reason if you're going to accept brute facticity. If change does not need a reason for the way it is, then the way things change (not that things change, but the specific way in which they change) is just a brute fact. And if you're going to say that patterns or tendencies in change are brute facts, then whither your prinicple of sufficient reason?
That's my problem. Your argument looks like this:
1. Change is primary over structure because it provides the sufficient reason for structure.
2. Change itself is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason.
The problem is that, from 2, it follows that:
3. The way in which things change is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason.
Which is the same as saying that manner in which change happens is a brute fact: why does change happen this way, and not some other way? The answer you give appears to be "because that's just the way it is." But brute facts are not compatible with the PSR, by its very nature.
I don't wish to interrupt the current exchange, and perhaps the discussion has already moved on, but Google defines an intuition as "the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning". The laws of physics seem to rely on a lot of conscious reasoning, no?
I think part of the confusion here stems from working with an inadequate vocabulary ('change' is possibly even worse than 'flux' insofar as change implies a *thing* that changes, subordinating difference once more to identity!). In any case, bracketing that problem for the moment, what I said was simply that variation provides the sufficient reason for the invariant. But the invariant just is what is to be accounted for. Recall the question to which the PoSR responds: why is there some-thing rather than no-thing? A: because variation. But variation is no *thing*: it is the pre-individual, it is that out of which, or from which, there are *things* - as things, as structure - to be accounted for at all.
Which is another way of saying that this question: "why does change happen this way, and not some other way?" - is badly formulated. "Change" in the abstract - 'change in general' - doesn't 'happen', only changes to this and changes to that. The right question is: why this change in the structure and not another? In other words the question of sufficient reason can only be formulated at the level of the individuated, at the level of structure, beyond which is simply loses its field of applicability. This is both to de-fang the PoSR and to intensify it. De-fanged (and de-theologized, I might add) because rendered immanent, referring reason(s) to the world and how it is (no longer looking outside it); intensified because no longer taking for granted that there are things at all and demanding instead an account of how they come to be at all.
Let me make sure that I have understood you: you want to say that there is some kind of variation, or change, or flux, or difference, whatever we want to call it, that is primary, out of which everything else arises, and for which there is no account.
Perhaps I'm just dense, but I guess I don't understand this. What does this variation/change/flux/whatever consist in? You say:
Quoting StreetlightX
And "variation" (your term) implies a thing that varies. And "difference" (also your term) implies two things that are different, and a third thing with respect to which they are different. What puzzles me is that you consistently criticize the words I use, but your own terminology seems to have the same problem. Of course, perhaps I'm being uncharitable here: when you said "inadequate vocabulary," perhaps you meant that the philosophical vernacular itself lacks the terminology to describe what you want. But still, you really ought to introduce a term of your own that doesn't have the same problems that my terms do. And the language you've been using so far, it seems to me, doesn't escape any of your own criticisms.
(I grant you that "change implies a thing that changes" sounds awfully stodgy - there is something Scholastic and Oxfordian about such an argument. But I am much more flummoxed by the reverse: "There is a primal difference which is not a difference between two things." How on Earth am I to make sense of a free-floating variance that is not the variation in anything in particular? Maybe you just "get it" and I don't. But if you "get it," then maybe you could introduce some terminology that works...?)
At any rate, your notion of change/flux/variance/difference seems to be awfully recalcitrant with regards to being expressed in words, although this may be simply my own failing and not that of your concept. Regardless, though, until it is neatly captured in words, it does not provide a sufficient reason for much of anything. And now we come full circle to the original point: how is variation/difference to provide a sufficient reason for things, if it lies outside of the space of justification? If something cannot be justified, it cannot meaningfully participate in inferential relations, including justifying other things.