Can we be mistaken about our own experiences?
This is a follow-up thread on the one about suffering being all we ever experience (basically, "pleasure" is merely a lesser-amount of pain which we grow accustomed to experiencing and see as "good"), which I personally am highly skeptical of.
I found the underlying notion to be that we can be mistaken about what we experience; what I see to be a great feeling is apparently actually just another negative experience. In other words, is it possible for our beliefs about our experiences to be different from the experience itself?
This obviously has connections to the oft-quoted "illusory" nature of x. When people say something is an "illusion" in this way, they mean that it somehow doesn't exist despite how much we believe it to.
But can experience itself be illusory? What would that even entail? Is it seriously even possible to believe that the experience of the color of the apple is red but really be experiencing the color green? Can it really be possible to think something as pleasurable but in reality be suffering incredibly? (Let's not forget about the fact that doubting one is having a pleasurable experience immediately makes the pleasurable experience cease being truly pleasurable...)
I don't see how this is possible. How could it be that belief in experience is separate from the experience itself? Is it not the case that to experience x means to believe that one is experiencing x?, i.e. one cannot experience something without believing they are experiencing something?
At first glance, it may seem as though no experience can possibly be doubted. And, true, I would say it is uncontentious that the belief that one is experiencing something, the belief that one has any sort of experience, cannot be false.
Then there's the example of the color of an apple. I believe I see the apple to be red, but what if I actually see it to be green? This is an example of an experience that I suspect could never be doubted, but for whatever reason I'm not sure.
But there are some experiences that also seem to be capable of being doubted or mistaken. Say I have never felt love before, and suddenly fall head-over-heels for a woman down the street. How am I to understand what I am feeling? Perhaps I go to another person, whom I trust as an authority, and learn that this experience is called "love" and that it is a very powerful and good feeling. There is an example of a new experience causing confusion.
What about ambiguous experiences? Like when you taste something new, or listen to a strange song. You're not sure if you like it or hate it. Can it be said that you already liked or hated it before you consciously understood that you liked or hated it? Does this even make sense?
What about cases in which people don't realize they are suffering until they get out of their habitual behavior, such as the case with addiction? What is going on here that allows a person to "suffer" but not realize that they are "suffering" until after the fact?
I found the underlying notion to be that we can be mistaken about what we experience; what I see to be a great feeling is apparently actually just another negative experience. In other words, is it possible for our beliefs about our experiences to be different from the experience itself?
This obviously has connections to the oft-quoted "illusory" nature of x. When people say something is an "illusion" in this way, they mean that it somehow doesn't exist despite how much we believe it to.
But can experience itself be illusory? What would that even entail? Is it seriously even possible to believe that the experience of the color of the apple is red but really be experiencing the color green? Can it really be possible to think something as pleasurable but in reality be suffering incredibly? (Let's not forget about the fact that doubting one is having a pleasurable experience immediately makes the pleasurable experience cease being truly pleasurable...)
I don't see how this is possible. How could it be that belief in experience is separate from the experience itself? Is it not the case that to experience x means to believe that one is experiencing x?, i.e. one cannot experience something without believing they are experiencing something?
At first glance, it may seem as though no experience can possibly be doubted. And, true, I would say it is uncontentious that the belief that one is experiencing something, the belief that one has any sort of experience, cannot be false.
Then there's the example of the color of an apple. I believe I see the apple to be red, but what if I actually see it to be green? This is an example of an experience that I suspect could never be doubted, but for whatever reason I'm not sure.
But there are some experiences that also seem to be capable of being doubted or mistaken. Say I have never felt love before, and suddenly fall head-over-heels for a woman down the street. How am I to understand what I am feeling? Perhaps I go to another person, whom I trust as an authority, and learn that this experience is called "love" and that it is a very powerful and good feeling. There is an example of a new experience causing confusion.
What about ambiguous experiences? Like when you taste something new, or listen to a strange song. You're not sure if you like it or hate it. Can it be said that you already liked or hated it before you consciously understood that you liked or hated it? Does this even make sense?
What about cases in which people don't realize they are suffering until they get out of their habitual behavior, such as the case with addiction? What is going on here that allows a person to "suffer" but not realize that they are "suffering" until after the fact?
Comments (254)
Also, what of masochists and sadists? A warped view of the pain-pleasure complex?
Exactly.
You can dither over the question of whether the apple is actually red or green till the cows come home, but such dithering yields little of value--UNLESS you are getting feedback that other members of your species are perceiving the apples much differently than you are. If three apples are said to be yellow, red, and green respectively, and you can't tell the difference, then you have a problem that's worth thinking about.
Quoting darthbarracuda
One of our problems is that we can not externalize our self-perceptions and see ourselves as other people see us. We can become quite unraveled, and if it happens gradually, we may not understand that we have become dis-arranged. We may be suffering and know it, but we can't see the cause within our complexly confused self-picture.
It is quite possible for our dis-arranged confused self to be eventually be taken (by us) as normal. If we do not receive some kind of acceptable objective feedback, or if life doesn't change for us we may never catch on to how messed up we are -- we will just keep suffering and suppose that it is because there is something wrong with the world.
As a counselor, I could give objective feedback to other people (about their conditions) without seeing how dysfunctional I was becoming. It was a huge discovery, once I quit working and could "re-ravel" myself back together, that I had been in quite a bit less than optimal shape for a long time.
What do you man by "present" here?
Quoting andrewk
Every experience, by the time it has occurred, is in the past. This, along with your statement as a premise, produces the logical conclusion that we can be mistaken about all experiences.
That doesn't answer the question, but I think the answer to your question would be found in the relationship between belief and experience. And, as you note, there are types of experiences which seem more liable to be mistake-prone, and types of experiences which aren't. So perhaps it's not even the relationship between belief and experiences, but belief and types of experiences.
Not past or future relative to a frame of reference.
I'm not endorsing a particular view of physics. I'm giving you MY view. In MY view, time IS included in a frame of reference. it's the changes/motion that's occurring in the frame of reference rather than the changes/motion that occurred but are no longer occurring, or the changes/motions that will occur but haven't occurred yet,
If what you mean is that we cannot help but perceive whatever we perceive, and then (initially) judge it to be whatever we judge it to be, then I am inclined to agree. In this sense, we cannot be mistaken about a percept itself (say, a green chair) or the corresponding perceptual judgment ("I am perceiving a green chair"). However, we can be mistaken in all of our subsequent reasonings about them (I am convinced that I really saw a green chair, but I was actually hallucinating).
That latter part would be about how the phenomenal experience hooks up with something that's not the phenomenal experience (specifically, how does the phenomenal experience relate to what caused it or to things in the external world?), which is different than the phenomenal experience as the phenomenal experience.
Agreed, I just wanted to clarify that distinction.
Quoting andrewk
Reply :
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The problem that MU has identified re past and present can be stated another way : All knowledge is narrative. We have no direct access to present phenomenal experience. Our only knowledge of this experience is what we know of it from narrative. When we consider "present" phenomena, we are in fact telling ourselves a story. "Oh look, a tree."
No, the narrative ("Oh look, a tree.") may be in the present, but knowledge of the experience we believe we are presently having cannot be direct, and so the experience must be in the past. We must first place the experience (if it actually occurs) into narrative to be aware of it.
EDIT : I see this level of skepticism as a logical conclusion of anti-realism. Not only must we doubt that qualia give us information about some outside world, we must also doubt that even the qualia exist! All we can really be sure of is narrative.
Perhaps reality is nothing more than the scrolling of a novel that we tell ourselves.
Okay, but that's what I'm talking about--the present mental content, whatever it is.
But doesn't this argument suggest that experience may be doubted? Narrative-of-a-supposed-experience (which may be in the present) is not the same as the experience itself.
How? What I'm talking about, that present mental content, whatever it is, is the phenomenal experience I'm talking about.
(Sorry, I can't type fast enough and always think of little edits I want to add.)
What I am trying to say is that present mental content is narrative, not experience.
What is experience in your view if not that present mental content?
Do you reserce "experience" for something like "things that happen to your body prior to you being aware of it"?
Sorry to answer a question with a question, but ...
Do you distinguish between experience and narrative? If so, can there be present phenomenal experience without narrative? Please explain.
Oops, gotta run. I'll pick this up later.
I don't use the idea of "narrative," partially because re the way you're using it, no, I'd not make any distinction between that and (phenomenal) experience.
I’m on board with this position. Although one has to grant that once it is turned into a proposition—rather than it being direct experience—it can then become corrigible, depending on the proposition held and its expression. It’s when our evolved ape-minds then start pricking and poking at the whys and hows.
For instance, the issue of direct experience gets tricky when we start to appraise our sensations of agency via narrative. Our sensation of agency easily translates into our holding of some top-down causal ability over our own bodies and, for example, in how we interact with others.
This to me is the zenith of conflict between our sensations and our cognitions of which metaphysical reality is true relative to what is ontic: our sensation of having freewill verses our mainstream conceptual constructs that no such thing is possible. Unless I’m wrong, it where the “illusion” motif stems from as regards what we experience.
I'm not saying my awareness is in the past, I'm saying my experience is in the past. Do you see a difference between these two? Awareness implies anticipation of future events as well as experience of past events.
Quoting Terrapin Station
By the time I've said "Oh look, a tree", that's in the past. So "oh look a tree" is necessarily in the past.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Why do you believe that there is such a thing as "the present mental content"? If you have to say "whatever it is", it seems like you have no idea as to what such a thing as the present mental content might be. Yet you claim that the present mental content cannot be doubted. That's rather ironic, you don't know what it could be, yet you cannot doubt it. I suppose if there is nothing there, there is nothing to doubt. How could there be any such thing as the present mental content? As soon as it's there, it's in the past, in an infinitely short period of time.
I think that mental content consists of memories of the past, and anticipations of the future. There is no present mental content.
In other words, the awareness that you're not saying is in the past.
We have current raw experiences. I feel warm. My back is sore.
I would call the example of a tree an interpretation of an experience. Dan Robinson, in his lectures on Kant's CPR, asks 'Does a dog see a tree?' He agrees that the dog experiences a certain pattern on its visual field, but it requires the Transcendental Aesthetic and the transcendentally-deduced Categories to interpret that pattern as 'A Tree'.
Because categorisation takes time, I feel inclined to agree that - whether one is a dog or a human - one cannot currently experience A Tree. However, I believe that one can currently experience the uninterpreted pattern the tree makes on our visual field, and the uninterpreted feeling the bark has against our fingers.
One's interpretation of one's raw experiences as emanating from a tree may be mistaken. One can also have an illusory memory of a raw experience of a visual pattern or roughness against one's fingers. But one's current experience of the pattern or the roughness cannot be mistaken.
I would describe this as a persistent experience. I have felt warm, consistently, for a while, and conclude inductively that I will continue to do so in the near future. So I say "I feel warm". Likewise with the back ache, it has been persistent in the recent past, and I infer that it will continue, I conclude "my back is sore".
I believe that this is how we use inductive reasoning to produce conclusions about what "is". We have notice in the past that the sky has been blue. This is persistent, and so we have good reason to believe that the sky will continue to be blue in the future. We conclude "the sky is blue". All the objects which exist around us, we have noticed a certain continuity of their existences in the recent past, so we assume that they will continue to exist into the near future, therefore we say there "is" a chair over there, and there "is" a table over there, etc. The "is", appears to refer to the present, but it really refers to what we have noticed in the past, and we conclude by induction, will continue into the future.
Quoting andrewk
So I think you're somewhat wrong to say "one's current experience ... cannot be mistaken". First, I don't think there really is such a thing as one's current experience, it's a subjective division of time to say what is "current". So this assumption, of a current experience, is itself mistaken. As described above, that which is current, "what is", is itself an interpretation of what has been, and utilizing a very basic form of induction, we claim it will continue to be. But we know that induction is not beyond doubt, so the interpretations which we call "current experience", may well be mistaken.
In other words, what I'm referring to is the awareness that you'd not say is in the past.
Right, I wouldn't say that awareness is exclusively in the past, because I am also aware of some things which will occur in the future.
But if we just consider sense awareness here, I realize that everything which I am sensing is necessarily in the past by the time that I am aware of it, because sensing is an activity which takes time.
This is why I must conclude that my awareness is in the future as well as in the past, because if I was only aware of what I've sensed, I would not be able react quickly to get out of the way when something is coming at me. All my actions, my "doing things", indicate to me that my awareness is just as much in the future as it is in the past. My awareness of my sensations is an awareness of what has been, in the past, but my activities of moving my body are an awareness of what will be, in the future.
So you'd say that awareness isn't in the past because you'd say it's in the past and the future?
It seems more accurate to say that your activities of moving your body are responses to a prediction of what would be in the future, given your awareness of your sensations and some assumptions about what they entail. The future is not yet actual, so you cannot (strictly speaking) be aware of it yet.
Right, I am aware of the past as well as the future. But I don't think my awareness can be in the present, because the present is an infinitesimally short period of time which divides future from past, which is so short that nothing can exist within it. Surely I am not aware of anything which occurs in a only Planck time length which would divide future from past. So I put these two things together, the fact that I am aware of both the past and future, and the fact that the present is too short of a period of time for me to be aware of anything, to produce the assumption that my awareness must be in the past and the future.
Quoting aletheist
No, I don't think that's the case at all. I definitely would not characterize it like that. When I am moving around doing things, typing on the keyboard, getting something to eat, etc., I am not responding to predictions about what would be in the future, my mind is actually in the future. My mind knows what I will type before it is typed, and it is not the case that it is responding to predictions about what could be, it is actively creating what will be in the future. My mind has the capacity to actually produce what will be, in the future. This is not a case of responding to predictions, it is a case of my mind being in the future, and ensuring that when that future comes to pass, for my senses, things will be, as my mind wants them to be.
Quoting aletheistI don't see how you can draw this conclusion. All the things which I have experienced, all the things which I have sensed, are in the past. I am fully aware of these things even though they are all in the past. What principle do you use to deny that I can be aware of things in the future? What principle allows you to say that being in the past is actual, but being in the future is not actual?
Your mind only knows what you (presently) intend to type. Something can (and sometimes does) interrupt you before you actually type it. When we debated whether final causes can be in the future, you took the position that this intention is the final cause of the outcome, and on that basis insisted that it must always be temporally prior to the outcome. Have you changed your mind about that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your mind has the capacity to imagine what would be produced in the future, if certain conditions come about; and only some of these are within your control. Unless you are omniscient and/or omnipotent, you cannot guarantee in the present what will be in the future.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because nothing is actual until it occurs. Modally speaking, the future is always possible, never actual. Claiming that the future is already actual amounts to determinism.
The final cause is temporally prior to the outcome in the same way that the future is temporally prior to the past. If you consider time itself, the time which will be in the past is always in the future before it is in the past. So for example, January 8th is in the future before it is in the past. So I haven't changed my mind, I just understand time in a different way from you. We can consider material things which exist in time, and those in the past are prior to those in the future, but if we take time itself, as an immaterial object, then any part of time itself, is always future time before it is past time. I understand that the future is always becoming the past, as time passes.
Quoting aletheist
Of course I cannot "guarantee" what will be, in the future, in any absolute sense, that's the point of the thread, we can always be mistaken. I might think that I am typing "mistaken", but actually type "mistakwn", or something like that. The capacity for my mind to produce what will be, physically, in the future, is very limited, because of the limitations of my body. But this does not mean that the capacity is not there.
Quoting aletheist
No, determinism is the claim that the actuality of the past determines absolutely what will happen in the future. I can claim that the future is actual, but it doesn't consist of material things, it is immaterial, without implying determinism. That is the advantage of dualism, we can appeal to two distinct actualities, material and immaterial.
So humans have an extra level of socially constructucted rationalising habit, based on language, that we use to structure experience - force it into rationalistic patterns that can account for everything in retroductive fashion. And also of course, a habit which we also use to control the body and its responses by setting up the novel states of constraint to which it must respond. So we can tell ourselves not to push that button until the light also turns green, or whatever other narrative constraint we might have reason to construct.
And then there is the biology of consciousness itself. The brain is an inductive predictive engine. It is always forward modelling to predict the future - predict the constraints on behaviour that will be coming from the direction of the lived environment.
So in terms of temporarility, the biological brain is pointed inductively at the future. It doesn't dwell on the past. It can't even dwell on the past. Animals don't reminisce. And the present only exists as the sum of a history. It forms the constraints that are the basis for future predicting. What has happened is done, but it in turn leaves open new possibility - the possibility into which the animal miind can creatively insert itself as an imagined player.
And then humans developed their new level of semiosis that allowed them to step outside of this natural flow and reconsider it in reasoned fashion. Through the structure of narrative, we can talk our way backwards in time to create a reasonable story about the past. That then gives us - or rather our cultures - the opportunity to build a quite different kind of psychology on top of the neural one. We can learn to think of our selves as "free willed, autonomous selves" ... who then can creatively insert themselves into the rather more abstract workings of a social community as an imagined player.
So the habit of retroductive explanation gives us the ability to now construct our own internal states of constraint. We can regulate our behaviour in a way that animals just can't. We can construct this thing of a personal identity, a collection of meaningful memories, a series of persistent purposes ... all done in our own name, but actually just reflecting our social construction.
Awareness is entropic induction. Self-awareness is negentropic retroduction. One looks continually to the future and runs down whatever is the easiest path. The other learns to act from "the past" and instead starts to devote itself to larger projects - the negentropic needs of the society which wants to shape "selves" as its tightly-regulated component parts.
So on your view, you don't exist at present, and you can exist in the future?
(If that's really your view, I'm tempted to not say anything in response to it, and to just let it sit as comedy material, as it would surely be one of the most incredibly stupid and/or insane stances I've ever heard)
Correct. I don't see how the present can be anything more than a point in time, which divides the future from the past, and therefore I think it's impossible that anything could exist at the present, a point in time. That I exist at the present is an illusion, I really exist partially in the past, and partially in the future. That is why I dispute you claim that we cannot be mistaken concerning our present experience, "present experience" itself is an illusion. Unless you are using "present" in a different way, I don't see how you can avoid this.
Would you mean "a point in time" in a mathematical sense, so basically something "zero dimensional"?
Here's another way to look at it. There's a principle called the relativity of simultaneity which is commonly cited against presentism. It indicates that events which are simultaneous from one frame of reference are not simultaneous from another frame of reference. Therefore if we produce a baseline of events which corresponds with "the present", some events would be present from one frame of reference but not from another. So, since my hands and feet are often moving in different directions relative to other parts of my body, I don't see how there could be one single "present", which is proper to my entire self. Therefore I don't think it is proper to say that my self has a present experience.
Why in the world would you take it to represent that? First off, the whole idea of a real zero-dimensional point is completely absurd. It's a useful concept in the language game that is mathematics, but there's no reason to take the game to correlate to reality in this respect.
I answered what the present is when you asked me the first time. The present is the changes/motion that are occurring. The past is the changes/motion that have occurred but that are no longer occurring. The future is the changes/motion that will occur, but that haven't occurred yet.
And yes, this is relative to situatedness. That's not a point against it. It's a fact about what the world is like.
Well I don't agree with this at all. All changes or motions require a period of time to occur in. That time may be in the past, in which case the change is in the past, that time may be in the future, in which case the change is in the future. If that change or motion is currently occurring, as you say for the present, then part of the change is in the past and part of it is in the future.
So I think you are just trying to set up a vague notion of the present, according to which, changes are occurring, but you cannot differentiate which part of the change is in the past and which part of the change is in the future. If you cannot differentiate between which part of the change is in the past, from which part of the change is in the future, then you cannot be mistaken with respect to that judgement, simply because you refuse to make that judgement. This denial, I assert is itself a mistake.
:-} What did I just write?
They don't require a period of time--they are what time is in the first place. Time isn't something separate from changes/motion.
That's stated as if you don't comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of how to use the language you're communicating in. If it's currently occurring there's no part in the past. The parts in the past are the changes that occurred. Again, the idea of a mathematical point is nonsense in terms of external existents.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you don't simply ignore what I wrote, I already did this twice.
The "morphing" is the present.
That you'd see this as suggesting that there's no present rather than saying "per this way of systematically thinking about things, it suggests there's no present, therefore we must have royally fucked up somehow with this approach to systematic thinking" is ridiculous. That's the worst sort of theory worship.
There is no category mistake here. The claim has ben made that we cannot be mistaken concerning our present experiences. But if fundamental physics demonstrates to us that "the present" is just an illusion, then "present experience" is itself a mistaken concept.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I am currently pouring myself a coffee. The starting of the pouring is in the past, and the end of the pouring is in the future. That's stated as if you don't comprehend the most rudimentary aspects of how to use the language you're communicating in.
Sorry to have to inform you Terrapin, but unless you can demonstrate a currently occurring event which has no part in the past, and no part in the future, your assertions amount to nonsense.
How would this not just amount to playing the game of whether you can respond to any suggestion by saying that part of any present change or motion is in the past?
In any event, for any x, if you say that currently x is occurring, then x isn't in the past, whatever x is, or you're equivocating. That is, at least as you have a first grade competence in English.
Oy vey. Yeah, well if you say that complete nonsense is a fact it must be. Great argument.
This wasn't a rhetorical question:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
We’re in agreement with this.
I think what most of the others are getting at is that, were the present as we experience it to be real, our non-illusory sense of the present would not of itself resolve the many problems in physics regarding the nature of time.
This can be viewed in parallel to Zeno’s paradoxes: I choose to believe there’s something wrong with the conceptual premises of the paradoxes rather than choosing to believe that motion/change is itself a nonreality. This, though, doesn’t in itself resolve Zeno’s paradoxes … and the premises used for the paradox are common to measurements/maths of space and time; e.g. geometric points, lines, etc.
Look, an experience is not a phenomenon in fundamental physics but biology. Is there any benefit in interpreting biological phenomena in terms of fundamental physics? I don't think so. Concepts such as the present, the past, apples, experiences etc. might be of little interest or "mistaken" even in descriptions of fundamental physics. Yet they clearly make sense in biology, or in the logic of ordinary language in which statements about the past are logically distinguishable from statements about the present or the future. For an experience which relies on the present features of an object in your visual field it matters little whether their presence refers to some absolute point in time or not.
. . . then "fundamental physics" has a serious flaw.
Some who refuse to recognize this, claim that we can be mistaken with respect to the past, and mistaken with respect to the future, but we cannot be mistaken with respect to out present experience. But clearly this is wrong if what we refer to as the present is nothing more than part past and part future.
It’s interesting to me that when taken verbatim, the same can be upheld for a metaphysics of presentism. I’m not confusing your metaphysics with that of any presentism. It’s just that for presentism to be consistent, the present will logically contain both past and future.
Here, though, the psyches/sentience of all living beings would be somewhat prioritized, this in all its horrid splendor of complexity. In simple terms, for example, when two or more sentient beings in any way interact, their frame of spatiotemporal reference will synchronize, and this may be further argued to result in the past being fixed, the present being a reality of active interaction, and the future being a realm of possibilities contingent on the fixedness of the past in conjunction with the interactions of the present. And, of course, this can all be constrained by a holistic telos that interacts with all the particulars of any given present.
This is closer to my own current affinities, and not a projection upon what you're saying, of course.
… but the problems are always in the details.
Yes, that I believe is the only way to create a valid presentism. What validates "the present" as something real is the very real difference between future and past. Since future and past are radically different, we must assume a division between them, a boundary, and this is the present. This "present" which is assumed as a logical conclusion from the premise that future and past are radically different, cannot be a dimensionless point on a linear timeline, because we have to allow for the human being's experience of existing at the present, and nothing could exist at a dimensionless point in time.
Quoting javra
A new trend in presentism is to give the present a separate temporal dimension, I call it breadth. From this assumption, time has two dimensions. There is the familiar temporal dimension which is the directional line or arrow which we are all familiar with, traditional time, but also there is width to that line, which allows for the activities of the present. It can be described like this. At the present, the future is continuously becoming the past. The moment in the future from now rapidly becomes the moment in the past from now, as the now of the present appears to change its temporal location. But we should not represent this as the now moving, the now is our static reference point, what is changing is that future time is becoming past time. As a "becoming", this is a process which itself takes time. So this "becoming", the "active interaction" of the present must have temporal dimension itself, to allow for such activity at the present. Therefore we need to introduce a second dimension of time to account for this activity which occurs at the present, which itself is a fixed division between past and future. What happens is that the present is now not a dimensionless point, but a point with its own dimension.
The issue is that the cannot find a present within a process. It is impossible. There is no instantaneous non-motion within a continuous motion. Try as anyone might, it is impossible to b stop the passage of time (motion) to create a present. It is gone into the past memory. The notion of present has to be jetisoned, otherwise one has to deal with Zeno's paradox. There is no instantaneous moment of now or present. It doesn't exist. What there is is a continuous, process of flux. Actually, Heraclitus had it right.
I would say that "Living in the Now" one form of theory worship. What we are living in is constant change. Constant, never stopping, no matter how much one wish to measure or idolize the Present, it simply cannot be done.
I like that. Rather than a geometric point, a sphere whose volume is in perpetual flux may be a better mapping of the present’s breadth. This fits in well with my current views.
There’s the present of experience. Then there’s the objective present of the physical world—which, as per what relativity expresses, can be more complex than not.
The present of experience, what William James termed the “specious present”, is always in flux. In listening to some sound, say a birdsong, there’s the breadth of time that the duration of song is within the experienced present prior to it becoming experienced memory. We like to quantify time. Nevertheless, in listening to a bird’s chirp (simpler than a melody or a conversation) there’s always an extended duration of the present moment that is not itself quantifiable. It’s not moment 1; stop of moment 1 and start of moment 2; moment 2; etc. It’s a fluid transition without discernable, temporal parts—resulting in a fluid whole that nevertheless is. What’s more, the present moment consists—at least in part—of the same fluid transition to an extended duration applicable to all that is taken in by all senses and introspections. Furthermore, part of what I mean to say by the experienced present moment being in flux is that this extension of the present moment can be wider or narrower—this to certain limitations. For example, an intense stimuli will be brief and acute, often resulting in narrower duration of the experienced present moment relative to what is normal.
So while I find the breadth of the experienced present to be in flux I nevertheless deem it present to awareness; in other words, the experienced moment is to me real and not specious.
The difficulties for me are in going from an acknowledgment that all sentience (and not only sapience) experiences some breadth of the present—this by definition due to their capacity to sense/perceive information—to … well, to physical time (aka objective time). But, again, if each sentient being is its own frame of reference, then objective time would in one way or another unfold due to simultaneity resulting from interactions … similar enough to what relativity endorses.
Eah, a difficult topic. Thanks for the heads up as to the new research in presentism. I’ll do my best to look into it.
Why would you be trying to peg an "instantaneous non-motion" though? Again, the present is the changes that are occurring from a particular reference "point" or situatedness.
By the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle, X is never both Y and not-Y at the same time, and X is always either Y or not-Y at any assignable time. Suppose that X is Y at time T1 and not-Y at time T2; i.e., X changes from Y to not-Y sometime between T1 and T2. There can be no particular instant of time between T1 and T2 when X is changing from Y to not-Y; it is always either one or the other, and never both. Hence if everything is particular, including time, then there is no "present" at which changes "are occurring," just discrete instants before and after each change.
In such case, your Present, is a process of constant change. There is no instanteous but a movement that represents all that has happened and where it is flowing into. This is fine, as long as it is recognized that there is no state that one can refer to as a Present but rather a continuous flow. It is simply a reimagining of the concept of Present from a state to a flow. However, there is no reference point. Everything is in flux.
Represents?
Anyway, I wouldn't say that's it's not a state or that it's not the present. States are dynamic. I also would say that it's a "reimagining" of what "present" refers to. I'd say that the misnomer is that it's "instantaneous non-motion"
It's not that the present is something at which changes are occurring. The present is the changes that are occurring. It's like you guys can't help but think in terms of mathematical points and stasis.
States can be considered the condition of something at a particular time. Embracing this view, that is the instantaneous time, is what manifests the Zeno' paradoxes. If your imagining of Present had no instant, has no state, and had no reference point, then it simply creates a flowing "present" from the past moving into some future. This is quite different than what one can imagine had the Now.
However, if your present can be harness as a stoppage of the flow, with a reference point, and a state, then you are back to Zenos paradox with nothing moving or changing. In other words, time has to be envisioned as a continuous flow or we have paradoxes. You can refer to this for as the Present if you wish. Bergson used the word Dureé.
If everything is particular, then there are no "changes that are occurring." If everything is always either P or not-P, then nothing is ever in some intermediate state of changing from P to not-P. The occurrence of the change is what distinguishes one discrete instant from the next, and there are no instants between them to label as "the present."
Okay, but time is (identical to) change or motion, so there is no "particular time" without change or motion.
There are no real points, period. It's just a mathematical construct.
This doesn't blur the present with the past or future. Again, the present is the changes that are happening as opposed to the changes that happened or the changes that will happen. That doesn't imply that there's no relative fuzziness there, either, but it doesn't make the present the same as the past and/or future.
Again, "particular" is the opposite of there being something that's identically instantiated in numerically distinct entities. Are we clear on that?
And another again, no one is talking about point-like "instants"--are we clear on that, too?
Sure, but what does that have to do with my objection? Do you deny that everything is always - i.e., at all times - either P or not-P, where P is some particular property?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Did you mean point-like "instants"? Let me put it this way instead: If something changes from P to not-P, then there is a time T1 at which it is P and a time T2 at which it is not-P, with no time in between during which it "is changing" from P to not-P.
I think you will have to think it through, since it seems you want to distinguish a Present (a particular state) from a past (I won't get into the notion of a "future"). If the two just blend into each other as a flow, then you are simply using a different word for Bergson's Dureé. The only problem then is the word you choose to represent the process since most commonly the Present would be used to describe an instantaneous that can be distinguished from the Past. I'm not sure whether or not you are actually trying to do this. If you are, it simply cannot be done in a continuous flow.
What it has to do with it is that the only way that something can not be a particular, then, is by there being something that's identically instantiated in numerically distinct entities. The issue has nothing to do with anything else. Either there's something that's identically instantiated in numerically distinct entites or there isn't. If there isn't, we're talking about particulars (per this definition of what particulars are).
Quoting aletheist
I'm fine with that insofar as it goes.
Quoting aletheist
I don't see any difference between the supposedly two things you're proposing. You've got P, then a change or motion, and we've got not-P.
Maybe you could be more patronizing. Why are you assuming that I haven't thought this through far more than you have?
Quoting Rich
It's not a want. It's what the world is like. There are changes that are occurring versus changes that occurred.
Quoting Rich
That's your claim. In my opinion that claim is wrong. I'm not using "present" in an unusual way.
I cannot find the line between the two different states, but apparently you have.
Said as if you didn't even read this sentence: "That doesn't imply that there's no relative fuzziness there, either, but it doesn't make the present the same as the past and/or future."
How is that not a difference? X is P before the change, and X is not-P after the change, but there is no time in between when X is changing from P to not-P. The occurrence of the change itself is how you define time, so there is no "present" during which the change "is occurring." Of course, technically X is no longer X after the change, since it is a different particular precisely because it is then not-P rather than P. So we really have X is P before the change, and not-X is not-P after the change, but there is still no time in between when X is changing into not-X by virtue of changing from P to not-P.
It's that relative fuzziness that sinks the ship. Or as is often said, you can't have your cake and eat it.
It's the "it doesn't make the present the same as the past and/or future" that doesn't sink the ship. You need to read the entire sentence.
I read the entire sentence, and you are trying to have your cake and eat it. This is an entirely different issue which I cannot address. That is what philosophy is all about.
Look, I'm just repeating myself, because it's like you're not paying attention to or not understanding (and not caring that you're not understanding) what I'm writing. What good does it do for you to keep responding with objections that are met by the same thing I typed already?
There's no present at which a change is occurring--as if the present is something not identical to the changes that are occurring. So it's correct that there's no present at which (time) the changes are occurring. Well, why is that correct? Because the changes that are occurring ARE the present. You can't say there's no present when the logical identity of the present IS the changes that are occurring. If there are changes that are occuring, that IS the present.
I'm the one who'd be teaching you what philosophy is about.
As you said, there is a certain "fuzziness" in your ideas. Indeed there is.
I am paying attention, and I am trying to understand, but you are simply dismissing my objection rather than answering it. As I see it, on your view, there can be no changes that are occurring (present tense); they always either occurred in the past (X was P, but now X is not-P), or will occur in the future (X is now P, but will be not-P). In the present, as at all other times, X must be either P or not-P; it can never be changing from P to not-P (or vice-versa).
If the present IS the changes that are occurring, where is the above claim coming from?
And actually, this discussion has been helpful re clarifying one thing: saying that "x is F (or "P" if you like, although I prefer to save "P" for propositions) at time T1" is necessarily an abstraction where we're imagining time to be something where we can peg a specific "point" (like a mathematical point) or a static "instant." In reality, the idea is incoherent, as what time is in the first place is change or motion. So if we don't have change or motion, we don't have time at all.
This is also a good thing to stress when folks are wondering what I'm saying different than the traditional physics notions when I say that time is identical to change or motion, or when they think that there's a problem with my ontology of time simply because it doesn't match the normal way of thinking about time in physics.
For your view to be consistent, changes never are occurring; they always either have occurred (X was P, but now not-X is not-P) or will occur (X is P, but soon not-X will be not-P).
What view, specifically, are you referring to? (I'm asking because I'm not confident that you could answer this, because what you say after this isn't at all something I agree with.)
Quoting aletheist
Quoting Terrapin Station
What can we say about X and P while the change is occurring?
That was YOUR view that you were asking for agreement on.
I wrote this (although I added it as an edit so maybe you didn't see it) in my second to last post above:
Quoting Terrapin Station
For me, there is no issue in understanding this as it has been very well described by Bergson in his initial writings and has been amplified by subsequent writers on this subject. There is this ongoing debate on the nature of time, and I am quite comfortable with Bergson's Dureé, while also understanding the usefulness of scientific time when it comes to measuring and predicting simultaneity within acceptable and achievable tolerance levels.
The issue is your attempt to carve out a Present within a flowing time. It simply cannot be done without creating an instance that stops all motion and time. This is the area of fuzziness sinks the Present ship by no means sinks the concept of time as a flow.
So you'd say that there are no changes that are occurring?
Yes, changes are occurring as a process of the past (Bergson's Memory) moving and flowing into a potential future, which is unfolding as a result of this process. Again, I underscore, the one and only issue is attempting to carve out a Present within this continuous flow.
Okay, but the changes that are occurring aren't in the past, are they? You know that in English, when we speak of the past, we say changes that occurred, right?
No, I did not see that edit.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Suppose a universe in which there is only one thing, x, and only one property, F. "Initially," x is F, but "later," x is not-F. According to your definition, the only "time" in this universe is "when" x changes from F to not-F. Are you saying, then, that there is only the present in this hypothetical universe, no past (when x is F) or future (when x is not-F)?
The changes are occurring as a continuous process, which is why Bergson chose to call the process the Dureé. He jetison's the concept of the Present since it falls into the scientific trap of an instantaneous moment within a constant flow. This, using scientific time, i.e. the concept of instants, leads to paradoxes.
Your Present is actually Bergson's Dureé.
What I was curious about was this: Okay, but the changes that are occurring aren't in the past, are they? If you're not interested in answering that, I'm not really interested in what you have to say.
You are insisting on a past, present, and future carved out of a continuous flow of time in some fuzzy way. Sorry, I don't even know where to begin to respond to such a question without being pulled into fuzziness. Something in your model has to give or forever remain in the Purgatory of fuzziness.
I'm just asking you a question. I'm simply trying to clarify that you wouldn't say that changes that are occurring are literally in the past. And if you would say that they're in the past, I'd wonder why you're saying that they're changes that are occurring rather than changes that occurred, because you'd be doing something very strange relative to the conventions of English.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Okay, suppose now that x constantly changes back and forth between F and not-F. There is only time whenever x changes from F to not-F or vice-versa. What can we say about x with respect to F "during" that time? How much time has elapsed after, say, a million changes?
The Present creates an instance of rest within a flow. Hence, we are back to Zeno's paradoxes. As I said, you appear to want to have a flow and an instance within the flow called the Present. I cannot see how you are accomplishing this, but apparently you are satisfied that you have done it.
You'd only have x for a time measurement. It would depend on how many changes you want to count as your time unit. You could say that a million units of time passed, or however you'd like to measure it.
(By the way, when we do thought experiments like this, we have to do the incoherent thing of imagining ourselves to be in a world where we're not supposed to exist, so that we're making decisions about how many changes we're going to count as a time unit and so on, but it's normal to fudge the fantasy in such a way and we don't usually question that . . . I'm just bringing it up so that we're aware that we have to change the fantasy a bit to answer a question like "how much time elapsed")
How about not being an asshole and answering the question I asked you instead?
Now you are resorting to vulgarity. The ship has sunk.
You've been resorting to vulgarity for quite a few posts now, with the extremely rude, arrogant way you interact.
Right. Notice that your view thus requires time to be discrete, since every "lapse" of time requires an actual change. If nothing changes, then no time passes.
However, that was not the only question that I asked ...
Quoting aletheist
If that's what you call "discrete," then sure, it's aletheist-discrete.
I'll take it that you're not literally asking what we can say about x with respect to F (as we can say all sorts of things, such as imagining time to be a "point" etc.--as I explained above), but rather, "What is the case with F at that time." The answer to that is: "F is changing to not-F, or not-F is changing to F, or F is changing to not-F and then back to F" or whatever the case may be for the time that we're focusing on.
It is what any normal English-speaker calls "discrete." My dictionary defines it as "consisting of distinct or unconnected elements : noncontinuous," "taking on or having a finite or countably infinite number of values." If we can (in principle) count the individual changes that constitute time, then time is discrete.
Quoting Terrapin Station
In that case, there is no time when x is F, and there is no time when x is not-F; it is "always" changing from one to the other. But we agreed previously that it is "always" the case that x is either F or not-F. Which is it?
I wouldn't say that it's unconnected though, and as I mentioned awhile ago re the issue of discreteness in general, I'm agnostic on it, and I don't think it matters for any of my views.
Discreteness certainly wouldn't hinge on what we are counting or can count. That's about us, not what the world is like independent of us.
Quoting aletheist
Right. Again, time ONLY obtains when we have change or motion, since that's what time is. So you can ask yourself, "Is such and such changing?" If the answer is "No," then you can know that I'd say, "There is no time (in that scenario)."
I've typed out my comment on this two times already. Here it is again:
Quoting Terrapin Station
So I'm only agreeing that we can talk that way via an abstraction we perform.
Hi TS. I had a busy weekend and couldn't get back to you.
First know that, in all that I say, I am arguing a contrarian position and not my own. I am a realist (of sorts) and believe that not only do we have experiences, but that our experiences reflect an external world. I will continue however with the argument I have been making here - that we can doubt our experiences.
I have stated that I believe all knowledge to be narrative. What I mean by this is that we do not have direct access to our experiences. We must place them in narrative form - name them, describe them - in order for our experiences to become known to us.
Have you ever wondered why the Selective Attention Test works? (Just Google it - some great videos can be found.) The unseen gorilla is certainly part of the video, but the first time we see the video, the gorilla does not become part of our narrative and remains unknown to us. So can we say that we experienced the gorilla or not?
You must attend to an experience to make it known. And attending means making it part of your narrative. Otherwise, it is as if the experience never occurs.
But what I'm referring to with "phenomenal experiences" is exactly what, and only what, you're aware of. So whatever you have "access to" as you'd put it. Just that, and only that.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
If you're not aware of it, you do NOT have phenomenal experience of the gorilla. You only have that when you are aware of it.
And all I'm saying that is that you can not doubt your present phenomenal experience as your present phenomenal experience.
If no time passes while x is F or x is not-F, then how are the different changes between these two states of affairs connected? As I mentioned a while ago, I think that your views entail that time is discrete, and I have tried to illustrate that with this example.
Quoting Terrapin Station
It is about whether reality constitutes a collection of (only) particulars, as you claim. Counting is one way that we represent particularity.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Which basically defines time such that there is a "present," but still does not explain how something can be ongoing as the present tense of "is changing" would indicate.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Are you saying that the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle are only mental abstractions, such that they do not apply within reality itself?
They form a time unit for x, for one.
Quoting aletheist
Is discrete time temporally contiguous, with no "gap" in between?
Quoting aletheist
It has nothing to do with whether reality consists of particulars versus universals on the traditional view of particulars versus universals. Apparently, though, Peirce refashions the discussion into a discussion about whether things are continuous or discrete. So in that refashioning, it would have something to do with it. On the discussion of whether things are continuous or discrete, again, I'm an agnostic. I don't think it makes any difference for anything. (Well, maybe aside from assumptions about that making a difference for applied science and mathematics.)
Quoting aletheist
The present is one change or set of changes occurring relative to another change or another set of changes.
Quoting aletheist
Well, yeah, of course--you could have simply asked me that in the first place. I'm an anti-realist on logic and mathematics. Logic and mathematics are languages we've invented for thinking about relations with a high degree of abstraction (abstractions being something that's purely mental).
So, whatever is happening inside a person's head at any given moment is their (present phenomenal) experience. That idea is, of course, unfalsifiable - but also useless. Certainly other things can happen inside one's head - memories, dreams, hallucinations - which do not seem to be experiences, or are they?
Yes, those are phenomenal experiences.
I didn't say the idea was useful for anything. It's simply the way in which we can be not be mistaken about our own experiences.
How is that a real connection between the two changes? As you noted, we can only "count" those units from "outside" that hypothetical world. There is also the whole issue of whether x is really still x after each change from F to not-F or vice-versa; if so, then that would seem to entail multiple instantiations (x as F, x as not-F) of the identical thing (x), which is why I see the problem of universals as relevant.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, because you are saying that each change corresponds to a distinct time, and there is no time in between those changes. Time as a whole is thus a discrete collection of actual changes.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So as an actual thing, apart from our thoughts about it, x can be both F and not-F, and x can be neither F nor not-F?
Time does not equal our counting. I never said anything suggesting that. Time is real. It's the real changes or motions of matter and structures of matter. So that's how it's a real connection.
What equals our counting is a particular measurement of time. That's different than time itself.
Quoting aletheist
Yeah, in my view it's x and x' (x and x-prime). Also, I think that the idea of "substances" that have properties, where the two aren't identical, is incoherent. That's a related issue, but I didn't want to get into too many things at once. It's better to keep things as focused as possible in my opinion.
Quoting aletheist
??
Where am I saying anything about "distinct" time? Not that I'd necessarily not say that, but I'm not even sure I know what saying it would amount to. The same thing goes for a lot of talk about continuous versus discrete. At any rate, I'm definitely saying that time is temporally contiguous, with no gap in between. I don't know if that's "distinct" or not.
Quoting aletheist
As an actual thing, it's not the same as our logical/mathematical language. So we can't ask a question about it as if it were. Aside from that, as I noted above a couple times, when we talk about x being F at time Tx, we're engaging in an abstraction that's not representative of what the world is like, since time is change or motion, not some mathematical point.
If x is F and x' is not-F, is the next step that x is F again or that x'' is F (and so on)?
Quoting Terrapin Station
When x changes from F to not-F and when x' changes from not-F to F are distinct times, not the same time, right?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You lost me here. Time cannot be contiguous if it is defined simply as change, because it only "exists" in our scenario as the change from F to not-F or vice-versa, not anything in between. It is just like a series of alternating binary digits, where 0 corresponds to the change from F to not-F and 1 corresponds to the change from not-F to F. There is nothing at all between each pair (01 or 10).
Quoting Terrapin Station
As I have suggested elsewhere, it seems that we then have no knowledge of the actual thing, since all of our cognition involves our logical/mathematical language.
x is F and then x' if not-F and then x'' is F' and then x''' is not-F' and so on.
Quoting aletheist
They're different times, yes, if that's all you were getting at.
Quoting aletheist
Which means that it's contiguous from time 1 to time 2 with no gap in between. Contiguity being a direct, "touching" connection. We could just as well say that it's like a line, say, with time 1 and time 2 as contiguous "points" on the line.
Quoting aletheist
I keep meaning to go back to that post and answer it, but I keep answering these other posts instead and not getting around to it. I don't at all agree that we can only know universals and saying that all of our cognition involves logical/mathematical language seems especially bonkers to me.
Let the record show that you introduced this diagram. Remember, on my view a truly continuous line has potential points exceeding all multitude between any two actual points. This is because two points can only be contiguous if they are (actually) indistinct but (potentially) distinguishable. Even if we marked points corresponding to all of the real numbers - rational and irrational - on a continuous number line, there would still be an inexhaustible supply of potential points in between each of them. Your definition of time as (actual) change thus entails that it cannot be continuous in this way; it must be discrete.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Can you give me an example of cognition that does not involve logical/mathematical language, or at least some kind of general representation?
Ah, I got your point after sending the last comment. To use realist language, we might say : Light waves reflected from a tree come into contact with your eye. But what happens at the eye is not your experience of the tree. Your experience of the tree is what happens in your brain.
The unseen gorilla is qualia, what you are aware of is your experience.
How does this amendment strike you : Experiences may be undeniable, but we may doubt qualia. Is that better? What do you think?
Imagine standing before a painting at your local museum. As you study it, you notice finer and finer details - the use of shadow, the brush strokes, the composition. Clearly your experience of the painting changes. But the qualia have not changed - the colors, the shapes. And it is those qualia that you do not have direct access to. (Notice that your experience is what I have been calling narrative - your story of the painting.)
Note that I put the word "point" in quotation marks. Again, mathematics isn't/mathematical objects aren't real. There are no real "zero dimensional" things. The very idea of that is incoherent. All I'm saying is that you could just as well represent time with a line, and different, adjacent times are thus two "points" on the line. That works just as well as saying that it's binary.
Re this: "f they are (actually) indistinct but (potentially) distinguishable," "if they are actually not different but potentially different" just reads like nonsense to me.
Quoting aletheist
Sure. For example, when I just looked at this fake rat I have on top of my computer. (It's like a plastic/slightly rubbery rat, a souvenir from the Florida Panthers hockey team, just in case you're wondering why I have a fake rat on top of my computer, haha.)
I'd say that what you can doubt in the vein you're shooting for are what the real things are like that your experiences are correlated with, or that triggered/catalyzed your experiences.
You can also doubt that you're remembering how you normally use concepts, terms, etc.
You say there can be no such thing as a dimensionless point instant, right? So presumably the present must, for you, either have duration, or be duration itself. If the present has or is duration, then it must be, at least logically, divisible into prior and succeeding parts, no?
Only if you concede that there is some distance between the two "adjacent" points. They are not and cannot be contiguous, any more than the zeroes and ones in an alternating string of binary digits can be contiguous. There is a reason why analog and digital are not the same.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Looking at the fake rat is perception, not cognition. When you judge that you are seeing a fake rat, you are already representing it, and that judgment is the first premiss of any subsequent reasoning about it. You cannot think about the fake rat (or anything else) without representing it somehow.
(I have to ask - why on earth would a team called the Panthers give out fake rats?)
It "is duration," I suppose. It is a swath of time. Namely, the present is one change or set of changes occurring relative to another change or another set of changes. You could think of that as being divisible into "parts," sure, although if you think of it being divisible into a nonchanging part, you're no longer talking about time, and you're just invoking an abstraction.
The temporal "points" in question ARE contiguous. (And this is like the third or fourth time I've said this.)
Re the difference between analog and digital, that can't hinge on zero dimensional points in the real world because there are no such things. So, for example, analog recording/analog tape doesn't involve zero dimensional points in any manner. Maybe on some fine-grained ontological level, there is no real difference between analog and digital recording. I don't know.
Quoting aletheist
Maybe you have some unusual definition of cognition in mind, but I wouldn't say that cognition doesn't include perception. A general dictionary definition of cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses." When I look at the rat on my computer, I'm acquiring knowledge--that it's there, for example; that it looks like it does; that it feels as it does, etc.
Quoting aletheist
I don't agree with that in the slightest. I don't buy representational theories of perception. I'm a direct realist on phil of perception.
Quoting aletheist
Their old home arena was infested with rats. The players used to chase them around the locker room with their hockey sticks. Word of that got out, and fans started bringing rubber rats to games. When the team would win, the fans would throw the rats onto the ice. At first the team tried to discourage it, but it became a tradition and part of the team culture so that they incorporated rat stuff into other things with the team, too, and they started selling their own fake rats to throw on the ice, etc., and this has continued even after they moved into a new arena.
No matter how many times you say it, it will always be incoherent to me. If time is defined strictly as the change from F to not-F or vice-versa, then the points that represent these changes cannot be contiguous, they must be discrete. Time (no pun intended) to call it an impasse, I suspect.
Quoting Terrapin Station
"That it's there" is a judgment; "that it looks like it does" is a judgment; "that it feels as it does" is a judgment. On my view, only the percept itself is brute; all subsequent steps, beginning with these kinds of judgments, involve representation. This will probably just result in another impasse, I suspect.
Hockey fans are weird.
If you can think of it as "divisible into parts" and the parts are prior or subsequent to other parts, then the present contains elements which are past and future in relation to one another. How 'wide' is the duration that is the present moment; and what determines its 'width'?
This is very similar to the example Aristotle used to demonstrate why we need to allow exceptions to the law of excluded middle. Without the exception, "becoming", and all change, is unintelligible. If something changes from not-Y to Y, then if we adhere to the law of excluded middle, there is no time in between, when the thing is changing, or "becoming" Y. Sophists were accused of adhering to the laws of logic in order to produce absurd conclusions such as in your example. Therefore it was established that we should allow exceptions to the law of excluded middle in order that change and becoming may be considered as real.
Exceptions are only necessary when an underlying model creates uncomfortable paradoxes, e.g. the Zeno paradoxes.
In the Bergsonian model, change is in duration, not between some moments in time. Continuous, indivisible, heterogeneous change is synonymous with duration which we feel as some memory transforms into a different memory. That is how we can feel our own continuous existence. There are no in-between moments in such a movement from one memory into another. This time is not a series of simultaneities in space, e.g. clock movements, but rather time is felt as some change in duration.
The very post of mine that you're respoding to contained the answer:
Quoting Terrapin Station
So, for example, take change A, from x to y. If B changes from 1 through 10 during A's change from x to y, then B's 1 through 10 is A's present.
That's the same thing if A is the set of changes from m to y (m, n, o . . . ), B's 1 through 10 is A's present.
In other words, it's relative to our reference frame (<
"Contiguous" means "sharing a common border; touching" or "neighboring; adjacent." or "next in time or sequence." So one change to another is necessarily continguous temporally. There's nothing between them so that those two changes are not adjacent to each other, next in sequence, etc.
Quoting aletheist
If that's a judgment in aletheist-speak, I have no idea what "judgment" refers to in aletheist-speak.
Okay, I am thinking of contiguous in the sense of melding into one another so as to be indistinct. In that sense, two discrete things cannot be contiguous.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I see no need for us to go down this road right now. Like I said, it probably would only lead to another impasse anyway.
Well, in that case, you simply can't have any two contiguous things no matter what. You could only have one contiguous thing . . . although I don't think that makes any sense at all with respect to the word "contiguous." Contiguity is a relation. And while I wouldn't say that we can't have a relation of a thing to itself, I'm not sure if I'd agree that you can have any relation of a thing to itself other than identity, and even that's really just a way of speaking/thinking insofar as it being a relation goes.
You can in a true continuum, since every part of it is also a true continuum; e.g., the parts of a truly continuous line are also truly continuous lines, not points. I agree that your view precludes there being such a thing as a real continuum of this kind.
Then a continuum can't be something with no distinguishable parts. The concept as you're expressing it is incoherent.
Actually indistinct, but potentially distinguishable - like the drops of water in the picture that @Rich posted, except that the number of drops is finite, rather than inexhaustible.
It could only potentially have distinguishable parts. It couldn't have potentially distinguishable parts.
The former is saying that there are no parts, but there could be, at which point we wouldn't be talking about a continuum.
The latter is saying that there are parts, which have the property of being potentially distinguishable. You couldn't have that.
However, you said, "You can in a true continuum, since every part of it is also a true continuum." That's incoherent. A continuum, per the definition you gave, can not have parts. It could only potentially have parts, at which point--the point where it does have parts of some sort, it would no longer be a continuum.
Re the picture, either it has water droplets in it or it doesn't (I'd say it doesn't--what it actually has is pixels for example). It doesn't potentially have water droplets.
I don't know if you're maybe thinking of something like "If we were there in person, we'd not immediately be able to distinguish whether there are individual water droplets, but upon investigation with a microscope for example, wed be able to tell that there are individual water droplets." But that would be about how we interact with something, not what it is ontologically.
By the way, we haven't even started to analyze potential/possible--what those things really refer to ontologically. But that's going to just be another big mess.
Sure it could; as potential individuals, they are not distinct within the continuum, but they are capable of being distinguished by being actualized.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Sure it can; they just are also continua, not discrete singulars.
Quoting Terrapin Station
In a body of water - a glass, a bowl, a pond, a lake, an ocean, whatever - there are no distinct drops, but they are (in principle) capable of being distinguished. That is all I was saying.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, so let's not go there, at least not for a few days.
Waves are continuous within themselves.
However, issues arise when one attempts to measure/identify a wave. Where does it begin and where does it end? Similarly one might think of memory (experiences) in duration as an undivided, ever changing whole, with no way to precisely define where a memory or experience begins or ends. It all flows and permeates each other. This flow of memory/experience is time. It is literally what we are feeling as we experience time.
There is an issue with contiguity and identity in relation to a thing's existence in time. We assume that the same identified thing exists through a period of time despite some minor changes to that thing. This is the principle of identity as presented by Aristotle, the identity of the thing is within the material thing itself, not the form of the thing, which may be changing. So the identified thing exists through a duration of time.
Now if the thing is changing, we can say that at one moment it exist with that form, and at a later moment it has this, slightly different form. Aletheist has been arguing that these two distinct forms must be temporally contiguous, that at one moment the thing has one form, and at the very next moment it has the other form. However, this position is what creates the absurdity pointed out by Aristotle. It leaves no time for the change from the first form to the second form, to have actually occurred. Therefore under this perspective "activity" is impossible. So we must be prepared to accept that such moments in time are not contiguous. But this lack of contiguity threatens the integrity of the thing's identity which is based in the assumed continuity of existence of the thing.
You might remember from other discussions (although not with you) that I don't buy identity through time. In my view saying that the same thing persists through time is just a convenient abstraction--convenient because it's far easier to think and talk about things that way than as if we just have changing-but-developmentally-related things from moment to moment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which is one of the many, many stances that I disagree with Aristotle on. In my view, there is no thing that's separate from form.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I thought he was actually arguing the opposite of that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
On my view, time IS change, so it makes no sense to say that "there is no time for (a) change to have occurred."
Correct, but @Terrapin Station defines time as the series of changes itself, so of course he holds that there is no time in between. He explains this by claiming that the changes are contiguous, while I do not see how they can be anything but discrete (in his model).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not what I have been arguing at all, since I have not said anything whatsoever about "forms." We have been talking about gaining or losing a (non-essential) property. If we were using Aristotle's framework and terminology - which we are not - then this would be accidental change, rather than substantial change. Furthermore, if there really is a "very next moment," then I have been arguing that time is discrete rather than continuous.
It would be nice if you would make the effort to identify and answer the actual questions being asked of you.
Unfortunately this just muddies the waters, and muddles the whole question up, by introducing further unnecessary complexity. My question was about your claim that there is a present experience about which we cannot be mistaken. The problem is that experiences take time, which means that the past (retention) and the future (protention) are always integral parts of all experience. And since we can never be absolutely certain about something remembered (however recent) or something anticipated (however imminent) it seems obvious that we can certainly be mistaken about our experiences.
You seem to be trying to obfuscate the issue in order to hang on to your precious, and yet obviously inconsistent, belief that we cannot be mistaken about a purely present experience, a purely present experience which, however, simply does not exist, according to your very own admissions.
So do you think that my chair is not the same chair that it was yesterday because it's gotten a bit worn from me sitting on it? Are you saying that there is no continuity of existence of this entity, the chair, it's just convenient for talking about things, but there's no real continuity of that entity, the chair? That seems rather absurd to me. Do you think that at every moment of passing time, when a molecule, or even an electron of the chair changes, the hand of God is actually replacing the chair which was there, with a completely new chair? Is this what you believe, entities are continuously being replaced with a new entity at each passing moment?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting aletheist
I haven't been able to make any sense of Terrapin's notion of time. I've completely given up on that. I'm now trying to make sense of Terrapin's notion of the existence of an object, and so far it appears unintelligible as well.
Quoting aletheist
It is in the last passage I quoted from you. Here, something like this:
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
See, you are saying that X has one particular static form (state) at one moment (before the change), and another particular state at the next moment (after the change), but there is no time in between, during which the change occurs. So you have denied the possibility of real activity. All there is, is one particular state (static form), then the next particular state, and so on, each state being temporally contiguous, such that there is no time in between these states during which real activity could be occurring.
Please read the exchange more carefully. I was saying that this is what @Terrapin Station's view entails, not that it is my own view.
Haha, surprise, surprise! Well, it's not really a surprise; I've seen it over and over with Terrapin. When the inconsistencies in his position are exposed by others, he doesn't acknowledge them, but withdraws his head into its protective shell and refuses to answer the salient questions straightforwardly. Terrapin indeed!
How about we try something simpler: give me a hypothetical example of a present phenomenal experience qua that present phenomenal experience that one could be mistaken about.
What do you mean by "present phenomenal experience qua present phenomenal experience"? How about you give an example of that, so that I know what kind of thing you are asking for?
But Terrapin was arguing for an active present, "changes are occurring" at the present. It was only you who brought up the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle. As I mentioned earlier, Aristotle demonstrated why change, "becoming" as it is commonly called, requires an exception to the law of excluded middle, in order to maintain the law of non-contradiction, and some form of intelligibility. Terrapin has opted for that exception to the law of excluded middle by describing the present as "changes occurring". So your insistence on these logical laws is not representative of Terrapin's position at all.
It's not logically identical to the chair it was yesterday because it's not the same in every detail, in every aspect. That it's worn a bit is part of it. It's molecules have also shifted position in countless ways, it's lost and gained molecules, and so on.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whether there's any "continuity of existence" depends on whether you mean by that that the chair is logically identical at T1 and T2. If so, then there's no "continuity of existence." This doesn't imply that the chair at T2 has no connection to the chair at T1. They're developmentally, causally, continuously related.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Re aletheist saying that's my view, it isn't. I'm not positing any static states whatsoever. However, there is definitely no time "between" changes, because time is change.
Sure, an example: I see a pink elephant.
Oh, good grief. My point was not to "represent" @Terrapin Station's position, but to draw out some consequences that I saw as entailed by his position. He disagrees with me about some (maybe all) of those implications. You are the only one who has introduced any talk of "forms" and "static states," so when you do so, you are not referring to the views of anyone in the conversation except yourself.
So, what makes you think you cannot be mistaken when you say you see a pink elephant? I would say it is highly likely you are mistaken.
Also, do you not see that by the time you have told yourself you are seeing a pink elephant you are referring not to the present but to a moment ago; a moment about which you could be mistaken if your memory is faulty?
When I have the phenomenal experience of seeing a pink elephant, how can I be mistaken that I'm having the phenomenal experience of seeing a pink elephant?
It's plainly obvious that by definition you're not mistaken about thinking you are having the experience when you are having the experience. But how do you know you are having the experience?
I'm not asking if you think that the chair today is logically identical to the chair it was yesterday. In fact, I described it as being somewhat different, for the very reason that you would know that I wasn't asking you this. What I was asking you, is if you think it is still the same chair as it was yesterday. This is Aristotle's principle of identity, it allows that a thing can change, and therefore be not logically identical to the thing which it was before, yet still be the same thing. What he said is that a thing is identical to itself. This means that a thing's identity is according to the thing that it is, not according to a statement of what the thing is. So it doesn't matter that a thing is changing, it continues to be the thing that it is by virtue of being the thing that it is, not by virtue of what it is, because precisely what it is is always changing, while the thing continues to be the same thing.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Why don't you just confirm what we all know, and commonly say, that the chair at T2 is the same chair as the chair at T1, instead of some convoluted statement ("they're developmentally, causally, continuously related)? By saying "they're related", you imply that the chair at T1 and the chair at T2 are two different chairs. But they're not really two different chairs are they? No, they are the same chair at two different times. It's just the natural effect of passing time (what you call change), that the very same thing will not be logically identical at two different times. How could they be logically identical if the passing of time is change? But this doesn't mean that it's not the same thing, just because it's changed.
My own argument would be that, as with the Ship of Theseus problem, the parts of the chair can change but as long as the whole, the gestalt, remains unchanged in form and/or functionality, it remains the same chair. Darn it though, this gets into issues of identity and change. ... But I too am an curious to see what Terrapin has to say.
Quoting Terrapin Station
In trying to understand this better, you’re saying that there’s no continuity to some perfectly static existent between T1 and T2, right? Not that there’s no continuity to a given we can all discern as having remained the same …
--------
Terrapin, I’d like to see how you—and others—might disagree with this:
T1, T2, T3, etc. is an abstraction of time wherein the observer is no longer present. I’ll call it “observer-devoid time”. Observer-devoid time is typically applied to the past by all of us (unless our memories are of former personal experiences which we relive) and, when further abstracted, can then result in the notion of B-series time (objective time being a changeless, tenseless time).
Time you term the present phenomenal experience, however, holds within it the extremities of past and future in a manner parallel to observer-relative spatial dimensions. For simplicity, we can solely appraise the dimension of up and down as always relative to our personal spatial location as observers: There is no absolute top and absolute bottom to space; there are only relations to ourselves as observers; as we change our spatial positions relative to each other and to an inanimate context, so too changes what is up and what is down relative to us. Placing a whole bunch of us together in the same interactive space further stabilizes up and down for the cohort. As with observer-relative spatial dimensions, so too is past and future a temporal dimension held within awareness relative to that which is the experienced present duration … with there being no clear threshold between memory and forethought that takes place in the present experience. This then results in A-series time (tensed time)—or, “observer-endowed time”.
In B-series time before and after is always relative to abstract events from which the observer is removed—and, as previously stated, an observer-devoid time is typically applied to the past, especially when cognized in the third-person. In A-series time before and after is always relative to the concrete reality of a present phenomenal experience.
One can build on this, but I’m curious to see if there’s any significant disagreement with what was just stated.
If there’s no significant disagreement, then a lot of the former arguments I've read have been about equating apples with oranges … this by overlapping or else mistaking A-series time to B-series time.
Well, that's all I'm saying.
Yet, people are arguing with me about it.
Quoting John
It's simply a matter of having it when you do.
There's only (a) logical identity, and (b) whether we call something "the same x" by virtue of the necessary and sufficient conditions we construct via our concepts. There is no other sort of identity on my view. Re (a) it's not the same chair. Re (b) it can be, depending on your conceptual abstractions relative to the chair.
The problem with that on my view is that "changeless time" is a contradiction.
Hey, I’m all about Heraclitus’ flux. So I don’t subscribe to B-series time either. Nevertheless, when we address past, we all use the notion of changelessness as it pertains to events gone by. It’s why I improvised the term, “observer-devoid time”: not exactly B-series time but it’s yet applicable to our cognizance of the past … a temporal duration where things no longer change (at the very least in terms of how we conceptualize the past).
To me it seems like the simple dichotomy between A-series and B-series is overly simplified.
All the same, how would you demarcate the past if not for it being a "changeless time(span)"?
It appears to me that the past is constantly changing. In fact, it is the only thing that is changing as it evolves into a new past.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, it's a matter of knowing you are having it when you do! That is the actual point at issue.
It is more accurate to say that the already established past does not change but it is constantly being added to. So, yeah, the past only changes insofar as new events are constantly being added.
Please expand on this if I’ve misconstrued you.
My position is that within nitty-gritty metaphysical analysis (or, alternatively, in contemplating some interpretations of QM) maybe some aspects of the past can change. But things such as our birthdays when we first came into this world yet remain static in the past. It’s just that the past keeps on expanding with every present moment that goes by.
I’m so far inclined to think that we agree on this.
I do not hold the view that a past can be more than how it is remembered.
Yes, a photo can remind someone of a past event, but it doesn't become part of the past until it becomes part of one's experience in one's memory. Of course, a memory of that experience could already exist and may change (evolve) because of photo. The photo itself is merely another experience within memory.
The fundamental question is whether the past exists outside of memory. It all depends upon ones's personal ontology I guess. My view of memory is very expansive and probably to much off the track to get into now. Suffice to say I lean toward Bohm'/Bergson holomovent view of memory and information which has been amplified by subsequent authors.
It is a sharp point that you bring up.
My birthday is a certain date as I remember it. I find a birth certificate which changes that memory that I have. The date and the birth certificate are now part of my memory as well as my original memory of what I thought was my birthday. In totality my past has evolved and changed quite a bit. Now suppose someone come along and tells me the birth certificate was wrong and I was correct with my original memory. Now my memory of my past has changed once again. It is constantly evolving as is everything else.
Surely, the past is more than merely what is remembered. What tiny fraction of all past events is enshrined within our documented histories?
As I said, my model for memory is very expansive and could roughly described as a holographic model of information. Probably no reason to go totally off topic with this idea. However, insofar as my past is concerned, it is for all intents and purposes what I remember. Where all other memory of events are stored and how they are experienced and and evolve is a much larger question.
I believe I understand what you’re expressing. And, at least as pertains to my current understanding, I'm in agreement with you.
Yet there is the issue of other(s)’ memories-embedded-with-the-present as well. Here, a simple argument of taking two people as example will be overly simplistic. Each cell within one’s body—to the extent it too is in some way sentient—will hold its own memories within the present. (This, I grant, will be contentious with many). Still, sentience is not limited to one individual. Every person I’ve ever interacted with will hold some memories of each and every interaction. Memories of what was said, seen, etc. These memories of (at least) sapient beings will, furthermore, themselves need to be noncontradictory in order to be intelligible: one can’t remember there having been a house at place and time X and there not being the same house at the same time and in the same way.
If we are to use a holomovement view, then there’s a complex interplay of memory between all individuals that in any way have ever interacted (for clarity, individuals which nevertheless presently coexist) which would then create a stable global memory of what was.
Hopefully I’m not being too abstract about all this. My basic point being that the past would be a complex web of causal interactions between a multiplicity of beings which, as such, would stabilize into what would for all intended purposes result in a changeless past.
For example, were I (knock on wood) to gain Alzheimer’s in later life, my past would still remain stable in space and time—this despite me no longer having a personal memory of when I was birthed, for example.
So, I’m still inclined to argue that—nitty-gritty metaphysical analysis of a non-B-series time aside—the past would still be a permanently fixed set of events that have already passed by … this from the vantage of all coexistent sentience (by which I myself include microscopic life as well, even that of somatic cells).
I understand everything you wrote. It is the concept of space-time where we diverge. Memory is not situated in space-time as view it. Memory, as I view it, is holographic that is constantly in flux. (There is no present, since that would require a freezing in the movement of memory). It is this evolving memory that creates the psychological feeling of time - real time. For example, how do I know that I exist and am evolving? It is the memory of myself juxtaposed on a prior memory of myself. The two memories create time. The time of scientists, or clock time, is different. Clock time is a spatial movement used to measure (with inaccuracies) the simultaneity of events. This is not the time that we feel as time. The time we live - real time - is evolving memory.
I’ve expressed this in other places: I’m by comparison anything but erudite when it comes to the in-depth physics of time. Not to say that I’m utterly ignorant either. However, a quick glance at Wikipedia didn’t reveal any information on what click time might be—and I haven't previously come across this term.
The view I’ve been holding onto is that time—both physical and experiential—is a hybrid between cyclical and linear: spiralar (but I’ve so far found no term that sounds good to the ear). From grandfather clocks to atomic clocks, time holds periods demarcated by repetition that nevertheless is always different with each new cycle. Like a more poetic dictum that every sunrise is the same, though no two sunrises in the history of Earth have ever been identical. This can be argued for digital time as well: the same quantities repeat as they accumulate into cycles.
I can in my own way then understand the sense of time being memory—for it is via memory, as you've addressed it, that this linear-cycle of information occurs (maybe better said, holds presence).
Not to contradict, but out of good natured curiosity: I associate forethought (prediction of what is to come) to the future, much in the same manner I’ve (maybe all too poorly) described the past as memory. I’m wondering if you currently hold an interpretation of memory as time that also incorporates this experiential property of forethought?
First, I must apologize. I corrected my post, but too late. I was referring to clock time.
Clock time is really a measurement instrument for trying to establish simultaneity. It is not lived time, and making it lived time and elevating it to some ontological theory creates all kinds of paradoxes which simply are not real.
But to answer your question. Bergson views the future as virtual action. It is what is intended but has not been. At this time, not having pondered this too much, it seems reasonable.
thanks. Only read Bohm so far. Might give Bergson a read.
Sounds interesting; why not start a thread to address it?
I am not sure where Bohm was directly influenced by Bergson but he must have been indirectly influenced.
Also, this may be interesting once you have some background on Bergson.
http://www.stephenerobbins.com
His papers are difficult to follow but had lots of depth. He has some Youtube videos that are bit easier to follow. Some interesting ideas to compare with Bohm's Implicate Universe. But definitely start with the source of it all, Bergson.
Hi John. I'll give it some thought. Thanks.
Are you talking about propositional knowledge that's independent of the phenomenal experience as such? Or would knowledge by acquaintance count? You have the latter simply by having the experience. I wouldn't say that the former is identical to the experience necessarily--although in the case where the phenomenal experience is of propositional knowledge it is.
In any event, my comment isn't necessarily about propositional knowledge of course. That's only pertinent when that's the phenomenal experience in question.
OK, so you deny that the chair which I sit in this morning is the same chair that I sat in last night. Of course that is contrary to the way we speak, and if it were true, or at least believed to be true by the majority of people, and held as true by the legal system, it would make ownership of objects impossible. The car that you bought yesterday is not the same car that is in the parking lot right now, so who exactly owns that car?
But let's put that issue aside, and assume that what you state is true. I believe that it could be the case, what you say, and our common affirmation that the object is "the same" object, is just done for convenience, and not a proper representation of what is real. But here's the problem I have with this position.
Let's say that every moment tiny parts of the chair change, but the majority of the chair appears to remain the same, unchanged. We are denying that it is the same chair from one moment to the next, because of those changes. Changes have occurred, therefore it cannot be the same chair. Why is it then, that the majority of the chair stays the same? We are claiming that the old chair is taken right out of existence, and replaced with a new chair at each moment of change. How is it that the new chair appears to be identical to the old chair? There are just minute, imperceptible changes.
Of course, some process has to manufacture a new chair at each moment, to replace each old chair which goes out of existence at each moment. So that process which is constantly manufacturing new chairs to replace the old chairs must be following some kind of design, in order that each new chair comes out looking like the old chair. Don't you think? How can we account for the existence of this design, which the manufacturing process must be following every time that it produces a new chair to replace the old chair? Where does that design exist, and what kind of machine is following that design in manufacturing a new chair at each moment?
Quoting javra
The Ship of Theseus problem takes the two distinct forms of identity, logical identity as claimed by Terrapin, and material identity as stated by Aristotle, and creates ambiguity between them. The appearance of a paradox is the result of this ambiguity. We have a named item, The Ship of Theseus, which is pointed to, and the temporal continuity of that item provides identity. This is identity according to the Aristotelian notion, material identity, it allows that parts can change, and the temporal continuity of the item is the identity of that item. If we maintain this identity, it doesn't matter how many parts are exchanged, or how many times they are changed, the named object is always pointed to, through time, it is always that named object, and there is no problem.
But if we allow formal identity, logical identity to enter the picture, then the named item, The Ship of Theseus, has a specific description, a definition, of what that item is. Then if the pointed to item ever ceases to fulfill the conditions of that definition, it is no longer the named item. In the so-called paradox, it is implied that the named item has a formal definition, but none is provided. If one were provided then we'd have a standard by which we could say whether or not the named item fulfills the conditions of the definition. Since none is provided, we must assume that the named item really has no formal definition, and it will always continue to be that named item no matter what changes occur. So the appearance of a paradox is created by implying that the named item has a formal definition when it really does not.
I didn't say that. I'd personally call it the same chair under (b), where philosophically, we need to be clear that it's not literally the same chair with respect to logical identity, and that it's only the same chair per my bestowal (to me, not to everyone) because it meets the necessary and sufficient conceptual criteria for me to call it the same chair.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What matters for that, aside from it meeting the necessary and sufficient subjective conceptual criteria to call it the same car, is that it's developmentally, causally, contiguously connected to the previous existents (that we're calling "the same car").
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ontologically it's not. I already specified a reason for this--all of the molecules that make up the chair (and all of the atoms that make up all of those molecules, and all of the electrons in those atoms, and so on) are constantly in motion, constantly changing relations with respect to each other, and so on.
You mentioned appearance right before you asked the question above. We can't see things on a molecular level with our unaided eyes, we've evolved to ignore a lot of minor (differences of) details, etc.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No one is claiming anything like that. And you're being led to that ridiculous idea by the equally ridiculous idea of there being an objective essence. What makes x a "chair" and what makes that particular one "that chair" in the first place is simply how we think about it conceptually, including that we conceptually separate it from the rug its on, the air around it, etc.
The past consists of the changes/motion that occurred, but that are no longer occurring (and it no longer exists, of course--it rather existed). Talking about changing the past, then, is talking about changing changes that no longer exist. Obviously that isn't possible.
I agree with your conclusions regarding logical identity, but disagree that the Ship of Theseus is an issue of material identity.
Suppose Theseus takes his ship (ship A) and uses its material to build himself a cabin. It’s the same material but no longer a ship, so the identity of that addressed has changed. A week following, Theseus changes his mind and uses the same material, now a cabin, to rebuild the same ship he had before (ship B). It becomes Theseus’s ship again. Complexities could ensue as regards identity, but to the extent ship A and ship B are the same ship (as would uphold someone off for the month in which it was rebuilt in to a cabin and back), it would be the same ship for what reason? Neither due to logical nor material identity—the latter, on its own, would make the cabin identical to the ship.
It at least in part would be the same ship due to its functionality as form: e.g. were it to now have two masts instead of one its functionality would be different, even though the total material would be the same and even though it would still be a ship. Functionality, in turn, is entwined with purpose; and purpose, in an Aristotelian view, is a product of telos.
Using functionality as a means of arriving at identity, Theseus’s ship could then have half of its wooden planks replaced with plastic planks (different material) and, as long as its functionality would be unchanged, it would remain the same ship. However, were all its material to change, its is very unlikely that it would retain the same functionality, and would thereby be a different ship.
I’m not affirming that there isn’t more to identity. A crushed aluminum can is the same can it previously was when uncrushed, for example. But I do believe there’s more to identity than that of material form.
I keep on coming back in my thoughts to a Tom Waits lyric: “time is just memory mixed with desire”
To argue the past no longer exists in some ontological way is not necessarily contradictory; but one cannot claim that the past holds no presence whatsoever. Yesterday was there for me and it was there for you too. Yesterday, then, is more than an intra-personal memory. It holds presence within all sentience … even if only as an intersubjectively shared memory of what was (not barring personal deviations from this intersubjectively shared memory). In this sense, the past exists independently of us as individual beings.
In other words--thought I think I get what you’re saying--the past is yet there for all of us and it is yet remembered (usually) in a third-person, “t1, t2, t3” manner … such that we are no longer present within the events of the past but, instead, look upon these events from the outside. This “outside” being the duration of the current moment.
Pretty much straight out of Bergson.
Time is memory with intent to action (desire).
Very nice indeed. I wonder if Wait arrived at this via his own intuition?
On my view sentience isn't independent of individual persons, and "intersubjectivity" doesn't amount to anything more than the fact that we can utter things to each other including agreements. It's nothing like literally sharing subjectivity.
Re the present, I defined that a couple times above, see especially this post: http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/45749#Post_45749
I've no way of knowing. But a lot of his lyrics indicate that he's well read.
Different topic but: we can and do share unspoken understandings. You disagree?
Still, what I was trying to get at is that the past yet holds presence--exists in one way or another.
We don't literally share understandings on my view, no. Understanding is an individual subjective (dynamic) state that can't be shared with others. We can achieve that (dynamic) state in response to other things than natural language utterances, though, sure. I didn't mean to suggest that I thought that it was limited to natural language utterances and not body gestures, artworks, etc.
(By the way, I'm just putting "dynamic" in parentheses because there are a number of people around here who read "state" as static/not-changing)
Right, you’re not one for universals. I was instead thinking in terms of all of us sharing a common understanding of basic aspects of reality, such as what up and down is, for example—this due to a fundamental universality of our individual experiences, even when unexpressed. And it of course then can become more complex via culture (in the anthropological sense) ... which includes a commonality of memories regarding the same events as referents.
We might need to do the old agreement to disagree on this one.
Haha--yeah. Remember that I'm a physicalist and kind of an extreme reductionist and "naturalist," in addition to being a nominalist who rejects that there are any real abstracts whatsoever. So anything that suggests a real abstract in any manner isn't going to be something I'd accept.
But hey, no cheating: what about your claim that the past doesn't exist? Care to embellish this some.
I'm not sure what you want me to embellish. It seems very straightforward to me. Obviously I'm not saying that we don't have present memories, but that doesn't amount to the past existing.
I’m not sure how to do this without dreary examples, so I’ll use forth-person: One is fine up until the day one gains amnesia. When one is fine there is a (nonexistent?) past. When one gains amnesia, this (nonexistent?) past is no longer existent within one’s duration of the present moment.
(a) Correct this wordage so that when one is fine there is a past relative to oneself.
(b) Then, using this corrected wordage regarding the past, how is the past which applies to one and all not existent (i.e., devoid of being; aka. “is” not)?
Before we get lost in what (b) intends, resolve (a).
Amnesia is a memory problem. You might not remember things like your name, your family, where you live, what you do for work, etc. So it's an issue with present brain states. Remembering those things is a matter of presently accessing information stored in your brain (via dynamic structures of particular neurons, synapses, etc.). When you have amensia, you can't access that information any longer.
Yes, I’m aware of what it is and its mechanisms as much as any other.
The issue is in expressing the different between there being a past for the person prior to amnesia, after which the person’s past no longer is.
Again, all this is in reference to your remark that the past does not exist.
"There being things they remember" is all that is.
So the things that the doctors remember isn't?
And if those things also are, then isn't there a commonly shared past independent of the individual's memory?
What? The things that the doctors remember aren't what? My "is all that is" is another way of saying "All that you're describing there is that people remember things (when they don't have amesia)."
Quoting javra
That seems grammatically garbled to me. If the doctor's memories also are what?
I'll take a guess at what you might be asking about, though.
* Joe remembers that Betty wore an orange shirt yesterday.
* Pete also remembers that Betty wore an orange shirt yesterday.
* You're calling that a "shared memory."
* I'm pointing out that it's not literally shared. It's rather that Joe and Pete both have memories that they're expressing so that they agree with each other, etc. (they say things like,"Yes, Betty did wear an orange shirt yesterday" and so on).
* I'm also pointing out that all of this stuff occurs in the present. It in no way suggests that a past still exists . . . and I have no idea why anyone would take it to suggest that, as it seems like quite a bizarre thing to believe in my opinion.
Quoting Terrapin Station
We’re again talking past each other.
If Joe (say, via some form of conscious or subconscious self-deception that occurred yesterday) now honestly remembers that Betty wore a blue shirt yesterday, does that then change the fact that Betty wore an orange shirt yesterday?
I say “no”—this for reasons I’ve already in part previously addressed. The past contains facts that remain unchangeable and, in this sense, the past exists independently of the changing present (this with a heads up to a great deal of potential complexity that, due to universals, nevertheless ends up being the same thing for all intended purposes).
But the onus is on you to clarify what you’re implying.
No, that doesn't change that fact, but that doesn't imply that the past exists and contains things.
It's not that the past isn't independent of the present--of course it is, as it doesn't exist any longer.
Believing something in the kind of manner in which one could be mistaken or not, for example "I am seeing a pink elephant" is always a matter of what is generally called 'propositional knowledge'.
There is no other context in which the dichotomy of being mistaken/not being mistaken is relevant or even makes sense,
I am forgetting: you’re a materialist/physicalist. If I understand you properly, the past no longer exists materially.
My current label of choice is that of an "objective neural-monist". So, to me, just as a thought hold’s presence—exists in this way—so too does the past exist: as information that holds presence. Only that it’s a lot more complex than a mere thought that one is having.
I say we call it Dutch. X-)
You're ignoring that I was talking about phenomenal experience per se, though. I'm not talking about assessing a proposition's relation to something else, at least not beyond doing so as a phenomenal experience, and I'm not talking about something limited to that. When I mentioned seeing a pink elephant, I'm talking about having that "sense data" present. When you have that sense data present, you have it present. It's difficult to deny that. (Yet people want to argue about it, since this is the Internet after all.)
Yes, but the argument isn't over whether when you have the sense data present, you have it present, which is tautologically true, whatever "having sense data present" might mean, and I actually don't think it means very much.
The argument is over whether you can know for certain that you have it present when you have it present; that is whether you can be mistaken about its being present. But we've already been around this circle at least once before.
Well, so after clarifying this and giving you an example, etc., how about going back to what I requested from you earlier--give an example re how we could be mistaken about present phenomenal experience, as present phenomenal experience.
We can limit this to propositional knowledge about present phenomenal experience as present phenomenal experience if you like. So explain how that could be mistaken. Take the pink elephant example.
You could be mistaken in thinking that you are seeing a pink elephant.
Right--you're supposed to explain how. The pink elephant phenomenal experience is present. So you could be mistaken that that experience is present because?
You could be mistaken in thinking it is present when it is not.
That's your explanation how that could be the case?
If you're just trying to say that you cannot be mistaken about the fact that whatever you think you are is experiencing is what you think you are experiencing, then you have been arguing all along for a mere tautology. But the OP is about what you are experiencing and being mistaken about that, it is not about the possibility of being mistaken that what you think you are experiencing is what you think you are experiencing, which would obviously be a ridiculous proposition.
The topic is whether we can be mistaken about our own experiences. I gave an example of a class of experiences that we can't be mistaken about--and indeed, that's because this is tautologous. Your present phenomenal experience, AS your present phenomenal experience, is something you can't be mistaken about. Yet, here are a bunch of folks arguing with me about that, unsurprisingly enough. Again--because this is the Internet, and the whole objective apparently is to argue with others and not allow agreement on anything, no matter how simple. I could say "Your username on this board is John," and you'd probably argue with me that it's not John, just because you need to argue with me.
No, you are just mistaken about the sense of the OP, in my opinion. What would be the point of arguing for a tautology, as you admit you have been? It is not a "class of experiences that we can't be mistaken about" at all, it is merely that, by definition, what we think is what we think.
In any case, we actually could be mistaken about what we thought, even if it was only a moment ago. When we are thinking, we are not at the same time considering whether we are mistaken about what we are thinking. So all assessments of what we have been thinking are necessarily after the fact, and thus could be mistaken.
Yeah, you could argue with me about what I should have posted about instead. That's one way to keep arguing instead of agreeing on anything.
No, I have already agreed that what you have been arguing is tautologically true; I just don't agree that it is of any significance to the thrust of the OP. If you think I disagree just for the sake of it then you are sadly mistaken.
I wasn't disagreeing with anything. I was just giving an example of a type of experience that we couldn't be mistaken about. Other folks started to argue with me. They could have simply read and understood what I wrote and left it alone.
But consider the case of hallucination. Can you hallucinate a dog and think it was a cat? I don't think so. Or consider the case of phantom limb pain. If you were a victim, could you think you were cured, and later find out you were still in pain? or If you underwent treatment for phantom limb pain, and were told by the doctor you were cured... would you believe the doctor, or the pain you felt?
Actually, I think ontologically the chair is mostly the same. All those molecules you refer to are still the same molecules, that they change some relations with each other over time, is really a minor factor.
Quoting Terrapin StationWell, either it's correct to say that it is the same chair, or it's not. You say that it is not. That means that the old chair must be replaced by a new chair. If you do not think that the old chair is replaced by a new chair, why not just accept that it's the same chair, as most normal people do? Clearly it is perfectly acceptable to say that it is the same chair with minor changes. Why do you need to insist that it's not the same chair, while not being prepared to follow through with the logical consequences of this claim? Those consequences are that the old chair must be replaced with a new chair if it does not continue to be the same chair.
Which do you prefer? Is it really the same chair, despite going through some changes, or is the old chair replaced with a new chair each time it changes, such that it's really not the same chair?
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My view is that re (a)--logical identity, that is, it's incorrect to say that something is logically identical at two different times. You agreed with this earlier.
Re (b)--which is basicallty how someone uses/thinks about concepts, on my view, it is not correct or incorrect to say that something is the same x.
I think you're falling for the same mistake here. You're calling it a "ship", and a "cabin", while "ship" and "cabin" have particular formal connotations. The point is that we just name the material "A". Then the material continues to just be "A" no matter which form it has, the ship, the cabin, or the other ship, it is always just A. It's when the name "ship" for example has a meaning, which we conform to, to believe that the material must have a specific form to be a ship, that there is a problem. So consider that there is no particular form which constitutes a ship. We point to the item and say "that is Theseus' ship". Then even when it's taken to make a cabin it is still Theseus' ship, as long as we point to it and identify it, and when it is rebuilt, it is still Theseus' ship. The problem is when we think that the name is more than just a name, when we think that the name must refer to a particular type of thing. But this is not indicated in the so-called paradox. The item is just named as a ship, but it is not indicated that any item must have a particular form to be called a ship.
The real problem with material identity is in deciding what does and does not constitute the material of the entity. So if a part is taken off, and replaced by a new part, or just if a new part is added, what determines how the old part ceases to be, or the new part becomes, part of the material entity? Like when you eat, and defecate, how is it possible that you gain material, and lose material, yet you maintain the same material identity. So "change" is like a coin, we look at it from two sides, form, and matter, but both sides give us difficulty.
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Yes, well I don't see it as an experience but as a thought about experience. And all it says is basically 'what I think is what I think'. True by definition.
I don't think it was that perfectlynclear at first that you were merely presenting such a tautology, and if it had been I doubt others would have bothered to argue to the degree they did. I am not convinced that you realised it was a mere tautology, otherwise why would you bother to present it?
Again, because it's the category of experience that we can't be mistaken about.
Re you not considering it experience, I'm just curious what your narrower definition of experience is.
I consider all mental phenomena phenomenal experience, obviously, but other people can have different definitions of experience, of course.
Ok, so if I understand, it is illogical to say that the chair now is the "same" chair as it was yesterday. And it makes no difference whether someone sat and watched the chair for that entire time period to make sure that it wasn't switched, the fact is that imperceptible changes occurred, so logically the chair is no longer the same chair.
Let me rephrase the question, because you seem to be avoiding it. We say that the chair is the same chair. That's common, acceptable use of language. So, what logic tells us, and what common language use tells us, are two distinct things, which are directly opposed. Logic says that it is not the same chair, common language use says that it is the same chair. I've asked you which do you think is correct, and you first replied that you believe that the logic is correct, and it is really not the same chair. But when I described to you the consequences of this assumption, (that it is not the same chair), you switched back, to try and say that somehow it neither correct nor incorrect. So what I am asking, is what do you truly believe? Do you think that the logic is telling us what is really the case, or do you think that common language is telling us what is really the case. If you think that it is neither, then perhaps you could outline some resolution which is not actually a disguised version of one or the other.
Let me remind you of the consequences of the logical assumption that it is not the same chair. If it is not the same chair, we must provide for the conclusion that at every moment of change, an old chair is being removed and being replaced by a new chair. I'm ready to accept this, after all, the old chair is always disappearing into the past, all we need to do is find out where the new chair comes from. Are you ready to accept this, or do you think that the logic, which says that it is not the same chair, is wrong, and common language use, which says that it is the same chair, is right?
There are two ways to look at it, and I don't think that one way versus the other is the right way to look at it. One way to look at it is per logical identity. Per logical identity, it's incorrect to say that the chair is logically identical at time T1 and T2.
The other way to look at it is what you're calling "common language." Per my views, what's going on there is what I described above: it's a matter of how an individual partitions their concepts with respect to the necessary and sufficient criteria to call some x (some particular existent) an F (some type/universal name). There aren't correct or incorrect answers in this realm.
Again, I'm not saying that one of the ways of looking at it is correct and the other is incorrect.
And I'm sorry if that's too nuanced/not black & white enough for you, but I'm not going to say something that I think is wrong (that there's a correct way to look at this) just because you want a black & white, easy-to-sum-up response.
Unless one endorses substance pluralism, wouldn’t everything then hold the material identity of A? This then would make individuality indiscernible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The contents of the digestive tract in vertebrates don’t to me seem a good example. The contents are not part of the physical being … only when some of it at the molecular level enters the bloodstream to feed the individual somatic cells of the body can it become argued part of the physical being. But, even then, contentions could be raised in terms of—by analogy—a fire being other than that which fuels it. To say this more simply, we are not that which we eat; we assimilate portions of that which we eat into ourselves. The contents of the digestive tract—wherever found—will hold a different identity from that which it is digested by.
Is it due to disagreement that you’ve bypassed my argument for identity resulting, in part, from purpose/functionality?
I’ll provide another example. Take something organic like the flower of a fruiting plant. We could give it any other name but it will still be that which it is. At which point in the bud phase does it become a flower? And, how many petals must wilt off before it ceases to be a flower? My argument is that it is a flower between a young bud and before the beginnings of it being a fruit (if pollinated and if of a fruiting plant) due to its functions/purpose as a flower. This both conceptually and physically.
Logical identity taken to its extreme will not apply. Neither will identity via material content—for the flower, being organic, undergoes a perpetual change of material content. Yet it will nevertheless be a flower somewhere between being a bud and a fruit. How so if its functionality is considered completely irrelevant or nonexistent?
Again I don’t maintain that purpose is the only element to identity; rather that it is an integral element of identity among others.
This same argument for the functionality of that considered then would also apply to the identity of a physical being as addressed by you in your example of digestion.
But I'm not talking about the necessary and sufficient conditions for calling some existent an F. I'm asking you if the existent continues to be the same existent through a duration of time, despite some minor changes to it. I'm not talking about whether we should call the item a chair or not, I'm talking about whether the thing which has been called a chair continues to be the same chair even after the upholstery gets torn, or even some minor molecular change which is imperceptible to us.
Logic says that it is not "the same" chair, but common language use says that it is the same chair. I have driven the same car for years despite the fact that it's starting to fall apart. I am asking you which one do you believe. I am not asking about the necessary and sufficient conditions for calling some x an F, I am asking about the conditions for identifying a thing as being the same thing, one unique thing with temporal duration.
Quoting javra
Yes I believe that may be the case, but it just demonstrates that dualism is necessary in order to properly understand the existence of individual entities.
Quoting javra I have to admit that I didn't understand your argument for identity from purpose.
Quoting javra
I don't see this as an argument for identity, I see it as a way of defining a term. You say that an object must fulfill certain conditions before it can be called a flower, so this is to define what it means to be a flower. But I understand the act of identifying to be the inverse of this. Rather than saying what it means to be a flower (that is defining rather than identifying), we take a particular object and say what the object is, that is identifying.
Quoting javra
I definitely see your point, that purpose is an important thing to consider when identifying objects, especially in some instances, as many things, especially tools are defined by their purpose. But what I am getting at here is what constitutes an object having an identity. If we cannot determine how it is that an object actually has an identity, then all of our efforts to identify are subjective, grounded in arbitrary designations. So from my perspective, why do you think that your definition of "flower" is more "real", or states more precisely what a flower really is than another definition? If objects don't have a real identity which is proper to themselves, how is our naming of them anything more than arbitrary?
But that's what I'm answering! What makes it the same chair is simply whether we (individually) consider it the same chair per our concepts. In other words, in my view, that's all there is to this.
There is experience and then there is thought about experience.
To be clear about my personal stance, the duality I uphold is other than Cartesian. It’s not easy to adequately define in a few words, but it is akin to a view of self holding within it a holistic substance that is not the self of information, be this information of the mind or of the physical. Both of the latter to me are different aspects, or manifestations, of the same substance. This holistic substance—that of a form which holds potential to be, to exist, devoid of the information by which it gains its manifest-form within time and space—I in some ways liken to the selfless being which Buddhists term Nirvana. Hence, while I personally don’t disagree with dualism, my view is not that of substance dualism in terms of a duality of information. (This, of course, is not to deny different aspects of this same substance of information.) All this to be upfront about my own dualist stance.
That stated, in the modern sense of substance, even if one were a substance dualist, there would via material identity alone be found no means of discerning between different givens of each of the two substances. One idea would be indiscernible from another due to both being of the same material identity. One physical object would be indiscernible from another physical object. Etc.
Material identity to me only makes sense due to the functionality of the individual materials addressed. For example, a wooden X is different from a metal X only in so far at the wood holds different properties of functionality from the metal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hopefully this won’t further confuse matters: Functionality as I interpret/intend it can be readdressed as the context-specific role of the given. This context-specific role of the given is one of kinetic and potential interactions with other(s). I’m very aware that such metaphysical approach can become confusing devoid of an entire metaphysics to support it. Nevertheless, to me it’s intuitive that one rock is, in part, different from another due to its context-specific interactions, both kinetic and potential—in short, due to is context-specific role or, else stated, its functionality relative to its surroundings. One rock’s presence (even if it is statically placed) will be different from any others, for example, in terms of what its removal from the given environment would causally signify. This perspective, then, takes into account causal relations between givens, locally and globally. Still … this isn’t the place to attempt to properly justify this perspective. I’ll address more particular examples below.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’m thinking of identity in terms of discernibility: If we can discern X than we do so only with the backdrop of not-X. Any discerned X then, for me, holds identity to us which discern; i.e., we identify X the instant we discern there being X--though we many not necessarily fully understand that which we've identified/discerned. This approach doesn’t rely upon narrative; rather it relies upon perceptions, sensations, and understandings. Hence, lesser animals can discern X from not-X as well—say, predator from not-predator, etc.—though they do not use narrative (words) to do so.
Being of this perspective, I’m not having an easy time interpreting you’re position. For instance, I can discern a broad quantity of givens at any particular moment thought I don’t use narrative to so discern all the givens that I do. Rather, I use narrative to convey that which I discern—either to myself during reasoning/thinking or, else, to others. To me then, discernibility is primary; narrative about that discerned secondary.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I interpret you as enquiring into the objective identity of things. My best resolution so far is to rely upon universals of psyche. This approach doesn’t create crisp thresholds between all things. For example, between when a flower bud is a flower bud and when it is a flower (a temporal distinction); or between when a heap is a heap and when it is not (a spatial distinction). What it does do is solidify X and not-X for all members of a populace … this in manners that do not always mandate an excluded middle (such as in the two examples just given).
As to what makes that discerned as flower—by us humans, by hummingbirds, by bees, etc.—more real than merely an arbitrary concept by all concerned: I would again largely found my arguments on the flower’s causal role/purpose/functionality relative to its context, as previously addressed. Hence, as I currently construe things, the role of a flower will remain more fixed than its shape or material content. To address one of Heraclitus’s better known analogies via the just stated: one cannot step twice into the same shape or material content of a given river; yet the river as context-dependent role will nevertheless remain the same (identical over time). Clearly there’s more to the river than just context-relative purpose-form, and its context-relative purpose-form too is in flux, yet this context-relative purpose-form is what remains stable relative to ourselves as separate process-bundles. The context-relative purpose-form is the gestalt which is “the river” and not any of its parts. Though not the only element involved, it plays an integral aspect in our discerning the given river to hold an objective identity. Devoid of this, there no longer is discerned “a river” but, maybe, any number of the river’s parts—each with its own context-relative purpose-form. These context-relative purpose-form, to me, are then ontic—as ontic as any river, flower, etc. is.
On a more psychological train of thought: This context-relative purpose-form of things is something I believe we all intuitively apprehend. And, as intuitions go, they’re more sub/unconsciously reasoned than consciously reasoned.
No worries if there are disagreements. I mainly wanted to better clarify my position regarding functionality and identity.
Phenomenal experience is thought, though--well, or mental content if "thought" is narrower than mental content in your usage, and present phenomenal experience and present thought, if different would both be present mental content (so occurrent at the same time).
Oh, sorry, I was mislead by this:
"it's a matter of how an individual partitions their concepts with respect to the necessary and sufficient criteria to call some x (some particular existent) an F (some type/universal name)."
See, I'm not referring to some type, or universal name, I'm referring to the name of a particular. This is a particular entity which has been named "the chair". It makes no difference whether the entity fulfills any necessary conditions for being a chair, "the chair" is just the name that we've attached to this thing which appears to be an object because it appears to have temporal duration.
When we assign a name to an object, something which appears to have been remaining the same for a period of time, why do you think that this is "per our concepts"? There is no conceptualizing here, we just notice something which appear to remain consistent, and we assign a name to it. And, as we've been discussing, we really know that it doesn't remain the same in an absolute sense, so we know that it is illogical to name it in this way, as if it is the same, so if anything, this is contrary to conceptualizing.
It's the same thing for "that particular chair" at time T1 and T2. That functions as a type term in that situation. It's one term ranging over more than one particular from a logical identity perspective.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It makes a difference whether it meets the necessary and sufficient conditions for counting as "that particular chair" to the individual in question. That's all this is about--whether it meets an individual's criteria for bestowal of the name "that chair."
Well that's a different way of looking at it, but it's clearly wrong. And by wrong I mean it's not representative of what is really the case, it's false. When I see two different chairs, I recognize that they are two distinct objects, but "similar", and class them together, each one as a chair. But when I see the temporal continuity of a single chair, I claim that it exists as "the same" chair.
So it is not the case that "that particular chair" at T1 and T2 functions as a type term, because this is not what is claimed in the use of that term. What is claimed, i.e. intended, and therefore meant, by this statement, is that it is the very same thing, not that there are two instances of the same type of thing. So you only misrepresent what is meant, by saying that it functions as a type term. It doesn't, the purpose is to indicate one and the same item, not two distinct but similar items.
Quoting Terrapin Station
My claim is that it doesn't meet any criteria at all. I look at the chair, I stare at it, and after a few minutes I say that it is still the same chair. I am not counting its legs, memorizing its shape, or any such thing, I am only watching it exist in time. If it were the same chair by virtue of it meeting some necessary and sufficient conditions, then it would be the act of determining it as the same chair which makes it the same chair. But the claim here is that it is the same chair by virtue of its continued existence in time, not by virtue of this being recognized by me or any one else. This is how we claim an independent, objective reality, things exist as the things which they are, without needing a judgement as to whether or not they meet the necessary and sufficient conditions for being the things that they are. There is no need for the object to meet any necessary and sufficient conditions for it to exist as the object which it is. When I assume that the chair is the same chair, I do this without referring to necessary and sufficient conditions.
You're saying that you don't think of it so that it functions like type terms do, right?
Surely the thought about an experience comes after the experience, though? And even if they were simultaneous, insofar as the one is about the other it might be wrong, no?
So, if I am sitting at my desk and before me is a red bottle and I think "I am looking at a red bottle" I can be wrong that I am looking at a red bottle (however unlikely that might be!) but if my thought is " I am looking at what appears to be a red bottle" then that thought can't be wrong, because it is really a thought about thinking it is a red bottle, not about the fact that it is a red bottle. However a moment later I could be wrong that I had, a moment ago been looking at a red bottle, or even what appeared to be a red bottle, and I could even be wrong that I had had the thought " I am looking at what appears to be a red bottle".
Of course all of this really seems to be complete bullshit, though certainly not because of any logical or rational reason, but simply because we just dispositionally have absolutely no doubt about the verity of our memories, and the accuracy of our corroborative perceptual faculties and our intuitive introspective prowess.
If the latter is referring to what it really is that's there that's causing the "I'm looking at a red bottle" thought, then it's not phenomenal exoerience that we're referring to.
Quoting John
Yes, that's the phenomenal experience as the phenomenal experience.
Quoting John
Correct, hence why present matters.
Quoting John
Maybe you have no doubts about those things but I certainly do. My memory often sucks, my vision and hearing have problems, etc.
Yes, but looked at logically everything we think about is no longer present. So it is distinctness, not presence that matters when it comes to whether we will doubt our experiences, as I explain more below.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Oh, I certainly have more doubts about my more distant memories. But that is only because I usually experience them as being more indistinct that closer memories. It's kind of like looking at distant figures moving on a mountain. You can't be sure exactly what they are; are they people, horses, dogs?.
But, when I do distinctly remember a thought I had, something I or someone else said, something I was looking at, some music I heard, a few moments, or even an hour, a day, a couple days or a week ago, it really doesn't matter how long ago actually, I generally have no doubt at all about the memory if it is distinct.
I think it pays to remember that doubt is mostly driven by intuitive feeling rather than by logical considerations; and that it is more often an active disposition than the passive acceptance of a logical deliberation.
What you're thinking about there is perception and memory. What I'm talking about is thought itself, not what it's about re perception or memory. (I'm using "thought" very broadly.)
By the way, and this has been going on for a long time, for some weird reason, most of the time when you reply to me (by literally clicking on reply or quote) I don't get a notification that you replied. That seems to mainly happen with you, not when other people reply to me.
Yes, but I would say that the thought in question is present only in the thinking of it, not in the thinking about it. And just as with perception and memory, it is only about it that the question of being mistaken or being correct is at all relevant. For example when we are thinking, we are not simultaneously thinking about that thinking, and much less about whether that thinking is mistaken or not.
So, even to say that we cannot be mistaken that what we are thinking is what we are thinking; is not relevant to the thinking itself, because there is no question of mistake until after the fact. So, it is a kind of 'back-projection' that says we cannot be mistaken that what we are thinking is what we are thinking, because the question itself cannot even arise in that context, but only after the fact, where we most certainly can be mistaken..
Quoting Terrapin Station
I have no explanation for that.
ON ACCURATE EXPERIENCE
This has been investigated by science many times over (in psychology) - and the verdict is in - little of what we experience is an actual reflection of the whole that is being experienced, so our personal experiences are nearly wholly mistaken. Further, our senses are far from perfect - they CAN fail to 'sense' what is right before us - because we often 'fill-in' what we are sensing with what we 'expect' to be there (based on experience), which may not reflect what is actually there, hence our 'misperception'.
ON GOOD/BAD EXPERIENCE
As for experiences being bad or good - that all depends on the perspective that you acquired. Example: If you grew up in a mansion, anything less than that will seem horrible to you, and you will probably commit suicide if you ended up in anything less. If you grew up in a shack, then anything better than that will seem like a mansion to you, and you happiness in life will be pretty much guaranteed, since everything you encounter will most likely be better than your shack.