Instead of accepting instants of time as metaphysically basic entities, many philosophers regard them as abstractions from something else. There is the Russell-Whitehead view that times are maximal classes of simultaneous events; the linguistic ersatzer's proposal that times are maximally consistent sets of sentences or propositions; and the view that times are made up of temporal parts of material objects. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these various proposals and concludes in favor of a particular version of (...) linguistic ersatzism about time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. This is an invited comment on “Physical Time Within Human Time”. The topic is the nature of time and its various representations in physical theory vs. our experience. In this Comment, I dissent from the standard formulation of the topic as involving a “Two Times Problem,” in which physical time is taken as being at odds with the human sense of a “flow of time.” I provide a brief overview of the case to (...) be made for the contrary view: namely, that physical theory is indeed consistent with a genuine temporal dynamism that takes into account the quantum level in connection with spacetime emergence, the latter being supervenient on specific quantum processes. (shrink)

The present paper aims to contribute to the substantivalism versus relationalism debate and to defend general relativity (GR) against pseudoscientific attacks in a novel, especially inclusive way. This work was initially motivated by the desire to establish the incompatibility of any ether theories with accelerated cosmic expansion and inflation (motto: where would a hypothetical medium supposedly come from so fast?). The failure of this program is of interest for emergent GR concepts in high energy particle physics. However, it becomes increasingly (...) important to guard scientific results against their misrepresentation by fundamentally anti-scientific agendas. We therefore argue that although it is not known whether the perceived space-time is fundamental (rather than a condensed state or a particular membrane), in a fundamental theory, space-time must be abstract relational: fundamental space-time is the consistent spatial-temporal arrangement of events. To pursue its own goals, this work should be accessible to a wide audience: physicists, philosophers of science, those being tempted by anti-relativity theories, but also those who vigorously defend some orthodox relativity that is not actually supported by GR. It must thus be extensive in order to satisfy the different parties’ desire to have included and understood their respective positions. (shrink)

There are a number of regions-based accounts of space/time, due to Whitehead, Roeper, Menger, Tarski, the present authors, and others. They all follow the Aristotelian theme that continua are not composed of points: each region has a proper part. The purpose of this note is to show how to recapture ‘points’ in such frameworks via Scottish neo-logicist abstraction principles. The results recapitulate some Aristotelian themes. A second agenda is to provide a new arena to help decide what is at (...) stake when adjudicating issues concerning the identity of neo-logicist abstracts — so-called ‘Caesar questions’. (shrink)

In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir traveled to the United States for a four-month stay, during which she toured the country extensively. Her copious notes taken during this time eventually became the travelogue, America Day by Day as well as a piece written for the May 25, 1947 edition of the New York Times Magazine, “An Existentialist Looks at Americans.” In both of these writings, Beauvoir offers an astute criticism of American culture from a foreign perspective. This paper explores Beauvoir’s (...) treatment of American abstraction and race with three goals in mind: first, to understand the American relationship to time and money as abstractions. Ignoring the past and projecting an idealistic future, leads to a strange kind of fatalism and lack of passion that profoundly impacts White and Black Americans but in distinctively different ways. The second part of the paper explores these differences through an analysis of how White Americans attempt to live with “good” consciences through the positing of and attachment to abstract values and things. This attitude, in turn, produces a largely instrumental and racist treatment of many populations, in particular, Black Americans. The final section focuses on how Beauvoir confronts the fact of her own whiteness, and in so doing undergoes the movement of race as an abstract theoretical category to one of lived embodiment. (shrink)

This essay shows how real objects must be processes for Gilles Deleuze. These processes are determined by his account of time as a nine-fold manifold of processes deduced from Deleuze’s account of three interconnected syntheses of time in his Difference and Repetition . It will also be argued that Deleuze’s philosophy of time is speculative in a broad sense and that Deleuze’s account of the real is opposed to forms of abstraction which associate objects with conceptual, perceptual (...) or transcendental identity. In order to demonstrate the radical and systematic nature of Deleuze’s account of process, there is a discussion of a basic process underlying his manifold of time. This process is opposed to Markov chains, in order to set up an opposition to interpretations of Deleuze’s philosophy that deny its metaphysical and speculative approach in favour of scientific realism. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of rhythm as enabling relations and thus as an appropriate mode of analysis for digital sound art installation. In particular, the article argues for a rhythmanalysis of the sonic event as a ‘vibrating sensation’ (Deleuze and Guattari) that incorporates the virtual without necessarily actualizing it. Picking up on notions such as rhythm, time, affect, and event, particularly through their discussion in relation to Susanne Langer’s work, I argue for the (...) consideration of the sonic event as an instance of a different kind of temporality subsisting underneath clock-time and sense perception. Ultimately, and this is the position of this essay, an investigation into experimental projects that interweave digital, sound, and aesthetic dimensions enables the articulation of a rhythmic time that helps account for the unknown, indeterminate, and unintentional forces immanent to the sonic. (shrink)

The present study examines whether deictic time and valence are mentally associated, with a link between future and positive valence and a link between past and negative valence. We employed a novel paradigm, the two-choice-sentence-completion paradigm, to address this issue. Participants were presented with an initial sentence fragment that referred to an event that was either located in time or of different valence. Participants chose between two completion phrases. When the given dimension in the initial fragment was (...) class='Hi'>time, the two completion phrase alternatives differed in valence. However, when the given dimension in the initial fragment was valence, the two completion phrase alternatives differed in time. As expected, participants chose completion phrases consistent with the proposed association between time and valence. Additional analyses involving individual differences concerning optimism/pessimism revealed that this association is particularly pronounced for people with an optimistic attitude. (shrink)

Students can use an educational system’s help in unexpected ways. For example, they may bypass abstract hints in search of a concrete solution. This behavior has traditionally been labeled as a form of gaming or help abuse. We propose that some examples of this behavior are not abusive and that bottom-out hints can act as worked examples. We create a model for distinguishing good student use of bottom-out hints from bad student use of bottom-out hints by means of logged (...) response times. We show that this model not only predicts learning, but captures behaviors related to self-explanation. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question of what current computers are from the point of view of human-computer interaction. In the early days of computing, the Turing machine (TM) has been the cornerstone of the understanding of computers. The TM defines what can be computed and how computation can be carried out. However, in the last decades, computers have evolved and increasingly become interactive systems, reacting in real-time to external events in an ongoing loop. We argue that the (...) TM does not provide a mechanistic explanation for interactive computing. The reason is that the fundamental phenomena relevant to interactive computing are out of the scope of classical computability theory. Part of the explanatory power of the TM relies on what we propose to call an execution model. An execution model belongs to a level of abstraction where it is possible to describe both the functional architecture and the execution in mechanistic terms. An updated execution model is warranted to provide the minimal mechanistic description for interactive computation as a counterpart of what the TM could explain regarding Church-Turing computation. It would support an explanation of the ubiquitous computing devices we know - those interacting with humans, e.g., through digital interfaces. We show that such a model is not available within interactive models of computation and that relevant abstractions and concerns are available in computer engineering but need to be identified and gathered. To fill this void, we propose to reflect on the level of abstraction required to support the mechanistic description of an interactive execution and propose some preliminary requirements. (shrink)

Most research on metaphors that construe time as motion (motion metaphors of time) has focused on the question of whether it is the times or the person experiencing them (ego) that moves. This paper focuses on the equally important distinction between metaphors that locate times relative to ego (the ego-based metaphors Moving Ego and Moving Time) and a metaphor that locates times relative to other times (sequence is relative position on a path). Rather than a single (...) class='Hi'>abstract target domain TIME, these two kinds of temporal metaphor metaphorize different kinds of temporal concept—perspective-specific vs. perspective-neutral temporal concepts. Recognition of this distinction enhances the explanatory potential of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). An example involves the interaction of deixis and the temporal reference crosslinguistically of vocabulary with the spatial meanings in-front and behind. More generally, this approach refines our ability to describe the temporal concepts involved in motion metaphors of time. Such temporal concepts are present not only in the target domains, but also in the source domains of motion metaphors of time, where we find space-to-time metonymy, which may play a role in motivating the metaphors. In order to distinguish such metonymy from metaphor, we need to characterize metaphor as a mapping across frames rather than domains. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

_Time, Space, and Phantasy_ examines the connections between time, space, phantasy and sexuality in clinical practice. It explores the subtleties of the encounter between patient and analyst, addressing how aspects of the patient’s unconscious past are actualised in the present, producing new meanings that can be re-translated to the past. Perelberg’s analysis of Freud’s Multi-dimensional model of temporality suggests that he always viewed the constitution of the individual as non-linear. In Freud’s formulations, the individual is decentred and ruled by (...) different temporalities, most of which escape their consciousness. Perelberg identifies the similarities between this and Einstein’s theory of relativity which states that rather than being absolute, time depends on the relative position and speed of the observing individual suggesting that rather than being a reality, time is an abstraction, connecting objects and events. Throughout this text, Perelberg draws together connections between time, mental space, and phantasy showing how time is constantly reshaped in the light of new events and experiences. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, and social workers. (shrink)

Reinvention of the form of expression is a conceptual approach characteristic for the evolution of all arts. This research study provides one such step forward in the advancement of scientific paper, a standard form of expression in natural sciences, toward more progressive terrains. The paper adopts the form of a theatrical play where a scientific family of four attempts to find the way around a writer’s block (Act I). Their idealess sense of confinement is overcome through arts or, more specifically, (...) through scientific research implementing the aesthetics of music as its key element. The characters record compositions differing in the degrees of consonance, rhythmicity and tonality, and play them to birds to observe their vocal and behavioral responses (Act II). They note that the birdsong volume drops significantly when the piano tunes, especially the compositionally complex ones, are played to the birds and increases signifcantly when the white noise of ocean waves is played. The bird count experiment proves indirectly that the birdsong volume reduction is an auditory response of the birds to music rather than the effect of their migrating to or away from the sound source. This science with the flavor of art elevates the characters beyond the limits of their confinement and they, exalted and uplifted, gain ideas for creative research in their own disciplines of biomedical science (Act III). They relinquish the newly gained freedom in favor of embracing love for humanity that underlies medical research and return to their confinement, where they conduct, in the coda of the paper, a series of experiments that venture beyond musicology and ornithology and fall in the domains of tissue engineering and drug delivery, but also psychology (Act III). First, sparrow nests are used as templates for tissue engineering constructs, which facilitate the growth of human fibroblastic cells better than their artificial, gridded replicas. Next, the shell of an Easter egg, predominantly calcite in composition, is used with success as a drug delivery carrier. Lastly, the bird nest drawing experiment demonstrates a greater mental health of children than that of the adults, correlating with one of the overarching points of the paper, which is to present children as a model for grownups to follow rather than the other way around. Over the course of the play, the characters discuss the value of the various fusions between art and science, question the limits of human language and repeatedly go off-topic to celebrate the freeness of the creative thinking process. The play reports on real-life research methods and scientific results through a narrative, without diminishing their empirical rigor and analytical accuracy. (shrink)

This thesis presents a novel theory of temporal experience. While time as measured by the clock is a perennially popular topic, the time of experience remains relatively neglected and poorly understood despite its centrality to our existence. This thesis therefore sets out to address the following questions: 1) How should we characterize experiential time and the experienced present? 2) How might such distinctively temporal experience arise in the first place? While the first of these is a “what (...) is it like” question, and thus in the realm of phenomenological analysis, the second is ostensibly closer to the realm of scientific inquiry in that it concerns an empirical phenomenon. The goal of this thesis is to synthesize plausible answers to both of these questions. As to the first question, there is already a lively debate ongoing in the philosophy of mind between various camps, each offering what they see as the most plausible analysis of the phenomenology of time. Regarding the second, there is an interdisciplinary investigation of mechanisms at various levels of abstraction, notably the levels of neurophysiology and information processing. This thesis proposes, among other contentions, that the time of experience is best characterized by a combination of retentional and extensional phenomenological analyses. This means the actual temporal extension of experience and its correlates determines, to some degree, the felt temporal character of experience. At the same time, perhaps the greater part of temporal phenomenology is determined by content: mental processes can be about temporal properties in addition to their primary contents and the way they are so partially determines the temporal character of experience as well. This analysis dovetails nicely with contemporary theories of consciousness that maintain the brain is fundamentally a complex predictive engine actively and adaptively guiding behavior. The thesis thus represents a multi-level framework for understanding the experience of time and the mechanisms underpinning it. It is my hope this perspective advances the debate on time-consciousness and can guide further work towards understanding this most fundamental aspect of our lives. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente articulo procura dar cuenta del problema de la formación de conceptos en Ser y tiempo a partir de la contramovilidad que asume la filosofia respecto de las tendencias auto-supresivas de la vida cotidiana. En un primer momento se distinguen algunos niveles, tendencias y direcciones involucrados en los procesos de formación de conceptos de las ciencias y de la filosofia desde la estela de Ser y tiempo. En un segundo momento se deslindan algunas operaciones categoriales inmanentes a la (...) formación de conceptos a partir del despliegue de lo que Heidegger denomina el acto fundamental de la objetivación, identificable con la tematización y con las direcciones en la que ésta se ejecuta. En un tercer momento, y a modo de cierre, se intenta echar luz sobre la peculiar actitud fundamental de la filosofia para mostrar que ésta se caracteriza, en contra de la Grundhaltung de las ciencias, por lo que podemos denominar con Heidegger una contra-tendencia respecto de la actitud natural-cotidiana. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____ -/- ABSTRACT This article accounts for the different levels, tendencies, and directions involved in theprocess of concept-formation that is proper to both sciences and philosophy in Being and Time. It distinguishes different immanent categorial operations that belong tothe concept formation from the perspective of the unfolding of the fundamental act of objectivation. The article shows, additionally, that Heidegger identifies this Grundakt with thematization and with the concrete directions within which thisact is executed. The paper clarifies, finally,what it is the Grundhaltung of philosophy in order to show that its fundamental attitude is characterized by a Gegenbewegung or Gegenzug. (shrink)

Resumen: Mediante un ejercicio hermenéutico se sostiene que la identidad personal supera la aporía del tiempo al construirse como relato de ficción. Primero, se plantea que el relato de ficción se inscribe en el círculo de la mimesis; segundo, que la imaginación es la facultad que crea el sentido de la identidad personal como relato de ficción; tercero, que es la imaginación la que establece la relación entre relato de ficción, innovación semántica e identidad personal; y cuarto, que la identidad (...) personal se crea a sí misma por medio de la generación sentido gracias al relato de ficción. Abstract: Through a hermeneutical approach, this paper states that personal identity overcomes the aporetic of time when built as a fictional narrative. First, it proposes that the fictional narrative is inscribed in the mimesis circle. Secondly, that imagination is the faculty that creates the meaning of personal identity as fictional narrative. Thirdly, that it is the imagination that establishes the relation among fictional narrative, semantic innovation, and personal identity. Fourthly, that personal identity as fictional narrative stresses the importance of the narrative, which creates itself as a generator of meanings. (shrink)

Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit examines a conspicuous feature of Hegel's major works: that they are progressive narratives. They advance from less to more perfect, abstract to concrete, indeterminate or empty to determinate. This is true, argues the author, of his lectures on aesthetics and on the history of philosophy, and it is also true of his most abstract work, the Science of Logic. In answer to the question of why is it so important (...) for Hegel to structure his various philosophical works as developmental narratives, this book defends the thesis that Hegel's motivation is in part metaphysical, intending his developmental accounts to reveal something significant about who we are as thinking, willing natures. He undertakes his study of past in order to demonstrate that there have been advances in the nature of human thought or reason itself and in our resulting freedom and his concern with our reason's development conveys his interest in how human reason is anchored in and shaped by its past. Ultimately, this book specifies the extent to which we can accurately attribute to Hegel the view that human reason and the freedom it affords us are indebted for their nature to this temporal order of nature and history. (shrink)

Progressive intellectuals at the turn of the last century founded the modern American university, created its disciplines and edited the journals that codified their thoughts. They created the ligaments of the national administrative and regulatory state; they helped legitimate the creation of a national financial and industrial corporate economy. Through the writings of Lyman Abbott, Albion Small, and Simon Patten, three features of progressive thought are underlined: the primacy of a narrative, their hostility to “principled” or abstract-philosophical forms of (...) political and social thought, and their confidence that historical modes of social inquiry would produce “laws”? of progress that would guide practice and anchor values integrating self and society on a democratic basis. Five topics contain these animating features: national patriotism, the new industrial economy, a new democratic ethic, social Christianity, and their critique of the dominance of constitutional jurisprudence and law in American political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Jonathan Lowe believes that metaphysics should regain its central place in philosophy. It is an autonomous philosophical discipline, which task is to outline the realm of what is really possible by defining a system of fundamental ontological categories under which everything that exists falls, and relations of ontological dependence in which objects of various ontological categories are related to each other. Metaphysical categories are what gives meaning to our experience, however, unlike I. Kant, they are not the result of a (...) priori constraints – on the contrary, they are subject to revision in the face of experience. The question of why there is something in the world rather than nothing, is solved with a non-Wittgensteinian understanding of what the world is (world is the sum of all existing objects because world as “the totality of facts” lacks determinate identity-conditions), as well as an understanding that universals must be actually instantiated in particulars. Far from being an easy textbook in the proper sense, this book is a brilliant example of the return of Aristotle to modern metaphysics. Reflections on the book: Lowe E. J. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Clarendon Press, 1998. (shrink)

The current technoscientific progress has led to a sectorization in the philosophy of science. Today the philosophy of science isn't is informal interested in studying old problems about the general characteristics of scientific practice. The interest of the philosopher of science is the study of concepts, problems and riddles of particular disciplines. Then, within this progress of philosophy of science, neuroscientific research stands out, because it invades issues traditionally addressed by the humanities, such as the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, (...) normativity, etc. As a result, the new area of interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy arises: neurophilosophy. This emerging area applies neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions, limiting their responses to neuroscientific revelations about nervous systems. Neurophilosophy research focuses on problems related to the indirect nature of mind and brain, computational or representative analysis of brain process, relationships between psychological and neuroscientific research, adequate adaptations of physical and philosophical concepts in neuroscience and the place of cognitive functions. Now, the temporal representation of conscious experience and the types of the neural architecture to represent objects in time have aroused scientific interest. Under these interests, we focus on the studies on the temporary triadic structure of phenomenological consciousness in Dan Lloyd and Rick Grush. From Grush’s studies, the importance of Kantian ideas for cognitive neuroscience emerges, due to the active way in which Kant conceived space and time as forms of intuition, within which the mind interprets its experience. Under this perspective, the theoretical arguments of Dennett-Kinsbourne and Eagleman-Sejnowski represent winks in the direction of Kant-Husserl within the neuroscientific goal while considering that the contents provided by the mind included space, objects and perception of causal relationships. Then, theories of cognitive neuroscience are beginning to suggest that these elements are also, as Kant argued, interpretative elaborations provided by mind / brain, and not only content received from outside. In other words, current cognitive neuroscientific theories try to pass from its Humean phase to a Kantian phase. So, the challenge has been to explain that these elements are provided by the mind and the world itself, and how they have the content they have come from. These are lacking in current studies. Filling this gap helps to involve the analysis of the scientist’s experience in his theoretical attitude. In this sense, an investigation under the Kantian-Husserlian approach that involves pure intuitions a priori with the experience of the scientific and neuroscientific concepts represents a ground-breaking. At present, a neurophilosophical study about this does not exist. In this sense, one feasible proposal for research would be based on the application of neuroscientific results of Moser-Britt to philosophical problems of foundational notions in relativistic physics: space, time, space-time, field, etc., under the Kantian-Husserlian approach, which allows to demonstrate the multidisciplinary link between neurophilosophy and physics. This represents a ground-breaking area in current interests in scientific research, with a positive impact in the field of neuroscience, and contributing to the study of abstraction emphasizing the importance of Kant’s Copernican turn and Husserl’s phenomenological ideas in the construction of physical theories. -/- . (shrink)

concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real-world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation-based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded (...) by related and unrelated pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of corn. When pictures were presented for 500 ms, latencies did not differ. However, when pictures were presented for 1,000 ms, decision latencies were significantly shorter for abstract words preceded by related versus unrelated pictures. Because the abstract concepts corresponded to the pictured situation as a whole, rather than a single concrete object or entity, the necessary relational processing takes time. In Experiment 2, on each trial, an abstract word was presented for 250 ms, immediately followed by a picture. Participants indicated whether or not the picture showed a normal situation. Decision latencies were significantly shorter for pictures preceded by related versus unrelated abstract words. Our experiments provide evidence that knowledge of events and situations is important for learning and using at least some types of abstract concepts. That is, abstract concepts are grounded in situations, but in a more complex manner than for concrete concepts. Although people's understanding of abstract concepts certainly includes knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, sensory and motor information experienced during real-life events is important as well. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the problem of time in the thought of Bergson, showing how the evolution of the concept of duration is conducive to new developments in the philosophy of intuition. Duration, which in the Essay connotes the experience of a non-measurable lived experience, while in Matter and Memory it assumes rhythms of different intensities to justify the relationship between perception and memory, as well as in Creative Evolution is judged as the fabric of reality itself, in Duration and (...) Simultaneity it is posited not only as a criterion to discern what is real and what is artificial, but also to justify the measurement of reality, that is to say, to restore the point of contact between time as duration and space, that seemed previously compromised by the loss of ontological consistency of extension as the dimension of the body. In this paper, then, Bergson, also by virtue of a controversial, detailed comparison with the theory of relativity, finally arrives to support the hypothesis of a single temporal dimension, curved and dynamic, where space comes to be outlined as the abstract tangent of time. It is at this level, then, that it becomes possible to examine the emergence of the concepts within the meanders of intuition as concepts imbued with meaning: here is the primary source of that continuous “added” element of new nuclei of creativity that characterizes the very logic of Bergsonian living where what, as ideal relationship, is time, as a real relationship, becomes life, i.e., the continuous opening of a register in which time is inscribed, becoming incarnate thus in the very nature of every organism. (shrink)

Little is known of Edmund Husserl's direct encounter with Georg Cantor's ideas on Platonic idealism and the abstraction of number concepts during the late 19th century, when Husserl's philosophical orientation changed considerably and definitely. Closely analyzing and comparing the two men's writings during that important time in their intellectual careers, I describe the crucial shift in Husserl's views on psychologism and metaphysical idealism as it relates to Cantor's philosophy of arithmetic. I thus establish connections between their ideas which have (...) been until now been virtually unsuspected and contribute to a better understanding of the development of Husserl's thought and of the philosophical and metaphysical ideas within which Cantor chose to frame his theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 199-203 [Access article in PDF] Lived Time and to Live Time Christian Kupke Keywords time, dimensional time, temporality, dialectics, subjectivity In this paper, I argue that a phenomenological description of temporality is a description of what it is to "live" time, that is, to live time in its three-dimensional aspects: past, future, and present. And it (...) is suggested that this dimensional time can be analyzed on two different levels: on a microstructural level that is part of the subject–object relationship (cognitive–intentional time), and on a macrostructural level that is part of the subject–subject relationship (intersubjective time). In a close reading of Martin Wyllie's paper "Lived Time and Psychopathology" (2005) some implications and consequences of these suggestions are discussed. Conceptual Problems: Personal and Intersubjective Time One of Martin Wyllie's main theses is that to accurately describe suffering one may have to use a conceptual framework of a bipartite structure that includes the embodied temporal subject on the one hand and the temporal world on the other. It is this what the author calls a "dialectical relationship" between the time of the individual person called "personal time" and the time of the world called "world time" or "intersubjective time" (Wyllie 2005, 173).But then Martin Wyllie also deals with another model, another conceptual framework that follows a different logic and that—in contrast to the dualistic model—is usually associated with dialectics: the tripartite structure of past, future, and present. "Now in lived time", Wyllie claims, "is a unity of the past, present, and future, and is more than simply a succession because the immediate 'no-more', 'present', and 'yet-to-come' are ordinarily never sharply separated" (Wyllie 2005, 174).I want first to discuss the conceptual problems that come along with Martin Wyllie's use of these models. It seems to me that the author is dealing with the complexity of the relationship between these models by means of a double strategy: to conceptualize world time as intersubjective time (a), and to focus the analysis on the external, dualistic model of personal and intersubjective time (b).(a) "World time" may be differentiated at least into three categories: physical and cosmological time; natural and biological time; and social or sociocultural time. But the question is: how are these (quasi-) objective time matrices realized (and perhaps even "constituted") by the individual subject? To answer this question it is, also in my view, a good strategy for a psychopathology of time to concentrate on intersubjective [End Page 199] time, for, as Martin Wyllie states, there is indeed no doubt that "the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world" (Wyllie 2005, 177).But what I think might be a severe problem with this focal point of the analysis is the tendency to identify the world exclusively with an intersubjective world. That the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world does not mean that the subject's whole world is nothing more than an intersubjective world. Those temporal processes that are, for instance, necessary to "read"—in an intersubjective world—Martin Wyllie's text and to "write" a comment on it (as I do now) are part of at least a double temporal structure.First, reading and writing are formal processes of an integration of cognitive and intentional activities that are the transcendental basis of any intelligible discussion of semantic questions, namely, to recognize signs, retentionally and protentionally, as integral parts of higher temporal units to enable the subject to understand what is read or written. Without such retentional and protentional acts, as they were generally described by Husserl, any text would be a mere accumulation of signs without any formal or logical order.But, second, reading and writing are also informal processes of an integration of those intersubjective activities that result in an intelligible discussion of semantic questions. Here it is necessary to remember what was read or written, by Martin Wyllie, myself, and others (an intersubjective remembrance that is essential for the... (shrink)

This article seeks to show that the views on time and eternity of Plotinus and Boethius are analogous to those implied by the block-time perspective in contemporary philosophy of time, as implied by the mathematical physics of Einstein and Minkowski. Both Einstein and Boethius utilized their theories of time and eternity with the practical goal of providing consolation to persons in distress; this practice of consolatio is compared to Pierre Hadot’s studies of the “Look from Above”, (...) of the importance of concentrating on the present moment, and his emphasis on ancient philosophy as providing therapy for the soul, instead of mere abstract speculation for its own sake. In the first part of the article, Einstein’s views are compared with those of Plotinus, and with the elucidation of Plotinus’ views provided in the Arabic Theology of Aristotle. The second part of the article studies Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which, contrary to recent interpretations, is indeed a genuine consolation rather than a parody thereof. The Consolation shows how the study of the Neoplatonic philosophical curriculum can lead the student along the path to salvation, by awakening and elaborating his innate ideas. To illustrate this doctrine, a passage from the little-known PseudoBoethian treatise De diis et praesensionibus is studied. Finally, after a survey of Boethius’ view on fate and providence, and Aristotle’s theory of future contingents, I study Boethius’ three main arguments in favor of the reconcilability of divine omniscience and human free will: the distinction between absolute and conditional necessity, the principle that the nature of knowledge is determined by the knower, and finally the doctrine that God lives in an eternal present, seeing past, present, and future simultaneously. This last view, developed primarily from Plotinus, is once again argued to be analogous to that advocated by contemporary block-time theorists on the basis of Eisteinian relativity. God’s supratemporal vision introduces no necessity into contingent events. Ultimate, objective reality, for Boethius as for Plotinus and Einstein, is atemporal, and our idea that there is a conflict between human free will and divine omniscience derives from a kind of optical illusion, caused by the fact that we cannot help but think in terms of temporality. (shrink)

In recent years, language has been shown to play a number of important cognitive roles over and above the communication of thoughts. One hypothesis gaining support is that language facilitates thought about abstract categories, such as democracy or prediction. To test this proposal, a novel set of semantic memory task trials, designed for assessing abstract thought non-linguistically, were normed for levels of abstractness. The trials were rated as more or less abstract to the degree that answering them (...) required the participant to abstract away from both perceptual features and common setting associations corresponding to the target image. The normed materials were then used with a population of people with aphasia to assess the relationship of abstract thought to language. While the language-impaired group with aphasia showed lower overall accuracy and longer response times than controls in general, of special note is that their response times were significantly longer as a function of a trial’s degree of abstractness. Further, the aphasia group’s response times in reporting their degree of confidence (a separate, metacognitive measure) were negatively correlated with their language production abilities, with lower language scores predicting longer metacognitive response times. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that language is an important aid to abstract thought and to metacognition about abstract thought. (shrink)

Modern cosmology treats space and time, or rather space-time, as concrete particulars. The General Theory of Relativity combines the distribution of matter and energy with the curvature of space-time. Here space-time appears as a concrete entity which affects matter and energy and is affected by the things in it. I question the idea that space-time is a concrete existing entity which both substantivalism and reductive relationism maintain. Instead I propose an alternative view, which may be (...) called non-reductive relationism, by arguing that space and time are abstract entities based on extension and changes. (shrink)

An Elementary Transition to Abstract Mathematics will help students move from introductory courses to those where rigor and proof play a much greater role. The text is organized into five basic parts: the first looks back on selected topics from pre-calculus and calculus, treating them more rigorously, and it covers various proof techniques; the second part covers induction, sets, functions, cardinality, complex numbers, permutations, and matrices; the third part introduces basic number theory including applications to cryptography; the fourth part (...) introduces key objects from abstract algebra; and the final part focuses on polynomials. Features: The material is presented in many short chapters, so that one concept at a time can be absorbed by the student. Two "looking back" chapters at the outset (pre-calculus and calculus) are designed to start the student's transition by working with familiar concepts. Many examples of every concept are given to make the material as concrete as possible and to emphasize the importance of searching for patterns. A conversational writing style is employed throughout in an effort to encourage active learning on the part of the student. (shrink)

I have argued that the most recent versions of the causal theory are subject to serious limitations. The causal analysis of spatiotemporal coincidence considered in Section IV does not apply to space-times in which (1) fails. And current versions of the theory collapse altogether for typical cases of relativistic space-times which are closed in their temporal aspects. Second, I have pointed out that the program of recent causal theorists is based on a false dichotomy — open vs. closed times; for (...) only a small subclass of relativisitic space-times can be said to be either open or closed in their temporal aspects, and the causal theory seems incapable of handling the cases which fall in between. Third, I have argued that the general theory of relativity does not provide motivation for the causal theory; on the contrary, general relativity promotes the view of spacetime as a substantial entity.As a result, I do not see that the causal theorist has a convincing argument against the position which holds that in order to understand the subtle and complex temporal structures encompassed by relativity theory, one must accept space-time as an entity which cannot be analyzed away as an abstract mathematical construct used for representing the ‘physical’, i.e., causal, relations between events. And I cannot agree with van Fraassen (1970, p. 140) that Philosophers were not long in appreciating this development [i.e., relativity theory], and the consequent construction of the causal theory of time and space-time must be considered one of the major contributions of twentieth-century philosophy of science. For it seems to me that causal theorists have failed to appreciate this development and that the construction of the causal theory has served to obscure important and interesting facts about the temporal aspect of space-time. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

I develop a new theory of times. I show how to analyze times as tenselessly describable “abstract” entities. Some philosophers make use of ersatz times, which are abstract entities such as maximal states of affairs that bear earlier than and later than relations to one another. Although these times are normally thought to exemplify A-properties that cannot be expressed in a purely tenseless language, I explain how a tenseless theory can accommodate abstract times. I do this by (...) defending Rasmussen’s tenseless presentism against a recent objection, and getting on the table a new theory of time that combines eternalism with a B-series of genuine, abstract times. The result is a new way to think about a familiar category: time. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increased attention to temporality in political theory, and such attention is sorely needed. For too long political theory, with the exception of occasional phenomenological forays, has remained grounded in a particular experience of time as linear and sequential. This book aims to unsettle the dominant framework by putting time itself, and the experience of time in everyday life, at the center of its critical analysis. Smita Rahman focuses on the experience (...) of time as one where past, present, and future intermingle with each other and refuse to adhere to a sequential structure. Rather than trying to tame the flux of time, this book places this "out of joint" experience of time at the center of its analysis of global politics. Rahman takes the highly abstract concept of time and decenters it to speak to a wide range of political issues across disciplines by exposing the cultural construction of the foundational concept of time in political theory and attending closely to the challenges of cultural incommensurability that it encounters in a globalized world of difference. Specifically, the book looks at interrogation practices in Afghanistan, the challenges of coping with the burdens of collective memory in Algeria, South Africa, and Rwanda, the difficulty of uncritically applying such a framework to the Muslim world through the language of secularism, and finally at the beginnings of democratic emergence in Bangladesh to explore a politics of contingency. (shrink)

Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by idetifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency between entities of different categories. He proceeds to set out a unified and original metaphysical system: he defends a substance ontology, according to which the existence of the world s (...) one world in time depends upon the existence of persisting things which retain their identity over time and through processes of qualitative change. And he contends that even necessary beings, such as the abstract objects of mathematics, depend ultimately for their existence upon there being a concrete world of enduring substances. Within his system of metaphysics Lowe seeks to answer many of the deepest and most challenging questions in philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abstract General Ideas in Hume George S. Pappas Hume followed Berkeley in rejecting abstract general ideas; that is, both of these philosophers rejected the view that one could engage in the operation or activity ofabstraction — a kind ofmental separation ofentities that are inseparable in reality —as well as the view that the alleged products of such an activity — ideas which are intrinsically general — (...) really exist. What has not been clear to commentators on either of these two philosophers has been why they each were so opposed to abstraction and abstract general ideas. The provision of an answer to this question is the main thrust of this paper. The nature of the question should be clarified at the outset. I am notasking the psychological question, whatwere BerkeleyandHume's actual intentions when they were moved to reject abstraction and abstract general ideas. Though I regard this question as one of great interest and importance, I am presently aiming to answer a somewhat different one, viz., what role, what philosophical role, does the rejection of abstraction and abstract general ideas play in the philosophies ofBerkeley and Hume? The answer to this latter question is apt to have some bearing on the right way to answer the first question; but, for present purposes, it is important to keep the two questions distinct. The maincontentionofthe paperis thattherejectionofabstraction and abstract general ideas lies at the very heart of the philosophy of Berkeley, and that pretty much the same may be said for Hume. Berkeley's defense ofa kind ofidealism stands or falls with the success ofhis attack on abstract general ideas, and Hume's critique ofinfinite divisibility in matters pertaining to space and time, along with his destructive critique ofvarious metaphysical notions, crucially depends on the successful denial of abstract general ideas. I. Berkeleyan Idealism Berkeley's most extended treatment of abstract ideas comes in the introduction to the Principles ofHuman Knowledge, first published in 1710. However, since he does not take up the topic in any systematic way later in the same book, nor in the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Phihnous (1713), it has seemed to many commentators that Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas is a local matter, one having only to do with issues concerning language use and a somewhat isolated criticism of Locke. That this is the wrong way to look at things is Volume XV Number 2 339 GEORGE S. PAPPAS perhaps best indicated by a couple of passages from the Principles. In section 5 ofthat work Berkeley says: If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from there being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? The tenet Berkeley is here referring to is to the effect that sensible objects such as trees and chairs exist independently ofperception. This allusion is made clear when we notice that in the immediately preceding passage Berkeley says: It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this Principle may be entertained... whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may... perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? (Principles 4) The claim that sensible objects exist independently ofall perception is the very denial of Berkeley's esse is percipi thesis regarding such objects. For the latter thesis holds that each sensible object is such that it exists if and only if it is perceived. So, in the first-quoted passage from Principles 5, Berkeley is saying that the denial of esse is percipi 'depends on' the doctrine of abstract ideas. Surely, the esse is percipi thesis is part ofthe core ofBerkeley's... (shrink)

The central task of the book is to compare and contrast the model of time as comprised of discrete instants and the model of time as a continuum. The first half of the book develops axiomatic and algebraic interconnections between "point structures" and "period structures"; the second half explores the connections between propositional tense logics in the tradition of A.N. Prior and the associated point and period models. Both the author's fine style and the publisher's excellent layout and (...) typefaces contribute to making this a particularly pleasant, readable volume. The level of exposition is that of texts for beginning graduate students interested in logic or abstract algebra. (shrink)

From descriptive interpretation of "understanding" to abstract-gnosiological understanding of mentality. The historical deconstruction of the existential understanding introduced as ontologic property of constantly becoming stable "Being-in-the-World" allows us to interpret this concept as mentality. Through theprism of existential philosophy in general and its interpreters such as Jacque Le Goff it allows us to make a conclusion that mentality is one of complete formations of public consciousness. But in the course of such interpretation of mentality it is important to avoid (...) the methodological situation in which Plato deadlocked, when he had decided to find out, what was beautiful itself. For the way out from this situation he had to introduce independently existing ideas and special space of ideas which define all the things and even gods. We, unfortunately, do not have such an opportunity which the history gave to Plato. Somehow to define structural and historical conditions for breaking out of mentality we shall be limited to the instruction that it is more complex, compound, but in the same time integrally complete formation historically actualized, unlike traditionally allocated kinds and forms of consciousness. Another important question is whether the concept "mentality" is acceptable for analysis of the current modern processes or it can only be used for the reconstruction of the completed formations. The mentality cannot be analyzed from inside. And we are inclined to consider that to operate the concept "mentality" in relation to a modern representative of civilization is inappropriate. (shrink)

In this compendium of essays, some of the world's leading thinkers discuss their conceptions of space and time, as viewed through the lens of their own discipline. With an epilogue on the limits of human understanding, this volume hosts contributions from six or more diverse fields. It presumes only rudimentary background knowledge on the part of the reader. Time and again, through the prism of intellect, humans have tried to diffract reality into various distinct, yet seamless, atomic, yet (...) holistic, independent, yet interrelated disciplines and have attempted to study it contextually. Philosophers debate the paradoxes, or engage in meditations, dialogues and reflections on the content and nature of space and time. Physicists, too, have been trying to mold space and time to fit their notions concerning micro- and macro-worlds. Mathematicians focus on the abstract aspects of space, time and measurement. While cognitive scientists ponder over the perceptual and experiential facets of our consciousness of space and time, computer scientists theoretically and practically try to optimize the space-time complexities in storing and retrieving data/information. The list is never-ending. Linguists, logicians, artists, evolutionary biologists, geographers et cetera, all are trying to weave a web of understanding around the same duo. However, our endeavour into a world of such endless imagination is restrained by intellectual dilemmas such as: Can humans comprehend everything? Are there any limits? Can finite thought fathom infinity? We have sought far and wide among the best minds to furnish articles that provide an overview of the above topics. We hope that, through this journey, a symphony of patterns and tapestry of intuitions will emerge, providing the reader with insights into the questions: What is Space? What is Time? Chapter [15] of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

Experience of matter can be described in the context of time and space, whereas, some people say, experience of mind may be described according to time only. Accordingly, though time and space together are regarded as objective forms, one may have a propensity for treating time alone as a particular form of the subjective consciousness. For space is indeed referred to the self-evidence of being, while time is thought to belong rather to the self-evidence of (...) our own consciousness. According to my opinion, however, even the spatial description is indispensable for the state of “mind”. For instance, the contents of our consciousness can be described only in terms of the localized phases of their images. Contrary to Kant, who regarded time and space together as forms of the outer intuition (i.e. as conditions of sensation), and time alone as form of the inner sense, I have a firm intention to assert them both as two forms of objective being because it is the being itself that can be the ultimate object of any of our cognitive powers — sensation, understanding and reason. Time and space are not forms proper to a particular “being” such as conscious existence like ours; they are also, nay, above all, two objective forms of being in general that transcends all such limited existences. It follows that these forms themselves, once abstracted in our mind, must, first of all, be valid for material beings; after that, i.e. derivatively and analogically, they may also be valid for mind-beings. The main aim of this paper is “dialectically” to elucidate that fact on the subject of time in particular. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article takes up questions regarding the interrelation of the given and the undetermined in Augustine’s understanding of the self. As a critical point, it argues that debate regarding the Augustinian self has been marked by an emphasis on given structures that has constricted conceptions of human becoming. This emphasis emerges by way of competing narratives of discovery: Augustine is presented as a discoverer either of a constitutive space of the self, or of a determinative temporality. It results (...) in accounts of formation that occlude the spiritual significance of the full sweep of Christ’s history, from incarnation through ascension. As a constructive point, this article argues that Augustine positions himself to develop a Christological vision of Christian becoming, rooted in attention to all aspects of Christ’s life and work, by understanding space and time not as structures that fix the bounds of human becoming, but rather as realities that take on different forms in accordance with differing modes of love. (shrink)

The leap from primitive to scientific time represented as the "time" in "relativity physics", or in "thermodynamics" or perhaps in "quantum physics" or even within "statistical mechanics" is large. Large also is the conceptual dif­ference between these various understandings of the nature of time. How are we really to understand these physical perspectives on time: As knowledge about the real nature of time represented by the objective concepts: Or as epistemological-operational abstractions that cannot avoid elevating (...) their results to the level of full-fledged reality, to ontology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume on Space (and Time) BEN MIJUSKOVIC HUME'S LABYRINTHINE ANALYSES of our ideas of space and time, textually occuring so early in the Treatise, 1clearly testify to his conviction of their central role in the physical sciences, then making such fantastic progress. Furthermore, quite early in the Treatise, Hume indicates his ambition to effect a revolution in the mental sciences comparable to the one Newton had (...) achieved in the physical disciplines, through the latter's conception of the force and effects of gravity. Accordingly, Hume regards the three principles or laws of the association of ideas as a "kind of ATTRACTION, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural" (T, 12-13). In pursuit of his investigations Hume commences, in the first part of the Treatise, by insisting on the principle that all our simple ideas are derived from simple impressions and that impressions always precede their correspondent ideas (T, 4, 7). This being firmly established, Hume nevertheless immediately proceeds in the very next part of the work to declare, paradoxically enough, that our ideas of space and time are complex ideas that lie beyond the nature of each and all of our simple impressions. Differently put, Hume is insisting that our ideas of space and time, unlike our idea of, say, a shade of blue, are not derived unproblematically from a precedent, simple mental impression (or physiological sensation, ~ la Locke). Thus, according to Hume, our idea of space is not sensationally given; it is not traceable to an antecedent extended impression as our idea of blue is derived from a precedent impression of blue. Hume's insistence that our conception of space is nonsensational has perplexed competent commentators on Hume. Consequently, even so able an interpreteter as Kemp Smith has been puzzled "why it was that [Hume] did not take the more easy line of allowing 'extensity' to the sensations of sight and touch. ''2 Or again, "How is it that [Hume] has not taken what would seem to be for him the easier and more obvious course, at least as regards space--the course usually taken by those who hold a sensationalist theory of knowledge--that extensity is a feature of certain of our sensations (those given through the senses of touch and sight), and in consequence sensibly imaged?" (PDH, 280). Of this simpler solution both Hobbes (Leviathan, Pt. I, 1; De Corpore, Pt. II, 7, 8) and Locke (Essay, II, 8) had availed themselves prior to Hume. Hence, Kemp Smith has found the section to be tough going indeed and has contented himself, to a great extent, in simply offering a number of historical appendices, suggesting lines of influence on Hume, through passages discovered in the works of Pierre Bayle, Nicholas de Malezieu, and Isaac Barrow. Now, without denying that Hume studied and was influenced in part by the ' A Treatise of Hurnan Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1888); hereafter cited as T. 2 The Philosophy of David Hume (New York, 1964), p. 277; hereafter cited as PDH. [3871 388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thinking of these authors (as well as by Francis Hutcheson), I wish to take up and develop in this paper a "historical" suggestion first offered by a student of Kemp Smith's, Charles Hendel; and I shall extend Hendel's point and try to argue a "theoretic" one, namely, that Hume's phenomenalism in the section devoted to space and time is derived from, and closely akin to, a form of Leibnizian idealism. In 1925, Hendel argued that Hume was directly influenced by the Leibniz-Clarke debate over the ontological and epistemological status of space and time; and he held that for Hume space and time, as appearances, were ultimately grounded in the associative power of the imagination.' Thirty years later, in a second edition, Hendel disavowed his earlier claim concerning the imagination and avoided discussion of his prior view that Hume was influenced by the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence (1963 edition, pp. 501, 503). In Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature, which first appeared in 1932 (reissued by Archon, 1967; see pp. 64-65, 67, 73, 77), John Laird also intimated that... (shrink)

The normalized, deterministic conception of evolution espoused by Dennett is increasingly being challenged by theorists who, following Gould, emphasize the role that historical contingencies play in it. I explore the conflict between these views and argue that correcting our understanding of the relationship between nature’s systematic necessities and historical temporality can resolve it. The mathematically precise laws science formulates describe the systematic patterns of nature abstractly and, as abstractions, these laws do not preclude but allow for the contingencies of historical (...) time. Drawing on Heidegger and Hume, I argue that historical time is characterized by the ingression of the unprecedented future into the present. This is the ontological infrastructure that makes the evolution of unprecedented ontological alterities possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Time’s Causal Power: Proclus and the Natural Theology of Time by Antonio Luis Costa VargasM. MartijnVARGAS, Antonio Luis Costa. Time’s Causal Power: Proclus and the Natural Theology of Time. Boston: Brill, 2021. i + 231 pp. Cloth and eBook, $162.00The metaphysics of time in Neoplatonism tends to be described top-down: From transcendent eternity, time as we know it emanates. This is (...) hardly informative about the nature of time as such, however. Vargas’s monograph about Proclus’s theory of time instead takes a bottom-up approach: From the effects of time, he ascends to transcendent and divine Time as their cause—a natural theology. In the process, we learn that the key element of Proclus’s theory is that Time, which orders events and distributes “lifetimes,” provides us with the possibility of understanding the world as an ordered, intelligible whole.The book contains four chapters providing a genealogy of sorts by systematically laying out Proclus’s inspiration from the philosophy of time in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus respectively. Chapter 1 starts from Plato’s Timaeus and the distinction between the “order of time” and the “flow of time.” The order of time is the intelligible, transcendent substance that causes the “flow of time,” that is, time as change. From the Republic, Proclus harvests “true Number” as determining the former, and the motions of the heavenly bodies dispensing lifespans to all beings as determining the latter. [End Page 732]Chapter 2 starts from Aristotle’s criticism of Platonic time as motion: A motion belongs to a specific substance, but time should be omnipresent. Vargas shows how Aristotle’s understanding of change, causality, and time helps Proclus shape the order of time as a cosmic intelligence that makes the world intelligible through the number by which its processes are measured. In this chapter, Vargas presents a beautiful and rich analysis of how Neoplatonists adopt elements from Aristotle’s physics, psychology, and biology in order to build their Platonic notion of time as “number that counts” or productive number. In Neoplatonic terms: Aristotle’s first intellect as first mover becomes the substantial Order of Time in Proclus, the transcendent monad, and his lower movers become the chain of emanated lower times as kinds of intelligence.In chapter 3, Stoic biology helps elaborate the understanding of time as the order within the cosmos, the world as a living being, and contributes the idea of one simultaneous present or “now” for everything. This cosmic life helps counter Aristotle’s criticism: All motions belong to specific substances but are part of the life of the cosmos. Vargas here also brings in an interesting link to more recent discussions in physics concerning the nature of simultaneity: How do we know whether things occurring far away from each other are simultaneous? The cosmic “now” and the notion of sympathy, which Proclus finds in synchronous processes, provide a metaphysical framework for such simultaneity.In chapter 4, Plotinus’s contribution to Proclus’s theory is discussed: the flow of time as the life of the world soul, which underlies all life in the cosmos and ties it together. It consists in the presence in the soul of the effects, that is, the external activity, of the emanated internal activity of Intelligence. Intelligence, according to Plotinus, must be alive because it is fully active, and its emanation in the world soul leads to the soul’s own external activity, that is, its uniform and discursive production of the world. This external activity is time in the strictest sense of the word. The main difference between Plotinus and Proclus is that for Proclus the flow of time is inferior to the eternal life of the world soul, belonging to its external activity, but for Plotinus it coincides with the world soul. Another interesting difference Vargas highlights is that, where Plotinus denied the possibility of time being a number of changes because of the eternity of the world soul’s production, Proclus instead ascribed it countable infinity resulting from the everlasting repetitions of the Great Year.Vargas’s analyses contain very rich and detailed discussions of metaphysical issues such as the Aristotelian difference... (shrink)

In the correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz proposes to construe physical theory in terms of physical (spatio-temporal) relations between physical objects, thus avoiding incorporation of infinite totalities of abstract entities (such as Newtonian space) in physical ontology. It has generally been felt that this proposal cannot be carried out. I demonstrate an equivalence between formulations postulating space-time as an infinite totality and formulations allowing only possible spatio-temporal relations of physical (point-) objects. The resulting rigorous formulations of physical theory may (...) be seen to follow Leibniz' suggestion quite closely. On the other hand, physical assumptions implicit in the postulation of space-time totalities are made explicit in the reconstruction of the space-time versions from the physical-relation versions. (shrink)

This short article reflects on short videos of action cam footage that are widely disseminated on online platforms. These first-person perspective shorts are compared to early cinema’s phantom rides in the use of point-of-view shots, and a dizzying effect of heightened mobility and versatility in camera movements. ‘Short’ in form and duration, highly individual and personal, and with minimal (DIY) editing, these moving-image, navigational ‘selfies’ are exemplary for the aesthetics of social media and online video sharing platforms. Considering the distinction (...) Michel de Certeau’s has made between (abstract) maps and (personalized) tours, I explore the way in which these images construct a form of moving-image cartography – a first-person cartography that fits today’s pervasive visual trope of navigation. (shrink)

This essay takes an epistemological perspective on the question of the ‘art of living with technology.’ Such an approach is needed as our everyday notion and understanding of technology keep being framed in the old categories of instrumentalism and essentialism—notwithstanding philosophy of technology’s substantial attempts, in recent times, to bridge the stark dichotomy between those two viewpoints. Here, the persistent dichotomous thinking still characterizing our everyday involvement with technology is traced back to the epistemological distinction between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract.’ (...) Those terms are often contrasted, and a tendency can be found, in the literature as well as in popular discourse, to either conceptually favor one of both or let them collapse into each other. The current essay makes a plea, in an exploratory manner, and on the basis of insights hailing from among others Gregory Bateson and Alfred Korzybski, to not choose either one of those options, but to practice ourselves in navigating ladders of abstraction. (shrink)

Here are presented the essential features of what Mach considered the four important types or ideas of space and time. These are referred to as ‘perceptual,’ ‘geometrical,’ ‘physical space and time’ and ‘mathematical manifolds.’ Although the first is foundational, we consider how in Mach’s view each further type is in a sense a more general abstraction, freed from particular limiting characteristics of the preceding type. What is most significant is his view of the fourth, in which the most (...) fundamental and essential feature of space is as a relation of immediacy and of time as a relation of mediacy. Some of the important implications of this are discussed, along with suggestions regarding their possible relevance to contemporary physics. (shrink)