On the other hand is the assertion that humans experience of duration is unique in experiencing not physical processes like clocks or anything else physical, but of the advancement of this "ontologically real" present. This would elevate it to an empirical claim, and despite being untested, would seem to be complete nonsense. — noAxioms

Totally agreed.

This sense of temporal perspectivality is quite independent from whatever the special theory of relativity has to say about time, empirically, except for the manner in which it defines the three regions of the agent-centered light-cone at each instant: limiting possible intervention, or unintended causal influence, to the events located within the "future" region of the light-cone.

On the other hand is the assertion that humans experience of duration is unique in experiencing not physical processes like clocks or anything else physical, but of the advancement of this "ontologically real" present. This would elevate it to an empirical claim, and despite being untested, would seem to be complete nonsense.

In the transition between phenomenological space/time and physical space/time, I think it's quite common - and this is in broad strokes - to make one a derivative of the other. Kant's view on space is a phenomenological one:

Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the representation of space must already underlie them. Therefore, the representation of space cannot be obtained through experience from the relations of outer appearance; this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation. — Kant, CoPR, Transcendental Aesthetic

and time is, again very roughly speaking, an a-priori structure which gives us our index of consecutiveness of experiences.

In the same regard, Heidegger's view of space - however different in character - makes physical space (and time) derivatives of various existentialia (roughly, 'fundamental properties of experience')

For example, an entity is ‘near by’ if it is readily available for some such activity, and ‘far away’ if it is not, whatever physical distances may be involved. Given the Dasein-world relationship highlighted above, the implication (drawn explicitly by Heidegger, see Being and Time 22: 136) is that the spatiality distinctive of equipmental entities, and thus of the world, is not equivalent to physical, Cartesian space. Equipmental space is a matter of pragmatically determined regions of functional places, defined by Dasein-centred totalities of involvements (e.g., an office with places for the computers, the photocopier, and so on—places that are defined by the way in which they make these equipmental entities available in the right sort of way for skilled activity). For Heidegger, physical, Cartesian space is possible as something meaningful for Dasein only because Dasein has de-severance as one of its existential characteristics. — SEP, Martin Heidegger, Spatiality

De-severance functions as a spatialising structure in which relevant objects for my activity are 'nearby for me' and irrelevant objects are 'distant from me'. Heidegger argues at length that the Cartesian conception of space - still present in special and general relativity, they are modern forms of Cartesian coordinate systems; real valued vector spaces - as a field of orthogonal extensions, and my place in it as a point, is derivative from this more primordial spatiality of my experience.

Time, also, is treated as derivative of the orientation of experience. Orientation, again roughly, has the component of futurity - my plans, what I will do next; the component of the present - my engagement with what I'm doing; and the component of the past - what needed to happen to be doing what I'm doing now. It should be noted that these elements work by structuring how I'm doing what I'm doing, and 'the experiential moment' is dispersed and elongated with respect to the futural,present and past aspects of Heidegger's phenomenological time. If you want to read more on this, the terms are 'fallenness', 'thrownness' and 'projection'.

Obversely, it is possible to imagine human experiential time and space as derivatives of physical time and space. The Circadian rhythm being coupled to the sun and the differences between neurotransmitter activity in the brain, the sense of fatigue from mental and physical exertions giving some sort of inner clock coupled with the one we obtain from day and night (or more generally light level). We could say that experiential time is an illusion projected from the the non-relativistic speed of our day to day activities.

I'd like to say at this point that I don't think either of these approaches gives much respect to the particularities of the derivative space/time concept. Accounts of phenomenological space/time are good at describing phenomenological time, science of physical space/time is good at describing physical space/time.

I think the following is a worthwhile question:

In what senses is our phenomenological space/time related to physical space/time? Deriving one from the other has a few problems:

(experiential allows derivation of physical) -> vulnerability to arche-fossils
(physical allows derivation of experiential) -> hard to give an account of differences between the two. (eg, flow-states and time perception)

The discussion so far as highlighted three connected ideas which act as a conceptual bridge between physical space/time and experiential space/time, namely:

(1) Time-like separation between events in Earthly reference frames is prerequisite for maintaining the order of cause and effect. This is a bit of an imprecise formulation but I think it suggests the right idea. Stuff has to be moving slowly, stuff has to be close on a cosmic scale, in order for us to get the real properties we have out of physical time accounts which use relativity.

(2) Light-cones as partitions between causally connected components of space-time.

(3) Limiting theorems of SR and GR reduce their dynamics to typical Earthly ones for most processes, so SR and GR can be incorporated in an ontology of space time.

Ever since I read a reasonable amount of Heidegger, and then Meillassoux' criticism of (experiential->physical) time derivations, I've thought it would be an interesting question to ask:

How do humans internalise physical space and time? How do experiential space/time allow us to act in a universe with a space/time alien to our own? An operational question, rather than casting one space/time as logically prior to another.

One thing to note about Bergson's concept of duration is that it is not, despite popular misreadings, limited to our/human psychology. For Bergson, our experience of duration attests to the fact that there are durations in the multiple, some of which we occupy, but many of which are, as he puts it "superior and inferior to us". Bergson's famous example, in Matter and Memory regarding having to wait for sugar to dissolve, attests to the fact that that are durations with which we do not coincide, that have 'their own time', a kind of temporal autonomy not indexed by us. Deleuze explains: "Bergson's famous formulation, 'I must wait until the sugar dissolves' has a still broader meaning than is given to it by its context. It signifies that my own duration, such as I live it in the impatience of waiting, for example, serves to reveal other durations that beat to other rhythms, that differ in kind from mine.... My duration essentially has the power to disclose other durations." (Deleuze, Bergsonism).

The audacity of Bergson is to have argued for the existence of durations that are as much a part of 'physical processes' as to our psychology - although he does not quite put it that way. One consequence of this is that there are for Bergson times in the multiple, not just one big block of impersonal time that everything belongs 'in', but temporalities that belong in some manner to each and every process of individuation.

Still, the physical duration of processes seem to me not to be perspectival in any one of the two senses distinguished above (i.e. "frame-perspectical" or "agent-perspectival"). — Pierre-Normand

OK, I see that. I was meaning that a worldline (not just one light-cone-laden event along it) is a perspective as a whole, and a person (a localized process) thus has a perspective that includes the duration of that worldline. That's isn't one of the two ways you are using 'perspectival' in your post.

One thing to note about Bergson's concept of duration is that it is not, despite popular misreadings, limited to our/human psychology. For Bergson, our experience of duration attests to the fact that there are durations in the multiple, some of which we occupy, but many of which are, as he puts it "superior and inferior to us". Bergson's famous example, in Matter and Memory regarding having to wait for sugar to dissolve, attests to the fact that that are durations with which we do not coincide, that have 'their own time', a kind of temporal autonomy not indexed by us. Deleuze explains: "Bergson's famous formulation, 'I must wait until the sugar dissolves' has a still broader meaning than is given to it by its context. It signifies that my own duration, such as I live it in the impatience of waiting, for example, serves to reveal other durations that beat to other rhythms, that differ in kind from mine.... My duration essentially has the power to disclose other durations." (Deleuze, Bergsonism). — StreetlightX

This points to the issue with the nature of "an event". The events which we describe, and have words for describing, are proper to our experience of duration, which is really a very narrow range of possible experiences of duration. So if we start to hypothesize about different types of "durations", then we must allow as coincidental to these hypotheses, the possibility that "events" within these different durations are completely beyond what we have the capacity to describe. Transformation mathematics only provide a skeletal comparison, and can't tell us what "an event" would be like in a significantly different experience of duration.

Interesting discussion, I haven't read all of it yet, but here's one little comment:

Prosaically, the perspective of a photon or of a (pathologically) distant motion is just as valid a reference frame sub specie aeternitatis as ones which preserve our causal orders. — fdrake

There is no such thing as the perspective of a photon. The perspective of a photon would be in its "own" reference frame, i.e. a reference frame where the photon is at rest. But there is no such reference frame.


A couple of references on the topic:

John Norton's "opinionated assessment of what we can learn about the ontology of space and time from the special and general theories of relativity":

Also, since causality has been brought up repeatedly, it is perhaps worth mentioning that there are nomologically possible violations of causality both in special and in general relativity. John Earman has written about it a number of works, such as Determinism: What We Have Learned and What We Still Don’t Know.

General relativity does not have a
fully developed metaphysics of causation such as would be expected by a philosopher interested in the nature of causation. Rather we should understand the causal structure of a spacetime in general relativity as laying out necessary conditions that must be satisfied by two events if they are to stand in some sort of causal relation. Just what that relation might be in all its detail can be filled in by your favorite account of causation

From the paper you linked. This kind of reasoning is what I've been trying to use all thread. How do the relativities constrain ontologies of space/time/motion?

There is no such thing as the perspective of a photon. The perspective of a photon would be in its "own" reference frame, i.e. a reference frame where the photon is at rest. But there is no such reference frame.

Space-like separation is still a problem for causality. This is why I've (and seemingly the first paper you linked) tried to frame light-cones as a partition between causally connected and disconnected components. Interestingly the paper goes on to say that while this causal account appears necessary, it isn't sufficient once you switch to general relativity - in the sense that this causal connection/partition can be generated by more than one spacetime geometry.

I've not read much of the second paper yet, but there's nondeterminism even in Newtonian mechanics. Nomologically possible indeterminism anyway.

That's funny. :mask: I'm glad not to be the only one who observes this. — Sam26

If there's a bad smell hanging around thread like this, most likely it's because the threads are rotten.