The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

I think I can make sense of that. I've taken a vow not to be sucked into commenting on anything quantum. I'll only make an ass of myself. But I can't resist complaining that I don't see why the absence of a observer with a clock prevents physical processes proceeding with their various changes relative to each other, resulting in the universe that we now observe. True, we now deduce that those changes were proceeding while we were not present, but there's nothing remarkable, to common sense at least, in that.

I only posted it - I post this passage often - because what you said here:

there is no way to differentiate rest and motion. (There's nowhere for an observer to observe from.) — Ludwig V

Isn't it making the same point? Anyway, it's a digression, let's leave it.

Isn't it making the same point? Anyway, it's a digression, let's leave it. — Wayfarer

Yes, it is. I just spotted a rather radical typo and corrected it. (Delete "presence" and insert "absence" But it is indeed a side-issue for us.

Western philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger, sought the essence of being—eternity, phenomenon, givenness—relying on the formula "Being — is," rooted in a language where "is" fixes being. Even the understanding of God—from Kant's highest being to Heidegger's mystery of being—followed this logic. — Astorre

This is a great way into the issues, and interesting analysis of being/becoming. Language forces our thoughts into certain shapes, that force us to think certain ways. And this can inhibit deeper, or broader, or more complete understanding.

Essence has captivated the west. Perhaps (in part) because of the structure of our sentences.

But I think all of the puzzle pieces and all the same moving parts of experience are written into eastern and western cultures and philosophies. Some puzzle pieces are just more the focus here or there, or then or now - but it is always the same puzzle, and always the same pieces.

Your analysis shows you looking both ways at once (west and east seeing themselves hiding in the other), and a way to educate (east teaching west about the being of becoming, and west teaching east about the essence in existence.

Very interesting stuff.

Aristotle sometimes gets lumped in as a key purveyor of "static being" or "substance metaphysics," but, were I forced to lump him into either category, I'd probably place him on the "process metaphysics" side. Hegel would be another example. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with that too. Aristotle understood the being in becoming (or the becoming of being) better than Plato seemed to, and Hegel, for all his orientation toward the absolute, is more of a method and process developer, than a substance (absolute essence) identifier.

The absence of the copula "is" makes the question "What is being?" alien. — Astorre

Being isn't a "what".
So a language that can't even ask this question may have wasted less time. Being resists definition, and maybe need none; things that are being are the things that have definitions. The being of those things needs no definition. The definition of being is always the same - becoming...

The Russian language disrupts this logic. In the present tense, the copula "есть" (is) is not obligatory: "Сократ философ" (Socrates philosopher), "Он доктор" (He doctor), "Я студент" (I student). Being does not demand confirmation; it simply is present. — Astorre

I agree "is" does not seem to distract from the "what", which is more pure. Whatness. Without distraction. Simply present. Letting the being continue breathing and not packing into a stagnant what through sentence structure.

which points to the world as a flow where everything is born and transforms. — Astorre

Being born, is a becoming motion, so in a world as flow, you should say "everything is born already transforming, continuing to flow."

In further sections, we will endeavor to philosophically clarify whether this distinction is truly rooted in ontology or if it is merely a grammatical intuition. — Astorre

I think it is a bit of both - the languages formed differently when similar human minds spoke of the similar experiences of the same world. But the eastern and western optional ways of speaking were there for the codification all along.

stemming from the Problem of the One and the Many. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is universally acknowledged, isn't it? Maybe not as a problem, but a concern, something drawing the attention of everyone who pays attention. The one-many, fixed-changing.

Being, in our view, becomes through the establishment of boundaries, through the interaction of presence and change. The question "Being — is. How?" is replaced by another: "Being — becomes. How does it become?" — Astorre

You are ambitious. I love it. Interested to see what else you see.

Can there be certainty without stasis?

If stasis precludes life? Is a



This reminds me of a quote I've shared before:

Kant realized that Hume’s world of pure, unique impressions couldn’t exist. This is because the minimal requirement for experiencing anything is not to be so absorbed in the present that one is lost in it. What Hume had claimed— that when exploring his feeling of selfhood, he always landed “on some particular perception or other” but could never catch himself “at any time without a percepton, and never can observe anything but the perception”— was simply not true.33 Because for Hume to even report this feeling he had to perceive something in addition to the immediate perceptions, namely, the very flow of time that allowed them to be distinct in the first place. And to recognize time passing is necessarily to recognize that you are embedded in the perception.

Hence what Kant wrote in his answer to Hamann, ten years in the making. To recollect perfectly eradicates the recollection, just as to perceive perfectly eradicates the perception. For the one who recalls or perceives must recognize him or herself along with the memory or perception for the memory or impression to exist at all. If everything we learn about the world flows directly into us from utterly distinct bits of code, as the rationalists thought, or if everything we learn remains nothing but subjective, unconnected impressions, as Hume believed— it comes down to exactly the same thing. With no self to distinguish itself, no self to bridge two disparate moments in space-time, there is simply no one there to feel irritated at the inadequacy of “dog.” No experience whatsoever is possible.

Here is how Kant put it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever we think or perceive can register as a thought or perception only if it causes a change in us, a “modification of the mind.” But these changes would not register at all if we did not connect them across time, “for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity.”34 As contained in one moment. Think of experiencing a flow of events as a bit like watching a film. For something to be happening at all, the viewer makes a connection between each frame of the film, spanning the small differences so as to create the experience of movement. But if there is a completely new viewer for every frame, with no relation at all to the prior or subsequent frame, then all that remains is an absolute unity. But such a unity, which is exactly what Funes and Shereshevsky and Hume claimed they could experience, utterly negates perceiving anything at all, since all perception requires bridging impressions over time. In other words, it requires exactly what a truly perfect memory, a truly perfect perception, or a truly perfect observation absolutely denies: overlooking minor differences enough to be a self, a unity spanning distinct moments in time.

"The Rigor of Angels: Kant, Heisenberg, Borges, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality."

Sheer change and difference wouldn't really be "change." If one thing is completely discrete from another, if there is no linkage or similarity and relation, then, rather than becoming, you just have sui generis, unrelated things (perhaps popping in and out of existence?). This isn't becoming, but rather a strobe light of unrelated beings. So, leaving aside the difficulty that the past seems to dictate the future, that things seem to have causes, or the difficulties with contingent being "just happening, for no reason at all," it seems hard for me to see how there could be any sort of "sheer becoming." All things that exist are similar in that they exist. If we had "different sorts of unrelated existence," "sui generis types of being," they wouldn't have any relevance for each other. In unrelated moments, we wouldn't have change, just unrelated existence and non-existence.

Now, there is a conceptual priority vis-á-vis difference, and this is important to keep in focus. It's one of the great findings of information theory. But information theory deals with "what something is," and not "that it is," essence but not existence. It skips the former. We can see this in the fact that a perfect set of instructions to duplicate any physical system would not, in fact, be that system. A perfect duplicator, call it Leplace's Printer, needs both instructions and prior existent materials. Information assumes some prior distribution, even if only an uninformed prior, and some recipient. Arguably, this makes it intrinsically triadic (as the advocates of dyadic mechanism wont to point out as a deficit, taking this to mean it is in some way subjective and thence illusory.

However, for those who inherited some of the empiricist modes of thought, the order of knowing has become the order of being, and the priority of difference in discernment is taken to be identical with an ontic priority. I would disagree, for anything to be different it must first exist and be something, "this" or "that," and not nothing in particular. Act follows on being. And in any metaphysics of participation, this linkage is even clearer. The conceptual priority of difference to discernible essence is important, it just isn't an absolute ontic priority. Indeed, the order of knowing and the order of being are, in general, mirror images of one another, reversing the order of each.

Think of experiencing a flow of events as a bit like watching a film. For something to be happening at all, the viewer makes a connection between each frame of the film, spanning the small differences so as to create the experience of movement. But if there is a completely new viewer for every frame, with no relation at all to the prior or subsequent frame, then all that remains is an absolute unity.

That is brilliant.

For all to be swept up in becoming, ALL cannot be swept up in becoming. We have to put a pin in the intuitive notion that “all is flux” in order to have the intuitive notion that “all is flux.”

(What is odd but I think worth noting is that very much the same arguments and points have to be made on threads about theory of mind as in theories of motion/essence. The same or similar paradoxes and same difficulties with making clear linear arguments abound in notions of mind as in notions of what the mind experiences. But the above analogy is clear, and I would love to hear what a Hume or a Heraclitus might say in response.)

But information theory deals with "what something is," and not "that it is," essence but not existence. It skips the former. We can see this in the fact that a perfect set of instructions to duplicate any physical system would not, in fact, be that system. A perfect duplicator, call it Leplace's Printer, needs both instructions and prior existent materials — Count Timothy von Icarus

This another example of the problem of the One and the Many. Instructions (the one) fail to explain the duplicates (the many), but how the many duplicates can be the same instructions is not clear either.

If stasis precludes life? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Would it?

It's a good question. Freedom and power were traditionally understood in terms of actuality, potency itself being nothing, and so inherently most static in that it is wholly incapable of moving itself. There is often a reversal here though. Potency becomes least static, freedom becomes the potential to do or be anything. Yet this only makes sense if potency is in some way actual, if it can spontaneously actualize itself, e.g., explanations of our contingent reality as simply 'brute face,' or of reality as primarily, of fundamentally will, a sort of sheer willing.



Well interestingly, Aristotle and Aquinas following him in On the Principles of Nature thinks we need three principles, not a reduction to one, or a dichotomy (e.g., difference and sameness). Those are:
Matter/potency
Form/actuality
Privation

Absence is in there, and it must be if finality necessarily lies outside whatever is moving.

Here is how Kant put it in his Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever we think or perceive can register as a thought or perception only if it causes a change in us, a “modification of the mind.” But these changes would not register at all if we did not connect them across time, “for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity.”34

Are you familiar with the concept of the specious present? It was designed to address the problem of continuity that arises from the notion of time as an endless series of punctual nows. William James and Husserl were among the first to argue that past present and future must appear simultaneously as each ‘now’. Husserl depicted this fat ‘now’ in terms of a retentional, protentional and impressional phase. It is because the ‘now’ includes past and future that we can enjoy a temporally unfolding event like music without it disintegrating into disconnected notes.

Sheer change and difference wouldn't really be "change." If one thing is completely discrete from another, if there is no linkage or similarity and relation, then, rather than becoming, you just have sui generis, unrelated things (perhaps popping in and out of existence?). This isn't becoming, but rather a strobe light of unrelated beings. So, leaving aside the difficulty that the past seems to dictate the future, that things seem to have causes, or the difficulties with contingent being "just happening, for no reason at all," it seems hard for me to see how there could be any sort of "sheer becoming." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don’t know of any philosopher who advocates becoming as ‘sheer’ change devoid of relationality. For Deleuze it is in the nature of differences that they always produce themselves within and as assemblages, collectives. The relative stability of these multiplicities does not oppose itself to change but evinces continual change within itself that remakes the whole in such a way that the whole remains consistent without ever being self-identical.

It's a good question. Freedom and power were traditionally understood in terms of actuality, potency itself being nothing, and so inherently most static in that it is wholly incapable of moving itself. There is often a reversal here though. Potency becomes least static, freedom becomes the potential to do or be anything. Yet this only makes sense if potency is in some way actual, if it can spontaneously actualize itself, e.g., explanations of our contingent reality as simply 'brute face,' or of reality as primarily, of fundamentally will, a sort of sheer willing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you think of life as having to do with freedom and power? I mean, algae don't really have either one, do they? I think life is more about an organism's purpose to reinforce itself in the face of entropy.

If we have a block universe, change is just about the way consciousness is configured.

If you don't identify the object you perceive, how do you know what you have witnessed?

To witness something you only have to be present, you don’t have to think, or know anything. The best way to describe what I mean is in regard to revelation. During revelation, the person (who witnesses) is hosted by a heavenly being and witnesses something which they can’t understand, which is inconceivable. And yet they bare witness to what happened. The Old Testament is full of descriptions of people witnessing things which there are not words to describe. It is the heavenly host who enables them to witness by allowing them to see through their eyes. To become the host, to witness the event, or state and then to be returned to the world. During this process the witness, doesn’t have the mental capacity to process the information. But they know, experienced what happened in some way.

So something is witnessed before the mind then processes the sensory information.

@Astorre @frank @Wayfarer @Joshs

Don’t you mean perceived, rather than identified.
To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed, this does not require identification.
— Punshhh
If you don't identify the object you perceive, how do you know what you have witnessed? — Ludwig V

PI #371 Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. -Wittgenstein

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism. Identification also having to do with which aspect, what you are looking at (on the object) as evidence, and the other criteria for identification (perhaps particular to this kind/type of object), not to mention how “seeing/perceiving” itself works (not immediately, wholey), instead involving focus (where we are looking), that we are usually telling someone else what we see, etc.

So something is witnessed before the mind then processes the sensory information. — Punshhh

But isn’t the whole idea of witnessing that it is without an object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.” @Punshhh But we are not witnessing “something” (even less, some “thing”), and thus not even proceeding to “perceiving”, in terms of “seeing”, and so, far from identifying, right @Ludwig V? Thus the only criteria is “being present” (not, visually), being able to be present, which some would argue is a skill (being able to let go of the desire to identify or even see, much less word), or something we can become lost to. Which makes “awe” more than just a “feeling”, and the reason for the Leviathan’s and Vishnu’s appearance (beyond the embodiment in Krishna); in order to, in that sense, snap Job and Arjuna “out of it”, say, their desire for reasons. All that is to say that we do not witness, say, the mysterious, all the time, or automatically (as part of vision), and particularly not before we “see” something or identify it. However, now I (just) realize why people suggest “putting God first”, which is also not to say, “all the time”, but when we don’t know how to proceed (thus needing to “pray on it”), or to say, “be present”, letting go of, and so allowing more in, than your reasons and goals first (ego). Thus, as Heidegger suggests, in thinking, "Useful is the letting-lie-before-us, so (the) taking-to-heart, too"

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism. Identification also having to do with which aspect, what you are looking at (on the object) as evidence, and the other criteria for identification (perhaps particular to this kind/type of object), not to mention how “seeing/perceiving” itself works (not immediately, wholey), instead involving focus (where we are looking), that we are usually telling someone else what we see, etc.

Yes you are right, I should have qualified my statement to the effect that I was considering pure being. Being unhindered by conditioning and social practice. I come to this discussion from the mystical perspective, in which my time is concerned with witness by (pure) being. Rather than language associated with experience. In the example I gave the person witnessing the inconceivable is taken out of themselves, thus leaving the conditioning behind.

Now I am thinking of how beings are witnessing in their daily lives and I think it is more like how you say.

object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.”

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived. (Which I realised after posting) I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed, but not identified. Whereas for Ludwig, it might have meant to identify what was seen.

This is one issue I spend a lot of time on in my practice. But not necessarily in a format amenable to philosophical analysis.

For Deleuze it is in the nature of differences that they always produce themselves within and as assemblages, collectives. The relative stability of these multiplicities does not oppose itself to change but evinces continual change within itself that remakes the whole in such a way that the whole remains consistent without ever being self-identical.

I work with the notion of anchors (crosses), a series of which the being transcends throughout their development. From primitive life forms to the transfigured being. Each cross anchoring the being within an arena of experience.

Don’t you mean perceived, rather than identified.
To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed, this does not require identification. — Punshhh

To be perceived is to stand out as a gestalt. To stand out as a gestalt is to be identified, although not necessarily in a linguistically self-reflective sense, since non-linguistically enabled animals are obviously capable of identifying the things that matter to them in their environments.

That also seems about right to me. The thing is, though, that identifying a difference is a rather different exercise from identifying an object. — Ludwig V

I wonder whether there are any free-floating differences that could be identified without identifying what the differences consists in. 'Objects' in the widest sense would include features like colours, textures, tones, smells, tastes and so on, insofar as these are all generally counted as objects of the senses.

I can see how one might want to say that. But "different" is a relation, so it requires two objects to be compared. Of course, from another perspective, those objects might be dissolved into a bundle of differences, which then require a range of other objects to establish themselves. — Ludwig V

:up: It seems we are agreeing.

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived. (Which I realised after posting) I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed, but not identified. — Punshhh

To be noticed is to be identified as something―a flash of light, a subtle odour, a patch of colour, something moving, and so on.

An excerpt from an essay on Medium. These paragraphs briefly discuss the transition from the participatory knowing of Aquinas' Aristotelianism, to the sense of otherness or separateness that characterised early modern science.

The earlier philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, maintained that true knowledge arises from a real union between knower and known. As Aristotle put it, “the soul (psuchē) is, in a way, all things,” meaning that the intellect becomes what it knows by receiving the form of the known object. Aquinas elaborated this with the principle that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.” In this view, to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is. (Here one may discern an echo of that inward unity — a kind of at-one-ness between subject and object — that contemplative traditions across cultures have also sought, not through discursive thought but through direct insight.) Such noetic insight, unlike sensory knowledge, disengages the form of the particular from its individuating material conditions, allowing the intellect to apprehend it in its universality. This process — abstraction— is not merely a mental filtering but a form of participatory knowing: the intellect is conformed to the particular, and that conformity gives rise to true insight. Thus, knowledge is not an external mapping of the world but an assimilation, a union that bridges the gap between subject and object through shared intelligibility.

By contrast, the word objective, in its modern philosophical usage — “not dependent on the mind for existence” — entered the English lexicon only in the early 17th century, during the formative period of modern science, marked by the shift away from the philosophy of the medievals. This marks a profound shift in the way existence itself was understood. As noted, for medieval and pre-modern philosophy, the real is the intelligible, and to know what is real is to participate in a cosmos imbued with meaning, value, and purpose. But in the new, scientific outlook, to be real increasingly meant to be mind-independent — and knowledge of it was understood to be describable in purely quantitative, mechanical terms, independently of any observer. The implicit result is that reality–as–such is something we are apart from, outside of, separate to. — Idealism in Context

(See attached for further elaboration.)

I think there is some ambiguity around the word perceived. — Punshhh

In philosophy, historically, it is taken as a technical term almost, where our identity is tied to the fantasy that we each (always) “perceive” uniquely (created from/with the idea of “appearance”), which opens a huge can of controversial worms, which I think we need not get into here.

I was thinking of it meaning something is noticed, — Punshhh

As I take “seeing” to be basically the same as noticing something—but not just as (immediate, ever present) vision. And maybe seeing is more about focusing on, pointing out, differentiating, etc. and to “perceive” is more seeing it as something. “Do you see that tree?” “The birch?” “No the pine” but then (so?/why?), “What about it?” “It’s beautiful.” “What? I don’t see (perceive) it’s beauty (see it as beautiful).” All that is to say, being present is perhaps to let, or wait for, more to strike us before we judge a thing to be what it is (by our ordinary criteria), as wording a thing is a kind of violence, closing that off.

In the example I gave the person witnessing the inconceivable is taken out of themselves, — Punshhh

This immediately made me think of Stanley Cavell’s discussion of Thoreau’s use of “ecstasy” in Senses of Walden (p. 100+) , as being “beside yourself”, as if we are two (some would speak of the “God in us”), different than (or beyond) self-consciousness (not just seeing ourselves, listening to our ego), but not as separable, but an activity (edit: or perhaps receptivity) between the two, as @Astorre says:

In Russian, being is present without fixation; in Kazakh, it becomes through a process ("болу"); and in Chinese, it manifests as a temporary presence (有) or the potential of emptiness (无), integrated into the flow of Dao — Astorre

Thank you for your interesting and varied comments! I am glad that my work touched you! Unfortunately, I was unable to participate in the discussion, but I will try to answer everyone as I study your comments.

Your comment highlighted a very interesting point that I wasn't aware of, as I don't speak Italian. With the help of AI, I was able to examine the grammatical constructions using essere and stare, from which I've found that:

Sono arrabbiato (I am angry) vs. Sto arrabbiato (I am in a state of being angry). The first sentence can be perceived as a more fundamental characteristic of a person's identity, while the second is a temporary, transient mood.

In Russian, this is expressed as: «Я злой» (I am angry, i.e., always angry) or «Я злюсь» (I'm getting angry, I am in a state of anger).

Another example: Come sta? (How are you staying/being?) is a standard greeting that focuses attention on the current moment of one's well-being. It is not a question about "who you are" (Chi sei?), but about "how you are situated" (Come stai?).

One might think there's no difference, as English also has the verbs to be and to become. However: To become in English describes the process of transitioning from one state to another. For example, "The caterpillar becomes a butterfly." This is a verb of change, not a verb of being in a state. And the verb to become is not used as a linking verb in just any sentence.

Similarly, English has the present continuous tense (am/is/are + V+ing), which describes an action happening at the moment, not a state or a quality. It is used like this: "I am writing a letter"—this is an action, not a state of being.

BUT! Let's take the greeting, "How are you doing?" Is this an action or a state?

All of this points to the following:

One cannot radicalize the assertion of being as process for the East and being as static for the West.

The existence of such distinctions in the Italian language suggests that it is natural for humans to feel both a certain sense of the processuality of being and its static nature.



As Count Timothy von Icarus correctly observes, there are indeed works in Western philosophy that discuss processuality, and I don't dispute that. I'm arguing that the very act of thinking about processuality requires a conscious effort to break free from the pattern of substantialism.

You're absolutely right to point out those philosophers. However, while processualists existed (and had a significant impact), they were in the minority. The dominant paradigm was, and remains, substantialism. To speak of process, one had to deliberately step outside of this paradigm, and that was not an easy task.

The influence of processualist philosophers is undeniable, but they were working against the current. Philosophers who thought in terms of an unchanging essence and substance had a far greater impact on the broader worldview: Parmenides, Aristotle, for whom substance was the foundation of reality; René Descartes with his ideas of the substances res cogitans and res extensa.

It is this tradition that, I believe, created a pattern of thinking that influenced European languages and, as a result, philosophy itself.



Here is what I write about the hypothesis of linguistic relativity in another chapter of my work:

The previous analysis of the linguistic structures of various cultural traditions revealed a diversity of ways of expressing (or not expressing) being and entities. This diversity, manifested in the grammatical features of languages - from the Indo-European copula "is" to its optional nature in Russian and its absence in Turkic and Chinese languages - emphasizes the variability of ontological perspectives rooted in language. However, this observation requires strict methodological reflection in order to avoid hasty or unfounded conclusions. The assertion of a fundamental difference in ontological attitudes, for example, between Western and Eastern traditions, cannot be accepted without further in-depth analysis. Language, as E. Sapir and B. L. Whorf noted in their hypothesis of linguistic relativity, can influence cognitive and philosophical categories, but the extent of this influence remains a matter of debate. Conclusions about the direct determination of thinking by language require caution, since cultural, historical and social contexts also play a significant role and language changes dynamically. Language is constantly subject to change and formation. It follows that one should not blindly rely only on the “feeling of the word”. Nevertheless, the phenomenological approach to linguistic differences, which presupposes living these differences as a direct experience, opens up new perspectives for the philosophical understanding of being. The very feeling of recognizing the fundamental differences between languages is significant for us. The value of such an approach lies not in establishing universal patterns, but in the possibility of rethinking familiar ontological categories through a change in perspective.

To be perceived is to stand out as a gestalt. To stand out as a gestalt is to be identified, although not necessarily in a linguistically self-reflective sense, since non-linguistically enabled animals are obviously capable of identifying the things that matter to them in their environments.

Yes in the way animals perceive, is what I was getting at. This is also present in a human, because we are also an animal. There are circumstances in every day life in which this kind of perception is exercised.

But when I say witnessed, to bear witness. I am going deeper, into our psyche. What we witness, even if not perceived, is recorded as the imprint of the experience of witnessing something. This imprint can be recovered later as part of memory. For example, one might glimpse a weird painting, a Salvador Dali for example. With no idea who the artist is and the nature of his work. But later on, while learning about the artist remember what was witnessed and recognise the same painting when viewing a selection of his work. It had left an imprint (or an emotion, a reaction) even if seen for just for a fleeting moment.

But if there is nothing fixed, how do we know that we are travelling? Or rather, how do we tell the difference between our travelling and the rest of the world travelling?

We don’t, normally, we just get on with our lives. I’m just identifying that all is in motion. Although I think we talk about things happening, in motion, perhaps more than we realise.

We “identify” based on the criteria (even habitual, unaware) of a specific shared practice (the kind of object), which is different than vision, the biological mechanism. — Antony Nickles

There's a bit of a trap here. We certainly do identify things by applying the criteria of a specific shared practice. But that does not mean that we always do so in the same way. Sometimes, as when we are identifying a rare species or disease, it is an elaborate and conscious process. We describe minutely, looking for clues, we look up definitions &c. &c. But sometimes we do so, as one might say, unconsciously or unaware of the process. In these cases, it is a bit of a moot point whether we should really say "we" identify the specimen. It certainly isn't under our control, in the way that it is when we consciously identify something.

But isn’t the whole idea of witnessing that it is without an object? “To be perceived, something merely needs to be witnessed.” Punshhh But we are not witnessing “something” (even less, some “thing”), and thus not even proceeding to “perceiving”, in terms of “seeing”, and so, far from identifying, .... — Antony Nickles

You seem to be thinking of witnessing as a preliminary step to the processes involved in perception - and hence identifying the source.
Sometimes we are, as one might say, startled awake - we wake up abruptly, but have no idea what woke us up, and indeed it is possible that there was no external event that woke me up - I just woke up, as we might say, naturally, or perhaps as a result of an internal (likely biological) process or event.
In those cases, I would say, that I did not witness the event. After all, there was, so far as I was concerned, no event.
But someone else, who was awake at the time, may well be able to say that there was a loud bang and that woke me up.
More than that, when we discover that the loud bang was a clap of thunder, we might be quite happy to say that the thunderstorm woke me up. My inability to report what I witnessed means, I think, that I did not witness the event. But perhaps I woke up in confusion but after a few moments can recall what happened and realize it was the thunderstorm that woke me up. Then I witnessed the storm.

I really should not comment on divine revelations. But still, as an unbeliever:-

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Paul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. — Acts 9:3–9

(I only pick this because I know how to find it.) Clearly, Paul did not know what was happening (what he was witnessing). Yet he was aware of a flash of light - and, presumably, reported it afterwards. Does this conform to what you think of as witnessing?
Having said all that, there is a paradox inherent in the idea that perceiving something is the result of a process. How do we conceive of the first step in the process?

The existence of such distinctions in the Italian language suggests that it is natural for humans to feel both a certain sense of the processuality of being and its static nature. — Astorre

European Romance Languages

The Italians and Spanish in their use of "being" are able to distinguish between, as you say, a fundamental characteristic of a person's identity (Latin esse) and a person's temporary, transient mood (Latin stare).

However, as you also say, the English language does not have this feature. English, being a Germanic language, doesn't have a direct equivalent of the Latin "stare".
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"Is" lends stability to being: Socrates is not merely a philosopher; he is a philosopher, as if fixed in reality. — Astorre

Bertrand Russell On Denoting

https://www.finophd.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/russell_on_denoting.pdf

There is the essentialism of the Greeks Plato and Aristotle, though of slightly different kinds.

For the Ancient Greeks, in the expression "Parmenides is a philosopher", the copula "is", as you say, not just a word but a mode of thought. An example of substantialism rather than processuality, establishing a permanent fixity rather than a temporary presence.

However, this Greek way of thinking has been updated by Bertrand Russell's 1905 article On Denoting, referred to by Frank P. Ramsey as "that paradigm of philosophy".

Parmenides was born in Elea, Magna Graecia, wrote the poem dactylic hexameter and was one of the pre-Socratic philosophers.

Russell analysed the expression "Parmenides is a philosopher" as there is something that was born in Elea, Magna Graecia, wrote the poem dactylic hexameter and was one of the pre-Socratic philosophers. This something that was born in Elea, Magna Graecia, wrote the poem dactylic hexameter and was one of the pre-Socratic philosophers is named "Parmenides".

However, I do accept that my understanding of On Denoting may be improved upon.

What this means is that "is a philosopher" has changed from being an essence of Parmenides to being a description.

Being born in Elea, Magna Graecia is not a necessary truth of Parmenides but a contingent truth. Parmenides could have been born in Constantinople, he may not have written the poem dactylic hexameter and he may have been a statesman rather than a philosopher

In the expression, "Parmenides is a philosopher", the copula "is" is not establishing "philosopher" as a fixed and static essence of Parmenides, but rather describing a contingent rather than necessary truth.

What this means is that "is a philosopher" has changed from being an essence of Parmenides to being a description.

Being born in Elea, Magna Graecia is not a necessary truth of Parmenides but a contingent truth. Parmenides could have been born in Constantinople, he may not have written the poem dactylic hexameter and he may have been a statesman rather than a philosopher

In the expression, "Parmenides is a philosopher", the copula "is" is not establishing "philosopher" as a fixed and static essence of Parmenides, but rather describing a contingent rather than necessary truth. — RussellA

Philosopher isn't metaphysically necessary to Parmenides, but if I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, it would appear that anyone who isn't a philosopher is not the person I'm talking about. So I can turn philosopher into an essential feature by way of my intention. Kripke introduced the idea of possible worlds as a tool for talking about that kind of essence.

Philosopher isn't metaphysically necessary to Parmenides — frank

As you say, being a philosopher isn't metaphysically necessary to being Parmenides.

Kripke's essentialism refers to Parmenides as a rigid designator. A rigid designator is the same object in all possible worlds regardless of what properties it may have. This means that Parmenides is the same individual in all possible worlds, even if a statesman in one world and a philosopher in another world.
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So I can turn philosopher into an essential feature by way of my intention. — frank

I don't think that you can.

In one world Parmenides may be a statesman, and in another world he may be a philosopher.

By your intention alone, you cannot force Parmenides to be a philosopher in all worlds.

You have no control over what employment Parmenides decides to follow.

If I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, then my reference will only pick out people who are philosophers. Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds in which that object exists.

If I refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, then my reference will only pick out people who are philosophers. Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds in which that object exists. — frank

Are we saying the same thing?

If you refer to Parmenides, the philosopher, you will pick out the possible worlds where Parmenides is a philosopher, but you won't pick out the possible worlds where Parmenides is a statesman.

I agree that Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds where Parmenides is a philosopher.

I agree that Parmenides, the philosopher is a philosopher in all possible worlds where Parmenides is a philosopher. — RussellA

Right. That would help explain how a person could talk about profession as if it's an essential property. This contrasts with transient states like coldness or hunger. On the one hand, they may realize that Parmenides could have been a sailor, but they still speak of his profession as if it's necessary to the object they have in mind. I think you have to pay attention to context to discern what properties are essential. Doing that is more valuable (to me) than laying open metaphysical possibility.

I think you have to pay attention to context to discern what properties are essential. — frank

Yes, to call someone a used car salesman is almost a derogatory term, casting doubt on their character, even though it is worthwhile employment.

Redo