What I never understood about Schopenhauer's idealism is that if the Idea is the result of the Will, and the Will is an unrelenting, striving force, then why is the world not even worse than it is? We certainly do "will" towards things, but then again we can tame this will. We can meditate, look at aesthetics, sublimate into projects, hang out with good friends, etc. Why are we able to do this? And why are we even able to understand the Will (for understanding leads to attempts to reject the Will - the exact thing the Will would not want). — darthbarracuda

This is a good point. It is more of a tepid Will than a ferocious Will. But maybe, even if we can think of a worst possible world, this is actually how bad it can get?

If there really is a Will, then I wonder why the world is not just an exponentially-growing pit of never-ending slavery to desire, with the inhabitants literally dragging their feet on the ground as they attempt to cope with the desire but ultimately unable to reflect upon it. — darthbarracuda

This kind of furthers the point I was making earlier as to why is this PSR/Time/Space actual reality that is presented to us the way it is, and not another way? I can get a striving force that is just "there", and I can get the world of representation being the playground for the Will to try to get its needs met (which ultimately fail in any complete sense of satiation), but why is it this kind of world with this hefty PSR/Time/Space/Causality? Why would that be how it manifests itself?

It kind of leads to an implicit answer of contingency. There seems to be something contingent in the world of Ideas, but then this introduces an idea of radical contingency not radical Will behind things, or at least, it would seem so to me. Why must this non-space/time/causality be limited or manifested in this way, and not another? Will just automatically creates this and only this type of world of Idea with a space/time/casuality? That would also possibly make the idea dictate what the Will is, which another thing that Schopenhauer seems to want to avoid.

This is a good point. It is more of a tepid Will than a ferocious Will. But maybe, even if we can think of a worst possible world, this is actually how bad it can get? — schopenhauer1

Schopenhauer uses an appeal to modality to argue against Leibniz' claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. He does so by arguing that god could change the parameters of possibilities - and if he cannot, then he is no god after all.

But if the Will is the source of the Idea, then I don't understand why the Will seems to be constrained. We can imagine a world worse than this (just as we can imagine a world better than this). I can imagine myself stuck at work for another hour overtime instead of writing this post. I can imagine suddenly and intensely feeling lust for an unknown subject. I can imagine there being one more African in Sierra Leone mining blood diamonds than there are in the actual world.

It's because of this that I believe that Schopenhauer over-emphasized the Will. Indeed I don't think that there is a harm of existence, but rather harms in existence. I doubt this is the best of all possible worlds, and I doubt that this is the worst of all possible worlds.

but why is it this kind of world with this hefty PSR/Time/Space/Causality? Why would that be how it manifests itself? — schopenhauer1

Good question. Too bad Schopenhauer is dead, I have some questions for him.

But if the Will is the source of the Idea, then I don't understand why the Will seems to be constrained. — darthbarracuda

The Will seems its own Idea which seems to have a curious structure. He also adds gradations of Ideas into the picture. Why all of this? But I think Schopenhauer's Will is more a force of dissatisfaction not necessarily pure malevolence. It is not that it is trying to cause as much suffering as possible, but that it's constantly striving for nothing in particular and this causes constant action and force in lower gradations, and suffering in conscious and self-conscious gradations.

It is not that it is trying to cause as much suffering as possible, but that it's constantly striving for nothing in particular and this causes constant action and force in lower gradations, and suffering in conscious and self-conscious gradations. — schopenhauer1

The nature of the Will, i.e. the "striving" of it, seems to have a correlation to creation and an abrupt halt in interest in this creation. Perhaps we can envision the Will as a kind of deistic god, one that creates things simply because it can and has a divine case of ADHD. I'm going off more of a metaphorical account of cosmology rather than a strict metaphysical account, but we can imagine the world being sustained by the very interest of the Will. As the Will loses interest, so does the Idea fade (entropy).

I don't quite understand though why the Will would create something that can seemingly oppose it because it suffers due to the Will. Is it just by accident that the Will creates beings that can suffer? Why does there seem to be exceptions to the Will? Not everything in the world is chaotic, random, or striving. I'm not sure why or how the Will would create a world that is not in its own nature. Perhaps as the Will loses interest, the Idea fights back and attempts to sustain the world, creating conscious life (like mini-Wills) in a vain attempt for self-preservation.

In a way, Schopenhauer's Will reminds me of the teleology of Aristotelian metaphysics. A substance is drawn towards its telos because of its very essence. But not everything can reach perfection.

The nature of the Will, i.e. the "striving" of it, seems to have a correlation to creation and an abrupt halt in interest in this creation. Perhaps we can envision the Will as a kind of deistic god, one that creates things simply because it can and has a divine case of ADHD. I'm going off more of a metaphorical account of cosmology rather than a strict metaphysical account, but we can imagine the world being sustained by the very interest of the Will. As the Will loses interest, so does the Idea fade (entropy). — darthbarracuda

Interesting mythos. I think Schopenhauer may have been less inclined to think of Will as so thoughtful or purposeful. It was blind, and thus from the objective standpoint, is what we might deem as the contingent nature of cause and effect. Will just goes blindly, seeking completion and in doing so builds into various matter/energy formations and gradations. This occurred through sheer force of causality which is mediated-Will through space/time to create species like us who have an excess of consciousness beyond that which keeps us sustained and alive.. We can reason about our situation and get existentially bored, lonely.. and thus the pendulum swing from survival to boredom.. and the self-help of absurdism/asceticism/hedonism/self-improvement regimens and the like. All of it just stop-gap for a species with more consciousness than we know what to do with, and a happenstance of contingency which is to say blind Will moving forward through space/time. Of course, this does not provide any more insight into why it is Will needs to mediate through this particular structure of space/time/causality other than we know that it appears to us to exist, at least as mental constructs. We see what's behind it (Will), but not why the appearances need to be constructed in such a way in the first place.

In a way, Schopenhauer's Will reminds me of the teleology of Aristotelian metaphysics. A substance is drawn towards its telos because of its very essence. But not everything can reach perfection. — darthbarracuda

Yes there seems to be similarities there.

It kind of leads to an implicit answer of contingency. There seems to be something contingent in the world of Ideas, but then this introduces an idea of radical contingency not radical Will behind things, or at least, it would seem so to me. Why must this non-space/time/causality be limited or manifested in this way, and not another? Will just automatically creates this and only this type of world of Idea with a space/time/casuality — schopenhauer1

Yes yes yes. That's my other stumbling block with Schop's account. When consciousness bloomed into being, it would have to have bloomed already-situated within a certain 'world' (used in the broadest possible sense.)

There's something irreducible here. I wonder if it's a 'will'/idea split all the way down. A kind of panpsychism that (like those escher hands someone posted above) always relies on something outside of consciousness, which in turn relies on it. I really don't know though

There's something irreducible here. I wonder if it's a 'will'/idea split all the way down. A kind of panpsychism that (like those escher hands someone posted above) always relies on something outside of consciousness, which in turn relies on it. I really don't know though — csalisbury

Not all the way down, no, Schop. is explicit that presentation is only applicable to sentient creatures, and is an outgrowth of will which is prior. It's also not quite a split, in that presentation just is the objectification of will (though confusingly, Schop. calls it also 'toto genere distinct' from it). As for what the will is like for non-sentient creatures, this is less clear. He speaks of a 'dull hunger' that drives ceaseless inanimate forces that compete against one another, like gravity. Clearly this is metaphorical -- there aren't any panpsychist suggestions to the effect that matter is literally hunger or feels a struggle. Yet in our own case, our knowledge of the will comes from things like hunger and sexual frustration. It seems from Schop's comments in Volume II that what this means is that though we have access to the thing in itself via our own case of willing, this is still through a sort of veil, which can never be entirely removed, and the thing in itself in its unity or entirety is closed off to us, and as in the Kantian tradition is totally inaccessible. We only get a sort of glimpse into its character by being one piece of it, a piece that can only reflect on itself through the veil of Maya.

Why must this non-space/time/causality be limited or manifested in this way, and not another? — schopenhauer1

As I understand it, Schop. would say this question is confused because asking why presupposes the techniques to be found in the phenomenal realm subject to the principle of sufficient reason. That is, seeking explanation is itself a means that the will has for manipulating its presentations to satisfy itself -- to ask why the will objectifies itself, and why in this way rather than that, is to make a category error, and not fully understand the import of the philosophy. Again, the Spirit blows where it pleases. I don't think this means the philosophy is insufficient or that it has nothing left to say at that point -- rather it dares to look at the very notion of explanation more penetratingly than most philosophers will allow, taking it as a genuine object of inquiry rather than being assumed. The level at which the will 'blows' one way rather than another isn't to be explained -- it's to be enacted and willingly changed in breaking free. The desire and attempt to explain is a kind of willing.

Not all the way down, no, Schop. is explicit that presentation is only applicable to sentient creatures, and is an outgrowth of will which is prior. It's also not quite a split, in that presentation just is the objectification of will (though confusingly, Schop. calls it also 'toto genere distinct' from it)

Yeah, I know it works this way for Schop, I was speculatin' for myself there.

I don't quite understand though why the Will would create something that can seemingly oppose it because it suffers due to the Will. Is it just by accident that the Will creates beings that can suffer? Why does there seem to be exceptions to the Will? Not everything in the world is chaotic, random, or striving. I'm not sure why or how the Will would create a world that is not in its own nature. — darthbarracuda

A disturbing quote to this effect from Schop.: "...the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will." Schop's favored image of how the world works is one animal eating another. Since we are all objectifications of the same will, it is literally eating itself (and people in harming each other are aware in a vague and traumatic sense that they are harming themselves).

Yeah, I know it works this way for Schop, I was speculatin' for myself there. — csalisbury

Okay. I'm not keen on panpsychism generally, sine it seems like a cop-out in the form of another retreat into the familiar or quasi-solipsism (I can only understand something else existing if it is 'like me'). I could be wrong though. I like the idea of mutual dependence, but in a way that I think we have trouble grasping -- we tend to think of interdependence in terms of an interlocking ecosystem that fits together in some larger picture. The difficult conceptual twist is to think of this dependence without any ecosystem or larger picture.

A disturbing quote to this effect from Schop.: "...the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will." Schop's favored image of how the world works is one animal eating another. Since we are all objectifications of the same will, it is literally eating itself (and people in harming each other are aware in a vague and traumatic sense that they are harming themselves). — The Great Whatever

How does the Will live on itself without eventually running out of anything to feed on? Like an ouroboros, it cannot constantly eat itself. Unless of course the Will is outside of the laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation, in which case it just becomes a mystical metaphor with little actual explanatory power except for illuminating the human condition.

If life did not exist, would there be any Will to self-cannibalize? Are we talking entropy here?

Okay. I'm not keen on panpsychism generally, sine it seems like a cop-out in the form of another retreat into the familiar or quasi-solipsism (I can only understand something else existing if it is 'like me').

Yeah, when I try to think about panpsychism, I try to think of it by analogy to the onset of (certain) psychoactive drugs: adjacent moments, though different, are at least mutually intelligible. But the final state, the peak, is so unlike the beginning as to be unintelligible from its vantage. Again this is only a crudge analogy, because the difference between different 'levels' of consciousness would probably be much more dramatic.

The difficult conceptual twist is to think of this dependence without any ecosystem or larger picture.

I agree, (though i think ecosystem-like patterns crop up, for a time. There's just no great chain of being, no super-ecosystem. I wish I understood set theory better because it seems to offer some good metaphors.)

How does the Will live on itself without eventually running out of anything to feed on? Like an ouroboros, it cannot constantly eat itself. — darthbarracuda

Schop. believes that the Will will eventually destroy itself, because it will create creatures (us) whose powers of representation become advanced enough that we begin to understand what we're doing and voluntarily give up the self-defeating game, abnegating the will.

Unless of course the Will is outside of the laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation, in which case it just becomes a mystical metaphor with little actual explanatory power except for illuminating the human condition. — darthbarracuda

It is outside those laws and all physical laws, because those laws are just objectifications of it. It isn't a metaphor because it's more real and concretely known than any physical or represented thing.

If life did not exist, would there be any Will to self-cannibalize? Are we talking entropy here? — darthbarracuda

On the one hand yes, because there was a point at which life didn't exist. On the other hand, the will is 'the will to life.' Life seems to be the inevitable outcome of its striving, which Schop. explains by a bizarre proto-Darwinian mechanism of competition between forces.

It is outside those laws and all physical laws, because those laws are just objectifications of it. It isn't a metaphor because it's more real and concretely known than any physical or represented thing. — The Great Whatever

No offense but this is kind of a cop-out. If it's outside the laws, how can it act on them?

Why would the Will (to live) create something that would eventually lead to a rejection of the will to live? Why would it hasten its own demise?

No offense but this is kind of a cop-out. If it's outside the laws, how can it act on them? — darthbarracuda

It doesn't act on them -- the laws are an objectification of it. It's 'behind' the laws, not on a par with them.

Why would the Will (to live) create something that would eventually lead to a rejection of the will to live? Why would it hasten its own demise? — darthbarracuda

It doesn't have reasons for what it does. Reasons belong to the phenomenal world, which it is prior to.

the laws are an objectification of it. — The Great Whatever

Then why is it possible to not strive for life? Why is it possible to meditate, enjoy aesthetics, commit suicide, etc? Surely these would also be objectifications of the Will?

Then why is it possible to not strive for life? Why is it possible to meditate, enjoy aesthetics, commit suicide, etc? Surely these would also be objectifications of the Will? — darthbarracuda

No, these are (barring suicide, for Schop.) negations of the will, and they are only possible in beings whose willings have created very complex representational capacities that then end up causing the will to shoot itself in the foot. For example, in enjoying art, representation takes on a life of its own and starts to enjoy itself for its own sake, disentangling itself from the will. If there is an 'objectification' here, what's being objectified is in a way the will 'committing suicide.'

Why would the Will create beings that can oppose the Will? If the Will's nature is to Live, then why would it even allow creatures that can counteract its nature?

Gravity for example keeps us rooted to the ground. But we still made airplanes and rockets that counteract this gravity. We have to work against gravity but we can still do it. But gravity is not a metaphysical, all-encompassing force. Gravity is within the world. So it is understandable that we can counteract gravity, for we are not objectifications of gravity. But if we are objectifications of the Will to Live, then it should be apparent that it should be impossible for us to have evolved cognitive capacities to counteract this Will to Live. It would be against the fundamental nature of the Will to create beings that do not Will.

The Will would presumably "want" to continue to Will for as long as possible. Creating beings that do not Will only hastens the end of the Will. Consciousness and the ability to reflect upon the pointlessness of the Will should not be possible if we are manifestations of the Will. Our consciousness and reflective ability must have come from something else if we are to take seriously this theory of the Will.

asking why presupposes the techniques to be found in the phenomenal realm subject to the principle of sufficient reason. — The Great Whatever

But I am not asking why the Will is Will but rather why the flip side of Will is structured the way it is. I believe that question to be valid, being that the flip side does exist and it exists in a certain way. What is it about Will that entails this structure? If Will is a blind striving force- why this particular flip side of it? I am guessing that a possible answer might be that subject cannot exist without object, and thus, the object needs to be there- it is not caused by Will but is the flip side of Will. Space, time, and causality are necessary structures that Will uses to make itself known to itself.

A separate question, is how does Schopenhauer account for changes. First there was a change from forces and chemistry into organisms. Then the organisms changed into a plethora of organisms. This brings two questions:

1) If subject needs object, how would that occur prior to the first organisms who create representations to know itself? How would the force of gravity allow Will to know itself?

2) If organisms can change, this contradicts the Schopenhauer's platonic forms. Evolution does not happen on grand scales as much as microchanges that might become catalyzed by large catastrophes. Anyways, it seems that the phenomena of mutations in DNA and natural selection, does not lend itself to the idea of stable Platonic gradations or Ideas that Schopenhauer thought existed and accounted for objects being the way they are when influenced by the PSR and space/time/causality.

@csalisbury@The Great Whatever

I was wondering what you thought about the two questions posed in my last post.

1) If subject needs object, how would that occur prior to the first organisms who create representations to know itself? How would the force of gravity allow Will to know itself? — schopenhauer1

Before there are sentient creatures, there are no subjects or objects.

Pre-conscious forces result in consciousness arising as a kind of 'arms race' that the will sets up against itself: when forces clash, new forces arise to 'resolve' the dispute, and consciousness is basically just an extremely convoluted way for the Will to 'eat itself' by navigating its increasingly complex and painful urges. Schop. basically articulates a kind of pre-Darwinian theory of evolution, but one that applies 'all the way down,' not just to biological organisms. Basically the whole universe is in a competition for survival against itself and there is perpetual pressure to develop more and more complex ways of willing. Consciousness is a sort of growth out of the will, which services its desires by finding a way to objectify and control them.

2) If organisms can change, this contradicts the Schopenhauer's platonic forms. Evolution does not happen on grand scales as much as microchanges that might become catalyzed by large catastrophes. Anyways, it seems that the phenomena of mutations in DNA and natural selection, does not lend itself to the idea of stable Platonic gradations or Ideas that Schopenhauer thought existed and accounted for objects being the way they are when influenced by the PSR and space/time/causality. — schopenhauer1

Schopenhauer's Ideas don't really seem to play the same generative role that Plato's do. Yes, he believes in timeless forms, but his notion of time is more nuanced than Plato's -- thee is a sense in which time doesn't 'really' pass, but not in the sense that it's the moving image of some eternal atempral thing, but rather because like with Kant time is just a form of intuition, and so at any point the Ideas will always appear eternal and tenseless, and can only be grasped aesthetically when representation examines itself in momentary freedom from the will. Can new Ideas rise up in time? Well, yes and no -- Schop. claims that animals arose at some point in natural history. But the idea that an Idea arises as well is literally nonsensical -- for there to be an Idea is for it to appear timelessly, in the 'standing present,' like a rainbow over a storm, there as a 'result' of what's happening and yet not really there, not really interacting with anything. Schop. is very Eastern in considering time ultimately to be a kind of illusion. It only exists insofar as it services the will's ends and is tied to the individual organism seeking out satisfactions of its individual will, but to contemplate the Forms or Ideas is to represent independently of the will, and so not to see things as arising and disappearing in time.

Before there are sentient creatures, there are no subjects or objects. — The Great Whatever

If that is the case, then there is no causality in this pre-conscious period, and if there is no causality, as in this system, then there is no time and space either. Causality is presupposed by time and space which in turn is presupposed by representation. Therefore, before sentient objects we get the classic Idealist dilemma. In this case replace consciousness with representation (which for all intents and purposes here act as the same thing). Even if gravity "experiences" or forces experience things as an "inner" subject- they do not have representation, which only animal organisms possess. This brings us back to the dilemma. Even worse, you start get "out of nowhere" the representation and it starts to look like any materialist argument where consciousness comes from non-consciousness but without a real explanation. Instead of neurons it is just this pre-conscious forces. It is not just Darwinian mechanisms that have to go all the way down, but the subject-object relationship has to go all the way down too, otherwise the dilemma rears its ugly head.

Can new Ideas rise up in time? Well, yes and no -- Schop. claims that animals arose at some point in natural history. But the idea that an Idea arises as well is literally nonsensical -- for there to be an Idea is for it to appear timelessly, in the 'standing present,' like a rainbow over a storm, there as a 'result' of what's happening and yet not really there, not really interacting with anything. Schop. is very Eastern in considering time ultimately to be a kind of illusion. It only exists insofar as it services the will's ends and is tied to the individual organism seeking out satisfactions of its individual will, but to contemplate the Forms or Ideas is to represent independently of the will, and so not to see things as arising and disappearing in time. — The Great Whatever

This is a bit muddled and I am having trouble parsing out your main idea. Indeed, animals change on micro levels of biochemistry at the representational level. If Ideas are not pre-existing atemporal things, then what is their use in his system other than to explain art (which is not a reason as much as a way to tie the two realms of philosophy)? The Ideas, I assume are archetypes for the representation in space/time and can be intuited by aesthetic contemplation. A possible answer might be that, in some atemporal way, the Ideas are already there, but time just realizes them, but that does not make sense because Will is change and "movement" and these forms are constant and thus seem out of place.

One possible way to solve this is to say that each micro-level change has an Idea but this is more of just a notion. I haven't fully developed it.

Also, not that Schop is necessarily a panpsychist, but I think the same arguments can apply against force having any sort of experience. As we all know, "consciousness" proper only occurs in organisms that have neural systems. Feeling seems associated with a particular phenomena. Your skin cells don't seem to have their own experience, Rather, our nervous system seems to be the tissue where experience resides.

However, you may make the counterargument that perhaps an organism, being that it comes from the same origin (stem cells) is a sort of organic whole, thus experience can reside in non-neural objects as long as there is a sort of unity of composition of that object. In other words, my body and the chair it sits upon do not have the unity that my skin cells have with my nervous system.

However, a counterargument to this can be where does the unity end for non-organic objects? When does the chairs leather stop being leather and start being another object? What gives it unity? Then, we must ask, if only some objects have unity and others do not, this brings us back tot he same problem but just slightly broadened from the argument that only neural tissue is where experience resides.

One possible way to solve this is to say that each micro-level change has an Idea but this is more of just a notion. I haven't fully developed it.

My understanding of the Schoplatonic ideas is that they're bound up intimately with capacity. To understand the 'idea' of something is not merely to contemplate its appearance or structure, but to know how it would act or react under different circumstances. This is why he has recourse to Malebranche's theory of occasional causality. It seems that microchanges in an organism wouldn't lead to a new Idea unless they reached a critical mass and changed the ways that organism would act in a given situation. (Perhaps the critical point in a phase transition would be a better metaphor than 'critical mass')

I like TGW's rainbow-over-a-storm metaphor. But it suggests the Ideas are concomitant with - yet of another order than - the phenomena. Schop's picture feels a little murkier.*

The force itself is a manifestation of will, and as such is not subject to the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, that is, it is groundless. It lies outside all time, is omnipresent, and seems as it were to wait constantly till the circumstances occur under which it can appear and take possession of a definite matter, supplanting the forces which have reigned in it till then. All time exists only for the phenomena of such a force, and is without significance for the force itself. Through thousands of years chemical forces slumber in matter till the contact with the reagents sets them free; then they appear; but time exists only for the phenomena, not for the forces themselves. For thousands of years galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc, and they lay quietly beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as soon as all three are brought together under the required conditions. Even in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force through three thousand years, and when at last the favourable circumstances occur, grow up as a plant. — S

Here, he speaks as though there is always this otherworldly matrix of possible 'clashes' between forces (as well as of possible resolutions-through-subjugation-of-parts in higher ideas) and that these possibilities are actualized through the will's development in time.


----------------

*FWIW I prefer TGW's metaphor which echoes a passage I've always liked from Deleuze's Logic of Sense:

"For if bodies with their states, qualities, and quantities, assume all the characteristics of substance and cause, conversely the characteristics of the Idea are relegated to the other side, that is to this impassive extra-Being which is sterile, inefficacious, and on the surface of things: the ideational or the incorporeal can never be anything other than an 'effect'[...]These effects are not bodies[...]They are not things and facts, but events. We can not say that they exist, but rather than they subsist or inhere (having this minimum of being which is appropriate to that which is not a thing, a nonexisting entity.) They are not substantives or adjectives but verbs. They are neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions. They are 'impassive' entities - impassive results. — Deleuze

I like TGW's rainbow-over-a-storm metaphor. — csalisbury

It's Schopenhauer's! :)

noooooo :-#

Allow me to strategically salvage my point and say it seems as though Schopenhauer is internally conflicted about what, precisely, he means.

Here, he speaks as though there is always this otherworldly matrix of possible 'clashes' between forces (as well as of possible resolutions-through-subjugation-of-parts in higher ideas) and that these possibilities are actualized through the will's development in time. — csalisbury

But again, I do not think this answers the question. How is it that representations come out of nowhere at "x" particular time? If the representations do not come from the beginning along with Will itself, then there is no explanations for how representation, time, space, and causality even came about? You need to have the world of representation in order for time, space, and causality to be there in the first place. If it is not there from the beginning, then there is a gap in explanation that is similar to any other theory of mind, or epistemology in general whether materialist or idealist.

A disturbing quote to this effect from Schop.: "...the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will." Schop's favored image of how the world works is one animal eating another. Since we are all objectifications of the same will, it is literally eating itself (and people in harming each other are aware in a vague and traumatic sense that they are harming themselves). — tgw

Two of my friends used to have a running joke where they'd compete to come up with the worst Coors advertisements. One of them made this one:

But again, I do not think this answers the question. How is it that representations come out of nowhere at "x" particular time? — schopenhauer1

Yeah, I don't have an answer for that ( primarily because I don't think they actually do come out of nowhere at x particular time) but I don't think Schopenhauer does either.

The best I can do is gesture toward that mobius-strip panpsychism I mentioned above. But I really don't know.

Well, after thinking about this for a minute: the world-as-idea that Schopenhauer puts forth is (obviously) super Kantian and so, like Kant, sees space and time like a cartesian grid where every point is equivalent to any other.* This way of looking at space and time only developed very late and doesn't correspond all that well with actual human perception. It's a construction developed out of reflection and retroactively imposed. Maybe the answer is that space and time (the world-as-idea) develops along with everything else, in stages.

*I should mention I've never read the appendix criticizing Kant, only the main text of WWR Vol. 1 and The Fourfold Root (though that was probably 3 years ago now? It's faded quite a bit, as has much of WWR)