I'm saying that the entire experience of it is constructed in our minds, — Pseudonym

Of course experience is in one's mind.

That's another example of sorting out a conceptual knot.

You will always be able to point to some issue and say "but you haven't solved that one yet".

But not having found the solution does not mean that there is none.

But not having found the solution does not mean that there is none. — Banno

Right, well we would need some metric for deciding which issues have been dissolved, which ones look dissolvable, which ones we're not sure about, and which ones remain resistant.

And also whether it can be shown that some problems can't be resolved this way.

"Ask a physicist".

Every now and then a neophyte comes along asking if time really exists. My Wittgenstein style joke is, ask me tomorrow.

Right, well we would need some metric for deciding which issues have been dissolved, which ones look dissolvable, which ones we're not sure about, and which ones remain resistant. — Marchesk

After all, it doesn't exist unless it is measured...

Like claiming that mountains do not have a height until they are measured.

At he very least, i propose as a philosophical method, look at your words first and check what you re doing with them.

Like claiming that mountains do not have a height until they are measured. — Banno

I recall that 100+ page long thread.

:wink:

There is plenty for philosophers to do, in the details.

Of course experience is in one's mind. — Banno

Yeah, if you're not going to actually follow the line of argument but just critique half-sentences to sound superior then there's not a lot of point in arguing. The sentence here specifies the entire experience of time, not experiences in general, and it is in the context of explaining how the term 'exists' can be used of unicorns differently to the way it can be used of 'time'. The experience we would expect of unicorns is one which interacts with our physical world, the world we sense. When no such interaction takes place, a term "doesn't exist" seems appropriate. Time is not a thing in the sense that we would expect some empirical interactions with it, as such "doesn't exist" is a grammatical error. It's simply not the sort of thing which is described by the term "exists" because it is entirely constructed in our minds rather than directly observable with our senses.

The point here is that what it means, even for us, to feel wet depends on the context. — Πετροκότσυφας

I've forgotten the context of this side debate.

But that would render other instances of us saying that we feel or not feel wet, meaningless, despite the fact that we seem to perfectly understand what is being said when they are uttered. Besides, the same would apply to terms like "you" (i.e. does your clothes qualify as you?), "drop", "aware", "liquid" etc... — Πετροκότσυφας

That doesn't sound promising for resolving philosophical debates. Reminds me of mereology and sorites. Which along with identity I'm somewhat amenable to dissolving with language. Those seem more like what sort of concepts we want to use in various situations where the world doesn't care whether objects can have parts or how much they vary over time.

The sentence here specifies the entire experience of time, not experiences in general, — Pseudonym

Cool. I have no access to the entire experience of time, and so I will have to take your word for it.

Speaking of physics, QM does present an area of philosophical debate which isn't born of ordinary language. Maybe it will be resolved at a future time by physics.

It's interesting to note though that science does provide new material for philosophy from time to time.

There's a more important problem. It doesn't sound promising for language and life in general. But this is what it seems to end up to when we're trying to find an essential meaning for such terms irrespective of how they're being used in our language (in order to meet our practical considerations). — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, if we're just focusing on the philosophy of time, it seems natural to me that humans would eventually start asking these sorts of questions.

Cool. I have no access to the entire experience of time, and so I will have to take your word for it. — Banno

But you have access to your entire experience of time, no? Is any of it available to other people via their senses? Or does the entirety of it have to be constructed in language in order to be inter-subjectivly analysed?

After having bumped into a horse, I can place it in someone else's path and watch them bump into it. My physical response matches theirs and so I have understood something about horses (you can't walk through them) without the need for language. I can establish horses "exist" in such a way. I cannot do the same with time.

There is plenty for philosophers to do, in the details. — Banno

The biggest challenge I see to your position is the ethics and how to live branches of philosophy. To borrow from Simon Blackburn, if I think fox hunting is wrong, and you think it's okay, how is analyzing language going to settle the dispute?

You might as well ask those questions, but within a specific frame and for a specific purpose in mind. Do we have any difficulty to be on time for work, or use the word in different ways, because philosophers can't agree on what time is? — Πετροκότσυφας

No, but my wondering about the nature of time has little to do with whether it's useful for getting to work. Not everything is of pragmatic concern. Sometimes we're just curious, or are feeling existential, mystical, high, whatever.

Ok, but the fact that it's useful to use it this way and that way, might has something to do with the fact that the "nature of time" is to be used this way and that way, in order to achieve this thing and that thing, — Πετροκότσυφας

Yeah, but what is the argument here? At the very least, we want a scientific explanation of time. That still seems to leave some questions.

A horse was useful for travel. That didn't stop people from wondering how horses came to be. A linguistic analysis of how we used horses didn't help with that question.

The biggest challenge I see to your position is the ethics and how to live branches of philosophy. To borrow from Simon Blackburn, if I think fox hunting is wrong, and you think it's okay, how is analyzing language going to settle the dispute? — Marchesk

Just so.

What is philosophical in each of these issues is cleaning up and setting out what is being asked or claimed in each case. After that they reduce to physics, politics, economics or some other area of study; or to differences of opinion. — Banno

I set in bold the relevant piece.

Why think that the answer to our differences of opinion can be found by doing ethics? That there is an answer to "what should we do?"

But on the other hand, consider the way in which an analysis of "sentience" impacts on one's decision to eat meat. Or Martha Nassbaum's analysis of justice and disability. Clarifying our ideas might not lead directly to solutions, but it will lead towards greater coherence. See the thread I started on transgender issues, where I asked for help in sorting out 'male', 'female', 'woman', and 'man'.

SO to answer your question, it might not give us the answer we want, but it's not going to hurt.

But you have access to your entire experience of time, no? — Pseudonym

No. The bits from before my third birthday remain sketchy.

You are in the way of a conversation I am having with March.

You are in the way of a conversation I am having with March. — Banno

Fine. I wasn't aware that this had become a private forum.

The one ring must be cast into the fire of Mt Doom.

OK, I was in the wrong. My apologies. Please continue.

Bedtime, anyway.

What is the question though? — Πετροκότσυφας

Whether a linguistic analysis of the philosophy of time can dissolve it, or leave it with the physicists.

Which would mean it's a mistake to ask philosophical questions about time. Either it's a scientific matter, or it's an everyday, practical matter.

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

In certain ways the one might not be reducible to the other so that one can trump the other as to what time really is. — Πετροκότσυφας

Nah, I'm a scientific realist. Thus even though the sun is said to rise and set, the reality is that the Earth turns, and ordinary language is wrong, being based on a misleading appearance.

Science has the trump card over ordinary use. If science were to definitely say that time doesn't flow, then our experience and talk of it "flowing" is wrong. It would still be useful in everyday life, though.

Or maybe you don't understand what is being said when someone says that the sun has risen or that it has set and you think that they are professing a scientific theory; — Πετροκότσυφας

Come on, we all know the origin of those words were based on how people thought the sun moved.

when in reality they are saying something akin to "it's morning, get your ass out of bed and go to school" or "it's late, go to bed or you'll be late for school when morning comes". — Πετροκότσυφας

Sure it can mean that also, but that isn't the concern when asking questions about the nature of time or sunrises.

This does not mean that when someone says that the sun has set means that the sun has moved downwards, even if they believe that this is how it actually moves. — Πετροκότσυφας

The point here being that showing how the words sunset or time is used in an ordinary setting doesn't help with ontological or epistemological questions regarding the movement of the sun or the nature of time.

OK, I was in the wrong. My apologies. Please continue.

Bedtime, anyway. — Banno

I appreciate the respect in your apology, but I also respect the honesty in your original remark, so will back out. Thanks.

"An explanation of time"; as if: "What is explanation of dog? Can science furnish explanation of dog? Or only philosophy give explanation of dog?"; Shitty Russians posing as philosophers of depth. A nice example of why any philosophical investigation that doesn't attend to language is doomed to failure.

Presentism and the problem of future contingents:

But what if dog didn't do way instain mother? Dog is would be, maybe. But definitely dog wasn't. Would be isn't is and wasn't isn't is, can talk that. But only is is is! Therefore wasn't isn't is and isn't isn't was, and would be isn't is and isn't isn't would be. But isn't is maybe would be some of the time. Would be and wasn't isn't is.

I do actually think that time presents a coherent set of problems, though. The problem of presentism isn't 'Can we say the past and future exist in the same sense as now?', it's 'Does only the present exist?'. I think some things which evince that the debate isn't just a problem of language are:

(1) the problem that the present isn't temporally extended.
(2) Whether presentism requires there to exist a unique ordering of all events.
(3) The equivalence of the ordering in (2) with time.

Admittedly there's a lot of baggage which can be brought to the table. 'Temporal extension' reads a lot like the Cartesian sense of extension, which applies to substance, and time alone doesn't seem to be substantial. Regardless, intervals of time are well understood, the present understood as a duration 0 event makes it pretty hard to defend. This alongside whether presentism requires a single unique now or a plethora of unique nows depending on the spacetime geometry of the universe.

I think the interaction of the debate around presentism with the problem of future contingents is suspiciously 'language addled' so to speak. If I say 'it will rain tomorrow' now, and it does rain on the next day, 'it will rain tomorrow' is true. If presentism is true tomorrow doesn't exist, which (arguably) doesn't allow the lining up with the state of affairs which happens tomorrow with my statement. Then it can be analysed as 'It will rain tomorrow' will be phrased as 'It will rain (for some subinterval of time within the next 24 hours)'. I think once we start doing the conceptual analysis of phrases to dodge objections using our folk understanding of terms it should raise suspicions that what we're doing is moving language around rather than anything substantive.

I would also like to highlight that it's probably the case that it's easier to take a bad approach to a complicated problem, making 'language run idle', than it is for the problem itself to have 'must be treated with language on idle' as a property.