The fragility of time and the unconscious — Constance

Do you maybe mean "The fragility of the concepts of time and the unconscious"?
Because neither time nor unconscious does actually exist to be fragile or strong.

About time: As you said, we use the terms "past", "present" and "future" conventionally. They are points of reference. We use them mainly for description purposes, and they are indeed very useful. But it is very easy to see that neither of them exists: past is long gone, it' not here, it's nowhere. Future has not come yet, so it's nowhere either. Present --which we usually call "Now"-- is the most controversial concept of the three. For one thing, it cannot be "grasped" because from the moment we refer to it, it has already passed by. But we can define it in a context, as a period of time, e.g. "At present" or "At the present time" or "Presently", refers to a period of time existing "as we talk". (Note: all the references to the word "exist" are figurative, since time does not actually exist.)

About unconscious: It doesn't actually exist either. It's a term invented by Freud and it is rejected by a lot of psychologists today. If there were an unconscious mind, it would have to be inside mind, i.e. a mind inside a mind. We use the term conventionally, as we do with the terms mentioned above regarding time, to mean whatever is inside our mind that we are not aware of, i.e. it is "hidden". It is also very useful. We say, "I did that unconsciously", meaning without thinking or being aware of it.

ANY talk at all about the unconscious is self contradictory, for to speak of it is to bring it to consciousness, — Constance

I can't see where does the contradiction lie. Psychotherapy (and other techniques) is based on exactly that process: bringing things that lie in out "unconscious" to our consciousness. This helps us to understand problems that lie hidden inside us and affects us and out behavior negatively, But in general, this is a very natural process that occurs with us every day: I have a name in my mind that I cannot remember, however hard I try. Suddenly, it pops up in my head: "I remembered it!". I don't know how much percent, but the very larger part of our is hidden from us at any given moment. We can say that it lies in our "unconscious", but only for description purposes.

Then of course, we have another kind of "unconsciousness", which belongs to the medical field. It is when we lose consciousness, i.e. we lose our senses and are no more aware of our environment. But this does not concern this topic I think.

Great thoughts! Language is structured such that the full truth of reality, the ever moving Present, can't be explained in finite time. The qualia of my thoughts may be different from yours but we have language in order to give ideas to each other so there is similarities between our truths. The Present is an eternal Now that constantly moves in time. It can move in eternal time because the past is no more and the future guaranteed. "Now"rests and moves in time at once

Do you maybe mean "The fragility of the concepts of time and the unconscious"?
Because neither time nor unconscious does actually exist to be fragile or strong. — Alkis Piskas

I wonder how you will find the following:

Time and the unconscious are always already conceptual, are they not? To even bring up the idea of time is to have a concept in mind; it is part and parcel of what it "is". And this kind of thing is to the point here: To bring up anything at all is to quality that thing by the terms set in the bringing it up. There is no innocent, pure "time" that is free to be considered apart from the concepts that are in the mentioning.

The fragility refers to the assailability, which is shown readily, easily. Take space: where IS something? If a given location (under the dresser, in Miami, inside the box, and so on) is given by a reference to a broader, more inclusive spatial designation, and this certainly is the case, then the rule for identifying spatial identity will inevitably end an inquirer up in eternity, a concept of true indeterminacy. talk about something "Under the stairs" is analytically reducible to an indeterminacy.

About time: As you said, we use the terms "past", "present" and "future" conventionally. They are points of reference. We use them mainly for description purposes, and they are indeed very useful. But it is very easy to see that neither of them exists: past is long gone, it' not here, it's nowhere. Future has not come yet, so it's nowhere either. Present --which we usually call "Now"-- is the most controversial concept of the three. For one thing, it cannot be "grasped" because from the moment we refer to it, it has already passed by. But we can define it in a context, as a period of time, e.g. "At present" or "At the present time" or "Presently", refers to a period of time existing "as we talk". (Note: all the references to the word "exist" are figurative, since time does not actually exist.) — Alkis Piskas

An interesting analysis of time: Focusing on the presence of what is before me, qua presence reveals a dynamic: As I make reference to, say, the future, I deploy, in the act of reference itself, the past which informs the reference regarding language and habits of experience that are "enacted" in the event. But the event itself is necessarily a future looking affair, an anticipation of what the thinking is "going to be," and so the past is always IN the future reference; reflections on the past are, as temporally structured events themselves, future looking in the event of the recollection. Thus, past, present and future is, in this brief analysis, a dynamic that really has none of any these three concepts; time is "all of a piece," that defies representation altogether, for as one speaks such a thing, this past/present/future is presupposed in any and all possible time references. The daily familiar time language seems to be entirely a fiction at the basic level.

One conclusion is that language never touches down in the intuitional givenness of the world. to think at all is to bring what is before one under a language representation. Of course, your answer to this is to say contextuality is the requisite setting for meaningful speech to take place. Even at the basic level, thoughts about philosophical indeterminacy only become meaningful themselves in a context of foundational talk (philosophy's true domain, I argue). More mundanely, to say that yesterday was warmer the next week's forecast, I am making perfect sense in talk about weather, temperatures, predictions, and so forth, but to think one can understand at all "outside" of contextuality is impossible. That makes it impossible to discover what it could even mean for an idea to be about what is not an idea. Rorty takes this tact: no such thing as non propositional understanding. Ideas "refer" to ideas, and truth can only occur in propositions, and there are no propositions "out there".

This kind of thinking is radical. It entirely undermines the possibility of foundational talk, that is, talk that refers to what is not in an established totality of meaning. It says that inquiry and research are not "closing in" on the nature of things, as science would have it; but rather, the indeterminacy that faces us when paradigm meets actuality, when words about, say, ethics, meet the foundational giveness of actual pain and happiness, is an actual structural problem that does not go away via "paradigm shifts" and bigger telescopes.

About unconscious: It doesn't actually exist either. It's a term invented by Freud and it is rejected by a lot of psychologists today. If there were an unconscious mind, it would have to be inside mind, i.e. a mind inside a mind. We use the term conventionally, as we do with the terms mentioned above regarding time, to mean whatever is inside our mind that we are not aware of, i.e. it is "hidden". It is also very useful. We say, "I did that unconsciously", meaning without thinking or being aware of it. — Alkis Piskas

Not so much a mind inside a mind, but "something". It is a very sticky wicket, but is where inquiry has to go: Any attempt to talk about the unconscious is going to be met with talk about what is conscious, since the inquiry itself is conceived consciously, and any idea that is even possible to address it will be conscious. It is the old Wittgensteinian problem: try to say what logic is, and the very best you can do is give a logical answer! Question begging at its worse. But, and this is a mysterious "but", one quickly encounters Kierkegaard. Actuality, the "raw" feels of the world, are not concepts, and when a knowledge claim is brought forth in the "saying" of something, the saying hardly possesses the "feels". In fact, it is entirely "other" than the feel. Truth, as Rorty holds, may be a propositional matter, but reality is not (he disagrees); presence of the presences all around me is not presence of propositions. Propositional knowledge may take it up, speak contextually about "it", use it, have purpose for it, write volumes and libraries of contextual thinking, but there is that impossible "presence" that refuses to be reduced. This is the other/Other of the world.

So it is not so much of a metaphysics of the unconscious that is so "fragile". This is all too clear. It is a metaphysics of the conscious! THIS is where indeterminacy is revealed.

Where to go from here? The answer lies in ethics and aesthetics (as Wittgenstein said early one).

I can't see where does the contradiction lie. Psychotherapy (and other techniques) is based on exactly that process: bringing things that lie in out "unconscious" to our consciousness. This helps us to understand problems that lie hidden inside us and affects us and out behavior negatively, But in general, this is a very natural process that occurs with us every day: I have a name in my mind that I cannot remember, however hard I try. Suddenly, it pops up in my head: "I remembered it!". I don't know how much percent, but the very larger part of our is hidden from us at any given moment. We can say that it lies in our "unconscious", but only for description purposes. — Alkis Piskas

I thought you said Freudian theory, theory of the unconscious, was merely an invention.
But I do see. But even now, as you produce speech and writing, what is the constitutive source of all this? best answer science has is the brain, brain chemistry, billions of neurons and axonal fibers connecting them; and so on with this kind of talk. But this altogether dismisses (or better, simply misses, being, as is usually the case, completely unaware of it) the paradox of phenomenological accounting: to posit brain science itself occurs as a phenomenon. In order to do the kind of explaining required, there would have to be a position outside of phenomena that "observes" a foundation for this scientific observational foundation! In other words, phenomena cannot be a basis of explanation for phenomena.

Talk about the unconscious always already is talk about conscious thinking about what the unconscious is. Even the unconscious itself is this.

no we are not moving through time because time isn't real
So then what is this that we are all experiencing that we were told us called time then?

Well it is called change, change is how we define time because time can't define itself because time is a concept that has been overlaid covering up the truth which is change the only actual thing that can be observed and experienced

Time and the unconscious are always already conceptual, are they not? — Constance

Right. This is about what I said. Time itself cannot be fragile; it's concept only can be. So, are you agreeing with that but just don't want to accept it directly? :smile:

As I make reference to, say, the future, I deploy, in the act of reference itself, the past which informs the reference regarding language and habits of experience ... — Constance

You lost me. Too complicated for me to get involved in! The space in my mind will be distorted! And I'm afraid that my mind might even be exploded! :grin:

Indeed, how can you perform all that thinking? What I can only get are complicated optical illusions, like this one:

:grin:

Not so much a mind inside a mind, but "something" — Constance

I don't know what that "something can be. But I thought later that "a mind inside a mind" might not be the case, but rather a different "mind", i.e two minds working parallely, which anyway, doesn't make sense either. So it's useless to speak about any of them. That's why I use to say "a part of my mind", refering to what is customarily called "unconscious". This at least makes more sense.

Wittgensteinian problem: try to say what logic is, and the very best you can do is give a logical answer! — Constance

Indeed, this guy was quite problematic! :grin: I can only find problems and emptyness in his "sayings", like the above position you mentioned, which for me means absolutely nothing. Giving a logical answer has nothing to do with defining logic! You give dozens of logical answers everyday about a dozen different subjects. Godssake, man. Enough! There. Because you have ignited a wick in me that started a fire! :grin:

I thought you said Freudian theory, theory of the unconscious, was merely an invention. — Constance

No, I didn't say that. I didn't speak about any theory. I just mentioned that the word "unconcious" was invented by Freud.

I stopped being interested in and talk about the "unconscious (mind)" since a long time ago. I'm only interested in and talk about the conscious mind and consciousness! :smile:

I think we know time exists intuitively just as we know space is real.

what do you mean when you say that space is real? And intuitive is by no means some kind of end all form of knowing, not even close in fact often times people's intuitive beliefs are wrong and or part of some kind of indoctrination.

So do you think that one day we will be able to time travel?

Can you mail me a chunk of yesterday?, No?, Then how about next week? That way it doesn't go bad before it gets here.

You can't and that's because time only exists as a concept and an imposter using change as it's body to trick people into believing in it .

(Obviously that last part I was speaking metaphorically)

We need technology to keep track of time because we can't (depending on the level of detail one chooses to observe it at that is)

And things don't all change as the same speed and yet there is just 1 time that we say governs everything

But yet a person can get healthy and look and feel and by every measurable way possible be younger

Did they somehow break out of this thing that science says rules and governs all physicality?, Did they become equal to a god?

I mean they look and feel 15yrs younger and they have the blood work that says the same thing so they must be a god if they have the power to spin the clock the other direction

Or the reality is that there is no time but there is change and everything is changing and doing so at different rates and a person can slow down there rate of change or turn there change from a falling apart less effective less efficient form into a healthier more abundant lively form IE a healthy lifestyle

So change is just a concept that uses pre-existing things that actually do exist as its body but we don't realize this and were told that time is real by the people before us and likewise the people before them and so on forth

Usually the only time that is real is the present. Space? It's what contains material things. But if time travel becomes real it will open many mysterious. Physicists generally believe in time. It's philosophers that reduce it to change. Time is the mysterious thing that we can't detect but which moves the present constantly forward. Taking time away distorts the mysterious in the name of bland "logic"

physicists are day dreamers that somehow get paid to daydream, like you said they believe in time which is different then knowing

And like you said we can't detect time and so we have to believe that it exists, but why? Why believe in something that you can't find? Especially when you go looking for it and instead find something else? (Change) why does science have such a stubborn dogma about itself that it will be so skeptical and cautious about new hypotheses and only accepting only those things which can be properly predicted and repeatedly controlled multiple times being so cautious as to not add something that doesn't appear to be true and controllable,

and yet at the very same time uphold beliefs that can't be confirmed but are assumed till Kingdom come and create the very backbone of its entire ontology?

It's nonsensical it looks dishonest and it appears to be agenda driven because I don't see any other reason why anyone would blindly believe in something that they fail time again to prove

Now I'm saying that directed towards science as a whole not the individuals within it because I highly doubt anybody has that kind of tyrannical agenda and perspective very rarely does somebody actually have that form of personality .

Right. This is about what I said. Time itself cannot be fragile; it's concept only can be. So, are tou agreeing agree on that but just don't want to accept it directly? :smile: — Alkis Piskas

But without the concept, time is no longer time at all. It is "something" but then, the moment I mention it, the concept is in play. The thought of time IS time as far as time can be even conceived. So when we speak of time, we are speaking of a concept. References to what is there that is NOT is a concept, that stands independently of conceptual contexts, that IS in some unassailable way, are attempts to declare an absolute. But, according to the "fragile" nature of language, such talk is impossible: the mere mentioning precludes it!
And this goes for everything, from cats and dogs to interstellar phenomena. When we speak of these, they are thereby in the context of speaking, not sand alone entities proclaiming what they are by their presence. Of course, as you say, "time alone" cannot be fragile, if by this you refer to what is there independent of language. But it is not independent of language, because to behold it at all with your intelligence is to bring whatever something is, INTO language.

You lost me. Too complicated for me to get involved in! The space in my mind will be distorted! And I'm afraid that my mind might even be exploded! :grin:

Indeed, how can you perform all that thinking? What I can only get are complicated optical illusions, like this one: — Alkis Piskas

Not that complicated, just unfamiliar. But yes, it gets complicated when you read, say, Husserl:

Where do we get the idea of the past? The being present of an A in consciousness through the annexation of a new moment, even if we call the new moment the moment of the past, is incapable of explaining the transcending consciousness: A is past. It is not able to furnish the slightest representation of the fact that what I now have in consciousness as A with its new character is identical with something that is not in consciousness now but that did exist.

This is from Husserl's The Phenomenology of Consciousness of Internal Time. A very worthy read. I have it on pdf if you want it. Husserl is not easy in this, but really, if you take it slow, you will get it, and it can change the way you think dramatically.

I don't know what that "something can be. But I thought later that "a mind inside a mind" might not be the case, but rather a different "mind", i.e two minds working parallely, which anyway, doesn't make sense either. So it's useless to speak about any of them. That's why I use to say "a part of my mind", refering to what is customarily called "unconscious". This at least makes more sense. — Alkis Piskas

Hard to talk about. One has to read her way into it, really. The disclosure of truth can only occur AS a disclosure. But when questions are asked regarding what is "behind" disclosure, then one is lost. Bring up any idea at all and one is instantly in the familiar (if you know the jargon, that is). Hard to discuss because on the one hand one cannot deny that knowledge claims about the world all fail at the basic level. Yet, the world is this imposing , undeniable presence (the feels, the sensory immediacy, the affectivity, and so on) that is the very thing that cannot be possessed in the knowledge claim. It is not some "way beyond other" but it is an "other" that is right there before you. This is where knowledge claims fall apart, in my cat, at the bus stop, under my feet, and in anything at all. One FACES the world of indeterminacy when questions are brought to bear on things right before you at the basic level. This is, it can be argued, the heart of existential thought. Existence is not thought (notwithstanding Heidegger, et al). So what IS it? It belongs to eternity, so to speak. Transcendence. See Eugene Fink's 6th Meditation.

At lot of reading here. See Derrida's Khora, the Violence of Existence, How to Avoid Speaking, and others. See Levinas. See Human Existence and Transcendence by Jean Wahl.

Always trying to get people to turn away from Science magazines to "real" philosophy. All I mention here I have on PDF. You are welcome to it. And btw, I am just an amateur philosopher. I am like you: I read. The question is, what does one read and where does one's curiosities lie? If you really want to get to the core of the human philosophical situation, continental philosophy is the only way. Luckily, the internet is saturated with freely given lectures and essays. You can read Heidegger's Being and Time just as I did.

Indeed, this guy was quite problematic! :grin: I can only find problems and emptyness in his "sayings", like the above position you mentioned, which for me means absolutely nothing. Giving a logical answer has nothing to do with defining logic! You give dozens of logical answers everyday about a dozen different subjects. Godssake, man. Enough! There. Because you have ignited a wick in me that started a fire! :grin: — Alkis Piskas

Wittgenstein, and I am thinking of the Tractatus, not Investigations, isn't saying every judgment is about logic any more than particle physicists are saying every judgement is about atoms and molecules. Witt is saying that all that can be sensibly said has a logical structure. Facts are not out there beyond what a person's logicality can do; they are rather inherently logical. I think of opening the window and my mind is miles from the logical structure of my thinking. Yet there it is, the conditional form: If I pull up on the frame, THEN the window will rise; also, more fundamental propositions like, there is a window, the window is closed, closed windows obstruct air flow, etc. All that lies before us in any given moment from sticks and stones to star systems are on a logical grid of the understanding. Read Kant for an intro.

This is Aristotle, then Kant, then Wittgenstein. Logic is a systematic way to lay out the formal structure of all we think and say.

No, I didn't say that. I didn't speak about any theory. I just mentioned that the word "unconcious" was invented by Freud.
I stopped being interested in and talk about the "unconscious (mind)" since a long time ago. I'm only interested in and talk about the conscious mind and consciousness! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

I don't take issue with the assumption of an unconscious to the extent that it yields an understanding of the dynamics of a conscious set of affairs. The assumption that there are underlying motivations and conflicts is simply a given confirmed in "talk therapy" all the time. But to posit unconscious motivations is merely to say that the foundation for talk about motivations is absent, therefore, we must extrapolate from the seen to the unseen just to get a working knowledge for understanding, NOT to establish an metaphysical ontology. Think of Freud's ID, e.g., as mysterious X that never shows itself, but from which things manifestly issue. What do these things tell us? Ontologically they tell us nothing, it can be argued, because they are beyond language, and the moment they are spoken or thought, they are no longer what they are, for the taking up of them itself is radically "other" than what they are.

I am guessing a lot of this is unfamiliar. As it was for me not too long ago.

physicists are day dreamers that somehow get paid to daydream, like you said they believe in time which is different then knowing — MAYAEL

Physicists are daydreamers?? I wonder what this means.

To my mind either God or time has to explain how the present continues its journey to a sure future. Otherwise there is no context for things to move in

without the concept, time is no longer time at all. — Constance

I would rather say, "without a concept ot time, we cannot talk about 'time' at all; the word 'time' has no meaning". Without the concept of freedom, the word "freedom" means nothing.

Now, unlike concrete, material objects, which can exist and perceived in the external world through our senses, abstract ideas, i.e. concepts, can only be created and exist in our mind. Time is one of them.

This is how I can see concepts are created: We first have an abstract idea, i.e. a concept, about something and then we give it a name. Ancient people, where watching a river flowing, seing the sun rising and setting every day --an illusion of course, since it's the earth that is rotating and orbiting-- etc., and these observations, penomena were giving them a sense, an idea of continuous change and movement, which is very similar to that of time, but they didn't have a name for them. At some point, they had to invent words for them for description and communication purposes. One of them was "time".
But these abstract ideas are not confined in the description of phenomena in the external world, which we perceive through our senses. They can refer to things that exist only in our mind. For example, how has the concept of freedom been created? From the idea of getting liberated from a state of being imprisoned into something or enslaved by someone. The sense of relief and the idea of being released, at some point gets "materialized" in the word "freedom" (or whatever came before it).

So there's no word "time", until we get the concept of time into a word. That is, until we give a name to the idea of constant change and movment. Yet, it still doen't exist in the way a river exists, but only as an idea in our mind.

The thought of time IS time — Constance

The thought of myself is not myself. The thought of a tree is not a tree.

But it is not independent of language, because to behold it at all with your intelligence is to bring whatever something is, INTO language. — Constance

I described avove the relation of concepts to language, using the word "word" :smile:

See Derrida's Khora, the Violence of Existence — Constance

Don't talk to me about more reading, pleeeease! :grin:

I don't take issue with the assumption of an unconscious to the extent that it yields an understanding of the dynamics of a conscious set of affairs. — Constance

Agree.
I also agree thet Freud was a pioneer and his work opened a the road to a lot of things, besides psychology. These persons and their work have been and are absolutely necessary in the advancement of knowledge, in every kind of field.

what future? There is only now and the "future" is just in the imagination
Now sometimes we can predict how the "now" will be in a this imaginary place called the future and when this imaginary place aligns with the now we then say if it was an accurate prediction or not but just because a prediction comes true no more makes the future real than it does just prove that you know how to predict how the now will be eventually

This is how I can see concepts are created: We first have an abstract idea, i.e. a concept, about something and then we give it a name. Ancient people, where watching a river flowing, seing the sun rising and setting every day --an illusion of course, since it's the earth that is rotating and orbiting-- etc., and these observations, penomena were giving them a sense, an idea of continuous change and movement, which is very similar to that of time, but they didn't have a name for them. At some point, they had to invent words for them for description and communication purposes. One of them was "time".
But these abstract ideas are not confined in the description of phenomena in the external world, which we perceive through our senses. They can refer to things that exist only in our mind. For example, how has the concept of freedom been created? From the idea of getting liberated from a state of being imprisoned into something or enslaved by someone. The sense of relief and the idea of being released, at some point gets "materialized" in the word "freedom" (or whatever came before it).

So there's no word "time", until we get the concept of time into a word. That is, until we give a name to the idea of constant change and movment. Yet, it still doen't exist in the way a river exists, but only as an idea in our mind. — Alkis Piskas

The trouble with this kind of thinking is that is assumes a time when there was no word/concept there for time. Consider what happens with a genuinely novel phenomenon: When the approach is made, there is in place in the perceptual constitution that receives it a vast system of thought---referring to even the most primitive epistemic involvement with objects, moods, and practical affairs, i.e., everything: when language is brought into the world of an infant, it itself is a pragmatic "issue", the matching sounds with objects, fitting these on logical constructions of sentences and paragraphs all in a future looking event of anticipating moments and resolving matters at hand. In order to address something new (and yes, perhaps your are thinking of thomas Kuhn's "Revolutions" here, with it popularized "paradigms" of science) it is not,no matter how sui generis it appears to be, "discovered"; rather is it "made" out of the possibilities of the existing system. To borrow: New encounters come into a mind, a culture that is "always already" endowed with interpretative meanings and standards. think also of the way they tried to conceive in science fiction in the 1920's what the world would be like in the future. It looked an awful lot like a weird exaggerated world of the 1920's.

So when you think of how ancient cultures conceived of time, certainly there were language inventions that created novelties that became the next dominating paradigm which was in turn built into a system that itself would yield to new paradigms (as in Kuhn's book), but NO ex nihilo novelty. And this is the point: time came upon not as a response to natural phenomena in some revelation about what was there that suddenly was discovered. Rather, time was conceived OUT OF a matrix of existing thought, and the novelty was a modification of things language was already doing with time. time is not a simple construction at all. It is a complex and evolving idea.

When I say time is no longer time at all, I am referring to the massive intuitive and empirical concept that time IS. The actualities that are "out there" that thought is a response to is certainly "there" are not to be dismissed, but to try to conceive what this/these would BE without the personal and historical matrix is nonsense. Time's "isness" is this very matrix, and the "invented words" you mention are not stand alone referents to their objects. They are integral parts of an entire evolving language that essentially "deals with" the world.

The thought of myself is not myself. The thought of a tree is not a tree. — Alkis Piskas

See the above. It is not as if when you refer to yourself you directly refer to the body of thought in which a self is conceived. It is rather, when you refer to yourself, it is NOT a simple reference, not just a singularity. the self is a complex of self related thinking that is in the "region" of the reference. A structure (so called structuralism) is "behind" the self, the tree, that richly informs the occasion implicitly of referring. think of a brain storming mapping out of ideas for inspiration. Start with a simple idea, yet surrounding this is a complex of inter related thought brought out by the mere suggestive power of the original simple idea. Those discovered thougths are already there. They stand at the ready to deal with the world.
The "actual self"?? A very big issue in philosophy.

Don't talk to me about more reading, pleeeease! — Alkis Piskas

Apologies.

The trouble with this kind of thinking — Constance

What kind is this?
My thinking is simple, rational and practical. I'm not lost in all kinds of concepts and quotes from various sources as it is usually the case in here and what people love to hear.

assumes a time when there was no word/concept there for time — Constance

I'm afraid you missed the point. Nothing was assumed. I talked about phenomena that "were giving them [people] a sense, an idea of continuous change and movement, which is very similar to that of time." The word "time" is used here as a reference to what we are using today to refer to such phenomena.

My whole point was that concepts exist as ideas in our mind before we give them names!

You totally missed it. And it took me some time to explain all that. Pity! :sad:

My whole point was that concepts exist as ideas in our mind before we give them names!

You totally missed it. And it took me some time to explain all that. Pity! — Alkis Piskas

Then let's look at what you wrote:

This is how I can see concepts are created: We first have an abstract idea, i.e. a concept, about something and then we give it a name. Ancient people, where watching a river flowing, seing the sun rising and setting every day --an illusion of course, since it's the earth that is rotating and orbiting-- etc., and these observations, penomena were giving them a sense, an idea of continuous change and movement, which is very similar to that of time, but they didn't have a name for them. At some point, they had to invent words for them for description and communication purposes. One of them was "time".

The problem with this lies with "at some point." It sounds as if time came into conceptualization through an act of abstraction from the actual events of flowing rivers, blowing winds, and the like. As if some philosopher sitting on a rock was musing about the need for a word. this certainly is how philosophers likely came up with what they have, but it is not how the term 'time' was brought to conceptualization. This occurred in the everydayness of our affairs. The before dinner, after the game, in two minutes, an hour earlier than yesterday, and so on with all the time words, came to us in pragmatic circumstances long before things were abstractly conceived. Indeed, the abstract could never have become an abstract if there were no that-from-which-it-is-being abstracted-from. And empirical science is an incremental process (again, see Kuhn's famous book).

But these abstract ideas are not confined in the description of phenomena in the external world, which we perceive through our senses. They can refer to things that exist only in our mind. For example, how has the concept of freedom been created? From the idea of getting liberated from a state of being imprisoned into something or enslaved by someone. The sense of relief and the idea of being released, at some point gets "materialized" in the word "freedom" (or whatever came before it). — Alkis Piskas

But what is a phenomenon int he external world if not that which possesses the basic terms of the abstraction? If you take time as an abstraction, then the question goes to what was there in the world prior to this, out of which time the abstraction, was abstracted? If you want to move to what the mind only can "see" apart from the empirical entanglements, one still must deal with the abiding historical language that made those mental moves possible. And these came forth out of their predecessors, and so forth.
When you talk about ideas "only in the mind" you refer to what is called apriority (made famous by a philosopher whose name I will keep unsaid). But apriority, the universality and apodicticity of logical propositions, has a very long history of observation and abstraction, prior to Aristotle an Plato, and likely deep in prehistory.
But if you are still not convinced that terms like time are, for meaning to take place at all, welded any intuition (apriori or otherwise) we might have antecedent to the concept, consider that in order for our understanding to be able to apprehend something "as it is" independently of the perceptual conditions imposed upon it in the actual act of perception, then ask: how is it that anything "out there" can get "in here", that is, IN the conceptual matrix?

show me the past and will show you a present event affirming something called past. the future and the present suffer the same fate. — Constance

Which is why it is helpful to think of time in terms of William James "specious present", that duration, perhaps 2 seconds or so, in which we combine the immediate future, the instant present and the already passing moment in time. Anything less than that is something which we aren't aware of consciously, at these levels we react unconsciously.

If you deny the future and past, you cannot make sense of the present, because it has already past.

The unconscious: it takes but a moment to see that ANY talk at all about the unconscious is self contradictory, for to speak of it is to bring it to consciousness, thus, the moment it comes to our lips, rises up to thought and language, it is conscious — Constance

Not really. We see, roughly, when photons hit the eye and react to the photo-receptors we have. We aren't conscious of this process. We become conscious of it when we study mammalian vision, but, aside from the discussions, we don't see photons, nor do we see how the brain turns this into images.

And there is plenty of study in linguistics than show that we cannot introspect into our language faculty. What we get in consciousness are fragments, not the process by which we get these fragments.

Until we get rid of this idea of "access to consciousness", we will remain stuck in philosophy of mind, because, as a factual matter, the vast majority of the things we do don't enter experience. But this should be rather obvious, requiring little times reflection.

The problem with this lies with "at some point." — Constance

You missed it again. "At some point" is a descriptive expression, not an absolute or a name or a term, used for space and time. We are using it to refer to the past --sometimes to the future too. It's not a substitute for the word "time". It does not even represent time.

I sense a language problem here. Maybe you read too much Wittgenstein! :smile: (Oh boy, did he have a problem with language!)

My advice, based on my own experience: Put aside all these guys. Start using your own thoughts and ideas, applying your own reasoning and using your own experiences in life. This needs a long practice. Don't read. You have already read enough from what I can see. Now write, write, write, and then write more. Your own thoughts. Your own experiences. Your own examples.

RE: The fragility of time and the unconscious
SUBTOPIC: Is something?
※→ et al,

I would like to fall back to the beginning.

(COMMENT)

But "where" is time, so to speak? — Constance

Time, being a human construct, is a matter of sensitivity and perception.

Time is the inverse to frequency [ t=(1/f) ] and it only points in a positive direction. Because it is a construct, the only question becomes: Is it sound and valid?


Respectfully,
R

Hello Rocco Rosano.

I really like your definition of time but if you don't mind I want to share another perspective from a Kantian point of view:
Because time, [in Immanuel Kant's terms] is only empirically real and does not exist independently among things in themselves.

Time is the inverse to frequency [ t=(1/f) ] and it only points in a positive direction — Rocco Rosano

What do you mean by "positive?"

RE: The fragility of time and the unconscious
SUBTOPIC: Is something?
※→ javi2541997, et al,

I think that Kant's thoughts applied somewhere between the empirical probability and the parametric form is equivalent to Maximum Descriptive Limit (MDL) empirical likelihood. I believe Emmanual Kant, who's study of reality, would give intuitive and/or empirical assumptions more value than normal when outside the normal distribution and characteristics.

As long as you can recognize that everything sits within the space-time fabric, you can say that they are independent, But remember that Kant surmised that there would be the occasional zones of exceptions, anomalies, and the occasional Asymptotic functions. But when rival principles of perception;, the types of empirical data the approach can and cannot explain, it falls into the reality of Metaphysics.

THEN, yes! We arena general agreement.


Most Respectfully,
R

Which is why it is helpful to think of time in terms of William James "specious present", that duration, perhaps 2 seconds or so, in which we combine the immediate future, the instant present and the already passing moment in time. Anything less than that is something which we aren't aware of consciously, at these levels we react unconsciously.

If you deny the future and past, you cannot make sense of the present, because it has already past. — Manuel

And Derrida refers to the "metaphysics of presence." The argument, the elephant in the room argument, is that amidst the theoretical work, there is the inscrutable givenness of the world. That time as a philosophical concept is so readily deconstructable, which simply means it falls apart so readily under analysis at the basic level, leaves the theory entirely "open", that is, indeterminate. But the same applies to space, logic, my grandmother and everything conceivable. ALL are subject to the came critical assault. For one reason, because their basic conception is bound to time, and if time is indeterminate (at the basic level of analysis), then everything is.

Not really. We see, roughly, when photons hit the eye and react to the photo-receptors we have. We aren't conscious of this process. We become conscious of it when we study mammalian vision, but, aside from the discussions, we don't see photons, nor do we see how the brain turns this into images.

And there is plenty of study in linguistics than show that we cannot introspect into our language faculty. What we get in consciousness are fragments, not the process by which we get these fragments.

Until we get rid of this idea of "access to consciousness", we will remain stuck in philosophy of mind, because, as a factual matter, the vast majority of the things we do don't enter experience. But this should be rather obvious, requiring little times reflection. — Manuel

True, we are not conscious of a zillion things in a given moment, but give this situation its due: when the photoreceptors are brought into an observable, occurrent event, the meanings that seize upon the content are conscious. Even the idea of the unconscious itself is entirely and is necessarily, a conscious conception. the unconscious has never been, NOR CAN IT BE, ever witnessed. This "nor can it ever be" breaks ranks with empirical concepts, the assumption behind them being that what is not known, can be at least conceived as being known.

The unconscious, and again, at the basic level, that is, philosophically, (certainly not in regular science) a nonsense term. Even the extrapolation from what is seen to what is unseen cannot apply here.

Time, being a human construct, is a matter of sensitivity and perception.

Time is the inverse to frequency [ t=(1/f) ] and it only points in a positive direction. Because it is a construct, the only question becomes: Is it sound and valid? — Rocco Rosano

Soundness is a reference to the world. You deploy an abstraction, thinking deductively, as if there were something axiomatic about the metaphor of "positive direction." Antecedent to abstractions like this, there is the world. One must look here first.

The question is not a logical one until the terms of what is there to be determined are set in place. One must say what the world is, that is, what is there in our midst that gives rise to the concept of time. We find here the apriority, as Kant would put it, but this begs the question: to what does this apriority refer? HERE was are mystified, for the return on this question is more concepts that presuppose time; even time, as a concept, presupposes time.

And one makes the final and dramatic move toward indeterminacy in all things. A move grounded, I would argue, in Kant's exposition.

And this is where philosophy assumes the place of religion, which is the final move philosophy can make. Without the nonsense, which is the point.

It seems to me that reality and time are the same thing. Time is of our minds but our minds are connected to everything. Time is the space that space moves in

@Alkis Piskas (re your optical illusion). Something doesn't add up!

It depends in on minds, indeed but as an illusion. Time is a complex concept that does not live outside human's awareness. Most of the rest of living being are not aware of the pass of time.
Kant said: "Time doesn't exist empirically outside the men's minds"

"Nature's highest goal, to become wholly an object to herself, is achieved only through the last order of reflection, which is none other than man; or, more generally, it is what we call reason, whereby nature first completely returns into herself and by this it becomes apparent that nature is identical to that which we recognize in ourselves as intelligence and that which is conscious". Schelling in "System of Transcendental Idealism

Sensations can only be felt in time. So wouldn't animals feel time as well? What humans do differently is in perception and how we emotionalize the experience of objects with feelings that seem to say something about the object. If you at night see a knife coming at you in the dark, the blade is seen as frightening and odious. This is a truth about it. We see children as cute and can't reduce it merely to subjective bias. Time and space can be felt as part of intuition said Kant. Nobody was more aware of time flowing then him among older philosophers

Sensations can only be felt in time. So wouldn't animals feel time as well? — Gregory

They do not feel "time" because they do not know neither understand what is the meaning of time. This is only a human concept. We both can be agree with the fact that a dog (for example) feels or knows when he is older but he is not aware of his age. We are, as humans, the ones who say that the dog is 10 or 11 years old. But the dog, himself, is not aware of that. His reasoning is not so complete to get such complex thoughts. They even are not aware about the existence of themselves...

Nobody was more aware of time flowing then him among older philosophers — Gregory

That's true, indeed. Because time is a weakness of humans. We feel nostalgia and despair when the person and things around us disappear due to the pass of time. I guess it gives us anxiety because it is an aspect the humans cannot control. The next year I will be 26 years old and that's a fact that I cannot prevent. It will occur.
Time is unstoppable and it kills us. That's why philosophers are always so concern about it.

It would seem that death is a far greater mystery than time