Personally, I am exploring the idea that, while objects may have a temporal position, consciousness actually has a temporal "size." Objects are three dimensional and moving through or in time, as it were. But consciousness actually exists in the past, present and future, has actual temporal dimension. An intuition. — Pantagruel
Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered; — this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself? — Pantagruel
However it seems like the arrow of time might be fundamentally related to the physical gradient of entropy — Pantagruel
“The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and the future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past—a recent past—delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past.”
James goes on:
“the original paragon and prototype of all conceived times is the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible.”
In another formulation he enters into more detail, and says something about what this short duration contains:
“The unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward—and a forward-looking end. It is only as parts of this duration-block that the relation of succession of one end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel one end and then feel the other after it, and from the perception of the succession infer an interval of time between, but we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded in it.”
In the same chapter of the Principles James also writes:
“Its content is in a constant flux, events dawning into its forward end as fast as they fade out of its rearward one … Meanwhile, the specious present, the intuited duration, stands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own quality unchanged by the events that stream through it. “
James clearly believed that there is an unvarying structure or mechanism underlying our temporal awareness, as did Husserl after him. If this is right, and if (as many believe) consciousness is essentially temporal, then this structure (or mechanism) is an essential component of consciousness itself, in all its forms.James is well-known for emphasizing the continuity of experience
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up into bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly … It is nothing jointed, it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is naturally described…”
and James’ stream metaphor strikes many as apt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
↪Pantagruel
Yeah, I am only attracted to the physics of time. Metaphysical notions/projections/handlings of time are a little like watching sci-fi, great fun, very entertaining, sometimes even thought provoking, but not real. — universeness
↪Joshs Is it? I thought the concept of the thermodynamic arrow of time was fairly 'fundamental'. — Pantagruel
To me it’s the opposite. It’s the physics of time that’s not ‘real’. Or put better, such empirical accounts are profoundly limited by their ignorance of the subjective structures that make them intelligible. — Joshs
Under this view, all the arrows of time are a result of our relative proximity in time to the Big Bang and the special circumstances that existed then — universeness
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up into bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly … It is nothing jointed, it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is naturally described…”
and James’ stream metaphor strikes many as apt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Perhaps there was a different phase of hyperinflation that affected the temporal dimension differently in the very early universe. — Pantagruel
Does what we designate as time really only refer to the awareness of time? — Pantagruel
the present moment may be all which exists, but how are we to understand looking back? I think we just have to take past, present and future as structures in human cognition which help us to make sense of our reality, but I don't know how much we can say beyond this. We can't really examine time outside of our experience of it. — Tom Storm
I don't think so. It's much more than that. "Time" is ... scrambled eggs which cannot ever unscramble (and reshell) themselves.Does what we designate as time really only refer to the awareness of time? — Pantagruel
Suppose cosmological – the Hubble volume's – expansion is, in effect, all clocks winding down, or unwinding ... — 180 Proof
Perhaps the concept of time only makes sense in the context of awareness. — Pantagruel
I’d agree with that. But then, in order to justify the concept itself, one has to ask…..what is the irreducible awareness which limits the context, such that without it, the concept wouldn’t even occur. — Mww
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