would think that you can add as many dimensions you would like, — Corvus

Can you give me an example of another dimension of time other than the past or the future?

Past existed in the past, but it doesn't exist now. Does it? Saying past exists sounds language with no tense knowledge. We are not denying past didn't exist. It existed. Where did it exist? In the past, and in memories. But does it exist now and reality? — Corvus

Have you considered that it is simply another dimension? A dimension where there is no present. And that is precisely why we cannot perceive it. Since consciousness only lives in the present. But we cannot say that it has no content, nor that it has no truths.

Historians going crazy with this discussion.

I think of time as a building that goes upwards. We have the current floor and the floors below that are the past. You need a virtual and indeterminate raw material (future) to keep building floors.

The past exists as the dimension of sedimentation where the added floors solidify in an unmodifiable way.

I didn’t say anything about ‘collapse’ by which I presume you’re referring to so-called ‘wave function collapse’. — Wayfarer

You did. But indirectly.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/968214

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/968235

This blurring between the objective and the subjective is a confusion of concepts that is solved by removing the unjustified intrusive belief of the role of the scientist in quantum physics experiments.

Why? What dictates that necessity?
3h — Wayfarer

Because otherwise we would have no possible explanation of how the watch functions.

I think the consciousness does act causally, with the measured physical system, necessarily so. This is done through the measuring tool. The tool is created with intent. As you see, others like to argue that the tool measures without any interaction with the conscious mind. But as you argue, that is not actually a measurement at all. So we need to accept that "the measurement" includes the intent put into the tool, as well as the observations of the tool. — Metaphysician Undercover

This sounds to me like, literally, the ghost in the machine.

What I want you to understand is why the measuring device is necessary. The collapse of function in fact is explained not because a person thinks or is aware of the experiment. In this sense the human or scientist is neutralized. There is no experiment that is correctly explained by something like "collapse by interpretation". In such an experiment the measuring apparatus and the environment are involved. And both are efficient causes of the collapse, the passage from coherence to quantum decoherence. Just think about the necessity of the means to perform the measurement: why are they necessary? They are necessary to interact with this quantum phenomenon. And, at this point it is obvious, they are necessary to measure, that is to say, they perform the measurement. The scientist is the person who interprets that measurement, but he is not the efficient cause of the wave function collapse.

I don’t agree. The clock is the instrument by which we measure, but the act of measurement is carried out by the measurer. As that passage I quoted says, ‘ A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession’ - which is what measurement entails. — Wayfarer

The thing is that to measure we need interaction. The observer is subsumed in this interaction in such a way as to make that interaction physical. So the observer is our measuring machines, like a clock, which makes the coherent state of an isolated system disappear. That interaction does not exist between our consciousness and the system. I am not saying that the clock measures the time of consciousness, what I am saying is that the clock is the interaction that the mechanism reflects as a function of a minimal movement. So measures a part of the movement of the world (and remember that there is no time without movement) But there must be an ontological continuity between the clock and those movements. This continuity does not exist between the consciousness and the measured object (here the isolated system in coherence). To affirm the contrary is to affirm magic or some kind of mentalism. How does the consciousness interact with the isolated system if it cannot even see it? It has a representation of it but does not interact, it needs the machine. Did you get it?

The thing is that for quantum mechanics to measure is not to be conscious but to interact with an isolated system in quantum coherence. It does not matter if we experience a time different from the quantifiable one, it matters however the mechanism that acts in our quantum clock. The clock measures time as its mechanism interacts with an exact minimal motion. We would not measure time because that accuracy is not given by our experience but by the clock mechanism. Hence it is the clock that measure.

The thing is that I already have my metaphysician's hat on and I have never taken it off. And I maintain a position that is in accordance with the metaphysical commitment of the scientist.

So I can say: yes, science as an object of study and as a fact refutes something about empiricism. We are being aware (which differs from perceive) of some things that we do not perceive. And we can study, analyze, investigaste them through technology.

somehow — tim wood

For me there is no somehow except in a very rudimentary stage of science. You perceive something, then you study or analyze it, but you use means to analyze and discover (today more than ever) things that you had not and will not be able to perceive. Even the result of analysis and investigation can totally change what we first thought we perceived.

We don't actually measure the time from the clock, the clock does the work automatically, we read that measurement.

Are you aware of any form of consciousness that is not the attribute of an observer? — Wayfarer

Yes, because observer is not consciousness. it is called a measurement, carried out by a machine or the environment. That is why the cat is not live a dead at the same time. Consciousness belongs to humans not observers.

Science is a method for studying phenomena. If you do not agree, we need to stop here and work this out.

Phenomena are what actually happens, relative to what might otherwise happen. And in a lot of modern science, the phenomena that are studied are on the gauges of machines and the readouts of printers. And that's it, period. Now, an analysis of phenomena can lead to theories, and the theories can be tested, and so on. But in many cases the "thing" studied is never directly observed, never itself a phenomenon. — tim wood

If phenomenon means to be-perceived then no. Science according to the example I have given consists in the study of perceivable or Non-perceivable reality. And I think you agree.

Empiricism concerns phenomena. Our OP seems to think that is a matter of the perceivable v. the unperceivable. But I shall leave to you a question he so far has ducked: can there be a science of anything that is not perceived, that is not in some way or other a phenomenon observed? — tim wood

I believe that in this topic the central criticism has been made of empiricism a la Berkeley, which is empiricism taken to its last true consequences (the criticism of primary qualities). In that sense the critique is absolutely right

It's already been demonstrated in this very thread, that there is a scientific argument for the indispensability of the observer in cosmological physics. — Wayfarer

Just a reminder: the observer is not consciousness.

Time is known to be eternal and non stoppable. It keeps flowing even all your watches and clocks stopped. Even when someone died, time keeps flowing. Maybe not for the dead. If there were no life on earth, would time still keep flowing? — Corvus

You refer me to the battle realism VS idealism. For me there is always a delay of everything existing that prevents its presence from being absolutely or absolutely identical to itself, but it is still constitutive. This delay is given by the relational being of things. And this is impossible to be given without time and space. This is applicable to consciousness which in turn is referred to an outside that constitutes it. Therefore time and space are conditions of consciousness. Therefore, time is something real and existent.

No problem. I'm glad to agree with you.

The machine makes the particles travel at near-light speed until they collide. How can that not be interacting? There is also the recording, that's true. In any case you get information and this like all sign systems is in place of something, something that is not perceived: the collision and the particles.It doesn't matter if a person has to read the information (even a picture with information) . The point is that when he reads it he is not perceiving what the information refers to.

I would not say that. For example, when two particles collide, what we see is information in a computer. The one that perceives is the machine, but that is not perceiving, it is interacting. Information here is a key element, getting information is not perceiving in my opinion, there is a whole chain of deferral that makes and generates information, or signification. This means that significance or information transcends perception. Thus we must say that we know the world not only as we perceive it, but as we obtain significance or information from it.

Feel free to disagree, dear reader. — Arcane Sandwich

I guess I can't disagree. I would say that much of science, especially physics, is composed of objects and relationships that are not directly perceived. We need in most cases technological devices to be able to perceive their reality. And not only that, but much of the theoretical work specializes in theorizing according to the available technology. Today knowledge is completely subsumed in different types of mediations.

Hegel would say that we live the development of knowledge through the work of negativity.

Heidegger's critique of calculating reason.

We are in the age of the calculating technique in which nature is manipulated or at least has the power to do so. Man's eagerness to dominate in order to control and predict.

The calculating reason turns everything into an "available resource" losing the opening to the mystery of being according to Heidegger.

Heidegger a conservationist?

Heidegger was talking about a passive attitude towards the sending of being. Let us say that this is doing justice to nature.


I do not agree. A pure and passive experience of being is being under the view of immediacy. But how could there be justice without law? One cannot stay passive, one must make laws that protect nature, and why not, even more science so that violence does not repeat itself.

Wouldn't time perception be some sort of perceptive mechanism from the shared capability of mind? — Corvus

Well, yes. We have an internal time according to Kant with which we perceive time both in things that move and those that do not move.

At the end of the day, you have measured the intervals, not time itself. Would you agree? — Corvus

For me we do have time in itself, but time has different ways of appearing. one of them is measurable and discontinuous time. What we see in a watch are differences of times or differences of movements, different rhythms, proper of each thing. The time of a watch is the time of the mechanism that composes it, but we can change the mechanism and we have another time and rhythm, as when we go from seconds to thousandths.

That is also problematic. You say that an Unrelated thing is a thing to which time does not pass nor does it occupy space?

Now there’s an oxymoronic phrase! I’m forming the view that ‘the world independent of mind’ is precisely and exactly what the ‘in itself’ refers to. — Wayfarer

Well, you know what I said. The other is very close to me and invades me - even in my imagination.

Not at all. What I am saying is that, supposing that there are simple things at the end of the composition, these simple things are explained in essence by the whole of which they are a part. That is to say that their essence or identity is conditioned by the whole of which they are a part.

And as you have seen in this topic a confusion is made between the simple thing at the end of the composite and God. But if every simple thing that forms a whole is conditioned in its identity and essence by the whole, then no simple thing that is part of a whole can be God.

In other words, if God is part of the world then he is conditioned in essence and identity by the world. But if he is not part of the world then we are no longer talking about wholes and parts.

Is time a kind of perception of mental beings, or some concrete property of objects and motions in space? — Corvus

It is difficult for me to think that time is not something proper to external objects. Imagine a world independent of the mind in which time does not pass, our experiences would not be able to perceive the movement of things either, don't you think?

Do dogs perceive time? When you throw a ball in the air, the dogs could jump and catch it before it falls on the ground. Surely they notice the motion of the ball. Is the motion noticeable to the dog, because of time? Or time has no relation to the motion, because dogs are not able to perceive time? — Corvus

I would not say because of time. Time is not the cause of movement, but time is part of movement. For a dog it is obvious that time passes, but it has no concept of time. The important thing here is to understand that movement does not occur without time, because any movement can only be explained in a before and an after. But they are not the same thing: without movement we do not perceive time; but time passes even for a hypothetical motionless object, we call it persistence or duration.

Well, one of the things that makes Heidegger original is that he breaks down something like being-in-the-world, being-for-death, the authenticity, inauthenticity of his conception of temporality that he reinterpreted from Kant in "Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics."

Is there a Dasien/being-in-the-world binary in Heidegger's philosophy? — Arcane Sandwich

For Heidegger the subject-object relation consists in the theoretical attitude in which man tries to free himself from that which constitutes him (language, prejudices, culture, etc.) in order to reach an object also devoid of its being with man (for example when instead of using a hammer we ask what a hammer is and ask about its essence or objectivity). Being in the world is the way of being of man and things in which the theoretical attitude has not taken place or is secondary.

To me this fits into the American pragmatism of Dewey and so on. Only in transcendental terms

Yes, but then it would not be an argument from composition. There is a correlation between composing and being composed. A being that composes finds its function insofar as there is a composite being. Therefore its essence as a composing being is ontologically dependent (contingent). This terms comes from fundationalism.

In other words God must create the world in order to be God, which means that his essence (being God) is contingent upon the creation of the world. Therefore, God is essentially dependent on the world in order to be God. And God cannot have essential dependence on anything. Therefore, there is no possible argument of composition+fundation to demonstrate the existence of God.

But don’t you both believe that live is determinated by its relation to death?

I think that in another place I spoke to you about temporality in Husserl as a constituent of consciousness as self-affection. According to this view the present is determined by a difference with respect to the past and the future, implied by the absence that is given in them. The present is never identically present but always deferred and postponed (a la Derrida), that is, we cannot deny the absence and non-subjectivity that constitutes it.

That's why I have concerns about thinking of time as subjective or hyper-subjective if you will.

I totally agree. I should not have said objective but only transcendental. But it is still true with respect to another form of temporality which is linear. Let us recall how the temporality of Dasein is determined as ek-stasis in which a linear and discontinuous description has no place.

Heidegger argues, if I understood well, that time is not something external to Dasein, but constitutes its very existence. The temporality of Dasein is understood on the basis of its ek-static existence, that is, Dasein is always projected beyond itself, towards the future, rooted in its past and committed to its present.

I agree that there is irremediably a type of time that exists as Bergson points out. But I would not be so sure that it is something simply subjective. Thanks to Heidegger's analysis of Kant's work we have to say that the time we say is subjective is in fact constitutive of subjectivity itself, which determines it as objective or trascendental. This form of time I would say is more fundamental than the one provided by physics (because of the problems that arise when we think of time as a series of discontinuous points that follow one another).

We must be very cautious in introducing consciousness as an observer. The two things are not the same. The same has to be said about seeing and measuring, they are not the same.

Think of schrodinger's cat. it is not true that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we SEE it. Quantum decoherence has already taken place since it is not a completely isolated experiment; here the observer and the measurement is made by the environment as our apparatus. And it could not be otherwise: being perceived is not an act of physical interaction, that act of interaction is carried out by our technological devices or the environment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einselection

For Kant time is a pure intuition, i.e. it is an a priori structure that allows us to organize events.

The movement is as it is represented in physics, for example as a trajectory through time. Motion as we see it is the same, we see a before and an after of the thing moving, otherwise we would not notice the motion.

Time is already acting on the motion. A thing that moves is a thing that passes from one state to another, but then the difference we see between one state and another is different from the thing [cause we apply it to different things] , we call it temporal difference, a now with respect to a before.

When I think of a critique of empiricism I think of Kant. He criticized the idea of tabula rasa that persisted in empiricism. Hence his whole philosophy concerning the active position of the mind with respect to what we perceive.

Kant even introduced the forms of sensibility (space and time) as transcendental forms that apply to external things.

In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant introduces the "Refutation of Idealism", where he argues that the existence of the external world is not just probable but necessary for self-consciousness.

Kant argues that the existence of external objects is a necessary condition for self-consciousness. His reasoning follows these steps:

1. We are aware of our own existence in time. We experience a continuity of thoughts and changes in our mental states.
2. To be aware of time, we need an objective reference point. Time is not something we perceive directly; we only understand it in relation to external events.
3. These external events must be stable and distinct from our minds. If only internal perceptions existed, we would have no fixed framework for organizing our experiences in time.
4. Therefore, the existence of an external world is necessary for self-consciousness.

This argument is based on the idea that we cannot be aware of ourselves without an external reference frame. The external world is not just an optional assumption. it is a prerequisite for our experience of the self to make sense.

Kant does not claim that we know things as they are in themselves (noumena), but he does assert that something external structures our experiences.

If I understand Putnam correctly, he says that a mind-independent world would explain the being of an external entity. But our language does not have that property, it only possesses words and signs that explain the being to the reference. So access to such a mind-independent world is problematic and rather illusory. Putnam believes that reference does not escape language and is trapped in it.

It is similar to saying that the thing we perceive does not escape perception, all the references we perceive are always being perceived.

For me antirealism is an almost irrefutable point of view. The only way out of idealist enclosure is a theory of the sign that can include the Non-perceivable, that can be extrapolated beyond language and that can be applied to experience itself.

The antirealism of the linguistic turn is a reflection of subjective idealism. What is present continues to dominate the notion of language that you see in the development of this topic.

In my view the simple thing, at the end of the series of composition is contingent upon the whole in terms of ratio cognoscendi:

"A simple thing by itself does not constitute a whole. Therefore, in order to constitute a whole, the simple thing must subordinate itself to the composition of the whole in order to function as a constituent thing."

This means that retroactively the whole (the parts) explains the simple thing that composes it qua superior explainer. Which in turn makes the simple thing contingent to the whole.


The counter-argument would be as follows


1. The composite things (the whole) exist contingently to their parts in order to be explained.
2. The simple thing at the end of the series of composition is, retroactively, contingent to the whole wich explains the cognoscendi superiority of the simple thing.
3. God cannot be contingent on anything (the whole), therefore we cannot relate a simple thing in a chain of composition to God.

It is. There is no exception to the contrary. — Arcane Sandwich

No proof, so I dismiss it.

I offered to do so, with the example of the iron sphere — Arcane Sandwich

You barely mentioned it. I can't consider it as an argument.

But you didn't show that. You merely asserted it. Basically, your "argument" is "I read Frege and Husserl's critique of psychologism. They convinced me. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. Why? Because I said so." — Arcane Sandwich

I have not taken the arguments from Frege and Husserl but from other sources. But the argument is there; it stands on the irreducibility of the theorem (which has the evidence of its meaning through different human beings understanding it) to cognitive processes that are individual. It is very simple, cognitive processes are individual and the theorem has been transmitted from human to human beyond such individuality. The theorem historically manifests properties of repetition and persistence which the cognitive processes not.

And I would say that what you just said there is a fallacy. — Arcane Sandwich

You will have to prove to me that all philosophy is expressed through syllogisms, premises and conclusions.

I already gave an argument. It's Bunge's argument — Arcane Sandwich

And I have refuted it. You will have to give me other arguments about fictionalism. But I sense that you don't want to give them.

If it's false, then you're wrong. — Arcane Sandwich

Again, the only argument you made is not yours and has been refuted.

How? Showing that the Pythagorean theorem transcends human cognitive processes. How do I show that it transcends them? By showing that such a theorem has universal properties and is not an individual cognitive processes, taking the example of the multitude of minds that understand the meaning of the theorem.

No, you haven't. This is what arguments look like in philosophy. You haven't done that — Arcane Sandwich

I would say that this is what an argument looks like in the philosophy you like. But obviously philosophy has a very broad style of expression. At least we can agree that you have to give arguments to prove a point which is what I have tried to do.

I have responded with arguments to what you have quoted from Mario Bunge. If you are not willing to defend it with arguments my point still stands.

False — Arcane Sandwich

I'm sorry but I can't take that as an argument. Saying it's false and nothing else doesn't make you right, nor does it mean I'm wrong. I invite you to give arguments against what I have said and argued.