I plan on replying in further detail later on. For now:

Without in any way denying the reality of conscious experience, down the line of my reasoning I fully acknowledge that conscious experience is the product of a commonwealth of subconscious agencies that hold their own subconscious experiences. And, even more, that conscious agency, which includes conscious experience, is itself a unified bundle of subconscious agencies, such that the sum is greater than its parts. But the issue here is that of conscious experience per se.

Whereas conscious experience is a brute fact, subconscious experiences are inferred, and this by none other than conscious experience.

On what grounds would you disagree with the previous sentence?

Now, Javra has stated that the present consists of a duration of time, the present moment is a duration. So within that duration some parts must be in the future relative to other parts which would be in the past. What this implies is that within the present, there is also future and past. And when we see that, within our experienced present, part is in the future, and part is in the past, then we can acknowledge that the part in the future is before (prior to) the part in the past. — Metaphysician Undercover

To address what you've last written, a correction: I've repeatedly asserted that the experienced present has a duration. For clarity, implicitly requisite in this is that I'm referring strictly to conscious awareness as that which experiences - i.e., to the first person point of view - and not to the experiences of our own unconscious minds, of which we as first person points of view can only infer. Furthermore, yes, within this experienced present, there are givens that occur before other givens (else, givens that occur after other givens) but, from the vantage of the experienced present as experienced by the first person point of view, these occurrences that consist of befores and afters are yet the present - hence, are neither the experiential future (which consists of yet to be experienced experiential present moments) nor the experiential past (which consists of already-experienced experiential-present-moments that are re-presented to our conscious selves, either automatically relative to us as conscious selves or via our volition as conscious selves of so remembering, with the latter most often termed "recall"). The befores and afters that occur in the experienced present are neither our experienced past nor our experienced future. But before further engaging in explaining this:

First, you've repeatedly claimed that we do not experience time. One such example:

I've been arguing that we do not directly experience time at all. It's conceptual, an abstraction. You end the paragraph with "we nevertheless experience time as such" , but you don't say what you think we experience time as. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is direct contradiction to time perception studies - with the sole point to referencing such studies here being that we as first person points of view do hold subjective awareness of time. Hence, we experience time. To my knowledge, this experiencing of time is something utterly non-controversial among both academics and non-academics. Can you point to a reference of someone who affirms that we humans do not experience time? (Again, they might claim that our experiences of time are illusory, but not that we don't directly experience time, aka temporal order.) ((Also, note the amount of information on the linked Wikipedia page regarding the subjective experience of time.))

What I've called the "experienced, or experiential, present" W. James famously termed the "specious present":

James defined the specious present to be "the prototype of all conceived times... the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Philosophical_perspectives

The person he borrowed this term from, E. R. Kelly, is quoted to more elaborately comment:

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 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. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three ... nonentities—the past, which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their conterminous, the present; the faculty from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present.[1] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specious_present

I have and will use "the experiential present" rather than "the specious present" precisely due to my disagreement with the inference that what I experience is "fictitious", as per the part of Kelly's quote I've boldfaced. (I am most certain of what I directly experience, and less certain of the inferences I abstract from such - this outlook being pivotal to my approach to philosophy in general; a different topic, maybe.) Nevertheless, there is yet mention of an experienced present in Kelly's inference of it being "fiction".

This quote by Kelly, quite likely, cuts to the marrow of our disagreement on this subject. Only that you go a step further and tell me that I don't experience time at all.

Experiments have shown that rats can successfully estimate a time interval of approximately 40 seconds, despite having their cortex entirely removed.[23] This suggests that time estimation may be a low level process.[24] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Neuroscientific_perspectives

To emphasize, what this implies is 1) that conscious reasoning (which occurs in the cerebral cortex) is not a necessity to the discernment of temporal sequences - hence, the discernment of time - and (here overlooking the rest of the linked to article) 2) that lesser animals are quite capable of experiencing time - again implying that conscious reasoning is not essential to the activity.

As to memory, for the sake of brevity, I did and will for now continue to address memory as strictly that which is brought into consciousness by the unconscious which of itself re-presents a perceptual event that has already transpired and ended. To be as explicit as I currently can, this experiential memory (i.e., memory as it is experienced by the first person point of view) always consists of long term memory (e.g., a phone # I had ten years back); usually consists of short term memory and/or working memory (the memory of a phone # I have been exposed to 10 seconds after the fact), and on rare and extra-ordinary occasions of sensory memory (e.g., the experience of an afterimage). Complexities galore with all of this. And yes, I dully acknowledge the role of various memory types. Yes, having said this, what I do not agree with is that there is no experiential difference relative to the first person point of view in question between, for example, looking at an apple (this being the person's experiential present) and remembering once seeing an apple (this being the person's experiential past). Here, experientially, there is a clear distinction between what I deem to be the present perceptions I am aware of and what I deem to be former perceptions I am aware of - one whose threshold is fuzzy, granted, but experientially a clear distinction nevertheless.

(In some ways it's akin to watching a movie and claiming that what we are in fact experiencing is a series of still frames when, in fact, we are experiencing fluid motion while so viewing. Slow down the movie reel's motion and there will be a threshold where we witness both motion and still frames, true. Yet our perception of unadulturated motion is nevertheless experientially real when the movie progresses at its intended pace. In a roundabout way, the same allegorically applies to our experienced present (our seeing motion) and the nitty-gritty analysis of sensory and working memory (the still frames of a movie reel): the perceived present is to us experientially real, despite being made up in many a way by memory. Maybe this will help in getting across what I mean by "experiential present".)

Note, though, that by "experiential" I am neither addressing sub/unconscious experiences nor am I inferring what is experienced to necessarily be an objectively factual state of affairs - one that necessarily occurs in manners indifferent to one's experiences.

I would have furthered this post with more direct replies to your last post to me, but I realize that if we disagree on there being an experienced (or, else, specious) present, we then lack any and all common ground that would be required for further discussing this topic.

In the case of a "snap", also other quick sounds like a gunshot, I do not experience a beginning and end. It's all at once, a snap. Only by inference do I decide that there must be a beginning and an ending. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're telling me that devoid of your conscious reasoning, aka inferences, what you would experience is an eternal sound, one that is thereby devoid of a beginning (a transition from no sound to sound) and an end (a transition from sound to no sound)?

A closely related question: You thereby consciously reason each and every instance of sound that you hear to determine its beginnings and endings as these stand relative to all other sounds that overlap? For instance, suppose you're blindfolded and a buddy snaps his fingers on both hands at approximately the same moment, with each hand being placed next to one of your different ears; without inferences (again, conscious reasoning) that you decide upon, you would be unable to discern which hand's snap ended first relative to the other, hence ending before the other?

(As can be confirmed with recordings and their analysis: An "all at once" sound, such as a snap, a hand clap, a car honk, a dog's bark, and so on a) holds duration (is not durationless, nor even of infinitesimal duration), b) is constrained, or limited, or bounded by a start and end, and, furthermore, c) the beginnings of such "all at once" sounds typically have different auditory qualities then the endings, in addition to the transitions from "no sound to sound" and from "sound to no sound" - again typically unless one is addressing certain synthesized sounds. But maybe this part in brackets is neither here nor there since we're addressing our direct experiences.)

... an interesting topic. I figure either one of us is in some way mistaken, or we experience things differently.

EDIT: Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that when I snap my fingers there's first a swooshing frictional sound made by rubbing my middle finger against my thumb that overlaps with a popping sound made when my middle finger touches my palm at a fast enough rate ... quite audible to me when I snap my fingers slowly. Evidencing that in my experiences there can be discerned a unique beginning sound from a different ending sound in an individual finger snap - with no memory utilized on my part to so discern (in my own experiences). Thought this to be an interesting tidbit to add.

Javra's conception is based in before and after, which is circular if before and after are not based in something other than time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your conception, based in past and future, is just as circular. — Luke

Luke, since I’m not sure what to make of your statement, I’ll take it at face value. So, out of curiosity, I’ll make this reply:

Circularity applies to reasoning that is circular. For example, one relies on X to explain Y and on Y to explain X. “Direct awareness of” is a brute fact, with no circularity involved. For example, one sees a pink elephant (whether or not what one sees is a hallucination is irrelevant to the reality that one sees a pink elephant; one’s so seeing is a brute fact to oneself). My own direct experience is that when I snap my fingers, I hear the one snap in the lived present; i.e., I neither experience it as an auditory memory nor as an auditory anticipation, but as a total sound which is happening concurrently with my direct awareness of the world external to me. As part of this brute experience, the snap has a beginning and an end, neither of which is memory to me when I hear the snap. Furthermore, the snap’s beginning occurs before the snaps end; this, again, at the very least in my own direct experience, is in no way a reasoned inference but an immediate observation (with no need to here address Kantian like innate intuitions required to so observe). This brute direct experience of the snap hence consists of a before and after, neither of which is memory or anticipation. From concrete direct experiences such as this, I then abstract before and after into the notion of time (with many more details involved in so abstracting).

Q: How does so abstracting what time is from the concrete particulars of direct experience consist of circularity of argumentation? Although I’m neither a philosophical empiricist nor a philosophical rationalist, but a bit of both, in this case this is what empiricism consist of: deriving generalized ideas from the concrete particulars of immediate experience. Does one then deem that all philosophical empiricisms are circular in argumentation?

From your second to last post:

I can see your point, to think of your experience in terms of befores and afters, But this is to look at time from the perspective of memory. Notice that you only assign (judge) a before and after, after remembering the entire sequence. We can remove the need for this type of judgement if we look directly at our experience of memories and anticipations, to derive our conception of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

And from your last post:

No, I do not agree with immediate "percepts". There is mediation between the sense organ and the image in the mind. That's why I argued that the thing sensed is always in the past. I feel pain in my toe, and I know that there is mediation between the feeling, and the organ which does the sensing. I believe this is the case with all senses. So the feeling, or "percept" is a creation of the mind, the subconscious part of the mind, in response to the sense organ, then presented to the conscious part of the mind as the "percept", image, or feeling. — Metaphysician Undercover

We seem to have come to a standstill. I find that you incorporate so much of neuroscientific knowledge and inferential reasoning into your understandings of percepts, this so as to accommodate your understanding of time, that you conflate what is immediately experienced with very abstract inferences concerning a hypothetical nature of time.

To sum up your stance as I understand it: We know from science that all our immediate percepts occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses first register data, and you thereby conclude that all our perceptions occur in the past. We however do not perceive expectations, so these are not of the past, being instead inferred to regard the future. There then must be inferred a transition between this non-past and past, an infinitesimal threshold of some sort, and this you demarcate as the non-experienced but purely conceptual present.

Please specify where I’ve characterized your stance badly, if I have.

To the average person on the street (who most likely doesn’t even have the learning to know that our immediate percepts of which we are consciously aware occur nanoseconds after our physiological senses register information) that all our “perceptions are remembrances” would be utter nonsense. To such, there is a clear distinction between “I am now seeing a house” and “I am remembering a house I once saw ten years back”. By the conclusions you've so far advocated, I'm tempted to speculate that this person should instead be saying, or at least conceptualizing, “I am right now remembering that house over there that I’m now point to (with our awareness of our so pointing also being a memory to us, since this awareness too is perceptual and therefore of the past)” and “I am remembering a house that I visually first remembered ten years back.” Again, to the average person so conceptualizing is nonsense, precisely because it contradicts the experiential nature of present perceptions as contrasted to what is commonly understood by memories.

I, again, was addressing what we directly experience, and not any reasoning regarding the mechanisms of our perceptions or the ontological nature of time.

But I accept that we will disagree on this.

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches. — javra

Yes, I think that is a fair conclusion. I see the concept of "a language" as an ontological entity, to be fundamentally flawed. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can only extrapolate from this that the proposition, "We are now debating in the English language," is to you untrue - this because the notion of "the English language" as something that exists is fundamentally flawed to you. Am I wrong in this?

This is close, but not quite what I'm thinking. The difference between generalities and particulars is a category difference, The subordinates and supraordinates are all within the same category, as generalities. The difference between them is just like the difference of making things more specific, in the example above. The more general the goal, the more opportunity for different possibilities in fulfillment. As we move toward less and les general, i.e. more specific, the possibilities are narrowed down.

Here is the reason for maintaining the category separation. Suppose we get to the extremely specific. My goal is to eat that particular hamburger, now. Until the action is actually carried out, there is still possibilities, with a bun, condiments, etc.. It is only after the action is carried out, that it can be described as a particular, without any possibilities. This is the endstate, and it is categorically distinct from the goal, as a particular occurrence, having already occurred. The goal is a view to the future, with respect for possibilities, while the endstate is something which has happened and is now in the past, there are no more possibilities if truth is to be respected.

So that is the reason why we need a good understanding of "the present", because the present, "now" is what provides us with that category separation, and confusing the two categories is a category mistake. We have a difference between the activity described as a goal for the future, and the activity as described as a past occurrence (the endstate). What lies between these, within the medium, is the accidentals of the actual activity. No matter how specific we get with our description of the desired activity, we cannot include all the possibilities for accidentals, so the goal will always remain as something general in relation to the activity which will be brought about, allowing for a multitude of different possible endstates to fulfill the conditions of that goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've decided not to comment due to our disagreements regarding what the experienced present consists of, or, rather, of whether there is such as thing as an experienced present.

Hm, I agree. I guess in the back of my mind is the neo-Platonic notion of the "the One" as g-d. Which is likely not what Kant had in mind. But I don't want to digress the thread with this. BTW, kudos for a really well thought out appraisal for and list of questions to Kant's critique.

Fractals – the example with which you illustrate your point – have boundaries, thereby being bounded, and thereby being subject to limits. We can discern one type of fractal from another because of the boundaries of each.

God is supposed to not be subject to any boundaries, for these impose limits, as well as to be divinely simple, i.e., not consisting of any parts; “infinite”, or "limitless", in this specific sense; rather than that of a qualified infinity (one which is restricted or limited) - for example, the infinite length of a geometric line that assumes endless constituent points bounded by their particular alignment.

Also, I claim Plebeian-Removed as a future band name. — Noble Dust

:yikes: Honored, actually. But now I'm toying around with band name "Plebianesque" myself. Darn, they're getting really hard to find nowadays ... if anyone has tried to come up with a novel band name. :grin:

Since its such a large part of our contention, I'm going to ask a few questions that I take to be relevant to what I find to be the experience of time:

Do you hold percepts that you deem to be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images obtained via the physiological sense of sight that pertains to your physiological eyes; sounds obtained via the physiological senses of sound that pertains to your physiological ears; smells obtained via the physiological sense of smell that pertains to you physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see that horse you're point to, and I can hear it neighing.

Next, can you hold any percepts that you deem to not be immediately obtained from the workings of your physiological senses? Images that you see with the mind's eye but not with your physiological eyes; sounds that you hear with the mind's ears but not with your physiological ears; smells that you smell with the mind's nose but not with your physiological nose; etc.?

E.g.: I see the unicorn I am right now visualizing, and I can hear its neigh in my imagination.

If you honestly answer "no" to either of these, then we have drastic differences in what we experience, and I'd be inclined to find out more about our differences. Assuming that you can experience both as I can:

Next, are the memories you experience of the first or of the second type of perception?

Answering these I think would give me a better idea of where it is that we might differ.

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds? — javra

I disagree with you fundamentally on this issue, so I do not see any point really in discussing it. I think that assuming "a collective of individual psyches" as a whole, is a fundamental ontological error. derived from a category mistake which males a generalization into a particular. — Metaphysician Undercover

Just to clarity, is your stance that of deeming the notion of a language to be a "fundamental ontological error". Thereby making languages ontologically nonexistent? Because in what I wrote I was addressing a language as having downward determinacy upon a collective of individual psyches.

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism? — javra

I say this on the grounds of how a particular object, a thing, is defined, by the law of identity, each thing being different from every other. When you define "goal" in such a way, so as to make it a thing (the particular desired endstate), then you must respect the differences between particular things, what Aristotle called accidentals. Since the accidentals between two things are different, then despite being the same type of thing, the two things are distinct. And the existence of a contingent thing is inseparable from its causes,, as what is required for the existence of that thing. So we cannot say that two contingent things, being "two" because they exist under differing circumstances, are the same thing, because that would contravene the law of identity. The best we can say is that they are two of the same type of thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Pardon the crudity of this. If one were to skin a cat from tail to head rather than from head to tail then the given outcome of having skinned the cat would itself be different?

In this sense, fulfilling a goal can be said to be bringing about a particular endstate from a general goal. In maintaining a separation between the goal, as something general, and the endstate as something particular, we allow that many different endstates can truthfully be said to fulfill the same goal. But if we say that the goal is a particular endstate, eg., I need that particular hamburger, then we misrepresent what a goal really is, and force upon ourselves an unrealistic need (the need for a particular endstate) in relation to fulfilling our goals. Fulfilling our goals does not require particular endstates, and creating this illusion that on particular thing is required to fulfill your goal is self-deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

What your thinking of in terms of particulars and generalities I'm thinking of in terms of subordinate intents relative to the given intent itself - and then of supraordinate intents to boot. In the example you've given, the intent is that of alleviating the hunger one experiences. A subordinate intent might be to intake a particular hamburger. And a subordinate intent of so doing might be to open up the fridge. And then, the supraordinate teleological reason for intending to alleviate one's hunger is, or at least can be, that of intending to survive. Before continuing, do you find so addressing the matter problematic? And if so, why?

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional? — javra

I still don't agree with this. The motivating desire is to run the marathon, not to finish the marathon. If the desire actually was, as you say, to finish the marathon, the most inspired marathoners would be looking for the best cheats, ways to finish without making the effort of running. But clearly the goal is to make the effort and actually run the marathon, not just to reach the finish line. — Metaphysician Undercover

Finishing the marathon is implied in running the marathon, otherwise one would either 1) run indefinitely without ever stopping or else 2) run for a few yards or so and consider one's goal actualized. And, as with most anything else, implicit in finishing a marathon is that of doing so honestly. If one were to finish a marathon by driving a car, how would that yet be a marathon? If one were to take a shortcut from the marathon's path, one again would cross the finish line without having run the given marathon.

Ok - but would you give any credence to that view? — Banno

Not one bit when I have my biological sciences hat on, no.

Doing so must introduce a ranking, and hence a move from description to evaluation. Whence the "ought"? — Banno

Very true. Nevertheless, going with the flow of culture, there is the use of "more evolved" in the sense of "better than". "Better" always stands in relation to that which is good; in some abstract sense, that which no better than can occur: a superlative. Here, the implicit ought - which is of course riddled with biases when analyzed in detail - is that things ought to be maximally proximate to this superlative good. So, if we deem intelligence or wisdom to so be more proximate to this ultimate good, then we deem ourselves as humans to be more evolved than bacteria.

Does such a superlative good exist? Seems like a different topic for a different thread. In short, though, without it there can only be moral relativism, this to state the obvious.

Evolution is not teleological, TiredThinker. — Banno

But heading back to the OP - the notion of "More evolved" is a nonsense. — Banno

A slight correction. What makes "more evolved" nonsense when addressing Darwinian evolution isn't its necessary being devoid of teleology - which, as you might guess, I find debatable - but simply that all living species are, by the very principles of Darwinian evolution, equally evolved from a common single-celled ancestor.

That we humans are more evolved than, say, bacteria can only be found valid in the "better than" sense of the word - but not in the sense of "evolution" as it is used in its proper scientific contexts.

I should further comment:

IV. The object of God (which can never be an object of intuition to us [25]) must have spontaneous intuitions as his only means of cognition, since thought always involves limitation [26]. — darthbarracuda

What I don't get is how one can envision a plurality of intuitions that are unlimited, or infinite. Quantity is always finite, limited. And plurality entails quantity - hence a multitude of finite intuitions, since they're quantifiable. So, by my appraisals, these spontaneous intuitions would themselves then not be infinite, instead being bounded one from the other. And they would themselves entail that God's cognition (assuming the hypothesis of such God) consists in some manner of limitations, rather than being infinite (in the sense of literally devoid of limits/boundaries). Thereby resulting in the conclusion that such God is in fact in some way limited, rather than infinite.

For one post, those are a lot of questions. :smile:

26. Why does thought always involve limitation? — darthbarracuda

Since I take this to be self-evident, I’ll comment: Thought devoid of aboutness, devoid of some given it is about, could be meaningfully classified as thought in which sense? Even in thinking about possible cases of such type of thought, I’m thinking about the addressed topic. This aboutness then will be literally limited, or bounded, to that which it is about. Here, then, one obtains the conclusion that all thought, in order for it to be meaningfully classified as such, will be limited and, hence, in some way finite.

The sole alternative to this conclusion is that there can occur thoughts that are literally unlimited, or unbounded, in all ways: an infinite thought. But such loses all semblance of what the term “thought” refers to, in part because it would be a thought devoid of aboutness which, again, is always in some way limited to that which is addressed, to that which the thought is about. Because a literally boundless, or limitless, aka infinite, thought is nonsensical, one again concludes that thought always involves limitation. Differently expressed, that it is always finite.

Science may benefit from creative thinking, but that doesn't make it an art form. — Noble Dust

In my agreement:

“Cooking is an art; baking is a science.”

This being a common enough view among commoners (yes, I is a commoner too in this regard). It takes a philosopher that is far removed from the plebs to consider any meaningful difference between the two as gobbledygook. (And yes, one can easily find such via online searches of the proposition given.)

But a commoner such as myself would say that cooking’s success pivots on attention to the qualitative vagaries of gustatory aesthetics in the creation of food, whereas baking’s success pivots on a quantitative, calculating precision for the same end. This despite cooking also making due with precision in certain regards and baking with aesthetics in others.

If art is a science because, for instance, it involves certain ways of knowing - knowledge being what science translates into - and science is an art because, for instance, it involves intuitive faculties - which are requisite in the making of most hypotheses - then all artists are scientists and all scientists artists.

Do the plebian-removed philosophers not see the absurdity in this conclusion?

Wouldn’t it be better to start with the basics and consider why “art” and “science” are not synonyms?

:up: Glad you liked them! :grin: BTW, I'm actually empathetic to what you say in your OP. Just thinking that philosophers need to put food on the table too, and most don't make great farmers.

"... But you can given them to the birds and bees," goes that other song :grin:



All this reminds me of Lucian's "Philosophies for Sale" (links to an easy to read PDF of it I found online). It gave me really good laughs back in the day. In it, "Zeus puts various philosophers up for sale in a slave market." Anybody ever read it?

I just wish to ensure that there is no ambiguity, so that if we talk about a point, which divides one portion of time from another, this is not a "moment", as we hereby define it, a moment is not a point, it's a short duration. — Metaphysician Undercover

To conceive of a point that divides past from future is already an act of dealing with a conceptual abstraction of what time is ontotologically. It is not what we directly experience time to be - but is, instead, how some of us conceptualize the objective nature of time to be. Some claim our experiences of time to be an illusion, yet we nevertheless experience time as such.

So if we posit a short duration, a "moment", as the divisor between the future and the past, what this means to me is that we assume a short duration of time which we cannot determine whether it has passed or not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, because it is experienced as the (extended) present.

However, I think that an "intersubjective experienced present" is not sufficient for an ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nor am I claiming that an "intersubjective experienced present" is sufficient for an ontology of time. But it is a necessary account of what our experiences of time consists of - if we are to be truthful about what we directly experience (be our experiences illusory or not).

I believe that the passing of time is something which occurs whether or not there are human beings in existence, and as I explained, the way that the world appears would be quite different to other types of beings which experienced a different duration of present. Therefore it is incorrect to assume that an intersubjective description of the present provides with a true description. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, we experientially find that the ever-changing present we live in consists of befores and afters. Right now listening to crickets chirping in the backyard while at my laptop. At the very least every individual chirp I hear occurs for me in the extended present, not in the past and not in the future. Yet each individual chirp likewise has a starting state and an ending state, and the start of the chirp occurs before the end of the chirp, despite the total chirp again occurring for me within what I experience as the present moment (neither memory nor prediction, but a present actuality). When time is conceived of as a series of befores and afters, time passes even within the experiential present moment. This confuses our conceptualizations of what time is, but it is an honest account of what we (or at the very least I) experience to unfold withing the extended duration of the present moment.

Secondly, if there is causal interaction between an ant and a human - here presuming each to experience different magnitudes of the present's duration - there will then occur an intersubjectively experienced present moment between the two of them. This would take a lot to unpack, but how could you demonstrate the falsity to a shared present moment occurring between causally interacting agents?

Thirdly, I am not here attempting to express an ontology of time via these observations. Nevertheless, the notion that an intersubjectively experienced present occurs for all agents that causally interact while they are causally interacting can be viewed as holding certain parallels to the relativity of simultaneity.

So I believe your examples of downward causation are really upward causation, in disguise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Downward determinacy and upward determincay are not mutually exclusive. That said, one aspect of culture is language. Yes, we might and on occasion do communally change the language which we speak in minute ways (dictionaries change over time), yet that does not negate that the thoughts and expressions pertaining to a collective of individual psyches which speak the same language are in large part governed by the language which they speak. It's why foreign words are sometimes introduced into a language by those who are multilingual so as to express concepts that would otherwise be inexpressible (if at all imaginable) in the given language. Zeitgeist as one example of this. We as individual constituents of a language do not create the language we speak in total; our thoughts and expressions are instead in large part downwardly determined by the language(s) we speak. Do you disagree with this as well? If so, on what grounds?

This as well, is very doubtful to me. I do not see how two distinct activities could lead to the very same end state. I used to think in this way, but I've come to see it as false. Minute differences are still differences, and mathematical allegories don't suffice because "equal" is different from same. — Metaphysician Undercover

Taking an expression at face value, you find it an impossibility that there can be more than one way to skin a cat? Here "skinning the cat" is the goal. The "one or more ways" are the means toward said goal. If you do find this to be an impossibility, on what grounds? Determinism?

This is a fine description, but can you see that it is not "the observing perspective". To be always looking forward toward your goals, and intent on obtaining your goals, leaves no room for "observing". To observe requires taking note of what happened, and this is to look back and to remember. — Metaphysician Undercover

When I remember something I do not experience a perception obtained via my physiological senses' interaction with external stimuli; I instead experience a memory, which has many of the same perceptual qualities as an imagination but is instead felt to correlate to present moments I once experienced but no longer do, past present moments in which I then experienced perceptions obtained via my physiological sense's interaction with external stimuli. To observe is to take note of what is happening ... in the present. The observing perspective takes place in the experienced present, not in the experienced past. See my initial reply regarding the experienced extended present.

Well, this is how you would define "goal", and it is how we have been trained to. What I am arguing is that it doesn't really represent what truly motivates us to act. I think that we are already motivated to act, and therefore are acting naturally. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you here equating "goal" strictly to a consciously held desired outcome? If so, then lets start using a less restrictive term, because this is not the only thing I mean by "goal". How about "intent" as that which one intends, be this consciously or unconsciously. If you find no difference in these terms, then what is it to you that "truly motivates us to act ... naturally" which is neither goal nor intent?

To represent goals as desired end states is to separate them from the acting. — Metaphysician Undercover

This consists of an assumption on your part regarding what I hold in mind that is erroneous.

I don't agree here for the reasons given. I don't agree with your concept of actual end states. I don't think we ever get to end states, we keep goin until death. There is an end state in relation to the goal, if the goal is achieved, you can say you've reached an end state. But that's not a real end state in relation to the person, the person keeps going. Nor is there a real end state if the goal is not achieved, because the person could keep trying, or alter the goal. This is why your description of "goals", and end states upon achievement or failure is not accurate. The end state is a fictional position only existing in relation to the goal when "goal" is defined in this way. Since this definition of "goal" produces this fictional end state, we need to consider that it doesn't accurately represent what goals really are within human beings. — Metaphysician Undercover

Running a marathon is an activity driven by the desire to finish the marathon. So is the person's finishing, or not finishing, the marathon not real, else fictional?

You'd have to read his Metaphysics toward the end of Book12. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. Familiarized myself with the cliff-notes, so to speak. Turns out I disagree with Aristotle on this.

That the present is extended, is the reason why it ought not be called a "moment". "Moment" usually refers to a much more precise point in time, not an extended duration. When we realize that the "experiential present" is an extended period of time, rather than a moment in time, we need principles which separate now from past, and now from future, or else any divisions made are arbitrary. — Metaphysician Undercover

Per Wiktionary, "moment" has two non-specialized definitions: a brief but unspecified duration of time and, potentially at odds with this, the smallest portion of time. But in both cases, there is a duration - rather than it being akin to a mathematical point on a linear diagram of time. I was using "moment" in the first specified sense. As to the divisions being arbitrary, they are in the sense that the experiential division between past, present, and future are fully grounded in the experiences of the arbitrator. Yet, as I previously mentioned with conversations, there is an intersubjectively experienced present whenever we in any way directly interact.

This provides a good argument for why we need to be careful with naive realism. Our temporal perspective, the length of any supposed experiential "now" has a huge influence on how what we call "the world" appears to us. So we need to take this into account, and validate any principles we use to designate the length of "now", when speculating ontological principles, because how the world appears, from the perspective of experience, is greatly shaped by the particular temporal perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

No disagreements here. But I'll just add that I don't find the experiential present to be a quantifiable duration - in part, precisely because it is experientially arbitrary.

The difference between upward causation, and downward causation, may simply be the product of different temporal perspectives, different lengths of "now". — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't find this to be the case. For instance, natural laws determine things in a downward direction: from the source's form, i.e. the given natural law, to the many givens that are partly determined by it. Same can be said of a culture's form (or that of any subculture, for that matter) partly determining the mindset of any individual who partakes of it. These being examples of downward determinacy. In contrast, the type of forest that occurs (temporal, tropical, or else healthy or sickly, etc.) as a form will be significantly determined upwardly by the attributes of individual trees to be found in a given location. Or else the attributes of a given statue as form, such as the potential sound it would make were it to be hit, will be in part determined by the statue's material composition (wood, bronze, marble, etc.). These latter two are examples of upward determinacy. In both upward and downward determinacy, that which determines and that which is determined by it occur simultaneously. You can't have one occur before or after the other - if at all conceivable - and still preserve the determinacy in question. So the lengths of "now" would hypothetically only make a difference to this in terms of whether the given determinacy is at all discerned. But if discerned, the determinacy would be found to have the determiner(s) and determinee(s) concurrently occurring.

And I would also add that to be facing one goals, facing the future, is to be forward facing in time. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm confused here. Weren't you arguing that goals are not found in the future? Facing one's goals would then not be tantamount to facing one's future - as far I've so far understood your arguments.

You act, and then the words appear. You, as an observer, "the observing perspective", see the words appear. Now you have to look back in time to remember your goal having caused the words to appear Having the goal to make the words appear was prior in time to the words appearing, therefore further away, in time, from you as observer, than the words appearing is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Two disagreements. My goal of, say, writing this post to my satisfaction does not cause the specific words that appear in this post. I could have chosen words that are different to those that now appear while still being determined by the exact same goal I hold or writing this post to my satisfaction. Not only do I not take determinacy, in this case teleological, to result in determinism but I also find goals or intents to allegorically act as mathematical attractors to causal processes, such as in my causing a word to appear on the screen. This in the sense that one can do different things for as long as each of the two or more alternative paths yet lead to the fixed potential end one strives to make the actual end of ones given set of activities, this being the given goal. It is not my stated goal which causes these individual typed words but, rather, it is I as a conscious being (that is partly determined by my goal) who causes these specific words. Again, I could have chosen to cause different words than what appear while yet being driven by said goal.

The second contention is that my typing words on this screen is perpetually under the sway of getting closer to my goal of writing this post to my satisfaction. My goal always dwells ahead of me while I type words. The end I pursue - technically, the potential end that I want to make actual - has not yet occurred. When and if the goal is actualized (I could erase all I've written and try again some other time), all activities that strive to actualize it end with its actualization (when I've written this post to my satisfaction, I no longer type words for this purpose). It is not until my goal is actualized that I might look back at what I once wrote and need to also then look back to what my intents were in so writing. But for every existing goal that I hold - every goal that has not yet come to fruition - it is never behind me but, instead, is found in front of me. So, I'm not currently looking back in time to remember my goal of finishing this post to my satisfaction; I'm instead looking forward to the time that this goal will (fingers crossed) become actualized. A time period I approach with every activity striving to accomplish it.

Have I misunderstood what you were intending to express?

But my initial point was that if you uphold free will, as I think you do, then it is you in the present as, in part, "the observing perspective" which causes effects via your free will. You as cause is the very observing perspective addressed. Yet this free will that causes effect is always in part determined by its intents, or goals, in so causing - which, again, dwell ahead as that which one is nearing.

Incidentally, this is probably one reason why goal directed activity is so hard for physics to understand. Physics doesn't have the principles to understand one extended activity, which consists of many stops and starts (writing many different posts for example), these would be distinct actions in physics, therefore not necessarily in the same direction. But with goal directed activity, the activity may stop and start, while keeping going in the same direction (the same goal). — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with much of this. Yet still find that a goal is a state of affairs, or a state of being, one is attempting to make actual - rather than the activities one engages in toward this goal. Each goal is a potential end, or stop - and becomes an end or stop for all those activities striving to actualize it once the goal becomes actualized. And to complicate matters, not only are there subordinate and supraordinate goals but most goals are plastic, fluid, in their nature, sometimes appearing, changing, or disappearing based on a multitude of both conscious and unconscious factors. But in the vein of keeping things simple:

I agree that this is the way "a goal" is commonly characterized, but I think it's a mistake. Suppose that you fix a goal in your mind, and you are what we call "determined" to achieve that end. I believe that this is not the best disposition to have. Consider that things change, circumstances evolve, and unknown factors become known. We must be willing to adapt our goals accordingly, as we move forward. So being hard set in one's ways, and to relentlessly seek to fulfill a fixed goal, is not good. We must be flexible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not in any way opposed to this. Its why I added "for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal".

In reality, the goal and the activity mix together, and become one. The activity is directed toward a goal, but the goal then gets adapted to match what the activity is capable of. Then the activity must be readjusted to meet the new goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

Goals can change. True. Yet a goal is still a potential state of affairs one wants to accomplish. No?

For any given goal, activities done for the sake of the goal can take innumerable alternative paths for so long as they're judged in one's ever-changing context to best approach the goal's actualization. So again, I yet find that for any given goal, the goal is fixed, or static, while the activities striving for the goal are not - again, this for as long as the goal is actively maintained.

The proposed endstate is what, death? — Metaphysician Undercover

Notice that you're here equivocating between telos (potential end striven for) and endstate (actual end arrived at). Also that an endstate is the culmination of any activity - and not the ultimate cultimation of all of one's activities. But to be more forthright, death, as in a complete non-being of what once was, is only one of a number of possible ultimate endstate scenarios for any individual psyche. That we die is a certainty. That our mortal death equates to eternal non-being is a faith, for it cannot be demonstrated. An arduous topic, though.

The unmoved mover is a thinking which is thinking on thinking [...] — Metaphysician Undercover

I have so far not found this in Aristotle (but I grant most of my readings are secondhand). Can you point out some references from Aristotle that substantiate this interpenetration of what the unmoved mover is for Aristotle?

What does "the now" mean to you? If you define "the now" as the time which you are perceiving, then you are begging the question. — Metaphysician Undercover

I imagine that if I were to be having a conversation with some non-philosophically inclined person and to then spontaneously ask, “Are we right now talking to each other in the present, in the past, or in the future?” that this other person would easily say, “In the present” (given that they’d reply in a few seconds’ time and wouldn’t find my question overly strange). And that it takes considerable conceptualization of the nature of time to question this intersubjective reality regarding an extended present period of time that unfolds during any conversation – one that transpires prior to percepts becoming memories, and before as of yet unactualized percepts occur as actualized percepts (which, again, have yet to be recollections).

In short, my take is that experiential now (or present, or current moment) consists of that extended duration in which our actualized percepts are not yet memories which our conscious selves recall. Our experiential past consists solely of what is recollection to us. And our experiential future consists of expectations, predictions, and aims - and, hence, in a roundabout way, of future percepts obtained via the physiological senses that have yet to transpire. It takes inference and temporal reasoning to consider that all our non-recalled actualized perceptions in fact occur in the objective past by a magnitude of nanoseconds relative to our experience of them. But, again, to me this does not constitute our experiences regarding the extended present moment; which, again, is at least in part composed of actualized percepts that have not yet become consciously recalled memories.

That said, what our discussions are teaching me is that the basic temporal placement of our experiences – be these of memories, of immediate percepts obtained via the physiological senses, or of ends we move toward - are less then uncontroversial. A worthwhile lesson. In honesty, this was my principal reason for starting this thread. Upward determinacy (bottom-up; or Aristotelian material causes) and downward determinacy (top-down; or Aristotelian formal causes) would occur such that what determines is fully simultaneous to that which is determined. Causation (Aristotelian efficient causes) is by definition forward moving sequentially and, hence, temporally: first the occurrence of the cause, followed by the occurrence of the effect. It then seemed a neat way of categorizing the Aristotelian notion of final causes (hence, teleology) in relation to the aforementioned three: as backward moving from a yet to be actualized end to activities intending to actualize this end that occur in the present. And in truth, I do have a hidden agenda in so categorizing. But this dispute regarding the temporal placement of our experiences confirms my qualms. I'm placing the cart before the horse. Bummer for me. :)

Still, I don't find this to affect the uncontroversial assertion that intents partly determine behavior. Right? IOW, by my reckoning, the reality of our experiencing ourselves to be goal-driven in a good part of what we do is not contingent on establishing the temporal placement of goals. So I figure we can further address telos-driven determinacy without needing to agree on the temporal location of teloi.

What you describe here is having one's attention firmly fixed on the future, one's goals. As I described in an earlier post, addressed to Arcturus, we need to distinguish between this, and having one's attention firmly fixed on the past, empiricism. Please read that post. — Metaphysician Undercover

From that post:

If we place cause and effect in a temporal relation to each other, the cause is always further away from the observing perspective, than the effect is. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can understand what you're getting at in most of the post. I find disagreement mostly on two counts. That teleology - here, goal-driven determinacy - occurs would not of itself dispel the reality of causation. As in, "that billiard ball caused that other to move". But I'm not sure if by the analogy of the cave you intended to claim that all causation is illusory. More importantly to me is this quote above. When I cause these words to appear on my screen, me as cause to the words that appear is not "further away from the observing perspective" than are the words I type as effect and observe. Furthermore, if any degree of free will occurs, then to the same degree the observing agent in question is a causally undetermined cause of the effects which unfold. One which is always partly driven, hence partly determined, by the intents it has in so causing the effects it produces. But I get that these issues are both complex and controversial, and they do complicate the basic issue of the thread: the ontology of teloi.

Getting back to your latest post to me:

When we turn around, to face the future, "the goal" becomes something active rather than passive, as the means, what you call "telosis", and the goal, as "an object" becomes elusive. In Aristotles ethics, the end is "that for the sake of which". But each end is just the means to a further end, onward indefinitely, until we posit a final end, which he suggested as "happiness". But he further suggested that the highest virtue was to be found in activity, because as living beings our nature is to be active. Now we have the problem that activity is usually represented as a means to an end, telosis, because we ask what is the purpose of any activity. But this is just the product of the backward facing ontology which makes "the end" a static object. When we replace this with an ideal, such as "to better ourselves", then activity, or practice is implied rather that a static goal. And the goal itself is to be active.

This is my proposition. Forward facing "goals" are activities, such that true goals are described as activities. Backward facing descriptions, observations, are expressed in terms of static states. This implies that activity does not really happen at the present, it occurs in the future, in relation to our experiential perspective which we call the now. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK, more concretely exemplified, my goal of completing this post to my satisfaction is in and of itself an activity in which way? Regardless of the goal's temporal placement, it is a state of affairs which has yet to transpire that I want to accomplish. My activities to actualize this goal might differ, but the goal remains fixed for as long as I strive to accomplish said goal. The goal is static while the activities done to actualize it are dynamic.

Also, since you've brought up Aristotle's notion of "a final end (or ultimate telos)", remember that for Aristotle this ultimate telos was an unmoved mover (this with no intimation of personhood whatsoever) of all that is. Being unmoved, this final telos cannot be an activity. It instead teleologically drives all that is activity - this while remaining determinate, or fixed, or static, in a metaphysical sense. At the very least here, the telos cannot be activity.

I'll leave it at that for now and see where you stand regarding this.

The modular view of mind has a long pedigree in cognitive science. Check out Marvin Minsky’s ‘Society of Mind’. — Joshs

Cool, and reassuring. Thanks for the reference.

As regards the experiential nature of time, I feel like viewing more of your debate with Luke.

For my part, I don’t understand how your claim that present perceptions are aspects of the past can be obtained without reliance on inferences made by neuroscience. With these neuroscientific inferences being themselves an aspect of reasoning, and not one of direct experience. Note that I’m not disagreeing with the neuroscience. I’m only clamming that as far as direct awareness is concerned, the perceptions we are directly aware of are taken to occur in the now, whereas memories we are directly aware of (which are qualitatively different than direct perception) are taken to indicate nows that have already passed by. All this being independent of our concepts (i.e., generalized ideas) regarding time – which, as concepts, are abstractions abstracted from concrete experiences. And I maintain that these concrete experiences consist of an ever-changing now, of former nows, and of nows that have yet to be: with former and future nows being meaningful only in reference to the ever-changing now which we perpetually live through at the level of direct experience. And yes, I agree that the now we live through is extended in duration, otherwise we would not be able to experience sounds (as we once previously discussed on a different thread, with emphasis on musical notes).

But, again, I don’t think the nature of time is all too pertinent to what I’m stipulating for as long as there is general agreement in there being a past, present, and future.

If we agree that a goal significantly determines one’s intentions toward said goal, that one’s intending to achieve said goal occurs in the present, that the future is not fixed (or actualized) prior to it becoming the present moment, and that the goal (i.e., that aim one intends to make actual) references a future state of affairs, why again do you object to claiming that the as of yet unactualized (ese stated, potential) future one strives to make actual determines one’s presently occurring intentions toward said goal? Such that here, a potential future state of affairs determines the actuality of present activities.

Hence, that in some sense aspects of the future determine aspects of the present … rather than aspects of the past determining aspects of the present. The former again being deemed by me to be backward determinacy (i.e., teleology) and the latter being forward determinacy (i.e., causation).

So its know, I'll contribute later on.

So I think simple perceptual identification is already well along in capturing the centra composted of the kind of intentionality you have in mind. — Joshs

Thanks again for the informative post. Yes, I in fact do agree with what you've outlined. For me, at least, the intending that occurs so as to perceive through any of the physiological senses occurs via sub/unconscious process of mind. While I don't want to derail the thread's theme with this, I by this infer that a total mind is composed of a multitude of sub/unconscious agencies (which in a healthy individual typically work in harmony, i.e. in unison) in addition to the conscious agency which we experientially know ourselves to be. An emotion or want that bothers us consciously (e.g., a pang of envy which we then proceed to dispel as inappropriate ) serves as an example of such a sub/unconscious agency that stands out to us for as long as we are opposed to what the emotion/want desires, or else intends. But I'm probably opening up a whole can of worms with this. Still, this is how I've so far made sense of perceptions being intentional, both in the sense of aboutness and in the sense of intending: via the intending of very basic unconscious agencies that together constitute the mostly involuntary conscious act of perception (leading to the notion of aboutness).

Yes, I'll need to read more into Husserl. Please let me know if anything just said in this post - regarding a multitude of agencies that typically work in unison constituting a single mind - strikes you as too audacious.

If the present is the time at which we are sensing, then the past and future are not needed to help define the present; they are instead defined by it. — Luke

To @Metaphysician Undercover: Yes, what Luke said.

[...] I'm just playing around with what your model looks like to me in order to better understand it. [...] — Dawnstorm

First, I don’t assume determinism. I assume a form of compatibilism that is largely rooted in what most would nowadays term indeterminism (rather than one that is grounded in determinism). This part is exceedingly hard to explain in a nutshell. But such is my stance: compatibilism.

In attempts to better express my pov:

The telosis is the active striving to accomplish a given goal/telos – is what one does to reach what one aims for. The endstate is simply the outcome of this goal-driven striving. I’m going to make this post a little more complex, hoping that via this complexity some of your questions might be better addressed.

For any given goal, there can be subordinate goals and supraordinate goals. Subordinate goals will serve the purpose of accomplishing the given goal. Ultimate supraordinate goals can potentially take the form of what various philosophers have described as a psyche’s overarching and generalized will to – be this will to power (Nietzsche), to meaning (Frankl), to pleasure or else the “pleasure principle” (Freud, which I acknowledge is not that great of a philosopher), and so forth (self-preservation also comes to mind as a candidate for some), which would then as an ultimate supraordinate goal hold all other goals as subordinates of itself.

Think of, say, a tennis match between two professionals at a tournament. Why does a player move this way and not that way at some particular time during the match? Because they deemed it the best way to act at that given time so as to win the tennis match. Right? Their actions during the tennis match where thus significantly fixed, determined, by the goal of winning the match. This being the goal of each of the two players which is taken for granted while they’re playing in the tennis match (barring the goal of loosing the tennis match for whatever reason). A subordinate goal to so winning might be to tire the other player out by making them run left and right as much as possible. A subordinate goal of this might be to hit the ball in a certain way rather than another. Yet all these subordinate goal serves the purpose of winning the match. On the other hand, a supraordinate goal to winning the match might be increased fame, or money, or obtaining a kiss from some gal/guy in the stands. And this supraordinate goal might itself be subordinate to some overarching will-to that is ever-present.

The endstate of the tennis match cannot have both player’s goals to win the tennis match actualized. As the tennis match’s endstate, only one of the two players will be the winner of the tennis match – and this is known beforehand by both. The characteristics of the endstate to the tennis match are indeterminate until the outcome – i.e. the endstate – of the tennis match becomes actual … rather than being a potential outcome/endstate that dwells in the future.

As to goals determining the striving toward said goals (else expressed, the telos determining the telosis): Would a person invest the time and effort in preparing for and then playing a competitive tennis match in a tournament if they didn’t have the goal of winning said tennis match? The goal of so doing determines, for example, that the person practices prior to the match rather than, say, binging on TV and ice-cream on the sofa during the same period of time. Or, else expressed, the telos of winning the tennis match determines the telosis of practicing for and partaking in the tennis match in such ways as one deems best to accomplish the telos – with the telosis, again, being the striving, moving, etc. toward the particular telos.

The end as eventual actualized outcome, as endstate, doesn’t determine one’s present behaviors. For starters, one doesn’t know whether one will win or lose the tennis match prior the tennis match’s conclusion. Instead, it’s the end as telos, as goal, as a potential future outcome one strives to actualize, that determines one’s current behaviors … which, again, seek to make this potential future outcome an actual outcome at some future time.

What led to someone having the goal of winning the tennis match is a separate issue, but I maintain that this too would need to be accordant to some supraordinate goal the person holds. And if, for example, one were to change one’s mind about wanting to win the tennis match, this too would be in part determined by some goal that is supraordinate to that of winning the tennis match. Depending on example, such as the supraordinate goal of wanting to survive, or to have a good reputation, or some such.

In sum, my general stance: Every consciously performed action is in part determined by what one wants to accomplish by performing that action. Else it is not volitionally enacted. This serves as an important reason for our actions: our intents. Our intents don’t simply give our actions meaning. They significantly determine what we do (and what we don’t do) in our striving to accomplish our intents. All the same, our intents are not always the actual outcomes that result from our striving to actualize our intents.

Complexities of course abound. And, I’m now thinking, other examples might have better served my purpose (my intent, or goal, or telos) of clarifying where I’m coming from. But I’ll leave it here for now and see what unfolds.

(I’ll have to further respond to other posts later on.)

My hunch is that this is pointing towards any action being the relationship between what you meant to do, what you ended up doing, and how you see what you ended up doing from the point of view of what you meant to do, and how that feeds into what you want to do next. But I'm unsure how that relates to time, except that some of it seems... nonlinear in some way? I'm not sure. — Dawnstorm

Nice post! I'm interpreting goal-driven determinacy to be performed by sub/unconsciousness as well - which obviously isn't strictly divided from consciousness. An easy example: a slip of the tongue. This complicates matters, but it might also serve as a way to resolve at least some of the issues you've brought up.

But, personally, I'm right now just focusing on how to best understand goals in and of themselves. To keep things simple, from a consciousness pov.

Thanks. Unfortunately I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this thread, since it turns out I'm shorter on time than anticipated. But I'll do my best to reply as needed.

Interested to see where you go with this. (And I'm curious if you have any ideas about when & why the emphasis on forward-determining causation came about.) — Arcturus

Right now trying to see how fluidly goal-driven determinacy would fit into the label of "backward determinacy: where that determined occurs in the present and that which determines occurs in the potential future".

There are further implications, but this thread isn't the place to mention them, I'm thinking.

As to why teleology has become out of favor in philosophy nowadays, tmk, it has a lot to do with folk like Descartes, Bacon, and Hume - in no particular order - which saw no use for any type of Aristotelian causation other than those of "material cause" and "efficient cause" ... making it easy for modern day materialism/physicalism to take root.

However, from this perspective we only come to believe in "the present" as a logical conclusion. The present is not experiential, we experience the past, and anticipate the future, and since we understand a substantial difference between these two, we come to the logical conclusion that there must be a present which separates them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hm. We here hold different perspectives. I find that the separation of all experiences strictly into past and future is the product of a logical, rather than experiential, conclusion. I again find that the present is extended experientially, as in the experienced sound of a musical note. An interesting topic for debate, though I'm not sure it is pertinent to the issue of where goals are temporally located.

I really don't know what you mean when you suggest a difference between imagined truths and factual truths. — Metaphysician Undercover

Imaginary as in "existing only in the imagination (but not in reality)". For example, that Santa Claus gives presents to good kids would then be an imaginary truth, since this state of affairs exists only in the imagination. That no such being as Santa Claus exists in reality would, for most, be a (factual) truth. Maybe my word choice was poor, but I still find the connotations to "imaginary" to be problematic due to aforementioned reasons. I'm thinking we could get into notions of Maya where everything but Brahman is imaginary, but that wouldn't be much help in better understanding how goal-driven teleology operates ... kind of a thing. :smile:

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)? — javra

Yes, I'm in agreement with this. — Metaphysician Undercover

This to me points to goals having an important relation to the yet to be actualized - hence potential - future. I'm trying to see where our disagreements dwell and how we might, maybe, remedy them. If a goal is not, in and of itself, a potential future (of which we are aware and yearn to actualize), then, given the aforementioned agreement, how would you say a goal differs from a memory or a perception? This with agreement that all three (memories, percepts, and goals) in at least some sense also always occur in the present.

By "determinacy" here, do you mean that we, in a sense, determine the future, through our goal-driven acts? This is obviously different from "determinacy" in the sense of determinism. — Metaphysician Undercover

The short answer is "yes": determinacy as in "to fixate the boundaries or limits of, either in part or in whole". I can't use the Aristotelian term of causation, since today causation strictly signifies efficient causes. But, as you rightly point out, determinism is today understood to be a system wherein the boundaries or limits of everything is completely fixated in advance, with no possibility of ontological change. Again, I dislike introducing novel terms where they're not needed, so I'm sticking to "determinacy" for now.

Have you looked at Husserl’s notion of intentionality? He begins from a notion of the present as ‘thick’ or ‘specious’. This time consciousness underlies all of our experiences. The present is not a punctual now but a triad consisting of the just elapsed past ( called retention) , the immediate present and a protentional aspect anticipating into the future. — Joshs

Thank you for the well written post regarding Husserl's intentionality. In truth, I need to delve into Husserl's notions more than I have. In my view of ontology, I agree with this quote. The present isn't infinitesimal or else illusory but holds an extension, and part of that extension includes the very recent past and future. As I once discussed with MU, sounds stand out to make this point. A musical note can only be heard within an extended present. And, as you say, so too is a melody, reductionistically composed of various musical notes.

I've, for better or worse, shied away from Husserl due to, imo, his "intentionality" being significantly different from the more common sense of intentionality that stems from "intends", which basically describes a stretching out from here to there. When it comes to goals, a consciousness's stretching out from the current conditions it is in toward the goal as desired future conditions it wants to see objectified. E.g., one generally plays a competitive game with the intention of winning. One here intends to win, i.e. as psyche, stretches out from where one is in the game to a future state where one has won the game. This notion of a psyche's stretching out so far seems to me to be a different category than that of aboutness.

Your thoughts are very welcome on this subject. I'm especially intrigued by this conclusion, which I believe I understand from Husserl's pov, although too vaguely for my own tastes:

So every intention is teleologically oriented , every intention is both a prediction and a fulfillment , in the same act and same moment. And every intention produces novelty and the unexpected at least in some smalll measure. — Joshs

BTW, in an ultimate scheme of things, I very much agree that all aspects of the psyche are at least in some measure teleologically oriented.

Telos = the potential end toward which a given moves; e.g., a goal (that which one wants to accomplish)
Telosis = the movement of a given toward a potential end; e.g., a striving (what one does to so accomplish)
Endstate = the actual end; e.g., the outcome of the striving toward a goal — javra


I don't see how these are significantly different than my formulation. — T Clark

Hm. The telos is the objective that might or might not become a reality. The telosis is all the activities one engages in to make the objective a reality. And the endstate is the reality that unfolds at the end of one's telos-driven telosis, which might be accordant to the objective or might not be.

Telos = goal
Telosis = plan for achieving that goal
Endstate = intended future condition. — T Clark

So telosis includes planing but also incorporates movements toward the goal, as in the implementation of plans (if plans were made). And the endstate is the future condition that actually unfolds, not necessarily the future condition that was intended to unfold.

Everything occurs strictly in the present. Our memories of the past and thoughts about the future take place in the present. Ok, ok, I'm being tediously pedantic. — T Clark

I'm not disagreeing, but this can lead to a trivializing of past, present, and future such that no meaningful distinction obtains. Ontologically, presentism can make sense. But we nevertheless can only live by separating events into the past, the present, and the future.

Even non-physical causation has to eventually lead to physical causation. — T Clark

Interesting hypothesis, though I'm not clear on what "non-physical causation" is meant to entail. I forget what ontology tickles your fancy. Would thoughts that cause other thoughts that eventually go nowhere and never get turned into observable behavior be an example of non-physical causation that doesn't get turned into physical causation?

I've been thinking for a while that causation is not a very useful concept. That is not a new thought. Bertrand Russell wrote about it extensively. Maybe I'll start a new thread. — T Clark

:grin: Yea, I'm somewhat familiar with Russell's take. If memory serves right, he also thought everything is mathematical and, hence, non-causal. Thing is, blame/credit would be impossible without the notion of causation. And its hard to live without figuring out who does what. To not mention what does what. Here I'm entertaining one of the reasons for why things get done.

There is a difference between the goal, and the fulfillment of the goal. The former is what exists in one's mind, at the present, as a determinate thing, the latter is indeterminate. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I agree. As much as I dislike introducing novel terminology, it's the difference between a goal one strives to achieve and a goal-accordant endstate in the terminology I'm proposing - as you initially mentioned. The first is determinate for as long as it persists, the second indeterminite until the time it becomes actualized, if it does become actualized.

I agree with this, but I would not say that our memories are necessarily our epistemological past, nor that our goals and anticipations are necessarily our epistemological future. I wouldn't even say that our perceptions are necessarily our epistemological present. This is because I think we use other conceptions to form our temporal conceptions, which serve as the base for our epistemological "time", therefore, past, present, and future. This is why we can have an epistemological "time" like eternalism, which removes past present and future from the experiential definitions which you give them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, agreed, and there are also false memories, hallucinations, and futile goals or incorrect predictions to add into the mix. There's more to comment on here, but it will likely deviate from the thread's theme.

I believe it is important to ground epistemology in solid ontology, so I think that going in the way which you do, referring to the ontology of time, for your epistemological definitions of past, present, and future, is the correct way. But I do not think that this is necessarily the way that epistemological definitions of past present and future, are formulated. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do have an ontology in mind, but I'm trying my best to approach the issue from a perspective where ignorance of ontology is (first) assumed.

You use "potential future", here, in a similar way to my "imaginary future". I think it's better that we use something like "imaginary", to maintain that this future is only in the mind, [...] — Metaphysician Undercover

I see where you're going with this. Still, connotations stand in the way for me. For instance, given the possibility of hallucinations, one could say that all our present perceptions constitute our "imaginary present", since our perceptions are only in the mind, and since there is a slim possibility that they could be wrong. In short, describing all our awareness of past, present, and future as imaginary on account of it taking place in the mind fails to distinguish between imagined truths and factual truths - for me at least.

In assuming as much of an ontological ignorance as possible, can we experientially agree that our goals reference a future that has not yet been actualized but which we want to see objectified, i.e. to see actualized? Furthermore, that it is this referenced unactualized future of which we are aware that then determines our present choices (regarding how to best actualize this as of yet unactualized future)?

There's something subtly difficult about goal-driven determinacy (whose occurrence I find is incontestable) and, as mentioned in a previous post, it as determinacy is a different category from that of causality as understood in modernity. To introduce other Aristotelian notions, also different from formal (top-down) and material (bottom-up) determinacies. Maybe noteworthy, to Aristotle, goal-driven determinacy was about the (potential) ends to present activities determining said present activities; hence the Aristotelian term of "final cause".

I don't think you can truthfully say that the goal is in the future. The goal always exists in the mind, at the present, and it is the intended fulfilment of the goal which is understood as in the future. The goal itself is in the present — Metaphysician Undercover

How is "the intended fulfillment of the goal" - which, as you say, is understood as in the future - not a redundant way of saying "the goal"? (e.g., Wiktionary defines "goal" as "a result one is attempting to achieve". To which I add that this result is not yet achieved, hence not of itself in the present.)

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, memories, perceptions, and goals all occur, ontologically speaking, in the mind and in the present. Everything that we are consciously aware of does. Yet our memories are our epistemological past, our perceptions are our epistemological present, and our goals are part of our less than certain epistemological future. To say that a goal takes place in the present holds the same weight as saying that a memory takes place in the present. Yet the memory is our awareness of the past (of past present moments we have already lived through) just as a goal forms part of our awareness of the future (of future present moments we have yet to live through).

While this can make little sense in eternalism, it can fit in neatly into a system of presentism. Whereas this quote seems to presume eternalism as regards the future:

If the goal itself were in the future, then fulfilment of the goal would be necessitated, and telos-discordant endstates impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

What I'm maintaining is that the future is not fully fixed ontologically. A goal is as much of the future as a memory is of the past. But, if for no other reason, there are a multitude of goals in competition with each other, and only some can become actualized as future present moments. When a predator pursues some prey, the goals of the predator and prey conflict, and only one of these two goals can become actualized as an endstate. Yet the "result each is attempting to achieve" resides in the potential future and not in the present.

As an aside, do we agree that a goal partly determines one's present choices of how to best achieve given goal?

So:

Telos = goal
Telosis = plan for achieving that goal
Endstate = intended future condition. — T Clark

No. I'll try to re-describe the three concepts:

Telos = the potential end toward which a given moves; e.g., a goal (that which one wants to accomplish)
Telosis = the movement of a given toward a potential end; e.g., a striving (what one does to so accomplish)
Endstate = the actual end; e.g., the outcome of the striving toward a goal

If one's telos happens to be the taking to flight by the flapping of hands, one will start flapping ones hands as the telosis. The endstate of so doing is that one will not take to flight no matter how hard one tries. The goal determines what one chooses to do - is the motive for the activity one engages in - but the endstate of this might be opposite of ones intent, as per the example just given.

Response - All the factors we are considering - goal, intended final condition, and plan - exist in the present. They are not in the future. Therefore, we are talking about just normal old everyday causation. — T Clark

Causation, as typically understood, does not occur strictly in the present. The cause is not simultaneous to the effect, but precedes the effect in time. If the effect occurs in the present, the cause occurred in the past and no longer occurs in the present. If the cause occurs in the present, the effect will occur in the future after the present cause. This, in and of itself, does not adequately specify the nature of goal-driven determinacy: The goal, while being a potential future end, is always present for as long as that which it determines - viz, the striving toward it - persists.

Or maybe I should ask, how do you define causation?

That said, because a goal is always a potential future which one strives to make objectively real (here placing goals found in fantasies and dreams aside), a goal as telos is always found in the future. — javra

I kind of have to disagree with this. The intent of a deed is never found in the world. The deed in itself is a means to achieve the intent but never really "wanted", in the sense of being the primary intent or will of the subject. What is objectively found in the future are consequences of deeds, not intents. Consequences are concrete and detailed while intents are abstract and general. — Heiko

Thanks for the disagreement. I assume you are approaching this from an eternalism pov. If not, the future is not yet objectified and so is also never found in the world in the sense I believe you're using, in so far as the future is never objectified until it becomes the objective present. I find that this applies both in presentism and in the growing block theory.

But even for an eternalist theory of time, would it make sense to then say that intents don't exist since they're never found in the world?

Is telos in the kind of examples given facing the same direction as cause because it starts in your mind and crytallises or concretises later. — Fine Doubter

Though it takes place in the mind, in the mind it takes place in the future - and from this mentally established potential future is determined what one chooses to do in the present. Contrast this with a memory, which takes place in the past, or a perception, which takes place in the metal present, both of which determine one's mental states and activities in different ways from that of goals.

You may be intuiting the examples you said you wouldn't cite: the late S J Gould believed that at after a time of maximum mutations the form of many of which contained apparently useless features, after a contingent elimination episode had occurred some of the later surviving species found some of their features contingently matched the new environment they had to survive in. — Fine Doubter

I'm focusing on goals because while non-sentient "ends toward which things move" in biology are contestable, and much more so in physics (despite the mathematical notion of attractors), I don't know of any that would contest the reality of consciously held goals determining at least some behavior. This, however, doesn't make me want to be dogmatic about goals being the only type of "ends toward which things move".

But if he cannot be represented as an individual, then where does he fit?

Of course some theologian will argue that he is in some way special, but that's just special pleading - When logic shows the notion of god to be problematic, they claim that logic does not apply to god. — Banno

In alluding to your interchange with @Wayfarer so far:

I too find the OP's proposition is relative to what one interprets by the term “God”. If, for example, God is the ground of being, aka being-itself, then in what possible world would the ground of being, or being-itself, not be? (An absolute nonbeing, even if someone claims such a thing imaginable, does not constitute a world.) Again, in this example God is not "a being" but "being-itself" and, as such, is necessary in all possible worlds, and is furthermore beyond the principle of sufficient reason.

As to the common Abrahamic notion of God, where in God is "a being", He is omniscient, omnipotent, etc., and, thereby, was fully knowledgeable of and fully responsible for that serpent incident in the garden which He then got upset about, cursing everyone left and right. That self-contradictory God can well be envisioned absent from some worlds, much including the one we live in.

13. G v ~G is exactly what skepticism is. A skeptic doesn't commit to either p or ~p for any proposition p. — TheMadFool

Don't want to derail the thread, but this in no way describes Academic skeptics such as Cicero, who committed himself to a multitude of, some would say, very important propositions. And even Pyrrho, founder of Pyrrhonism, committed himself to the proposition that skepticism leads to eudaimonia. Which is to say, something's amiss. For my part, I'll leave it at that.

Groovy. What abouts this part heres:

My point, again, is that the issue is not death, but suffering in life (much including the suffering caused by the death of loved ones, and the like). — javra

Or do you find no correlation between increased global warming and increased human suffering?

No, the given is not extinction. But that all humans are mortal, with or without extinction.

My point, again, is that the issue is not death, but suffering in life (much including the suffering caused by the death of loved ones, and the like).

As you may recall from a former conversation a while back, that all humans die is a given. So the issue is not one of whether or not humans will die.

The issue, at least as some of us see it, is the degree of suffering experienced by us and other humans - including that which is to be experienced by future generations - while alive.

And, while others will speak for themselves, I for one don't find overall positions such as that of @Xtrix's in any way discordant to the issue I've just addressed.