Nothing is next. There is no next. That’s the point!

It depends what you mean by apodictic — sime

The meaning of ‘apodictic’ is not subject to qualification. Something cannot be relatively apodictic.

The point at issue is that sentient beings are, in fact, beings.

‘If what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we’re outside the bounds of civilisation’ ~ Walter Lippmann (Journalist), quoted by David Brooks, speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

I posted a link to a long article on Whitehead on the previous page, along with some excerpts. Here is another that I would like to understand.

Subjectivity as a Fundamental Feature of the Whole of Reality

Whitehead, on the basis of his interpretation of the modern conceptual framework, derives the task of sketching a metaphysics in which nature does not bifurcate and in which there is no division of nature and mind and their respective knowledge fields of the material and the mental. Such a metaphysics requires not only a radical reconstruction of the concept of nature, but necessarily includes an equally radical reframing of subjectivity. For Whitehead assumes that it is precisely the modernist conception of subjectivity (and thereby objectivity) that has contributed decisively to the bifurcation of nature. His interpretation of modernity as a historical–discursive formation characterized by the bifurcation is therefore crucial to his radical reconstruction of the concept of nature.

Such a reformulation of the concept of nature includes for Whitehead not least the dissolution of the opposition nature/subjectivity or else nature/experience: instead of excluding the subject and experience from nature and thus opening the door to bifurcation, for Whitehead subjectivity is a fundamental feature of the whole of reality. According to the Philosophy of Organism, everything that exists feels; every atom and every flower feels. A statement, as Melanie Sehgal notes, “that sounds strange only against the background of a concept of experience implicitly oriented towards conscious, human perception, as it characterizes modern philosophy” (Sehgal 2016, 209f., my translation). Reality must be described as a hierarchy of consistently given, though varying, degrees of subjectivity. This is also the reason why Whitehead can state “that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, p. 167). If such a relocation of subjectivity into nature is linked to the goal of correcting the materialist–mechanistic conception of the ‘natural’ world as it derived from the bifurcation, subjectivity can also no longer be a “privilege of higher developed entities, let alone an ontological distinction of man” (Wiehl 2007, p. 30, my translation). On that note, Whitehead vehemently rejects modern anthropocentrism, which locates subjectivity outside of nature: “Pansubjectivism,” Reiner Wiehl elaborates, “thus means in Whitehead not only the implementation of the subject in nature and the natural sciences, but equally also a naturalization of subjectivity” — Source

I too have come to accept that 'the subjective' is irreducible, and that reality is subjective, in this radical sense. But I'm a little uneasy about the apparent pan-psychism of this excerpt. I still can't see how non-organic nature possesses a 'degree of subjectivity'. Any guidance appreciated.

I have an aphorism on my profile page which is trying to express a similar idea, 'Reality comes into existence through beings'. I'm not perfectly happy with it, but the idea that it attempts to express is that apart from the experience of beings nothing exists. See the Schopenhauer excerpt on this page, How Time Began with the First Eye.

Also:

Our experience of time depends on the flow of cosmic time that we measure through our experience of time, and only life can know life. Like the ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail, we are in the universe and the universe is in us. This is the strange loop.

Merleau-Ponty puts his finger on the strange loop when he writes in Phenomenology of Perception: “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism). Instead of these two extremes, Merleau-Ponty proposes that each one of the two terms, the conscious subject and the world, makes the other one what it is, and thus they inseparably form a larger whole. In philosophical terms, their relationship is dialectical.

The world Merleau-Ponty is talking about is the life-world (lebenswel), the world we’re able to perceive, investigate, and act in. The subject projects the world because it brings forth the world as a space of meaning and relevance. But the subject can project the world only because the subject inheres in a body already oriented to and engaged with a world that surpasses it. The bodily subject is not just in the world but also of the world. The bodily subject is a project of the world, a way the world locally self-organizes and self-individuates to constitute a living being.

You may want to say that the universe—the whole cosmos or all of nature—subsumes the life-world, so the strange loop pertains only to us and our life-world, not to us and the universe altogether. But quarantining the strange loop this way won’t work. It’s true that our life-world is a minuscule part of an immensely vaster cosmos. The cosmos contains our life-world. But it’s also true that the life-world contains the universe. What we mean is that the universe is always disclosed to us from within the life-world. The life-world sets the horizon within which anything is observable, measurable, and thinkable. So the life-world and the universe themselves are caught up in a strange loop. — The Blind Spot, Evan Thompson, Marcello Gleiser, Adam Frank, Pp 198-9

Makes perfect sense to me…

As does that.

What happened on the 'Valentine's Day Massacre' at the NSAA is typical of the reckless endangerment of critical Government programs through the haphazard mass firings of employees and the chaos that will ensue. Because in this case the subject was radioactive materials and nuclear weapons, DOGE/MAGA quickly backtracked and withdrew the sackings. The same about-face won't happen for other vital but lower-profile agencies, such as food safety, weather forecasting, and social security, because, who cares? They're all sucking off the public teat, that money would be far better directed to tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.

Amid the tumult of mass firings, the Trump administration’s dismissal of workers who maintain America’s nuclear weapons delivered perhaps the greatest shock. These are people with highly sensitive jobs, the Energy Department would later acknowledge, who should have never been fired.

Almost all the workers were rehired in an embarrassing about-face, a prominent example of how the administration has had to reverse dismissals in multiple instances where its scattershot approach caused deeper damage to agencies than anticipated.

Yet late the night before Valentine’s Day, the Trump administration perfunctorily fired 17 percent of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s workforce, over the strenuous objections of senior nuclear officials.

The employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration are stewards of a sprawling government system that keeps 5,000 nuclear warheads secure and ready. They make sure radiation doesn’t leak, weapons don’t mistakenly detonate and plutonium doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

“The president said workers critical to national security would be exempt from the firings. But then there was an active decision to say these positions are not critical to national security,” said an official at the nuclear agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. “It is so absurd I don’t even know what to say.”

The episode proved to be among the biggest blunders of Trump’s first weeks in office as he deployed the blunt instrument of the U.S. DOGE Service, overseen by billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk, to radically slash government payrolls. (Gift link) — DOGE Fires, then Recalls, Workers Essential to Maintenance of US Nuclear Weapons

Hence the repeated references to a ‘constitutional crisis’, although, really, Trump’s election was already one, as he had patently and obviously engaged in a plot to overthrow the 2020 election. It’s utterly absurd that Trump were allowed to run for President. It beats me why he wasn’t disbarred under the constitutional clause banning insurrectionists from public office.

Anyway there was a major victory for the courts late last week when Trump’s peremptory firing of the an inspector general was struck down:

A U.S. judge on Saturday declared President Donald Trump's firing of the head of a federal watchdog agency illegal in an early test of the scope of presidential power likely to be decided at the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington had previously ruled Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel who is responsible for protecting whistleblowers, could remain in his post pending a ruling. — Reuters

There are numerous other suits being contested. MAGA is making noises about possibly defying or ignoring legal injunctions. It hasn’t happened yet but the writing is on the wall, although what action could be taken in response, and by whom, is far from clear. (Wouldn’t it be great to see Musk arrested and taken into custody for contempt of court?) Trump and Musk are utterly and flagrantly in breach of accepted practice and constitutional norms, they’re far outstripping the so-called ‘check and balances’ in the system by simply trampling them.

I would regard the presumption that other beings are like myself as apodictic. I wouldn’t be so egotistical as to believe otherwise. And real life is not a hypothetical exercise.

In 2019, President Trump tried to extort President Zelinsky by withholding Congressionally-mandated military aid to Ukraine, which was attacked and invaded by Russia, to coerce him to say he was opening an investigation into the Bidens. Zelensky showed his mettle and resisted; Trump was impeached.

Fast forward to yesterday, Trump (who could not handle the job alone and needed the assistance of a henchman) again sought to bend President Zelensky to his will to extort Ukraine out of its natural resources (and afterTrump conceded key negotiation points to Russia BEFORE negotiations even began). And once again, Zelensky resisted. But without any congressional repercussions for Trump.

Instead, we are now an international pariah. — Andrew Wiesemann

And let's, at this point, remember the episode which made Zelenskyy an internationally-respected figure, when the US Embassy offered to helicopter him out of Kiev, in February 2022, and he responded:

I don't need a ride, I need ammo

Before proceeding to bleed the invaders of half a million attackers.

He's the kind of leader America could use.

You're making lliterally sense. The Greek myth of Sisyphus is that of a legendary or mythical king who was sentenced to punishment in Hades by having to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity only to have it roll back down every time. This is a factual statement. What you're going on about, I have no idea, but let's leave it that, as this exchange is becoming Sisyphean.

You gotta look at the situation from the Grecoan Ideal... not yours. — DifferentiatingEgg

I referenced the Greek myth. Let's see what the Brittanica has to say:

Sisyphus was, in fact, like Autolycus and Prometheus, a widely popular figure of folklore—the trickster, or master thief. Clearly, he is everlastingly punished in Hades as the penalty for cheating Death, but why he is set to roll a great stone incessantly is a puzzle to which no convincing answer has yet been given. It appears to belong with other Greek imaginings of the world of the dead as the scene of fruitless labours.

'The scene of fruitless labors'. And how, precisely, does this map against 'happiness'?

The appeal to Nietszche as an authority doesn't impress me. By 'sisyphean' I simply mean the common interpretation of engaging in strenuous and apparently endless activity for no visible result. Indeed a sisyphus gif was for a long time a part of my work email sig.

Erm... that's the Christian mythology of Sisyphus — DifferentiatingEgg

There is no 'Christian mythology of Sisyphus', it was a Greek myth. Sisyphus was described as the cunning and deceitful king of Corinth (Ephyra in early sources). While he was a ruler, he is not depicted as a "noble" in the sense of living up to an ethical or heroic ideal but was often portrayed as a trickster and an archetype of human cunning and defiance. Unlike figures such as Heracles, who underwent divinization (apotheosis), Sisyphus was punished for his defiance rather than rewarded, that punishment being condemned to rolling a boulder endlessly up a hill, only to have it roll back down again. That's what I meant by the reference. Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus recast him as a heroic figure as an embodiment of human resilience and defiance against absurdity but I never found it persuasive.

Comments on January 6th revisionism belong in another thread. Maybe the Trump thread - Count Timothy, as you're a mod, perhaps you might be so kind as to move them there. This thread is about the Musk Plutocracy which is providing ample material for discussion in its own right.

Do you see the distinction between this process of repeated contextual variation and a meta-proclamation of truth? — Joshs

I see it, but I believe it is pointless, in a way, sisyphean. But then, my meta-philosophical stance is oriented around the possibility of a cosmic philosophy, that is, a philosophy that situates the reality of human existence in the context of the cosmos.

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. — Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, Thomas Nagel

I realise we'll never be on the same page in any of this, but I appreciate having an intelligent person to explain it to.

Having bludgeoned the Congress into pathetic submission, MAGA is now setting its sights on the judiciary, the last remaining bastion of constitutional democracy.

“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr. Musk wrote this week on X, his social media platform, in one of multiple posts demanding that uncooperative federal judges be ousted from their lifetime seats on the bench.

“We must impeach to save democracy,” Mr. Musk said in another entry on X after a series of rulings slowed the Trump administration’s moves to halt congressionally approved spending and conduct mass firings of federal workers. He pointed to a purge of judges by the right-wing government in El Salvador as part of the successful effort to assert control over the government there. — NY Times

We must impeach to save democracy is directly suggestive of 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it', from William Caley, officer in charge of the Mai Lai massacre,

One of today's headlines: "DOGE presses to check federal benefits payments against IRS tax records -
Officials with Elon Musk’s group say they want to search for fraud. Privacy law bars the IRS from disclosing tax information to other parts of the government."

In Australia, there was a massive scandal over a similar scheme, dubbed Robodebt, were automatic matching technologies were used to pursue purported social security debts, often without any human oversight. The resulting debacle caused more than a few suicides and ended a few careers. Of course, none of that would matter to Elon Musk, as he'll just chainsaw anyone who stands in his way, with Presidential permission.

I don't know enough to say whether it's Husserl's thought, but I cross-checked it with my AI buddy Chuck (a.k.a. ChatGPT4) which responded 'Overall, the passage is a well-articulated summary, and while it could be more precise in distinguishing Husserl’s phenomenological approach from traditional epistemology, it correctly conveys his main insights into the problem of other minds.'

Anyway it makes perfect intuitive sense to me. Even though I don't know other people in the same way I know myself, I know they are persons like myself. 'Husserl explores this through the concept of empathy (Einfühlung). He suggests that we "appresent" or co-present the other’s mind: we perceive another body as similar to our own and, by analogy, attribute to it a consciousness like ours.' I've often opined that empathy is the natural antidote to solipsism.

Hey! I found this book going on about organicism and new metaphors in biology. Thought it would be interesting for you. — substantivalism

Does look interesting, albeit (groan) yet another book. I don't know if you've had much interaction with the sometime contributor here, Apokrisis, but he has a lot of interesting things to say about biosemiotics, a field I didn't even know existed until he came along. That has lead me research into that field, and also into the phenomenology of biology, subject of books by Hans Jonas and Evan Thompson. Also Terrence Deacon's 'Incomplete Nature'. I think there'd be some crossover to that book you're mentioning. I notice:

The reverse of the positivist claim seems to be the case: the positivist program is the useful device but a richer conception is required to generate or understand science.

Surely rings true for me. Positivism, especially the Vienna Circle type, is that attempt to restrict the scope of philosophy within the bounds of science, which of course came to grief with the realisation that the setting of those bounds was itself a matter for philosophy.

Unconditioned meaning foundational to perspective? — fdrake

I think it's a key term which has to all intents dropped from philosophical discourse. That it was arguably last sighted in Hegel, with his depiction of the Absolute, but by then entangled in prolific thickets of arcane scholarly verbiage that overgrew its actual meaning.

There's a journal article I've found, The unconditioned in philosophy of religion, Steven Shakespeare, Nature, 2018 (open access). I've looked at it, but not a lot of it stuck - maybe I'll take another look, although it is developed in a direction I didn't much understand or like. But it is at least an attempt to conceptually separate 'the unconditioned' from the almost-inevitable tendency to say 'oh, you mean God', with all of the implications.

But my intuitive sense is that the difficulty for all of this is that the unconditioned is as a matter of principle beyond the scope of discursive thought (meaning, to all intents, out of bounds).

I'm sorry, but I'm not an admirer of Nietszche. It probably puts us in different worlds, but it can't be helped.

It seems to me you're describing a psychological difference, — fdrake

Yes, I can see how it would seem like that. But again, we're no closer to the sense in which religious revelation purports to connote insight into the unconditioned.

I want to say "I love you all," but I'm not quite sure I believe that. But I wonder what would happen if I had faith that I could have faith in that? — DifferentiatingEgg

Learn by doing, I would suggest. That would be quite a challenge, although one which at least some Christians seem to exemplify.

Right, which is to say that something can be verifiable even if it is not verifiable according to some particular metric. For example, a Buddhist claim can be verified, but not with a microscope. — Leontiskos

Hence my frequent referral to 'domains of discourse'. By that I mean, specific cultural rubrics. I've looked into the origin of that term, and originally it was derived from mathematics, but I'm using it in the sense that different cultures and sub-cultures exist within a rubric of meanings and implicit understandings, and that it's necessary to understand something of that background in order to interpret them.

Buddhism is an example, as it developed, up until quite late, in a completely separate cultural sphere from the Christian West. For many of the key terms of Buddhism such as karma, Nirvāṇa, saṃsāra, and dharma, there are no direct equivalents in English or indeed in the Christian cultural framework. So understanding it in its own terms requires some assimilation of its terminology and the cultural and spiritual setting within which they're meaningful.

Case in point: the term 'enlightenment' itself which seems to pivotal to the entire culture. It was used to translated the Pali/Sanskrit term 'bodhi' by T W Rhys Davids, a British translator and founder of the Pali Text Society, formed in what was then Ceylon in 1881. 'Bodhi' is a noun derived from the root 'budh-' meaning awakening or enlightenment—specifically, the insight into the true nature of reality in Buddhist thought. It's the same root word used to form 'Buddha.'

Rhys Davids chose the term 'enlightenment' at least in part because of its resonances with how the term had been used in European culture in respect of the European Enlightenment. Rhys-Davids (and his wife, who was also involved in the Society) presented Pali Buddhism as being compatible with science in a way that Christianity was not (although they both disparaged Mahāyāna Buddhism as having been corrupted by superstition.) But I think one consequence of this is that the European and Buddhist uses of 'enlightenment' are in many ways incommensurable, resulting in confusion as to what it actually means. Buddhism was often said by its early 20th century exponents to be a 'scientific religion' with the principle of karma being compared to Newton's laws of action and reaction. But I think that was fanciful. (One of the reasons Evan Thompson gives for not being Buddhist in his book on that, is the persistent myth of the 'scientific' nature of Buddhism.)

So, after that rather long digression, how can Buddhist claims be verified? One could easily dismiss the whole story as myth, and many do. But I think the preponderance of archeological and archival evidence indicates that he was a real historical figure. So as to whether the Buddha was enlighented, that amounts to asking whether the Buddha was really a Buddha ('Buddha' being a term for a class of beings.) So if one accepts that such a teacher actually existed, asking whether he is enlightened is rather like asking whether a standard meter is, in fact, a meter long. But that is not, as you say, something to be validated by scientific instrumentation.

As to whether Buddhist principles can be verified by anyone other than a Buddha, it might be pointed out that the Buddhist sangha (monastic associations) are the oldest continually-existing religious orders in the world today. Again, some might believe that this is a long history of self-delusion but I don't think that credible.

None of which means that specious claims of enlightenment are not common.

I'm not sure where Janus fits into this. — Leontiskos

I will say that there many here who advocate a kind of articulate positivism and pragmatism, along common-sense lines. Positivism is a powerful influence in modern thought. The dictionary definition is 'Positivism - a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism'. It's the default for a lot of people. They will recognise the possibility of veridical religious experience, but insist that they are subjective and meaningful only to those who have them, and cannot be conveyed, nor form the basis of any real philosophy. Thereby vitiating the whole tradition of Buddhist philosophy, among others.

(Although, there is another terminological note: 'philosophy' is derived from the Greek term philo- love and sophia -wisdom, hence, love of wisdom or love~wisdom. It has been argued that Indian wisdom teachings are distinct from Greek philosophy proper, on those etymological grounds. The Hindu schools of what we call 'philosophy' are called 'darshana', derived from 'seeing' or 'seer'. Buddhism self-description of the Buddha's teaching is a 'sasana', meaning a 'dispensation'. But in any case, there are sound scholarly comparisons of the themes of Buddhist teachings presented as philosophy, notably by Mark Siderits. And of course the vast corpus of Buddhist philosophical commentaries, spanning millenia and cultures, in a diverse array of languages.)

As such, he is a problem, and as a problem, best approached clinically. The obvious question being how such a problem is solved, but that not-so-easy to answer. — tim wood

He should have been impeached when the opportunity arose, obviously, and would have been, but for Mitch McConnell's gutlessness. The Republican Party is utterly culpable in this matter. They put a criminal in the oval office, one who is hellbent on destroying constitutional democracy, and he then let the world's richest man loose with a chainsaw.



NY Times comment on yesterday's spectacle: 'It was a sickening spectacle: the man who tried to upend democracy bullying the man who is fighting for democracy.'

Yes. Some beliefs are more significant to people than others. This remark says nothing about the phenomenology of revealed truth. — fdrake

Again - relativises the subject by categorising it as belief. The question was not whether one believes it were true. For the purpose of the argument, suppose it actually were true - put yourself in the position of one who believes it is. This is intended to convey its non-contingent nature. Were it true, it would be something of absolute importance, not one among other of a shifting web of 'faith convictions' and 'beliefs'. It would be as urgent as the requirement to breath.

There is no meta-interpretation. — Joshs

Speaking of convictions.....

As you may know, this question of how we retain previous moments as we listen, and project future moments, is integral to a composer's skill. — J

This analogy is not about music or composition. It's about the fact that music comprises individual sounds which, by themselves, are not music. It is the awareness of the sequence of sounds. This analogy is then applied to the awareness of duration. What ties together the succession of moments into duration?

we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. — Aeon.co

Perhaps 'cares' is the wrong word, but the organism persists, it heals from injury, and it reproduces. Something which minerals do not. The point being, even at this rudimentary stage, a form of intentionality is apparent.

Julian Barbour is an independent scholar who also argues that time doesn't exist. I haven't listened to the whole presentation, but it might be of interest to you. He also has published a book on the subject.

A world transforming, singular, experience aligns the nature of the divine with the perceptual. What you see is what you now believe. In effect, the reinterpretation is a way of seeing the same world another way, like whether a Necker Cube goes into or out of a page. — fdrake

Although whether one has, or is, an immortal soul, might be rather more significant than an optical illusion.

It has been pointed out, that while Associated Press and Reuters have now been banned from White House briefings, that the official Russian state media had a reported in the Oval Office today, to conveniently broadcast Trump and Vances brow-beating of Zelenskyy to the whole Russian federation. How convenient for them.

Are you suggesting no discussion about faith is meaningful without first adopting the definition that it is a revelation of something otherworldly? — ENOAH

Not at all. Discussion can be meaningful but ‘revealed truth’ is essential to it.

I'm just as capable as he (Socrates) was as he was of critical thought It's a pity the same cannot be said of you. — Janus

This esteemed rabbi was on his death bed. Many of his former students and admirers filed in to pay their respects and sing his praises - his learning, his mastery of the Torah and so forth. After they left, his wife said to him, ‘why do you look so downcast, Moshe? They all said such nice things about you.’

‘My humility’, he said morosely. ‘Nobody mentioned my humility.’

I know what you mean, and I agree, faith which claims to have such revelation into some otherworldly superior reality is not supportable. — ENOAH

But that is precisely what revealed truth means. It is the entire meaning of the Bible. It doesn’t mean you have to believe it.

But in reality, faith is as contingent and fallible as any other belief we hold, shaped by history, culture, and personal experience — Tom Storm

For secular philosophy.

But he cautioned against 'ontotheology' which I understand to consist in the absolutization of the human. — Janus

not as I understand it - ontotheology was the concentration on beings instead of Being, but writ large as the ‘supreme being’

I'm attempting to do a similar thing here. — Janus

But you are not Socrates ;-)

Thank you, marvelously apt selection of text :pray:

Didn’t realize you were posting from inside Australia!


Friendly compatriot smile

If all we want is "a plausible functional story," what would be wrong with organisms that just react to stimuli without experience? What we want to say about this, of course, is that it's impossible -- the idea of an organism "just reacting" without any form of subjectivity is offensive somehow. Or maybe we want to say that the very concept of "reacting" presupposes experience. But none of this is obvious; we can't just declare this picture it to be impossible. If it is, we need to know why -- back to the hard problem. — J

Further to this thought-provoking question - I have been considering the idea that the appearance of organisms just is the appearance of the rudimentary forms of intentionality. Not that primitive life forms have a meaningful form of consciousness, but that the key thing which differentiates an organism from a mineral is that it maintains in itself a distinction from the environment. Hans Jonas, in The Phenomenon of Life, makes a similar point, suggesting that the organism is not just matter in motion but something that cares about its own persistence, something for which its own being matters in a way that is absent in the purely physical realm.

Energy policy and environmentalism are issues. The liberals are running for nuclear power. Trump’s election has cast doubt over climate change amelioration. Yes, cost of living is a perennial, but I think there’s cynicism that either side can really address that. There’s also the ‘incumbency’ factor which goes against whomever is in power.

All in all, too close to call, although I did notice some street-level campaign activity in my district today.

Speaking of melody, you might have missed this quote I provided a few weeks back

We usually imagine time as analogous with space. We imagine it, for example, laid out on a line (like a timeline of events) or a circle (like a sundial ring or a clock face). And when we think of time as the seconds on a clock, we spatialise it as an ordered series of discrete, homogeneous and identical units. This is clock time. But in our daily lives we don’t experience time as a succession of identical units. An hour in the dentist’s chair is very different from an hour over a glass of wine with friends. This is lived time. Lived time is flow and constant change. It is ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. When we treat time as a series of uniform, unchanging units, like points on a line or seconds on a clock, we lose the sense of change and growth that defines real life; we lose the irreversible flow of becoming, which Bergson called ‘duration’.

Think of a melody. Each note has its own distinct individuality while blending with the other notes and silences that come before and after. As we listen, past notes linger in the present ones, and (especially if we’ve heard the song before) future notes may already seem to sound in the ones we’re hearing now. Music is not just a series of discrete notes. We experience it as something inherently durational.

Bergson insisted that duration proper cannot be measured. To measure something – such as volume, length, pressure, weight, speed or temperature – we need to stipulate the unit of measurement in terms of a standard. For example, the standard metre was once stipulated to be the length of a particular 100-centimetre-long platinum bar kept in Paris. It is now defined by an atomic clock measuring the length of a path of light travelling in a vacuum over an extremely short time interval. In both cases, the standard metre is a measurement of length that itself has a length. The standard unit exemplifies the property it measures.

In Time and Free Will, Bergson argued that this procedure would not work for duration. For duration to be measured by a clock, the clock itself must have duration. It must exemplify the property it is supposed to measure. To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do. — Aeon.co

Which supports my view, that time is meaningless without there being an awareness of duration. In that sense the expression ‘the world before time began’ is not entirely metaphorical.

I’ll head off the predictable objection that we know of a vast period of time before we existed. Yes, we are aware of that. That period is measured in durations of years, which are based on the period of time it takes for the Earth to complete an orbit of the Sun.

A major NY Times analysis How Musk Took Over the Federal Government - gift link