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Sun 8 Dec, 2013 06:37 pm
Preamble:
McTaggart argues that Time is unreal because an event can't be past, present and future (the "A" series). Also, Time cannot be an ordered series of events (the "B" series) because, unlike past, present and future events, this series does not display the property of change, and change is essential to a description of Time. No complete elimination of Time is yet on the cards, here or elsewhere, however. We can make a start on that:
Discussion:
Time is marked by clock events - by ticks, positions (e.g. 2.30), or appearances (the arrival of a train, etc). We can isolate a solitary clock - a "monad clock", which should provide us with all the properties we need to construct Time.
First, a solitary or monad clock, alone in a void, generates a sequence of identical events, or ticks (definition). Because the monad clock events or ticks are identical, one tick cannot be distinguished from another. Thus there is no arrow or passage of Time for the monad clock.
A collection of clocks can be considered as a monad clock that generates a sequence of more than one clock event, such as ticks and tocks. Let us now consider two clocks in a void.
Because the two clocks have non-identical clock events, one event can be distinguished from another event. Yet there can be no relationship of before, after or simultaneity between these clock events because, for two non-identical events, there is no third property. A third property is required to allow us to distinguish a temporal priority of one event over the other, or a simultaneity of events.
We can consider three clocks that send out three non-identical events. An order between them can theoretically be distinguished. For example, XYZ rather than XZY. However, note that XYZ cannot be distinguished from its reverse - ZYX (this description corresponds to McTaggarts B temporal series).
Further, while XYZ can be distinguished from XZY there is no third property. A third property is needed to adjudicate on their temporal priority.
And ad infinitum:
there are no clocks that can ultimately establish a before, after, or simultaneity, and no clock that can establish the arrow of Time. There is a disconnect between clocks and our standard temporal definitions. The paradox can be resolved if we declare all events to be connected not temporally but by association. For example, it is through the association of a "communication" that a reply comes after a question. Before, after, simultaneity, and the arrow of Time are clock-events, and not temporal descriptions.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
Unless you take Heidegger's view of "time"as an essential essence of "being" then time remains a psychological construct. McTaggart's Hegelianism is outmoded except as a position to kick against by shifting paradigms.
@fresco,
There are not two interpretations of the way things are, either real or psychological constructs. Heidegger, Hegel and McTaggart plump for some form of the former, or else, in McTaggarts case, fall back on a conceptual ambiguity like "unreal" or "psychological", terms that do philosophy no good.
My model avoids the real/unreal(psychological), binary and completes the McTaggart project (a project he struggled with) in showing the irrelevance of Time rather than repackaging it as the lesser member of the real/unreal privileged binary.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
ugh..."Time" is an abstract of change, and clocks represent an arbitrary measurement of the same -- it's meant to demonstrate the neat classifications of P/P and P . The "psychological experience" represents something real, or your unified theory is a charlatanade, even if it fails to comprehend it.
A chosen "monad clock" isolated from the conditions of other clocks will not strike at the same time as clocks set at the same moment and yet sent to wildly separate places at extremely high speeds. That's the premise of the law of relativity -- measurement is not the same as duration.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
I don't agree with your answer in terms of a dichotomy "real/unreal" since "reality" can also be termed "psychological". Razzleg makes a good point about measurement. At the end of the day "time" is a concept utilized by humans with respect to their preoccupation with prediction and control. In relativistic physics, time cannot be extricated from space except in parochial control scenarios. Like any other concept "time" is
functional in specific contexts and has no status in its own right.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
Reply to both posters:
All clocks are monad clocks. The alternative, standard idea, is that all clocks are related in a medium called Time. However, clocks do not themselves require or reflect this medium.
Relativity offers an ambiguity called space-time to convey a supposed idea that events are neither real nor unreal but a third, non-thing, called "relative".
"Psychology" is another, philosophically useless, popularism that no-one can identify as a legitimate thing. It smacks of clinical reductionism, an idea where a physical object possesses mental properties that we can read off directly from the physical matter itself. One of the greatest of superstitions, it gives rise to the myth of chemical possession, currently a major belief in psychiatry, psychology and neurosciences.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
As far as I am concerned, any philosophical or psychological discussion which fails to make the
contextual nature of observation its central focus tends to become word salad. With respect to "time" for example, any discussion of "events" implies an observer to define the event window and its contents. And any reference to "the arrow of time" in terms of the second law of thermodynamics must ultimately come to terms with the fact that only an observer can define what "order" is.
From the little I have read of McTaggart, he appears to rely on
logicality to argue his case, but that would confine him (and those like you who attempt to extrapolate) to a severely limited semantic domain. Cutting edge physicists (like Bohr) psychologists (like Piaget) and philosophers (like Derrida) have each pointed out the pitfalls of logicality in their specialisms. And specifically regarding
time, anthropologists have pointed out that concepts of time are not universal as illustrated by the absence of tenses in some languages.
Time is the measurement that weights the rate at which information is exchanged. Different speeds imply different rates of information exchange for different "observers". Note please that observers in physics means very clearly detectors, not necessarily people.
There is a serious misunderstanding in pop culture physics regarding the double slit experiment on what "observing" is to aim at, but a quick search around the web on what people like Richard Feynman n others mean with it will quickly settle the mater.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
JohnJonesCardiff wrote:
All clocks are monad clocks.
I'm curious as to how Leibniz would respond to this statement, but I don't expect an answer...
JohnJonesCardiff wrote:
Relativity offers an ambiguity called space-time to convey a supposed idea that events are neither real nor unreal but a third, non-thing, called "relative".
Not at all, the idea of "relativity" offers up an idea that events are real, but that they're "perceptibility" is (at least) ambiguous, and that their "measurability" may often offer up incommensurable results. The concept of "relativity" does produce some questions about reality, but its main purpose is to critique the inquiry into, and the experience of it -- and by extension, the consequences of each.
JohnJonesCardiff wrote:"Psychology" is another, philosophically useless, popularism that no-one can identify as a legitimate thing. It smacks of clinical reductionism, an idea where a physical object possesses mental properties that we can read off directly from the physical matter itself. One of the greatest of superstitions, it gives rise to the myth of chemical possession, currently a major belief in psychiatry, psychology and neurosciences.
i know that i'm acting like a huge asshole when i ask, but are you from the 18th Century? Do you view George Berkeley as a cutting edge psychologist?
There is no such thing as a "philosophically useless" form of study. Your summary summary of psychology and its history reveals a lack of genuine, informed knowledge of (or insight into) the subject, or its current, complex interaction with philosophy, in general. Current conditions require a lot of interaction between the most ancient of "useless" intellectual practices and the recent, most brilliantly "undisciplined" of mental disciplines. It's possible that an individual's "psychology" doesn't render truth, but it's a path in, and possibly, to it.
@Razzleg,
I suggest the main thrust of Berkeley's idealism, for himself as a priest, was the requirement of a "God" as an "ultimate observer". I introduced the term "cutting edge" to indicate those who instigated paradigm shifts (in the Kuhnian sense). In psychology for example, Piaget pointed out that "logical thought" was a
product of intellectual development which precluded its use as vehicle for investigation of such development. This supports the paradigm of "constructivist perception" and deflates the concept of "truth" to that of pragmatism.
@fresco,
It seems to me that the idealism of Berkeley, as with the perspectivism of Nietzsche, suggests that all empirically grounded knowledge is necessarily partial. Yet unlike Nietzsche (who did not, to his credit, require the presupposition of an absolute/objective reality) Berkeley required the assumption of perpective-free realities and as such an omnicient perceiver or God.
@JLNobody,
Yes. The subject-object tradition is central to those who would visualize a separate deity to oversee its creation.
There is a good analysis of that tradition and its subsequent abandonment by existentialists here:
http://www.cosmolearning.com/documentaries/bryan-magee-talks-to-hubert-dreyfus-on-husserl-heidegger-and-modern-existencialism-870/
@fresco,
The requirement that a context is needed if we want to interpret events, must assume events, of any sort. And that is all I assumed when I said that the monad clock makes events.
Regarding logicality, the term "logic" generally refers to the way that objects behave, also called logical form. It also refers to a moral ideal, such as when we say that "we made the logical choice". You need to identify which, or at least expand upon what others, like Derrida, meant, and also say how this connects with the simple monad clock scenario that I presented.
@Fil Albuquerque,
First, to measure the "rate" at which events occur requires an independent clock to measure those events.
This independent clock, this "rate", is just another clock. "Rate" is the name of another clock, not the name of a medium called "Time".
However, you seem to indicate that the "rate" of events is decided by Time. You indicate that it is Time that measures the rate of events. I argued that it is not Time that measures the rate of events but, merely, another clock.
Second, even if we suppose that there is an absolute medium called "Time" that is the ultimate source of the different speeds or rates at which events occur in a system, there can be no measurement procedure that can indicate how fast events are proceeding within that system. You might want to suggest a procedure that can measure that rate, if you disagree. You will not find one.
@Razzleg,
I employed the term "monad" in its normal definition, Liebniz included, to mean an independent event, occurrence, or object.
My attack on psychology was made in hope. The hope was to remove a philosophical misdirection, to remove an ambiguity and popularism that invites no significant philosophical conjecture. I gave reasons. Certainly, there are studies, but no studies fall under the pseudo-domain of psychology, simply because the term has never been carved out in philosophy or medicine. Rather, "psychology" is either a veiled reductionism (mind to matter) or a spurious and contingent moral injunction made in respect of behaviour.
@fresco,
"Re: Razzleg (Post 5516893)
I suggest the main thrust of Berkeley's idealism, for himself as a priest, was the requirement of a "God" as an "ultimate observer". I introduced the term "cutting edge" to indicate those who instigated paradigm shifts (in the Kuhnian sense). In psychology for example, Piaget pointed out that "logical thought" was a product of intellectual development which precluded its use as vehicle for investigation of such development. This supports the paradigm of "constructivist perception" and deflates the concept of "truth" to that of pragmatism. "
I must agree with that - certainly it appears that science reduces to pragmatics.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
Some great responses to my post there. My style may appear unforgiving.
@fresco,
"Re: JLNobody (Post 5517541)
Yes. The subject-object tradition is central to those who would visualize a separate deity to oversee its creation.
There is a good analysis of that tradition and its subsequent abandonment by existentialists here:"
Interestingly, it is not merely God that visualizes a subject-object, but science itself.
@JLNobody,
@fresco,
It seems to me that the idealism of Berkeley, as with the perspectivism of Nietzsche, suggests that all empirically grounded knowledge is necessarily partial. Yet unlike Nietzsche (who did not, to his credit, require the presupposition of an absolute/objective reality) Berkeley required the assumption of perpective-free realities and as such an omnicient perceiver or God. "
I can't remember if I replied to this. Anyway, this looks like another, though very interesting, issue or topic.
@JohnJonesCardiff,
Quote:Interestingly, it is not merely God that visualizes a subject-object, but science itself.
As I understand it, you are trying to establish "the reality of time" by logical argument.
But if you follow up the link you will hear Heidegger's view of science as an important, yet secondary mode of inquiry regarding "the world". The concept of "an independent reality" for the focus of science is a
synthetic ploy after which logicality is employed, but that term "reality" is merely a pragmatic stance required by
Dasein's "in order that" mode. The point is that the "time element" is already subsumed by that mode of "being", and therefore resists "logical" analysis. In short "being" (the verb...the interactive coping process ) is prior to a requirement for "beings" (subjects and objects) and
time is encompassed by
being and cannot itself be objectified.
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