A Sense of Time

A piece of artwork Melissa Taylor says that she made using newspaper and 
charcoal, when inspired by the song ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd

Posted by Andrew Porter* 

Plato calls time the ‘moving image of eternity’. Most likely because time and eternity are all tied up together or because time and eternity are a dialectic, yet concurrently an organic whole.

Perhaps that esoteric word ‘eternity’ means exactly this: the melding of ‘time’ and ‘timelessness’ – a covenant, as it were, to let freedom/order live, to let rationality have process and identity, to let life have its optimal day, to sustain a universe that is true to the good and the beautiful.

Actual time, meaning time in the full sense, is local mixed with non-local, only seeming simply local. This non-locality that is very much a part of time is like non-locality and entanglement in quantum physics. Space-time reveals that distance and no-distance are both true. Time is not change, as such. It is constancy as much as change, identity as much as process. And the best way to express this is to say that actual time is a thorough union of the concepts of ‘time’ and ‘timelessness’.

In this view, God would be time/timelessness, or some less awkward term, such as ‘time-full-ness’. No wait, that's still awkward. God would not see all time as a single view, frozen and fixed, but would, as it were, take something else seriously: the thorough integration of ‘time’ aspects and ones of ‘timelessness’—to create an attainment in accord with His values. The Divine may be or see neither time as discrete moments in sequence nor timelessness described as an atemporal block.

One of the biggest conundrums in thought has been the relationship or presumed relationship between time and timelessness. Scientists, theologians, philosophers, and perhaps your next-door neighbour wrestle with the complexities therein. It seems to be relevant to today's world as people try to sort out a balance between doing and being, between stress or contentment. Are they gripped by time or actually freed from it?

The philosophical issue closely relates to what we consider, if anything, Becoming and Being. We tend to like these categories because we think it makes things clear. But our real problem is likely that we assume what ‘time’ and ‘timelessness’ are – and then run off in the wrong direction.
Timelessness seems to have the advantage of being free from plodding pace as a chain of moments, but what could timelessness be without the duration and dovetailing of one phase with another?

Time is physicality; this is a claim that can be clearly made. But we have too many presumptions about timelessness. Current thinking tends to relegate the 'timeless' to a ‘block universe’. If it can’t move it must be a frozen reality and a view, say, by God that sees the big whole all at once. I think this block universe—an atemporality ‘fixed’ as much as space is, and relative one ‘place’ to another, is an untenable view. It only arises as a counterpoint to what we experience as time-passage.

The core of the, I think, wrongheaded, distinction is that temporal and atemporal seem to compete, to diverge, be some kind of opposite. But this is what I encourage us to reconsider. Nature actually shows a contrary impetus: not a separation of time and timelessness, but a convergence. We see clues that nature appears determined to be a composition, of what would otherwise be a non-unity; that is, a consolidation of time's openness and newness, of timelessness' freedom from measure as movement.

All reality—physicality, laws, energy, dark matter, spiritual reality—gives strong indications that it, rather than a bifurcation, is an amalgam, a mix, of what are only conceptually time-as-sequence and timelessness as a vision of the entirety. A further argument would point out that reality is the way it is precisely because it is a threading of the needle between ‘time’ and ‘timelessness’. The emergence of the Lesser Grass Blue butterfly in Hawaii is a fact that supports the idea that there is a synthesis of continuity and newness, a kind of absolute blend of becoming and being, process and consistent identity. The species is replete with aspects that require time; in one and the same species, there is an equal requirement for a flexibility of action across time, or regardless of time.

This melding of what would otherwise be ‘time’ and ‘timelessness’ (a singularity which everything is) both frees you and orders. You are neither wholly beholden to time as change nor locked in a space–time block that shatters choice in the moment. You are, rather, free to make decisions in an open present, and ordered to optimise those choices or ways of life by the transcendence of time that is inherent in real, actual existence. With a newfound time sense, we can be more in the swing of things. 

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Andrew Porter is a philosopher and educator who lives near Boston in the United States.
He can be contacted via email at <aporter344@gmail.com>

The Rhythm of Sentiment

Francisco Goya. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Posted by Allister Marran 

If you are privileged enough to go to university straight out of school, as I did, you are greeted by disdainful lecturers who roll their eyes at your infantile exuberance, your unenlightened ignorance, and often plain stupidity.

You think you know it all, yet you lack the fundamental tools to appreciate the gravitas of the knowledge you are being fed. Everything is so simple when you know nothing.

Life experience creates perspective.

Social theory was particularly difficult. To my mind, in a world where there was only black and white, I could not grasp the grey areas.

Nazis, right wing racists, and communist dictators were bad. Progressives and capitalist democracies were good. Nothing else to see or say. You could never have a bad democratically elected president, could you? You could never explain the rise of nationalism in a way that made sense, could you?

And yet we now live in an age where democratically elected populists, who are right or left wing nationalists, are dominating the world political landscape, where they are verbosely racist and openly swear allegiance to military dictators and murderers. Trump, Johnson, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, Austria. The list is long and shocking.

These are all democratically elected officials. The voice of the people has been heard. The people want leaders who allow them to chant 'Send her back,' and can question the nationality of anyone who is not white skinned (Trump), who diminishes the effects of colonialism on Africa (Zille), or promotes Islamophobia (Johnson), who actively promote racial tension and are anti gay rights (Bolsonaro).

A simple social theory was presented to us, called the social cycle theory, which may be described as follows:

Social cycle theories belong to the earliest of social theories. Unlike the theory of social evolutionism, which views the evolution of society as progressing in some direction(s), social cycle theory argues that events and stages of society typically repeat themselves in cycles. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto wrote, 

'There is a rhythm of sentiment, which we can observe in ethics, in religion, and in politics.'

In the broader scope of having some greater perspective on life and politics over the last thirty years, if you subscribe to the social cycle theory, it is clear that we are heading into a very dangerous age, where political leaders are able to stoke their bases, and these supporters can wear their prejudices and their hatred of others with pride, knowing that there will be no accounting for their bigoted behavior.

As the chants become louder, the racists become more emboldened, stepping out of the shadows to add their voices to the cacophony of jeers and hate speech.

There is strength in numbers, and so they exhibit their most vigorous exuberance for resentment and loathing, of others not like them, when they are in groups. They wear hats and badges which are brightly coloured, so they can easily spot each other and seek each other out in the world, and can speak easily when in the company of similarly uniformed cadres. And they try to assimilate everyone in their orbit by jovial energy, brute force, or subterfuge.

I did not believe in the social cycle theory when I was younger. I believed that humankind evolved, moved forwards, and you can never look back. If the world was ruined and destroyed by the rise of white nationalism in World War II, surely people aren't stupid enough to fall for that again? Surely showing someone a video of the Nuremberg Rallies, or Mussolini speaking to his army, would be enough to guard them against rallying behind the hatred of a new nationalist cabal in the world?

Surely we are not destined to repeat the mistakes of the past ad infinitum, until mankind is no more, destroyed once and for all by their own hatred and prejudices?

In my old age I am slowly coming around to understanding that maybe the social cycle theory is the best way to explain humanity's stupidity after all.

Aside: The fate of the world rests with the youth. Their single-minded desire to cast off the sins of their forebears and parents, and to forge a new way could still save us. The depressing beauty of life is that death is certain for us all, and in that we renew with a potentially diverging purpose and direction.

The advice I give to older people is simple ... for you it is too late. Your time is over. Enjoy the memories, but don't impart your prejudices and bigotry on the younger generations.  Let them forge their own path, devoid of the hatred and darkness you have internalised.  Pass down your knowledge but not your bitterness.

Break the cycle. Make the future a better place for your children, and your children's children.

Pragmatism: its Conception of Unverified Truth #2

Essay by an anonymous contributor* reposted from Pi Alpha

 

In this, the second of two posts, Pi presents reflections on ‘Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth’, a title which William James chose in 1907 for a classic paper on pragmatism.

In last month’s post, we considered pragmatism’s conception of verified truth. However, many of our beliefs are either not verified, or are only partially so. Rather, the vast majority of the beliefs we live by are unverified.

William James uses the example of a clock:  we do not know how it works, nor have we seen the insides of it. ‘We let our notion pass for true, without an attempt to verify.’ We believe the clock to be keeping accurate track of time with its cogs and weights, but we do not really understand how.

This is not a problem for pragmatism, as James points out: ‘Just as we here assume Japan to exist without ever having been there, because it works to do so.’ So because of this, we assume that the thing hanging on the wall with the hands and a face is a clock which keeps accurate track of the passage of time, because it works for us to use it in such a way.

The verification of the assumption here means that our incorporation of this assumption does not contradict previously held beliefs, or is so overwhelmingly powerful that previous truths are altered (as little as possible) to make room for this new truth. The fact that we could verify that the cogs and weights actually do keep an accurate track of the passage of time counts in this case as verifiability. It is because we know previous truths about cogs and weights that we can believe that a series of them can count units of time. This information is useful to us in our new belief that the thing on the wall is a clock and functions as such. ‘We use it as a clock.’ That is what makes it useful to use in a situation where knowing the current time is helpful to us. In another situation, knowing the time may not be helpful to us. In this case it does not matter if the cogs and weights actually do keep an accurate track of time.

Another reason that James gives for us counting the possibility of verification as being just as good as actual verification is that ‘all things exist in kinds (groups) not singly’. When we verify a certain belief that we have, that verification can then be used to verify other beliefs of the same kind, or of the same type. ‘A mind that habitually discerns the kind of thing before it, and acts by the law of the kind immediately without pausing to verify, will be a “true” mind in 99% of cases, proved so by its conduct fitting everything it meets, and getting no refutation.’ These semi-verified or non-verified truths give us the same advantages of full verification, such as saving effort as we verify all our beliefs, which thus leads us to say that these beliefs are true.

Our actions (formed through beliefs), which allow us to willfully lead ourselves through persisting reality, form into habits of action. These habits of action are carried out at an almost unconscious level as most of our un-verified (but verify-able) beliefs form actions that we carry out every day.

Consider habits, as an example. Habits are things which we do every day, but do not really think about, like going to work or playing a certain card game. As long as these habits contain beliefs that are consistent with this persisting reality or realities, and lead us to moments worthwhile, they will be followed.

‘To “agree” in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed.’ 

 Reality is not a set thing that our ideas either match up with (which is true ideas) or do not (which is false ideas), but it is made by us. In pragmatism, to copy a reality is one way of agreeing with it, but not essential. The essential part of agreement is how you use it to guide you through this persisting reality we seem to be experiencing. Names are just as true or false as our other ideas or what James calls definite mental pictures. Names are arbitrary, however once set they need to remain so or there would be confusion. Names are labels given to objects that have the same grouping or kind, and as long as we use the right name for the right object, our name is always true.

‘You are sure to get truth if you can but name the kind rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything of that kind without exception.’

In the end, philosophy needs to give us a theory that will affect out lives, giving us something almost tangible that we can hold on to and use. Pragmatism is not strictly speaking a philosophical theory of itself, but more of a lens through which all other theories must pass. It grants an idea to be true, and then asks, so what? What definite difference will this idea make to me in my life, if I were to believe it or chose not to believe it. It must always be remembered that all previous truths must be affected as little as possible when incorporating new beliefs.

‘We must find a theory that will work, and that means something extremely difficult, for our theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences.’ 

 In science, there are often two or more competing theories which attempt to explain the same phenomenon or situation. In times like this, we should look as much as possible to the explanation that incorporates all previously held truths, while at the same time accurately predicting new experience. This is a rather easy thing to do. We are naturally disposed to incorporate the theory which conform to our preconceived notions, and thus reject the one which changes our previous truths more.

Truth has a certain ‘cash-value’ in pragmatism. Truths pay. They pay because they lead us towards some way of predicting our next experiences. The truths that pay more, help us more, by leading us towards worthwhile moments in our experience. Pragmatism is a name for a verification process of our ideas and beliefs: truth is largely made up of other truths. It is a lens through which all other theories must pass, in order for us to incorporate them into our belief system.

Experience has a way of ‘boiling over’, which is to say that it forces us to correct our beliefs due to new experiences happening, which do not conform to what we believed before. While the facts may change in our situations, our use of truth also does.

‘The “facts” themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.’

 Beliefs make us act, and as they do so so, they bring with them new experiences which themselves redefine the belief’s guiding our actions. This may be likened to Berkeley’s descriptions of matter: people thought he was denying its existence. Similarly, pragmatism was accused of denying truth, but clearly just redefined the word to mean something other than copying a stagnant reality.

Copying reality is really not important. Who cares if our beliefs copy reality, if what we really want is to be able to use our beliefs to guide us to where we want to be? And to do so through this persisting reality that we seem to be experiencing through our sensory perceptions.

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* This post is adapted from Pi Alpha, the first embodiment of Pi.  In the transition to Pi Beta, the name of the author was unfortunately lost.  His identity would be a welcome addition - if anyone can help.

Picture Post #48: Philosophic Reflections on a Lunar View of Earth

Image Credit: NASA/JSC  This view taken  July 20, 1969,  from the Apollo 11 spacecraft shows the Earth rising above the moon's horizon. 

Posted by Keith Tidman

Half a century after the Apollo 11 astronauts stepped onto the heavily pockmarked moon, a quarter of a million miles away, much of the world has recently been savoring again the grandeur of the achievement. 

The feat symbolized humankind’s intrepid instincts. To venture into space as explorers once riskily did across Earth’s threatening oceans and landmasses. To satisfy a gnawing curiosity, placing footprints, as those astronauts did, onto unknown and little-known shores.

From this comparatively short distance, Earth still looks startlingly small and lonely — even humble, given its cloaking by the atmosphere. How might the image of our planet change, then, as cameras peel back even farther: from elsewhere in the Milky Way and well beyond? After all, distances in space eventually become light-years.

As Earth shrinks with distance, does the meaningfulness of our planet and its inhabitants shrink in parallel, in the vast cosmic backdrop? Or do, say, the ‘volume and mass’ of what fundamentally matters about us rebelliously remain the same, no matter Earth’s size in the surrounding expanse? 

A rebelliousness that, one might submit, emerges from a web of human ‘consciousness’ that stretches around the planet — the collective synapses of seven billion people ceaselessly firing: the churn of dreams, imaginings, creations.

The seeming peacefulness here is just that: ‘seeming’. The pacific panorama masks the authentic nature of Earth: roiling with both natural and human activity. The phantom tranquility conceals one particular instinctual human behaviour: successive wars filling millennia of history. One has to wonder what in the human genome leads mankind to war to remedy differences and quench hegemonic cravings.

As we gaze, from moon’s vantage point, upon the orb of Earth, with its thin coating of air and water, we are starkly reminded of how vulnerably brittle the Earth’s environment is. And the responsibility humanity has as active guardians, to nurture the planet as the planet symbiotically nurtures us. Critical to the survival of our species.

What happens if we poison or exhaust the planet? Or will nature itself, being perhaps indifferent to humanity and coolly subjecting us to its whim, thereby render the planet uninhabitable, leading to another major extinction event? Are we only renters, not owners? Has the lunar walk deceived us into thinking we can leave Earth behind and inhabit somewhere else? Is that humanity’s imperative?

Is there a solemnity about the rearward-looking scene of a distanced Earth — an evocation of awe, prompting reflection? Is there ‘an aloneness’, too? The silence of space contrasts with the known cacophony of Earth, the latter a buzzing hive of devices that magnify our voices and boisterously shout our presence. Will that cacophony continue or ultimately end?

Anyone whose culture might have included the pre-digital-age children’s game of marbles might nostalgically recognise, from this lunar distance, the surface appearance of Earth, with the gauzy, seemingly chaotic swirling patterns on Earth’s surface. Our mind’s eye might give recognisable form to those patterns.

Future generations will grasp, better than us, how this one step on another cosmic body, however craggy and nearby it is, served to spur far more ambitious tours through space, whether by human beings or sophisticated thinking apparatuses — to face down the harsh environment of space as we  scratch our exploratory itch.

PP #48: Philosophic Reflections on a Lunar View of Earth

This view taken  July 20, 1969,  from the Apollo 11 spacecraft shows the Earth rising
above the moon's horizon. (Image credit: NASA/JSC)

Posted by Keith Tidman

Half a century after the Apollo 11 astronauts stepped onto the heavily pockmarked moon, a quarter of a million miles away, much of the world has recently been savoring again the grandeur of the achievement. Reaffirmation of the ‘giant leap for mankind’ legendarily beamed back to Earth, and the ambitious revisualisation of our space-based destiny and vistas.

The feat symbolised humankind’s intrepid instincts. To venture into space, as Earth-bound explorers once riskily did across threatening oceans and landmasses. To satisfy a gnawing curiosity, placing footprints, as these resilient astronauts did, onto unknown and little-known shores. And in the doing, be in awe of the oneness and most-fundamental architecture of humanity — the very nature of our being.

From this comparatively short distance, Earth still looks startlingly small and lonely — even humble, given its cloaking by the atmosphere. Yet, humankind might discover it isn’t alone; the cosmos brims with habitable planets. In that endeavour, how might the image of our planet change, then, as cameras peel back even farther: from elsewhere in the Milky Way and well beyond? As distances in space turn into light-years.

As Earth shrinks with distance, does the meaningfulness of our planet and its inhabitants shrink in parallel, in the vast cosmic backdrop, contesting humankind’s immodestly self-styled honorific of ‘exceptional’? Does our reality change? Or do, say, the ‘volume and mass’ of what fundamentally matters about us — our purpose — rebelliously remain unaffected, defining our place in the larger scheme, no matter Earth’s size in the surrounding cold expanse? 

A rebelliousness that, one might submit, emerges from a web of human ‘consciousness’ that stretches around the planet — the neurons and synapses (connectomes) of seven-and-a-half billion people ceaselessly firing: the stuff of dreams, imaginings, creations. Integral, perhaps, to a larger cosmic consciousness: and again, the stuff of dreams, imaginings, creations.

The seeming peacefulness in the image at top is just that: ‘seeming’. The pacific panorama masks the true nature of Earth: roiling with both natural and human activity. The phantom tranquility conceals one of our instinctual human behaviours: successive wars filling millennia of history. One wonders what idiosyncratically in the human genome leads mankind to war to remedy differences and trifling grievances, as well as quench hegemonic cravings. All the while paradoxically juxtaposed with the astounding complexities of humankind’s diverse civilisations and cultures.

As we gaze, from moon’s vantage point, upon the orb of Earth, with its thin coating of air and water, we are reminded of how vulnerably brittle the Earth’s environment is. Especially at the environment’s intersections with not-uncommonly remorseless technology. Existential risks abound. We’re reminded of the responsibility humanity has as active (proactive) guardians, to nurture the planet as the planet symbiotically nurtures us. Critical, we might agree, to the survival and continued evolution of our species.

What happens if we misguidedly, even disinterestedly, poison or exhaust the planet, as it hangs precariously in space? Or might nature, perhaps indifferent to humanity and coolly subjecting us to its whim, itself render the planet uninhabitable — leading to another major extinction event? Are we only renters, not owners? Did the lunar visit introduce a new imperative: to leave Earth behind and inhabit somewhere else?

Is there a solemnity about the rearward-looking scene of a distanced Earth — an awe that prompts reflection? A scene made all the more evocative by our believing that Earth is immersed in a sort of cosmic sea — of dark matter, dark energy, quantum fluctuations, and more. Is there the perception of ‘aloneness’, too, our seemingly distanced from everyone and everything else in that cosmic sea? The silence of the gaping, inky space contrasts with the cacophony of Earth, the latter a hive of devices that magnify our voices and echo our presence. Will that cacophony continue, or ultimately go silent?

In that presence, we marvel that humankind, dwelling on the comparatively tiny planet seen from the lunar perspective, nevertheless has the cognitive wherewithal to ponder and increasingly understand the cosmology of the whole universe: its beginning, its evolution, its current circumstances, its future. A study in the making, propelled by an irresistible impulse to know.

Anyone whose culture might have included the pre-digital-age children’s game of marbles may nostalgically recognise, from this lunar distance, the surface appearance of Earth, with its gauzy, chaotically swirling patterns. We admire its familiarly abstract beauty. All the while suspecting that there’s order interweaving the deception of chaos. Surrounding this marble-like Earth is a bewildering stillness and blackness — a blackness majestically interrupted, however, by galaxies and stunning phenomena like the Pillars of Creation.

Future generations will grasp, better than us, how this one step on another cosmic body, however craggy and nearby the moon is, served to spur far more ambitious tours through space, whether by human beings or sophisticated thinking apparatuses — to face down the harsh environment of space as we inexorably scratch our exploratory itch.