Some Views of the Time Problem

Van Riper Benjamin W.

Description

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The effort to distinguish clearly between the philosophical and the scientific problem, and to understand the relation between the two, is a strictly modern product. The earlier Greeks thought nothing of having a cosmological theory that was in flat contradiction to their metaphysis. The former was Opinion It was inductive, realistic, concrete, sensory: the latter was truth it was deductive, rational. The cosmology could be understood by anybody; the real truth only by the initiated. Even Parmenides had highly complex teachings as to the movements of the heavenly bodies; on the other hand he was perfectly certain from a rational standpoint that motion was quite impossible. And if many people even today seem to have analogous water-tight compartments in their minds, we shall probably have to admit that it is a more sophisticated distinction, not a naive one. But we have not yet told the whole story. Not only did the ancient and medieval thinkers entertain at the same time a priori truth and scientific opinion, but they complicated matters generally by the introduction of an a priori science which therefore occupied a sort of intermediate position so far as subject-matter and general validity was concerned. It was in this a priori science, however that the evolution theory in modern times arose.14 On the side of pure philosophical thought there had been, since the time of Plato, no room for talk of ontological development; the orthodox thinkers were bound by the whole movement of history to deny that change could be ultimate. But, it seems, from every other manner of man there came now and then suggestions of world develop ment Of a more or less definite sort, which found expression in Astronomy, Botany, Biology, etc., as well as in philosophies such as that of Leibnitz mentioned above.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Forgotten Books
• Date de parution: 27 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780243686827
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

D

F

D I S S E RTATI O N L OF D L

B E NJ A

M E N A S H A

S

O

RIP E R

SIN

C OOL

II

I V

V

V I

H isto r y

C O NT E NT S

PART I

GE N E AL I S SU E

t h e p h i osop h ical idea

time

EFF E T OF T H E D O T R E OF EVO L U T O T H E P RO BL EM C h nge time T h e philosop h ical t h e scienti c problem The idea that c h ange may be of relations only Time and change correlative

RE LAT V T Y OF T M E T H E S P E I OUS P R E S E T O f our estimates of time T h time itsel to consciousnesse relativity The Obj ective undament um t h e time series Kant on the time di r ection The question of t h e i r reversibility the series Idealistic E te r alism

M E TA APH S L C H A R A T E R OF T I Not an ontological continuum

E

REL A T IO OF T H E P R E S E N T T O C HAN E The specious presen t h e o ly real there present or many L dd B radley

T H E U

V E RS AL T

NE E SS T Y OF T H E T M E R ELAT O

PART II

A C O M ON OPA IS F T H E V I E WS O F T I M HEL D B Y B E R S O

A I

II III I V

B

I II

III

C

I II III I V V V I

P RO ES S OR C ON E P T ION M t for theoral Argume E xistence

the Timeless

The Presupposition T in Knowledge and H is Conception of the Prese t T he Implications a Real H istory

P ROF E SSOR

C ON E P T ION

H is Theory the Intel ect as a H Idea Intensiveisproof of is D M g tude Its relation quality conscious states Its explanation by an unnu eric multiplicity

C ON E PTUA L T I ME I D E NTI A L W H S PA E If only form of homogeneity is possible And if Space is that form

REL ATION OF N E SS OF

D UR EE P GE I S T ES L E N

Geistes

T O T H E T MELE S

F UN TION PE R E P T ION P UR E M EM OR Y A ND T HE GE IS T I E GE E NWA T S U E SSION AND T HE C ONS IOUSN E SS O F S U E S ION D E R EE S O F D U T IO O F T ELE S SN E S REL AT ION O F S P IT

B oth men accused dualism B ergson made an eternalist by oppos ng writers Relation time order cau e and ef ect

A S P E C T S OF T H E TI ME PR O B LEM

The vast amount scussion t h at has centered in modern t h ought around the idea evolu tion and development h as almost raised anew t h e whole ancient problem Of t h time and te nature h e Slightly less ancient one of its relation to e perience The Absol tist is sure there is nothi g in View of the world that is in any way inconsistent wit h the fact of development in the concrete r ealm of phenomena t h e E equally surevolutionist is h at the Absolutist denies in one breat h what he a rms in the next The Absolutist insists that to reg r d c h ange and development as ult mate makes the ve r y conception of such a thing impossible and ab surd t h e E volutionist replies that to refuse to do so is to stamp the whole vast fact as illusion and sham T his debate may safely be regarded as the central interest in present philosophical discussion Professor Windelband has su med up essential e ort Greek p h changeThe cause rch for what is changeless ilosophy as the se and must in the last an lysis it seemed a c h angeless ground and to t h i erencs ground th ngs whether by slow process or by happy guess is the ruling problem of ancient thought co rse it tu r ns out to be a di cult logical exercise to deduce change from p r em that do not contain it or vice versa and so it genera y transpires that either change or permanence must be condemned in toto as illu sion B ut however intimately time and change may be related it is evident that the problem in this simple form scarcely touches the que stion of nature time since both sides assume it as real without inq ring the conditions its be ng so Temporal change and temporal change lessness are eac h essentially temporal af airs and the E asleatics quite much as the assume the reality time O f course the change t h el change is involved in time it etc is future to past a t real c ange but t s the E all their passion for changelessnessleatics with did not think to deny and fo r that their vethe go d reason r y conception of changelessness implied that minimum amount of change They opposed a succession simi a r moments to a succession of dis similar ones and t h ng of the nature is says not succession itsel Plato and A ristotle approach nearest to the modern problem The ormer became in his later ph osophy a ittle suspicious of pp pp L J

S O ME VI E W S

TI ME PROB LEM

earlier attempts to get change into the world of t ngs hrough the simple participation of empty space in the changeless and provided to faci tate the di cu t transition even here the princi ples of change and changelessness are given no essential y new form be sure he condemns the world of time as inferior and u e l but the eternal world with which he contrasts it is sti a rea m temporal changelessness a t meless e stence the modern sense the word In some translations at least he is even made to speak of world Ideas as timeless but there is obvious rea son in the conte t nor in the drift hought regard th s as anything essential y d ferent from the Older E leatic temporal identity Aristot e narrowly escapes the modern problem Change and move ment he understands as ch racteristic Of imperfection In the struggle Of matter to realize form there is cha ge and all that it i plies B ut in the h ghest heaven there is only form pure and c ngeless and t s eternal principle gives reality to the lower world as P ofessor B ergson has remarked the Aristotle s ph losophy is related to the material world as etern ty is related to time B ut far all this theory the eternal may still be interpreted simply as temporal lack change just as in the case Plato B u t once at least Aristotle becomes d ssatis ed with t s s mple alternative H e suggests that change and movement are enough make the reality Of time that before time can be real the change must be nombr and t s mplies consciousness In wh ch case there could be such hing as time if the soul did e ist This he considered make time absolutely relative since the soul p ssessed nece sary reality B ut suggestion does contain the conception hat ti e is rel tive Unfortunately however he follow the ide its consequences and however grea t may be the charm Of nding the begi nings everyt ng in Greece we must still ad t that Aristotle was not a K ntian transcendentalist F modern time rom Aristotle perhaps even to H ume and Kant there occurred no systematic development the time problem nds many bri ia t isolated conceptions but little tendency emph size them even on the part philo ophers themselve from whom t ey

L C

C

p

A SP E T S OF T HE TI ME PRO B LEM

came The Christian conception Of eternal life in the future involves no new concept time as such Indeed the very fact hat it is located in the future shows how it is removed from a conception timeless presence however an article by M r in for the claim that real timelessness may properly be regarded as past o r ch ef concern of future And course the the middle age was with this very world view so that the philosophy the whole period makes same general assumption ultimate fact time that characterized the Christian and reek conceptions O f the isol ted individual conceptions we need notice o y a few of the more important In Plotinus there is the same sort of va ueness and ambiguity that one learns to e pect from mystics in general To be sure he look d up to an intense ecstatic state unity with the Ultimate as the completest s tate of existence possible to man and in t s sort Of e perience particular relations time and place tend to melt away And on the other hand the content t s higher l fe spreads its details out in time B ut in spite t s terminology I doubt that it can at all be inte r preted as a theory timelessness O time as such is not real forf course consciousness in such a state of mind but then no particular thing whatever is at that time real as distinguished from other thi ngs because there is no distin uish ng activity going on there Time is no e ception to th s rule but neither on the other hand is i t a distinct problem to say that Plotinus considered time as merely a phenomenal r elation sh p would like saying that since Th es regarded everything as made Of water he must have regarded space and time as aqueous entities And the god Of Plotinus is to all intents and purposes the Ideal World of Plato the etern ty of which we have already construed as really only in nite time in a world where change is forbidden Plotinus if this be true does not progress so far as Aristotle toward a really ideal view of time There can be no doub t that S t Augustine saw distinctly the g r eat di culties in the way systematic view time H ere for the rst time appear many the haunting parado es in which subsequent philosophy has found it such a pleasure to revel and which too it has taken a century or so of modern thought to dispel The fact that a temporal world cannot e ist a durationless present is itsel if taken y

S O ME V I E W S O F T HE TI ME PROB LEM

seriously a nal blow to any mecha cal or mathematical view time T s evidently Augustine saw very plai y although h e did far toward a solution The world was not rescued from danger a nihilation with w ch a geometrical present t eatened it until in odern times time was made a derivative consciousn ss T rocedure Augustine anticipated at least to the e tent seeking in psyc c phenomena a solution for d culties It does not seem to have occurred to to ask what sort Of existence he would have in that case to attribute to consciousness itself And th s cour e would have to be included in any complete View of time With the beginn ngs Of modern thought we a gro suspicion even among the Plato sts that the bare abstract identiti s Plato are powerless to supply real change and process B runo and Nicolas de look to the principle Of vit lity to carry over from event to another The world is a li ing being and like us can grow and grow old r Kepler escapes the identities the G eeks in a oc trin e of active force and B endetti accord ng to B ergson showed as against Aristotle that the idea movement is no longer absurd if agrees to the e istence an inner life through change In this there is the tendency to appeal one s own inner experience settle the problem the outer world the tendency th t has been charac modern thought B ut it is also evident that these e rly attempts touch upon the time problem o y indirectly through that causality and change B ut even that is enough to make their con ri noteworthy D escartes stands at the turn the road H is physics the outer world is essentia y Greek It is systematic and cle r cut H gis deali with consciousness is origin and empirical This ds compl te e pression in his hopeless dualism Of mind and matter Unfortunately the development problem time fell in opinion wholly th e side extension rather than that Of thought H e therefore regarded it as essential y equivalent to the movement and change hat outer world M ost his philosophyfollowers developed this phase at the e pense his more dynam c conception th e world which m ght have been more fruit ul And there has b en no lack in recent years Of p losophers in a similar way ident fy time with change and movement Whether such an identi ca tion can

O

C

pp

p L

V

ASP E T S OF T HE TI ME PROB LE

be successfully carried through is a di ere t matter which can hardly be discussed here S ttedabstract logical world would have ad pinoza s of interpreta tio in terms of ultimate timelessness but if he ever held that conception he did not work at any length its relation to consciousness world T be sure there would be no change in the simple logical interdependence of the elements his world this was also true of the ideal world Plato And mere lack change in th ngs is by no means synonymous with a t r anscendence time relations S the latter it was soonhin sight pinoza came wi lost to view in supreme e fort to overcome D escartes dualism B ut L eib tz took the question more seriously and drew some conclusions With him the outer merely mechanical world D escartes disappears and all reality is regarded as having i nnerness always consciousness at least someth ng analogous to it And time turns out even in his world of pre stablished harmony and devel to depend upon the know ng subj ects whose range is l mited the M wonad of monads who can see h niteole i connection t ings at once there is no nal or existential development It is evident that this if carried out to its ultimate consequences very closely to Kant s conception of t h e transcendent character the ego far Of course as time is concerned O therwise t h ere are fundamental di erences that almost obscure what similarity there is between the two theories And the other hand perhaps this very Sim larity in their views tim e as relative to consciousness is partly be accounted for by the fact that hrough Wol Kant was early brought under the influence L eibnitz And we must also notice that this same brief suggestion Of L anticipates the whole conceptioneibn tz psychological present as it has been worked out in recent tho ught especially by Professor James and Professor Royce The mechan cal Side D escartes theory reached perhaps its most famous expression in t h e work S i r Isaac Newton and to a less degree his predecessor Clark Newton accepted the theory concept time as a simple phase the outer mechanical order sort continu um existing its right and mov ng at a perfectly const nt velocity All our measurements time are ulti ately measurements move p z C pp L D p L z pp pp