Kant defined space as “the form of the external intuition”, and time as “the form of the internal intuition”. However –
it’s said that “time flies when you’re having fun”, and time also seems to go faster when you’re older. In the words of Einstein, “Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute; sit on a hotplate for a minute and it seems like an hour; that’s relativity.”
If time is an internal form, why does it not run equally constantly? I can only think that maybe we forget about – are distracted from – time when we enjoy something outside ourselves. But then what kind of “form” of the internal is time when we need not be conscious of it?
And the same goes for being distracted by the internal in such a way that we ignore the external. (Like when you run into a wall while philosophising.) But then you seem not conscious of time as well while internal.
Is the phenomena I present accurate?
Does it pose a problem for Kant’s definition?
Time is constant or minds are not. When distracted, time continues to run but our awareness of time passing is forgotten as we enjoy whatever is causing the distraction.
No, and no to both your questions. It depends on how you view Kant’s COPR as to how you consider him to actually view time in his ‘everything exists in time and space’ manifesto. I cannot immediately think of any view that holds that any form of internal intuition need be constant in a conscious sense.
Kant wouldn’t want you to begin your thinking with the premise that time is somehow detached form our “selves” or in any sense imbued, naturally or categorically, in the world around us.
I think, perhaps, your misunderstanding stems from a misunderstanding of the trascendental ideality- and for this I can forgive you as nobody really gets it. Suffice it to say that, again by popular opinion, Kant does away with any need to consider time in an empirical or conceptual framework. How well he does this, however, is up to you to determine.
I wonder, also, what makes you think Kant expects such intuitions to be constant. Secondly, I wonder how an a priori sensibility, such as time essentially is for Kant could ever be criticised for a “fault” it exhibits a posteriori. If you have good reasons for either of those thoughts I would enjoy hearing them (sincerely).
Well, I considered that in my OP, but it seems one can also lose time being distraced by something internal. So how is time the form of the internal intuition, when it can be distracted by the internal?
Not sure, Obi Wan. [I always think of that when I see your screen name. May I call you that? ]
Maybe I’m using more of the Aristotelian thought of time being the multitude of motion – a unit of movement as a time counter sort of thing.
If Kant doesn’t see time as being what is measured by movement, I’m not sure what is his experience of time. Otherwise it would just seem to be experiences following upon experiences with none of more or less duration. But I suppose mental measurement of time is iffy in concrete experience; in fact that was a premise in my OP.
It seems as if time were a defective measure of motion in the internal intuition. But this is strange, in that the more experiences we have to experience, the shorter the time seems – not more; and time slows down when there is little to experience.
By the way: If Kant didn’t believe time was external, whence the legend of his walks being so regular that villagers could set their clocks by his passing? But then, maybe it’s just a legend. And clocks tell time, not the intuition it seems – maybe Kant recognised that.
Kant’s problem here, one of them, is in asking a bad question to begin with. Is time internal or external? Besides the obvious (isn’t it?) question of “What the fuck does that even mean?”, there are other problems. But, what the fuck does that even mean?
Kant is treating time as if it is an entity - it occupies some type of “place”. Time is not a thing - it’s a measurement we make - it’s the noun form of something we do. It’s a figure of speech - it has no literal meaning as a noun. We do this very often with language, and ignore this all too often in philosophy.
Line a hundred human brains up and tell me the difference between them. Okay, that’s a bit silly, but humans have similar brains, just like we have similar noses - compared to those of other animals. We like to measure, and to some extent, at least, we must - just as any bird of prey, for instance, must. There is a variance in that ability across the cohort of eagles, and of humans. But you know, if it works, it works. You go home with a mouse in your talons, or you don’t.
Hey, some people have almost no ability to do math. Does that make math “external”? We use brain functions to systematise sense data. Since the senses of humans are more or less similar, our language relflects this. But we are not clocks, for crying out loud. Okay, give me a nice “heartbeat” metaphor. But it’s only that.
We perceive external phenomena with “internal” senses and brains. Since those experiences are roughly similar, we can have language, and we can call similar experiences by name. We can measure movement and change with commonly held conventions.
The walking around his village thing is pure myth as far as I know. You can call me whatever you like, you geek.
One way to describe how Kant views time (and I agree with Faust that basically, this is an academic excercise and I do not suggest taking Kant seriously on this, despite its philosophical brilliance) is to think of how we view a house. Actually scrap that, there is no way I can do that example without drawing it for you and I am not so strong with microsoft paint. If you come across someone who might know about it, ask them to draw you the Kant-time-perception house model. Basically it attempts to show how time cannot exist other than as a series of moments, no fluidity of motion, and that this can be compared to how a camera lens views and records the world.
Kant actually spends a long time in the transcendental aesthetic laying out how he views time. He has three arguments that set up the precons for his conclusions that time is a priori and about another three which give us the idea that time is the condition of the inner inituition and both without empirical reality or conceptual foundation. What is ironic about this, however, is that his arguments remain compatible with the view that time is a very understandable part of a mind independent setup.
When I first studied the first argument Kant uses to show time is an a priori sensibility, we spent about 10 hours on it. [a30.b46] for your reference.
Moreso, Kant goes on to try and demonstrate that experience would be completely impossible without us imposing a sense of time upon our perceptions. “In it alone is all [quite] actuality of appearances/perceptions possible”. It’s worth asking yourself what type of claim he is making here (i.e. ontological?).
The problem is, Faust, that you are making far too much sense. You’re not being analytical enough, because if you were, you would find Kant’s justification for time being an apriori sensibility to be very very tempting, and not a situation of “Huh?!” which is the intuitive response. I know this because I have an idea of how you look at arguments; weren’t you tempted by it?
You say not to take Kant’s argument seriously – just an academic exercise you call it, but say Kant has philosophical brilliance. You argued about a priori sensability for 10 hours, but can’t or won’t lay down the basic premises of the argument. Sure I should probably read the Transcendental Aesthetic; it might explain the questions I laid down, it might not. I really have little respect for the guy and his deistic agenda, and I might as well drop the subject if I need to read him for arguments on such things as atomistic time. His reasons will fold eventually – they always do. Don’t know why the moderns go for him, which makes me wonder if there’s something to him though. Maybe they were just taught his work in class and they tried to save philosophy by trying to rectify his works.
…Yeah, have to read that Transcendental Aesthetic.
Ah well if you haven’t read the TA, or a explanation of it, it’s hard to discuss. You’re asking me to lay out the “basic premises” (your words) of his arguments (all three of them in the TA, and more elsewhere) for the a priori aspect of time:
Kant says, since we presuppose representations of simultaneity in the moments of experience that we perceive that they necessarily are mind-imposed.
Kant says, since we cannot accept a situation in which we think about our perceptions of things in the world without positing a sense of time upon them, time is necessarily a priori and experience permissive.
Kant says, upon analysis, our (necessary) understandings about the nature of time already mean that it must necessarily be a priori rather than a posteriori. He claims that in order for the understanding of time we already have to be apodictic, or at least, for the principles of time to be apodictic or even remotely so, it is entirely necessary for this measurement to be lent a priori.
There, but I strongly recommend not reading Kant before reading someone like Dicker on Kant.
We never argued about it during those ten hours - god no. That was just ten hours of trying to understand what he meant.
Edit after your edit: Re his deistic agenda - but that’s the great thing, he single handedly destroys God. It’s thanks to Kant that 99% of philosophers now do not believe in God. In his attempts to prove god, he gave us the very best reasons not to have faith. That’s another thread though.
Georges Dicker, Kant’s theory of knowledge : an analytical introduction?
I will run pitter-pat as fast as my feet can carry me to the local library.
Not sure why though. What i really need is an anachronistic commentary by Aquinas on Kant.
Is this the virtue of studiousness or the vice of curiosity?
Because you asked me to state premises. Dicker goes to great lengths to provide expositions of Kant’s arguments - i.e. reconstructions. This is something an analytic philosopher does.
If you’re not into being analytical then you’ll have a real headache with Kant; better to stick to reading Nietzche and Sartre while wandering the halls of the Tate Modern. Give it a try, Dicker does a good job of explaining the most complicated writings of that century.
Obw - if you’re asking me if i have read Dicker, or some similar treatment - no I haven’t. I am capable of my own analysis. But, of course, it’s impossible to read much after Kant without reading about Kant. He would have singelhandedly destroyed philosophy if everyone took him seriously.
mrn - it is possible to be philosophically “brilliant” and not be worthy of being taken seriously. This is, however, exactly what gives philosophy a bad name. A writer can, like Hegel, have the premisies wrong, but reason well. Kant has bad questions, bad premises and bad arguments. I understand Ob’s point, but, perhaps like you, think this is not a very good example. I rather think that it is because of Hume that so few believe in God - that this would be the case if Kant had not written anything. But historically, since Kant tried about everything with about every major question, there is a sense in which Ob’s claim is true. Unfortunate, though.
I just wonder if that might be why you think nothing about his work tempting in the least- maybe you have not seen it charitably illuminated? Then again, you might just understand it better than me.
Re: Hume, yes… definitely a possibility. The great thing about Kant’s work on god was his minute attention to detail rather than Hume’s more assumption based methodology. It was also a political point, as Kant’s footprints were seen as bigger than Hume’s, for good or ill.
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