I can’t answer for them because I don’t know what they would say.
There is no relationship between time and infinity. Not ontologically or teleologically or any other way.
Any change we care to measure. From the perspective of the measurer.
What are the tools of philosophy?
I have answered this question countless times. “Reasonableness” is not the only way to measure an argument. In fact, if by reasonableness, you do not mean logic, then please tell me what you do mean, for I will not be able to answer you until I know.
You have ignored my arguments. if I could demonstrate that your argument (which you have not given) that Wittgy was awesome was self-contradictory, would you hold fast to that argument? Would that be “reasonable”? The fact is that you avoid any actual argument, so we’ll never know, will we?
And you are calling that an argument?
And my point is that calling time a “fragment of infinity” is good prose, but has no literal meaning.
And still you miss the point. Logic isn’t everything. To say that it is when it isn’t and then complain that it isn’t everything is just…well, I’ll leave it at that.
No, they speak about a large explosion that is inferred from the fact that everything we can perceive in the universe seems to be expanding away from some generally singular location. The idea that this explosion was “out of nothing at all” or the “beginning of time” is just metaphysical-religious speculation on top of the simple scientific observation of the motion of (perceived) things in the (known) universe.
Maybe there was lots of other stuff out there before and during the big bang - how would we know? Physics is not saying that there was “nothing” and then “something”. The scientific notion of the big bang does not mean this, nor does the notion itself imply this.
How do you know they don’t know? I have already claimed to know perfectly well what time is: a relative measure of change, from the perspective of that which measures. Everything changes, this is what it means to be a “thing”, in part; then we measure these changes from our own perspective and context (think Relativity here), by marking out units of measurement of some sort. It is as simple as that.
I am confused about what you are so confused about…
Certainly. But this demonstrates my point, not yours.
And you would not know because you did not live their lives, have their experiences, engage their relationships, have access to the precise sequence of information they did. Instead, you had your own. That is why people born and raised in 4th century China answer questions relating to value judgments [or time and change] differently from those born and raised in 21st century America.
And [as I see it] the manner in which you “demonstrate” this to us is simply to aver that it is true. As though you could take time out of your left pocket, change out of your right, hold them in your hands like stones and say, “see, everyone, there is no relationship between them.”
iambiguous wrote:
What particular change at what particular time—and from what particular perspective? That is my point. Your inclination is to take change and time up to the sky-hooks, while mine is to bring them down to earth. Or so it seems to me. But I may well be misunderstanding your point.
Okay, let’s instantiate this:
At time X John believed abortion was immoral. Then at time Y John believed abortion was moral. Then at time Z he wasn’t sure whether it was moral or immoral.
There is time and change here. What can we say about this relationship reasonably? And then having denoted this what can we further denote reasonably about these changes and the morality of abortion? Any man or woman can change his/her mind about abortion over a period of time. But no matter how many in fact do we still can’t determine if changing one’s mind from one point of view to the other is more reasonable or ethical.
It is this distinction I keep bringing up—not the logic chopping you are intent on.
Logic and epistemology certainly. And the manner in which language is employed by those gifted in both to explore, among other things, ethics and metaphysics.
Okay, regarding your charge that Warhol and Wittgenstein were charlatons, defend it using these other “measures”.
Please tell us how one can arrive at this conclusion using criteria other than discourse weighted heavily by rational premises and [concommitant] rational conclusions.
I did not state Wittgenstein was “awesome”, only that in my opinion his philosophical contributions are not those of a charlatan. My point revolves instead around the conjecture that such words as “sucks” and “awesome” and “genuine” and “fraudulent” can be but points of view. The existential points of view of daseins.
iambiguous wrote:
[i]Logic is a tool of philosophy. It establishes a rational link between a set of premises and a conclusion. Now, formal logic is not concerned with existential meaning and circumstantial context. It is concerned with analytical truths. Fine. But sooner or later with respect to arguments about Warhol, Wittgenstein and fraud the premises and the conclusions must involve the use of substantive assumptions and inferences relating to actual existential contexts. Then what? Then logic is useful only up to a point. And after that point is reached we are left with conflicting opinions that cannot be resolved.
For example, as I noted above:
One can say that Warhol was a charlatan because his art was a pale reflection of what true art is. Or one can say Warhol’s art was that of a charlatan because he was a homosexual. And I will respond by opining that one’s sexual orientation is not a reasonable measure of one’s artistic merit. That sort of conjecture seems eminently illogical to me. But what of my [or anyone’s] opinion about the relationship between Warhol’s art and “true art”? What is “reasonable” or “unreasonable” here? How useful is language in resolving this?
As I see it, saying Warhol “sucks” is different from saying he’s a “charlatan”. Different because “sucks” simply means you don’t like him. And establishing whether someone ought to like him invites considerably more inchoate arguments than in establishing whether his art is fake.
And I believe it is important to acknowledge those aspects of our lives that are beyond the reach of philosophical resolutions. And this is because they encompass what may well be the most important aspects of all: establishing what we ought to do—how we ought to behave—regarding our moral, political and asethetic interaction.
[/i]
Yes, I am. How is it not an argument?
What does “literal” mean when discussing the relationship between a particular point of view about time and the existence of time itself? We’re back to Bryan Magee again and words chasing each other around and around in circles.
I’m not saying logic is everything. On the contrary, my aim is to note just how limited “logical thinking” may well be in grappling with the most profound mysteries embedded in whatever “existence” and “human existence” may or may not “be”.
I would not know because I haven’t asked them. I don’t have to live your life to know if you like baseball.
I said there is no relationship between time and infinity, not between time and change.
What do you want to say? Time measures change. Physical change, but change. Time is not a moral idea, nor is change. I have no clue what you’re on about, here. Do you wish to apply some sort of law of physics to morality?
Epistemology is not required for morality, nor is logic. But both may be employed.
My point is this - there is a difference between an argument and its premises - they are arrived at differently, and their “reasonableness” is measured differently. We may judge an argument perfectly “reasonable” - that is, “valid” while disagreeing about the premises.
Logic is useful in evaluating arguments, and only that - correct. But to say that “existential meaning” and “circumstantial context” is not part of logic is wrong. Many a paradox has been solved by taking context into account.
It’s a strawman. You treat the sexual preference case, but not the “pale reflection” case. Of course the sexual preference case is crap - that’s a matter of definition. No one uses “charlatan” as a synonym for “homosexual”.
How can you discuss a point of view about time if you haven’t defined time?
Here’s my original beef - time measures change. It’s a measurement. Infinity is immeasurable. There is no relation between a measurement and the immeasurable. That’s not philosophy, it’s common sense.
Certainly. Infinity is just a metaphor for as of yet unexplorable, unchartable territory. We invoke the notion of infinity to attempt to represent the as yet unrepresentable (whether “out there” in the universe, or inside ourselves [think here: consciousness, spirituality, “god”, etc…]).
Yes, but that is time, “for all practical purposes”. What time is is another matter altogether. You may as well speculate as to what existence itself is as though merely noting the manner in which we treat it as a utility is as far as the mystery need go. And perhaps it is. But many philosophers and scientists are not satisfied to leave it at that.
iambiguous wrote:
Time is, among other things, profoundly mysterious. Astrophysicists speak of the “time” when a big bang burst into existence out of “nothing at all”.
Come on, either time and existence “began” at some point or they have been around eternally. The point being that arguing either perspective is simply mind-boggling. It boggles the mind, in other words, because a mere mind [the mind of each individual dasein] cannot defend either explanation without making something analogous to “metaphysical-religious” assumptions about the very nature of existence itself.
Here is a classic “answer” from theoretical physicist Paul Davis:
[b]Well, what did happen before the big bang?
Few schoolchildren have failed to frustrate their parents with questions of this sort. It often starts with puzzlement over whether space “goes on forever,” or where humans came from, or how the planet Earth formed. In the end, the line of questioning always seems to get back to the ultimate origin of things: the big bang. “But what caused that?”
Children grow up with an intuitive sense of cause and effect. Events in the physical world aren’t supposed to “just happen.” Something makes them happen. Even when the rabbit appears convincingly from the hat, trickery is suspected. So could the entire universe simply pop into existence, magically, for no actual reason at all?
This simple, schoolchild query has exercised the intellects of generations of philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Many have avoided it as an impenetrable mystery. Others have tried to define it away. Most have got themselves into an awful tangle just thinking about it.
The problem, at rock bottom, is this: If nothing happens without a cause, then something must have caused the universe to appear. But then we are faced with the inevitable question of what caused that something. And so on in an infinite regress. Some people simply proclaim that God created the universe, but children always want to know who created God, and that line of questioning gets uncomfortably difficult.
One evasive tactic is to claim that the universe didn’t have a beginning, that it has existed for all eternity. Unfortunately, there are many scientific reasons why this obvious idea is unsound. For starters, given an infinite amount of time, anything that can happen will already have happened, for if a physical process is likely to occur with a certain nonzero probability-however small-then given an infinite amount of time the process must occur, with probability one. By now, the universe should have reached some sort of final state in which all possible physical processes have run their course. Furthermore, you don’t explain the existence of the universe by asserting that it has always existed. That is rather like saying that nobody wrote the Bible: it was. just copied from earlier versions. Quite apart from all this, there is very good evidence that the universe did come into existence in a big bang, about fifteen billion years ago. The effects of that primeval explosion are clearly detectable today-in the fact that the universe is still expanding, and is filled with an afterglow of radiant heat.
So we are faced with the problem of what happened beforehand to trigger the big bang. Journalists love to taunt scientists with this question when they complain about the money being spent on science. Actually, the answer (in my opinion) was spotted a long time ago, by one Augustine of Hippo, a Christian saint who lived in the fifth century. In those days before science, cosmology was a branch of theology, and the taunt came not from journalists, but from pagans: “What was God doing before he made the universe?” they asked. “Busy creating Hell for the likes of you!” was the standard reply.
But Augustine was more subtle. The world, he claimed, was made “not in time, but simultaneously with time.” In other words, the origin of the universe-what we now call the big bang-was not simply the sudden appearance of matter in an eternally preexisting void, but the coming into being of time itself. Time began with the cosmic origin. There was no “before,” no endless ocean of time for a god, or a physical process, to wear itself out in infinite preparation.
Remarkably, modern science has arrived at more or less the same conclusion as Augustine, based on what we now know about the nature of space, time, and gravitation. It was Albert Einstein who taught us that time and space are not merely an immutable arena in which the great cosmic drama is acted out, but are part of the cast-part of the physical universe. As physical entities, time and space can change- suffer distortions-as a result of gravitational processes. Gravitational theory predicts that under the extreme conditions that prevailed in the early universe, space and time may have been so distorted that there existed a boundary, or “singularity,” at which the distortion of space-time was infinite, and therefore through which space and time cannot have continued. Thus, physics predicts that time was indeed bounded in the past as Augustine claimed. It did not stretch back for all eternity.
If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless. Unfortunately, many children, and adults, too, regard this answer as disingenuous. There must be more to it than that, they object.
Indeed there is. After all, why should time suddenly “switch on”? What explanation can be given for such a singular event? Until recently, it seemed that any explanation of the initial “singularity” that marked the origin of time would have to lie beyond the scope of science. However, it all depends on what is meant by “explanation.” As I remarked, all children have a good idea of the notion of cause and effect, and usually an explanation of an event entails finding something that caused it. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.
Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; we don’t experience them in daily life. On the scale of atoms and molecules, the usual commonsense rules of cause and effect are suspended. The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.
A typical quantum process is the decay of a radioactive nucleus. If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event “just happened” at that moment, that’s all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.
The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that “just happens” need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.
It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don’t have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.
Inevitably, scientists will not be content to leave it at that. We would like to flesh out the details of this profound concept. There is even a subject devoted to it, called quantum cosmology. Two famous quantum cosmologists, James Hartle and Stephen Hawking, came up with a clever idea that goes back to Einstein. Einstein not only found that space and time are part of the physical universe; he also found that they are linked in a very intimate way. In fact, space on its own and time on its own are no longer properly valid concepts. Instead, we must deal with a unified “space-time” continuum. Space has three dimensions, and time has one, so space-time is a four-dimensional continuum.
In spite of the space-time linkage, however, space is space and time is time under almost all circumstances. Whatever space-time distortions gravitation may produce, they never turn space into time or time into space. An exception arises, though, when quantum effects are taken into account. That all-important intrinsic uncertainty that afflicts quantum systems can be applied to space-time, too. In this case, the uncertainty can, under special circumstances, affect the identities of space and time. For a very, very brief duration, it is possible for time and space to merge in identity, for time to become, so to speak, spacelike-just another dimension of space.
The spatialization of time is not something abrupt; it is a continuous process. Viewed in reverse as the temporalization of (one dimension of) space, it implies that time can emerge out of space in a continuous process. (By continuous, I mean that the timelike quality of a dimension, as opposed to its spacelike quality, is not an all-or-nothing affair; there are shades in between. This vague statement can be made quite precise mathematically.)
The essence of the Hartle-Hawking idea is that the big bang was not the abrupt switching on of time at some singular first moment, but the emergence of time from space in an ultrarapid but nevertheless continuous manner. On a human time scale, the big bang was very much a sudden, explosive origin of space, time, and matter. But look very, very closely at that first tiny fraction of a second and you find that there was no precise and sudden beginning at all. So here we have a theory of the origin of the universe that seems to say two contradictory things: First, time did not always exist; and second, there was no first moment of time. Such are the oddities of quantum physics.
Even with these further details thrown in, many people feel cheated. They want to ask why these weird things happened, why there is a universe, and why this universe. Perhaps science cannot answer such questions. Science is good at telling us how, but not so good on the why. Maybe there isn’t a why. To wonder why is very human, but perhaps there is no answer in human terms to such deep questions of existence. Or perhaps there is, but we are looking at the problem in the wrong way.
Well, I didn’t promise to provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but I have at least given a plausible answer to the question I started out with: What happened before the big bang?
The answer is: Nothing.[/b]
Well, that’s one way to think about it. But there are lots of other ways too.
[/quote]
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Once one grapples with time and change much beyond “for all practical purposes” they either become confused or they fall back on some simplistic “theoretical” explanation where everything is “resolved” with “analysis”.
And then you post a quote explaining in a non-metaphysical/religious way why the question doesn’t make sense.
Of course people growing up on the scale we do will have minds used to causation and Newtonian physics. And that on other scales and at other times and places this was different requires difficult thinking. But as long as you don’t get the ‘time’ we talk about every day confused with the ‘time’ that physicists talk about confused, there’s no impediment to leading a full and satisfying life.
You keep making problems for yourself. There are plenty of real problems to tackle.
That quote merely takes us to the point beyond which we are still unable to go. Either philosophically or scientifically. What does it mean to say that “nothing” happened before the big bang?
In other words, Davis supplies us with an answer, not the answer.
My point has nothing whatsoever to do with either leading or not leading “a full and satisfying life.”
On the other hand, I suspect neither philosophers nor scientists have anything essential to tell us about that. What in the world does it even mean? Well, that depends on the world each individual [as dasein] actually lives in. And the uniquely subjunctive manner in which he or she thinks about it. It’s existential to the bone.
No, I keep pointing to the limitations of philosophical language regarding both value judgments and metaphysical speculation. And it’s not really a nagging problem if you don’t believe there will ever be a solution.
Besides, real problems are the kind now unfolding in Sendai, Japan. What are our problems here compared to their problems there?
Last night on the Science Channel they had a documentary that focused on the very question of time, space and existence. What came before the big bang?
They took this question seriously. In other words, they knew to take all of the proposed—“theoretical”—answers with a large serving of salt.
It means that, according to the theory, nothing in the universe that we know happened. Why does this trouble you so? It doesn’t mean that something “metaphysical” happened. It means that we have no means of describing what might have happened, or what “happened” might mean. If that leads you to god, then tell him for me I don’t really hate him, huh?
That’s not just a limit on language - language of any kind. It’s a limit on human experience - that is, we can’t even imagine what we could have experienced before the big bang. We do a lot of imagining now, but as humans.
But you would have to have lived a life that included references to baseball in order to understand what baseball is—to describe it to someone else.
And describing what baseball is is not the same thing as, say, insisting baseball is a better sport than football.
Language is often sufficient in explicating what something is. For example, it is sufficient in explaining why the nuclear reactors in Japan were damaged by the earthquake and the tsunamis. But it can never be sufficient in deciding conclusively whether we should abandon nuclear power as an energy source.
Same thing in my view. You can’t make distinctions as though “time” or “infinity” or “change” were things able to be defined and described and then fully understood. In my view, they are both profoundly mysterious relationships and points of view.
On the contrary, I wish to suggest that morality is quite the opposite of physics. Now, admittedly, physics out at the very edge here becomes purely theoretical conjecture with mathematical equations suggesting [at times] contradictory things. But morality can only be a point of view. Even regarding relationships we confront day in and day out. In other words, there is nothing the equivalent of “the laws of nature” regarding conflicts that revolve around opposing views of human virtue.
There are laws of biology that must be adhered to in performing abortions. The physiological equivalent of categorical imperatives. There are not however similar such precedents we can derive regarding the morality of performing them.
In order to successfully perform an abortion we must know how to do certain things in a certain order—a rational process. And we can measurably come closer and closer to knowing everything that must be known in order to perfrom one in the most rational manner of all.
This is not the case regarding the morality of abortion. Here we can only have conflicting points of view. That is all I have ever been suggesting here regarding any measure used to construe right and wrong behavior.
At least with time and change there seems to be a greater likelihood of closing the gap.
But I have always understood that reasonable arguments can be made from conflicting [even contradictory] premises. Why? Because the premises are often rooted in how we have been taught or come to view the world. And we can be taught or come to view abortion in contradictory ways and still have equally reasonable arguments. And that is because the premises cannot be shown to be objectively true—only true given particular assumptions.
For example, if you assume human life begins at conception then abortion is the killing of a human being. If you assume human life begins at the point of “viability” then any fetus destroyed prior to that is not the killing of a human being.
And there are reasonable arguments being made to defend both points of view. But how would philosophers/scientists make a definitve assessment of this?
But what particular [or kinds of] arguments can logic evaluate more rigorously than others? If the argument is largely dependent on “existential meaning” and “circumstantial context” it will be considerably less susceptible to logic’s value/utility.
For instance, consider the arguments of those in Japan who championed increasing the role of nuclear power in generating electrical power—last month.
Consider their arguments now.
Something changes and the arguments are forced to accomodate it. There is no one right [ethical] answer, only answers that seem more reasonable [ethical] in one context but not in another.
No one can define time, well, definitively. Or how is that different from telling us what time is? It is a dimension [like space] embedded in human interaction that has any number of practical applications.
That’s because language doesn’t decide anything. People do.
We do not share a view here. I do not find time or change mysterious at all. Infinity is a concept of such limited usefulness that I just don’t care.
There are no opposites. I think that’s your problem. You have that typically metaphysical view that things can be sensically seen in paired opposites. Is up opposite of down? Not if you drill from the North Pole to the South pole. You’ll go down for half the ride and up for half, without ever making a turn. Everything requires perspective - everything requires context to have meaning. The context of just about everything you say here is not morality or science - it’s how you feel about it. You think you’re talking about “the limits of philosophical language” but you’re really talking about how upset you are that nothing we experience is certain. Some philosopher (perhaps) has broken your heart - and this is what Existentialism is - the philosophy of the broken-hearted.
The original E’s were heartbroken by WWII. I cannot blame them for that, any more than I can blame you. But it doesn’t make for very good philosophy.
Nyet. Laws of science are merely descriptions themselves. We have no better claim to certainty with them than with any other laws. We can’t even be certain that up is the opposite of down. The world we live in is not linear.
In the most effective manner of all. I don’t have to understand the first thing about the theorems of mathematics to balance my checkbook.
That is, again, not a limit of language, moral or otherwise. Language won’t save the day, nor will science. Nothing will.
Not if we keep asking “why” long after we know the answer.
Nothing is objectively true. We wouldn’t know “objectivity” if it hit us in the nether parts.
No it won’t. The context of the premises is all that counts. The argument form itself is just mathematics. The premises don’t have to “objectively true”. They merely have to be accepted as true. Logic has no interest in the basis upon which we accept the truth of the premises.
What has changed?
Sure, someone can. It’s the measurement of change.
This is not a post about the nature of time, but you keep arguing about what time is.
You are answering all the questions, but the answers are totally irrelevant here. The OP is about “giving answers.” Clearly Iambiguous has a sort of anthropological streak. She is interested in how different groups of people answer these questions (i.e. what is time?) differently. In this thread, you are just another person giving an answer. You are so sure that your answer is better than the detective’s answer, and you refuse to discuss anything else, because it is “beyond the limits of language” or something like that. But you are just another person giving an answer, another culture group, perhaps an aborigine.
So you don’t find anything mysterious about Time. You’ve got it all figured out. Great. But are you sure that you are on the right message board?
Ah, the answers are irrelevant. That’s good news. That means I can stop giving them. I was wondering how I was going to get out of this. But if it’s antrhopology, it is not I who is on the wrong board.
Iambigous, you can never trust a perspectivist. They will never give you a straight answer. :-"
You seem to be saying that there is no certainty, that there are no absolutes. OK. So we have to say “Ultimately, I don’t know”. Without being flippant, I have to ask, so what? The approach isn’t to be certain, but to find enough predictability to function in the absence of KNOWING. It may be likely that the universe is full of novelty and sponteniety that will never allow us to find certainty, that there will never be absolutes, that we will always be in a state of not knowing some “ultimate”. But that doesn’t mean we can’t know enough to get through the day. We have endless imagination more than capable of asking unanswerable questions. It does not invalidate the questions for which there are useful and workable answers.
Of course the answers aren’t always and everywhere irrelevant. The answers you are giving are totally relevant elsewhere on these boards.
My point is that this topic is not “The Nature of Time.” This topic is “Monk’s Wittgenstein.” Monk’s Wittgenstein is not interested in the mechanics of duration or infinity.
I didn’t say it was Anthropology, I referred to “an anthropological streak.” A streak.
Which is more problematic for philosophy, an anthropological streak or a stubborn unwillingness to consider conceptions of time different from one’s own.
