Is time just a line or something more?

[Ripheus27]

One of the qualities of mystical experience is that it cannot be described adequately. Mysticism transcends language. There have been wonderful descriptions of mystical experience from Christian mystics, Buddhist mystics, and Hindu mystics. But the universal understanding is that these descriptions can only approximate the real experience.

All of this is open to debate.

William James, (James, 1958, 292–93) deemed “ineffability” or indescribability an essential mark of the mystical. It is not always clear, however, whether it is the experience or its alleged object, or both, that are to be ineffable. A logical problem with ineffability was noted long ago by Augustine, “God should not be said to be ineffable, for when this is said something is said. And a contradiction in terms is created, since if that is ineffable which cannot be spoken, then that is not ineffable which is called ineffable” (Augustine, 1958, pp. 10–11). To say that X is ineffable is to say something about X, which contravenes ineffability. This problem has been raised anew by Alvin Plantinga (Plantinga, 1980, 23–25) and Keith Yandell (Yandell, 1975).

Several responses to this problem are possible for the mystic. One is to avoid speech altogether and remain silent about what is revealed in experience. Mystics, however, have not been very good at this. A second possibility is to distinguish first-order from second-order attributions, where “ineffability” both is a second-order term and refers solely to first-order terms. To say, then, that something is “ineffable” would be to assert that it could not be described by any first-order terms, “ineffability” not being one of them. A third possibility is to say, for example, that “X is ineffable” is really a statement about the term ‘X,’ saying about it that it fails to refer to any describable entity. A fourth possibility lies in the ongoing negation of whatever is said about X, ad infinitum, in what Michael Sells has called an infinite “unsaying” or taking back of what has been said (See Sells, 1994, Chapter 1).

An example of unsaying can be found in the endless negations in some Madyamika and Zen Buddhist meditative consciousness. Since the truth about reality – as it is – lies outside of our conceptualizations of it, we cannot say that truth, only experience it. Hence, when we say, “Reality is not reality,” that is, that reality as it is differs from what we take it to be conceptually, we must also say that “Reality is not - not reality.” Otherwise we will have been caught in conceptualizing about reality (saying about it that it is not what our conceptualizations say it is). We must then immediately negate the latter saying by saying that reality is neither not-reality nor not not-reality. And so on. (See Thich Nhat Hanh, 1994, Chapter 5). A second, theistic, example of this approach is in the negative theology of (Pseudo) Dionysius (c.500) for whom God was “a most incomprehensible absolute mystery,” about which we can only say what it is not. Such continuing negation points beyond discourse to experience.

A fifth possibility for resolving the paradox of ineffability issues from William Alston's observation that mystics professing the utter unknowability of God have had much to say about their experiences and about God (Alston, 1991). Alston maintains, therefore, that when mystics talk about ‘indescribability’ they refer to the difficulty of describing in literal terms, rather than by metaphor, analogy, and symbols. This is not a peculiar mark of mysticism, demurs Alston, since quite common in science, philosophy, and religion. Alston's position, however, may not square well with the explicitly “unsaying” trends in mysticism.

A sixth solution to the ineffability paradox could come from Richard Gale (1960) and Ninian Smart (1958, 69) each of whom have argued that ‘ineffability’ is (merely) an honorific title marking the value and intensity of an experience for a mystic. Similarly, Wayne Proudfoot argues that mystics could not know that what they experienced could not be expressed in any possible language, because they do not know every possible language. He concludes that the ineffability-claim only prescribes that no language system shall be applicable to it, and is not a descriptive claim. The word ‘ineffable’ serves to create and maintain a sense of mystery (Proudfoot, 1985, 125–27). These positions beg the question against the possibility of there being mystical experience so different in kind from what humans otherwise know that it cannot be expressed by ordinary human language. Against Proudfoot it may be said that: because mystics could not know that a mystical object was indescribable in any possible language, it does not follow they would not, in their enthusiasm, make a claim beyond their knowledge. In any case, mystics might reasonably believe that since languages known to them cannot describe what they experienced, in all likelihood no other human language could describe it either.

Some philosophers think that a stress on ineffability signifies an attempt to consign mysticism to the “irrational,” thus excluding it from more sensible human pursuits. Grace Jantzen has advanced a critique of the emphasis on ineffability as an attempt to remove mystical experiences from the realm of rational discourse, placing them instead into the realm of the emotions (Jantzen, 1995, p. 344). Others have staunchly defended the “rationality” of mysticism against charges of irrationalism (Staal, 1975). The issue of ineffability is thus tied into questions of the epistemic value of mystical experiences, to be discussed below in section 8. [Jerome Gellman, "Mysticism," sec. 3.1]​

But here you are suggesting that you may have some kind of superior "vocabulary" that enables you to accurately describe your mystical experience--i.e. describe the indescribable.

If you can perform such a feat, I invite you to do so right now.

I didn't say that I could do it. First off, even if I could, I couldn't do so in a d#%m post on a forum. No individual descriptive term is sufficient; neither is a single sentence; a paragraph; a string of connected paragraphs. The furthest limits of the compositional level of language is where it would have to be at. John Ciardi seems to have thought that Dante Alighieri pulled it off with the totality of the Paradiso, for instance, even though Dante himself didn't think so.

 

[Ripheus27]

Well, I'd say that the sphere and the horizon would just be your abstract projections, and that in actual fact, any motion of an object beyond that horizon would be nothing more than that object's spatial change relative to other objects, no different in kind than its motion within the sphere.

I think it's natural for us to project abstractions onto the world and to create mereological constructs within our minds that don't have any real, mind-independent existence, and it seems to me that this is all the sphere and the horizon would be.

Well, my deeper reason for thinking that the concept of space in itself is not just an abstracted relation between objects is that it seems possible to imagine empty space. Since Descartes at least (and probably earlier) we've had philosophical evidence that to conceive and to imagine are different intellectual functions. So imagined empty space is not the same as the empty concept of space (the concept aside from its application), but a representation of space in its particularity. So if space, in particular and not just in the abstract, can be comprehended as empty of objects, then the concept of space itself must be abstracted from this concrete emptiness, not from the relations of objects therein or even thereto.

 

[Crandaddy]

Well, my deeper reason for thinking that the concept of space in itself is not just an abstracted relation between objects is that it seems possible to imagine empty space. Since Descartes at least (and probably earlier) we've had philosophical evidence that to conceive and to imagine are different intellectual functions. So imagined empty space is not the same as the empty concept of space (the concept aside from its application), but a representation of space in its particularity. So if space, in particular and not just in the abstract, can be comprehended as empty of objects, then the concept of space itself must be abstracted from this concrete emptiness, not from the relations of objects therein or even thereto.

So, I take it that by imagined space and conceived space you're drawing a distinction between space understood merely qua space (space understood merely insofar as it is space, iow) and space understood as particularized to some actual bit of space (“this” particular bit of space, iow), so that the difference between the former and the latter is (at least) that of an additional particular “this” to the latter. Am I correct here?

 

[Ripheus27]

So, I take it that by imagined space and conceived space you're drawing a distinction between space understood merely qua space (space understood merely insofar as it is space, iow) and space understood as particularized to some actual bit of space (“this” particular bit of space, iow), so that the difference between the former and the latter is (at least) that of an additional particular “this” to the latter. Am I correct here?

Maybe not exactly... The line from Descartes I'm invoking is the one that goes like, "I can both conceive and visualize a pentagon, but I can only conceive a chiliagon (a thousand-sided shape, I think)." If we *could* visualize a chiliagon, though, I think we could understand it as a chiliagon (if of a specific subcategory, rather like we comprehend an isosceles triangle concretely when apprehending it in a priori geometric space).

But with empty space we're in an even better position, arguably, for if my intuition is on the mark, then in "visualizing" pure empty space, we apprehend all the predicates that could be truly said of the pure concept thereof. That is, the faculty of imagination, here (forgive my faculty psychology if you find it outdated or w/e ), gives us space qua space as much as an abstract concept would.*

*With the exception of dimensionality, maybe. Inasmuch as space in the imagination is limited to three dimensions, then the conceptual possibility of higher-dimensional space must be inferred from what is imagined in this case, not intuited directly with the act of imagining space in itself.

 

[steve_bakr]

All of this is open to debate.
William James, (James, 1958, 292-93) deemed "ineffability" or indescribability an essential mark of the mystical. It is not always clear, however, whether it is the experience or its alleged object, or both, that are to be ineffable. A logical problem with ineffability was noted long ago by Augustine, "God should not be said to be ineffable, for when this is said something is said. And a contradiction in terms is created, since if that is ineffable which cannot be spoken, then that is not ineffable which is called ineffable" (Augustine, 1958, pp. 10-11). To say that X is ineffable is to say something about X, which contravenes ineffability. This problem has been raised anew by Alvin Plantinga (Plantinga, 1980, 23-25) and Keith Yandell (Yandell, 1975).

Several responses to this problem are possible for the mystic. One is to avoid speech altogether and remain silent about what is revealed in experience. Mystics, however, have not been very good at this. A second possibility is to distinguish first-order from second-order attributions, where "ineffability" both is a second-order term and refers solely to first-order terms. To say, then, that something is "ineffable" would be to assert that it could not be described by any first-order terms, "ineffability" not being one of them. A third possibility is to say, for example, that "X is ineffable" is really a statement about the term 'X,' saying about it that it fails to refer to any describable entity. A fourth possibility lies in the ongoing negation of whatever is said about X, ad infinitum, in what Michael Sells has called an infinite "unsaying" or taking back of what has been said (See Sells, 1994, Chapter 1).

An example of unsaying can be found in the endless negations in some Madyamika and Zen Buddhist meditative consciousness. Since the truth about reality - as it is - lies outside of our conceptualizations of it, we cannot say that truth, only experience it. Hence, when we say, "Reality is not reality," that is, that reality as it is differs from what we take it to be conceptually, we must also say that "Reality is not - not reality." Otherwise we will have been caught in conceptualizing about reality (saying about it that it is not what our conceptualizations say it is). We must then immediately negate the latter saying by saying that reality is neither not-reality nor not not-reality. And so on. (See Thich Nhat Hanh, 1994, Chapter 5). A second, theistic, example of this approach is in the negative theology of (Pseudo) Dionysius (c.500) for whom God was "a most incomprehensible absolute mystery," about which we can only say what it is not. Such continuing negation points beyond discourse to experience.

A fifth possibility for resolving the paradox of ineffability issues from William Alston's observation that mystics professing the utter unknowability of God have had much to say about their experiences and about God (Alston, 1991). Alston maintains, therefore, that when mystics talk about 'indescribability' they refer to the difficulty of describing in literal terms, rather than by metaphor, analogy, and symbols. This is not a peculiar mark of mysticism, demurs Alston, since quite common in science, philosophy, and religion. Alston's position, however, may not square well with the explicitly "unsaying" trends in mysticism.

A sixth solution to the ineffability paradox could come from Richard Gale (1960) and Ninian Smart (1958, 69) each of whom have argued that 'ineffability' is (merely) an honorific title marking the value and intensity of an experience for a mystic. Similarly, Wayne Proudfoot argues that mystics could not know that what they experienced could not be expressed in any possible language, because they do not know every possible language. He concludes that the ineffability-claim only prescribes that no language system shall be applicable to it, and is not a descriptive claim. The word 'ineffable' serves to create and maintain a sense of mystery (Proudfoot, 1985, 125-27). These positions beg the question against the possibility of there being mystical experience so different in kind from what humans otherwise know that it cannot be expressed by ordinary human language. Against Proudfoot it may be said that: because mystics could not know that a mystical object was indescribable in any possible language, it does not follow they would not, in their enthusiasm, make a claim beyond their knowledge. In any case, mystics might reasonably believe that since languages known to them cannot describe what they experienced, in all likelihood no other human language could describe it either.

Some philosophers think that a stress on ineffability signifies an attempt to consign mysticism to the "irrational," thus excluding it from more sensible human pursuits. Grace Jantzen has advanced a critique of the emphasis on ineffability as an attempt to remove mystical experiences from the realm of rational discourse, placing them instead into the realm of the emotions (Jantzen, 1995, p. 344). Others have staunchly defended the "rationality" of mysticism against charges of irrationalism (Staal, 1975). The issue of ineffability is thus tied into questions of the epistemic value of mystical experiences, to be discussed below in section 8. [Jerome Gellman, "Mysticism," sec. 3.1]

I didn't say that I could do it. First off, even if I could, I couldn't do so in a d#%m post on a forum. No individual descriptive term is sufficient; neither is a single sentence; a paragraph; a string of connected paragraphs. The furthest limits of the compositional level of language is where it would have to be at. John Ciardi seems to have thought that Dante Alighieri pulled it off with the totality of the Paradiso, for instance, even though Dante himself didn't think so.

Good discussion on ineffability. Actually, I do encourage you to describe your mystical experience, if not here, somewhere. I was pointing out the fact that language does have its limits.

Nevertheless, as Karl Rahner says, we need to express our transcendental experience of the infinite because doing so helps us to realize it or "actualize" it in our lives. We need language to do so, but it can also be realized in religion and its symbols. It can also be expressed through the practice of philosophy, art, music, poetry, and other secular pursuits.

 

[Crandaddy]

Maybe not exactly... The line from Descartes I'm invoking is the one that goes like, "I can both conceive and visualize a pentagon, but I can only conceive a chiliagon (a thousand-sided shape, I think)." If we *could* visualize a chiliagon, though, I think we could understand it as a chiliagon (if of a specific subcategory, rather like we comprehend an isosceles triangle concretely when apprehending it in a priori geometric space).

But with empty space we're in an even better position, arguably, for if my intuition is on the mark, then in "visualizing" pure empty space, we apprehend all the predicates that could be truly said of the pure concept thereof. That is, the faculty of imagination, here (forgive my faculty psychology if you find it outdated or w/e ), gives us space qua space as much as an abstract concept would.*

*With the exception of dimensionality, maybe. Inasmuch as space in the imagination is limited to three dimensions, then the conceptual possibility of higher-dimensional space must be inferred from what is imagined in this case, not intuited directly with the act of imagining space in itself.

But I don't think this is quite what Descartes had in mind by distinguishing imagination from cognition. It's certainly not how the Scholastic thought he inherited had understood them. The Schoolmen tended to think of imagination as wholly distinct from the intellect. Accordingly, mental images (phantasms as they were called) exist beneath the level of intellective cognition because they're particular mental depictions, whereas on the other hand, thoughts and concepts are universal and not particular in nature.

Also, I don't see how on your view there's any difference between "visualizing" pure empty space as a sustantial entity by itself that has the potential to countenance all these possible configurations of spatially-extended substance, and simply "visualizing" the potential for spatially-extended substance to be concretely realized in said configurations (without having to invoke any independently substantial space in which they might occur).

 

[Ripheus27]

But I don't think this is quite what Descartes had in mind by distinguishing imagination from cognition. It's certainly not how the Scholastic thought he inherited had understood them. The Schoolmen tended to think of imagination as wholly distinct from the intellect. Accordingly, mental images (phantasms as they were called) exist beneath the level of intellective cognition because they're particular mental depictions, whereas on the other hand, thoughts and concepts are universal and not particular in nature.

In more contemporary parlance, space (and time) are often said to be the conditions of concrete, as opposed to abstract, objects. And abstract objects include properties (universals). Yet what then of space (and time) as properties? It would seem that they are somehow on the border between both the concrete and abstract "worlds."

Also, I don't see how on your view there's any difference between "visualizing" pure empty space as a sustantial entity by itself that has the potential to countenance all these possible configurations of spatially-extended substance, and simply "visualizing" the potential for spatially-extended substance to be concretely realized in said configurations (without having to invoke any independently substantial space in which they might occur).

I wouldn't say that pure potentiality is as such able to be visualized. In the final analysis, I take space/time to admit of particular representation in themselves, but categories like substance and modality to be represented originally through general intellectual functions.

Kant refers to space and time as forms of intuition, specifically the forms of the outer and the inner sense. But what in the world does he mean by this? An intuition is a representation of something in its particularity, whereas a concept(ion) is a generalized representation. Space, then, on Kant's view, is how we differentiate objects as numerically different ("outside" or "external" to each other). That is, space is the objective form of numerical difference (and time the form of numerical identity).

 

[Ripheus27]

Actually, I do encourage you to describe your mystical experience, if not here, somewhere.

I do have a file on my computer expressing the content of my "contact with the transcendent," if you will, but it utilizes font shading, blank pages, peculiar pagination, etc. so I don't think it would be well-transcribed on this or any other forum of which I'm aware.

As an indication of how it works in the file, though, the text is colored so that it looks like it fades in and out (the individual letters are colored in variously increasing and decreasing shades of gray at certain points) until fully fading in to the direct vision of "the Last World," the plane of existence beyond all others. (I call it "the Last World" at least for the sake of the novel this file will eventually be integrated into.) The pages on which the text fades in and out are numbered 1 to 227/1027, so that the reader is supposed to get the impression of a huge amount of information contained within the pure "light" of the blank pages between the shaded ones.

 

[steve_bakr]

I do have a file on my computer expressing the content of my "contact with the transcendent," if you will, but it utilizes font shading, blank pages, peculiar pagination, etc. so I don't think it would be well-transcribed on this or any other forum of which I'm aware.

As an indication of how it works in the file, though, the text is colored so that it looks like it fades in and out (the individual letters are colored in variously increasing and decreasing shades of gray at certain points) until fully fading in to the direct vision of "the Last World," the plane of existence beyond all others. (I call it "the Last World" at least for the sake of the novel this file will eventually be integrated into.) The pages on which the text fades in and out are numbered 1 to 227/1027, so that the reader is supposed to get the impression of a huge amount of information contained within the pure "light" of the blank pages between the shaded ones.

That seems like a very creative way of expressing what Karl Rahner might call an original transcendental experience of the infinite. And the novel sounds very interesting.

 

[Ripheus27]

That seems like a very creative way of expressing what Karl Rahner might call an original transcendental experience of the infinite. And the novel sounds very interesting.

Forgive me my pride for a second . My first novel makes some use of calligrams, pages where all the words are arranged to form shapes. For one example, see this link: Sapere Aude's Photos | Facebook The book with the fade-in/fade-out text is supposed to be like this, but on every single page, so that if you flipped through the pages really rapidly, you'd get a sort of short film out of the experience. (I also hope to include "frames" of other "short films" in the margins on every page, so that if you added all the "animations" together you'd get something even more involved, but as yet I have only the faintest notion of how that would play out.)

 

[ThunderTongue]

Forgive me my pride for a second . My first novel makes some use of calligrams, pages where all the words are arranged to form shapes. For one example, see this link: Sapere Aude's Photos | Facebook The book with the fade-in/fade-out text is supposed to be like this, but on every single page, so that if you flipped through the pages really rapidly, you'd get a sort of short film out of the experience. (I also hope to include "frames" of other "short films" in the margins on every page, so that if you added all the "animations" together you'd get something even more involved, but as yet I have only the faintest notion of how that would play out.)

Those, and the ones mentioned by you in previous posts are all killer ideas. Reminds me of a fractal for some reason...don't ask why. It will definitely contain many avenues of experience for the reader.

I only demand info on how to get a copy if it comes to fruition

 

[Ripheus27]

Those, and the ones mentioned by you in previous posts are all killer ideas. Reminds me of a fractal for some reason...don't ask why. It will definitely contain many avenues of experience for the reader.

I only demand info on how to get a copy if it comes to fruition

Well, I'm hoping to sign a contract with Tor, so if they publish any of my work...

You're exactly right to see fractals in some of the text on my book's Facebook page (if you saw those there). I used this image editor, GIMP, which has a fractal subprogram built into it, to make some of the pages, so, yeah .

 

[bricklayer]

Time is the progressive sequential increments of the matter-space continuum.

Space is position relative to matter.

Notice matter's special relativity?

Time/space is contingent upon matter.

The linear constraints on time are inferred from material implications.

No particle of matter can occupy the same position relative to the balance of matter in any two increments of time anymore than a particle of matter can occupy two positions relative to the balance of matter in the same increment of time. In other words, nothing can be in the same space twice or be in two places at once.

Therefore, I am left to believe that time is linear.

 

[apache1]

I lean towards... I think it's called "space-time substantivalism," the idea that space and time are independent on their content. Either that or straight-up transcendental idealism. For example, if space only exists through its objects, then if there were a finite number of objects in a world, the "horizon" of space would be the outermost sphere of these objects. But it seems as if we could imagine motion beyond that sphere, and it would have to be motion into and through space outside the relations within the sphere. (But then again, I've never understood a Leibniz-style theory of space and time as relations only, so maybe I'm failing to grasp the Leibnizian reply to my objection.)

I know of 3 people that don't have a Ph.D. in philosophy or math or physics that would understand or could even proficiently explain these theories: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, and Bob Marley

 

[Gottservant]

Time beckons, but it does not answer.

 

[Paradoxum]

Now map this logic onto temporal apprehension. A 2D temporal perceiver would see at once all the points making up a line traced by an object through time (this is because 1D structures, i.e. lines, are n - 1 for a 2D temporal perceiver). This is exactly how eternity has traditionally been conceived of: God (assuming It exists) doesn't see things moment-by-moment, but in terms of all moments "all at once," as an "eternal present." So an eternal God, if existent, would be one Who was fully aware of things not outside of time but from a higher dimension thereof. (Of course, we can push this thinking to the limit and attribute absolute infinity to God, wherefore God sees 1,000,000D time, and 2,300,000,000,000D time, etc. That's a way to think of divine ineffability without abandoning all concrete concepts.)

God being timeless and outside of time makes much more sense. Saying that God is inside time in any sense makes him sound as if he is a physical thing.

Besides theology and physics, modeling time as n + 1D might yield interesting results in other fields. One I would argue at length for subjecting to such treatment would be the philosophy of emotions and music, as well as theories of déjà vu, but in this thread I'm going to conclude by talking a little about ethics. Suppose, for instance, that ethics requires free will that transcends the order of physical cause-and-effect. Kant himself argued that this order is the transcendental synthesis of moments in time: the laws that bind events together into a coherent whole, the laws of nature, are laws for "connecting the dots" in time to form a line.*

No offence, but I think this sort of this is why some people think philosophy is a bunch of nonsense theories. Making up random worlds and dimensions of time just to explain emotion and music.

I see why someone would want to try to save free will by putting it into a mysterious other world, but it seems to me to be nothing other than a rationalization. Rather than highly speculative metaphysics, it makes more sense just to accept that libertarian free will in an illusion. This doesn't mean that morality is an illusion though.

What happens if we are not confined to just a line in time, though? Free will might be a force that operates in the domain of higher-dimensional time. It would not conflict with physical causation, but neither would it be subordinate to the process.

I'm not sure why it saves free will. Even if free will works on another timeline it still must be based on prior states. If it isn't based on prior states then it is just random, and therefore still not free.

Hannah Arendt came up with an interesting model of forgiveness, for instance, as basically a power of the human spirit to literally break apart moral timelines (see The Human Condition, not sure which section, for her pertinent remarks).

Interesting, but almost definitely wrong. Forgiveness is psychological, not metaphysical. Well, maybe it is metaphysical, and maybe I'm am the second coming of Yahweh.

What do you think? Do you have any evidence of your own that maybe the ordinary notion of time as a line is mistaken?

If there is evidence then it should go to science to figure out. If it is just speculative metaphysics then we should be highly skeptical of such theories. History has shown how great philosophers can get their metaphysics wrong (they can't all be correct), and there is little reason to think we can do much better now. The problem is that metaphysics tends to be so abstract that we can't tell if we are just making stuff up or not.

Whatever time is I think it comes under science rather than philosophy. Philosophy could aid science by giving potential interpretations, but it would have to be tested against the evidence.

 

[ThunderTongue]

^ NICE!

A little "ahead of your years" aren't ya!

 

[Ripheus27]

God being timeless and outside of time makes much more sense. Saying that God is inside time in any sense makes him sound as if he is a physical thing.

Wouldn't this depend on the definition of the concept "being physical," which is not the most well-formed concept out there?

No offence, but I think this sort of this is why some people think philosophy is a bunch of nonsense theories. Making up random worlds and dimensions of time just to explain emotion and music.

Well, these things need explaining. For example:

Pieces of music, or performances of them, are standardly said to be happy, sad, and so on. Music's emotional expressivity is a philosophical problem since the paradigm expressers of emotions are psychological agents, who have emotions to express. Neither pieces of music, nor performances of them, are psychological agents, thus it is puzzling that such things could be said to express emotions. [Andrew Kania, "The Philosophy of Music," sec. 3.1.]

I see why someone would want to try to save free will by putting it into a mysterious other world, but it seems to me to be nothing other than a rationalization. Rather than highly speculative metaphysics, it makes more sense just to accept that libertarian free will in an illusion.

I don't think it's a matter of "highly" speculative metaphysics. Much of Kant's argument goes through on the principle "ought implies can," which is more like a "common sense" claim than Platonic mysticism.

EDIT 2: I also don't much enjoy debating "free will" or "free choice," even. Those kinds of terms are too unclear to be of much real use. Instead of supporting "libertarianism" versus "compatibilism," I would say that I support a libertarian analysis of the concept "the ability to do otherwise" over the compatibilist's relevant such analysis.

This doesn't mean that morality is an illusion though.

That would depend very much on what morality is thought of as.

I'm not sure why it saves free will. Even if free will works on another timeline it still must be based on prior states. If it isn't based on prior states then it is just random, and therefore still not free.

Where does this, "If it's random, it's not free," notion come from? But at any rate, maybe free will would be about chance instead of randomness (there is apparently a difference between the two).

Interesting, but almost definitely wrong. Forgiveness is psychological, not metaphysical. Well, maybe it is metaphysical, and maybe I'm am the second coming of Yahweh.

I didn't even quote the actual text of Arendt's argument, so saying that it's "definitely wrong" seems unfair.

If there is evidence then it should go to science to figure out. If it is just speculative metaphysics then we should be highly skeptical of such theories. History has shown how great philosophers can get their metaphysics wrong (they can't all be correct), and there is little reason to think we can do much better now.

"They can't all be correct," unless in a lot of ways they all have said the same thing. Now of course there's this massive appearance of disagreement in philosophy, but in my eyes that's because philosophers tend to succumb to competitive drives just as much as others, and so instead of admitting, "Yeah, my predecessors already knew this, etc." they make up this show of conflicting schools of opinion.

Whatever time is I think it comes under science rather than philosophy. Philosophy could aid science by giving potential interpretations, but it would have to be tested against the evidence.

What kind of empirical test could you come up with for, "Emotions are motion in a higher dimension of time"? To me, after I came up with the idea, it seemed self-evident almost. Like looking at the sky and seeing what color it is or something.

That being said, there is a physicist who has argued for a second temporal dimension (as noted at the start of the OP). --Moreover, your standpoint on the general question seems to reflect a widespread, but I think terribly inaccurate, idea about the division between philosophy and science. First, philosophy and mathematics go very much hand in hand, as do mathematics and science. Moreover, physicists and other scientists are often given to assuming all kinds of metaphysical premises in their arguments, drawing very often on especially Kantian thought (there is even an entire discipline, cognitive science, inspired quintessentially by Kant). The reality is that philosophy involves certain kinds of questions, and sometimes the questions involved in science are subcategorized under the broader heading of philosophy. So some questions are both philosophical and scientific (just like some are both philosophical and mathematical).

EDIT: There's a reason, after all, that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes articles like "The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics" or "Evolutionary Psychology."

 

[Paradoxum]

Wouldn't this depend on the definition of the concept "being physical," which is not the most well-formed concept out there?

It would, but from what I know from physics, space and time are connected and affected by mass/energy. So I consider space, time and matter to be physical.

Well, these things need explaining. For example:

"Pieces of music, or performances of them, are standardly said to be happy, sad, and so on. Music's emotional expressivity is a philosophical problem since the paradigm expressers of emotions are psychological agents, who have emotions to express. Neither pieces of music, nor performances of them, are psychological agents, thus it is puzzling that such things could be said to express emotions. [Andrew Kania, "The Philosophy of Music," sec. 3.1.]"

The music (soundwaves) aren't themselves happy or sad. That is just how they are interpreted by our brains. Simple.

I don't think it's a matter of "highly" speculative metaphysics. Much of Kant's argument goes through on the principle "ought implies can," which is more like a "common sense" claim than Platonic mysticism.

EDIT 2: I also don't much enjoy debating "free will" or "free choice," even. Those kinds of terms are too unclear to be of much real use. Instead of supporting "libertarianism" versus "compatibilism," I would say that I support a libertarian analysis of the concept "the ability to do otherwise" over the compatibilist's relevant such analysis.

What do you mean by the ability to do otherwise? As that is what I reject.

That would depend very much on what morality is thought of as.

True.

Where does this, "If it's random, it's not free," notion come from? But at any rate, maybe free will would be about chance instead of randomness (there is apparently a difference between the two).

Well being random is no better than being controlled. There is still no 'you' making the choice. You can merely watch the random or determined decision happen. Though of course it feels like you chose it.

I didn't even quote the actual text of Arendt's argument, so saying that it's "definitely wrong" seems unfair.

Well I said it is possibly true, but I highly doubt that. It is just making up metaphysical theories unnecessarily.

"They can't all be correct," unless in a lot of ways they all have said the same thing. Now of course there's this massive appearance of disagreement in philosophy, but in my eyes that's because philosophers tend to succumb to competitive drives just as much as others, and so instead of admitting, "Yeah, my predecessors already knew this, etc." they make up this show of conflicting schools of opinion.

In what why do you think they are correct?

What kind of empirical test could you come up with for, "Emotions are motion in a higher dimension of time"? To me, after I came up with the idea, it seemed self-evident almost. Like looking at the sky and seeing what color it is or something.

Well I doubt there is a test for that. I meant a test for the nature of time in general.

Emotions are caused by chemicals in the brain. What consciousness itself is still a problem.

That being said, there is a physicist who has argued for a second temporal dimension (as noted at the start of the OP). --Moreover, your standpoint on the general question seems to reflect a widespread, but I think terribly inaccurate, idea about the division between philosophy and science. First, philosophy and mathematics go very much hand in hand, as do mathematics and science. Moreover, physicists and other scientists are often given to assuming all kinds of metaphysical premises in their arguments, drawing very often on especially Kantian thought (there is even an entire discipline, cognitive science, inspired quintessentially by Kant). The reality is that philosophy involves certain kinds of questions, and sometimes the questions involved in science are subcategorized under the broader heading of philosophy. So some questions are both philosophical and scientific (just like some are both philosophical and mathematical).

EDIT: There's a reason, after all, that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes articles like "The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics" or "Evolutionary Psychology."

I agree that they can work together. I think I even suggested that in my last post.

 

[Ripheus27]

It would, but from what I know from physics, space and time are connected and affected by mass/energy. So I consider space, time and matter to be physical.

I think there's a difference, even in physics, between physical space and geometric space, at least insofar as the former is only one kind of structure (I guess), but geometry admits of infinite variations on the concept of space. To the extent that space and time are symmetrical notions, this geometric freedom in understanding space carries over to time.

Now by Kant's lights, the proof of the law of cause and effect depends on the role of our minds in integrating all the successive moments of successive temporal perception. Succession, in time, is mapped purely by a straight line. So it is only the first dimension of time that corresponds to a minimal conception of physics as the strict domain of cause and effect. We often say of our emotions that they are "highs" and "lows," and music corresponds to ups and downs in our feelings, so it seems to me as if our emotions are our minds tracing lines up and down on a different axis of time than the axis of the succession line. Three-dimensional time is, I think, our ability to imagine things (we use the mirroring principle of space and time to represent a three-dimensional spatial manifold using our inner temporal consciousness).

The music (soundwaves) aren't themselves happy or sad. That is just how they are interpreted by our brains. Simple.

Couldn't you just as well say, "The laws of logic are just brain functions"? I mean, grant that this is the case. This doesn't say anything about why our brains function the way they do. Likewise, why do our brains interpret (some) sound waves as expressive of emotion?

What do you mean by the ability to do otherwise? As that is what I reject.

If at time t I can do a or fail to do a, then I have "the ability to do otherwise" at t. Whenever I do something wrong, it must've been possible for me to not do it (as, "You ought not do it," was true, and whatever ought to be the case can be the case), yet clearly it was also possible for me to do it (as if it hadn't been, then my doing it wouldn't've happened). So it seems to me as if when I do something wrong, I have "the ability to do otherwise."

Well being random is no better than being controlled. There is still no 'you' making the choice. You can merely watch the random or determined decision happen. Though of course it feels like you chose it.

Why can't an event (a) be undetermined by prior causes and effects and yet (b) done by me? Would that be a random event?

Well I said it is possibly true, but I highly doubt that. It is just making up metaphysical theories unnecessarily.

Here's where the science-philosophy divide sends your reasoning down a questionable path, though. A psychological theory can be a metaphysical theory, and vice versa; so Arendt's theory can be understood as both psychological and metaphysical.

Actually, Arendt never says anything about higher-dimensional time, as far as I know. Citing her in this thread, all I meant was that her model of forgiveness makes sense from a +1D time standpoint. However, I think of time as at least as subjective as objective, wherefore all psychology must depend somehow on time (inasmuch as time is part of the way that we have mental states at all), so again, this standpoint, while metaphysical, is also psychological.

In what why do you think they are correct?

Off the top of my head, and as I claimed in a different thread, almost every major ethical philosopher has defended self-discipline as a good. As far as metaphysics goes, I would be straining the evidence at my disposal to claim that Kant's theories are, in general, basically identical to Plato's or Aristotle's, for instance. But if you look at the way that they look at reason/the intellect, you find out (or I think you find out) that they, among others, implicitly ground knowledge not in axioms per se but in the ability to ask questions. If you were going to delimit science from philosophy, you might even say that the limit has nothing to do with the answers involved on either side but on the relative emphasis on our erotetic power involved in the one compared to the other.

Well I doubt there is a test for that. I meant a test for the nature of time in general.

There might be one in a way (at least, there might be a way to test Itzhak Bars' theory--I'm not sure, and I don't fully recall what it is he says on this subject, if anything). However, it seems like it would be difficult to empirically test a theory claiming the existence of things that are outside of the form of our empirical perception. For example, since we can't directly perceive space in higher-dimensional terms, all we can know about how many higher spatial dimensions there are is by inference from physics and so on grounded in lower-dimensional spatial intuition. Whether there are more than the 10 or so claimed by string theorists (or whoever) might be something of an unanswerable question.