From ontos verlag: Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society - New Series (Volumes 1-18)
How should we characterize our ordinary understanding of time, as displayed in our use of tense and temporal concepts? We can focus the question by looking at a way of thinking about time that is arguably more primitive than the mature conception. Children early on have the use of 'scripts' or 'schemas' which describe what typically happens, or what one does, in a stereotyped or repeated situation, such as going to a seminar, visiting a doctor, or eating in a restaurant. McCormack and Hoerl have argued that scripts function as 'temporal frameworks' into which novel events can be slotted. Someone with only this way of thinking about time, however, is in a quite different condition from someone who has our ordinary conception of time. What makes the difference? What does it take to have our ordinary conception of time, as opposed merely to script time? I hall suggest that it has to do with our understanding of the causal significance of temporal location. But this puts a great deal of pressure on the question: 'What concept of cause?'. I shall look at various ways in which one might fill out a description of the kind of understanding of causation that would make the difference here. Thus we can contrast the view of causation as having to do with what would happen to a system under interventions on that system, with a view of causation as having to do with the mechanisms underlying such counterfactuals. Arguably an interventionist understanding of causation is consistent with possession merely of the idea of script time; linear time is not required. But arguably too, the view of ausation as mechanism merely presupposes, and can do nothing to explain, the ordinary conception of time as linear. I shall propose a way through this dilemma.
Early in the twentieth century our ordinary conception of time was challenged by McTaggart's argument that time was unreal, and by the standard interpretations of developments in physics inspired by the special theory of relativity. McTaggart held that central to our conception was the change in events from future to present and then to past. But, he held, this makes no sense, and so there is no such thing as time as ordinarily conceived. The view that time is a fourth dimension seems to reinforce much of McTaggart's reasoning. Many physicists and philosophers have concluded that although time is real enough, the sense of the passage of events from future to present to past is merely a subjective phenomenon; the classic statement of this position perhaps being Adolph Grunbaum's. Samuel Alexander, C.D. Broad and most recently Michael Tooley have maintained that we can have time as a fourth dimension, and passage as a real and not merely a subjective phenomenon, if we recognize that the future is unreal. Passage is not the mysterious movement of the property of presentness along the temporal dimension, nor is it a matter of consciousnesses successively apprehending points in time. It is a matter of new events coming into existence. I will review the issues and defend a version of the Alexander-Broad-Tooley view.
Can the structure of memory tell one anything about the nature of time? There is a certain kind of memory that appears to connect us in a special way to the past, namely `episodic memory´: remembering witnessing a certain event or performing a certain action (as opposed to merely remembering that one witnessed the event or performed that act). This kind of memory requires there to have been a relevant experience in the past, to which the memory is linked. It is this link that reveals something about time itself. Following a suggestion by John Campbell, in Past, Space and Self, this paper argues that an epistemological principle governing episodic memory has interesting consequences for our understanding of the passage of time. The principle question is that the memory cannot acquire a greater degree of veridicality (closeness to the truth) than the original experience. That in turn requires that the content of the memory be the same as, or at least be logically connected to, the content of the experience. The event or past state of affairs that makes the original experience veridical also makes the resulting memory veridical. So, for instance, if I remember the first moon landing, then it is the landing itself, or some fact about it, that makes veridical, both my current episodic memory of seeing it (on television), and the original perception. But how should we conceive of that event? Should we think of it as located in a changing `A-series´, that is, as receding further into the past? Or should we think of it as located only in an unchanging `B-series´, that is, as standing in relations of precedence, subsequence or simultaneity to other events? The first view takes seriously talk of the passage of time. The second is assiociated with what is sometimes called the `static´ conception of time, which treats passage as wholly mind-dependent and perspectival. This second view can easily accommodate the idea that in episodic memory what makes the memory veridical also made the original experience veridical. The first, it argued, cannot. For if there is an A-series, then one state of affairs is constantly being replaced by another, and past states of affairs are no longer available as truth- makers for present memories. One reply to this line of reasoning is that it is enough that there be a logical connection between past fact and present fact to secure the corresponding connection between memory and original experience. But, again, only the static view can explain this.
Zur Entwicklung des Zeitbegriffs: Aristoteles und der Zeitbegriff in der relativistischen Kosmologie
Von der Antike her hat sich über mehr als zwei Jahrtausende der Zeitbegriff entwickelt. Ausgehend von den griechischen Philosophen, verschiebt sich mit der Entstehung der Einzelwissenschaften die Thematik von der Philosophie mehr und mehr zu den Naturwissenschaften. Dabei kommt der Physik als Grundwissenschaft eine besondere Rolle zu. Innerhalb der Physik hat wieder- um die Einsteinsche Relativitätstheorie den Zeitbegriff der modernen Physik am nachhaltigsten geprägt. In welchem logischen Zusammenhang steht der moderne naturwissenschaftliche Zeitbegriff mit jenem der Antike? Die Vorstellungen von Zeit in der post-Einsteinschen Physik werden mit den Ideen von Aristoteles verglichen und es wird gezeigt, dass diese ihre Entsprechung in der modernen Kosmologie haben.
“Close to the Speed of Light”: Dispersing Various Twin Paradox Related Confusions
There is a big conceptual problem concerning the notion of 'speeds close to that of the velocity of light' if this notion is to be formulated within the framework of the Special Theory of Relativity. On the one hand, the velocity of light is defined as being the same at any point of any system of reference. On the other hand, the notion of speeds more or less approximating the velocity of light must have a system- of-reference-independent meaning if some alleged effects of the STR are to be explained. I will argue, contrary to familiar dynamic and geometric solutions to the so-called Twin Paradox, that the tension implicit in the afore- mentioned phenomena can be fully resolved only by adopting an ontologically absolute meaning for the term 'velocity of light'. The compatibility between the effects of speeds more or less close to the velocity of light with the invariance of the speed of light in all the systems of reference is based on the fact that these effects can be established only by comparing them directly. So, the change of the reference frame in the Twin Paradox has itself no significance for the difference in the aging of the twins. The fact that the twin who changes reference frames turns out to be younger results from the fact that he necessarily traverses a longer path in an absolute sense. The main point is that, given that the twins have first been moving away and then approaching each other by a uni- form velocity, we cannot operationally determine whether the twin who has turned out to be younger has aged more slowly during the moving apart or during the approach to his brother, though one or both of these two possibilities must be the case.
Neben der linearen Zeit, der Zeit der Geschichte, und der zyklischen Zeit, der Zeit natürlicher Rhythmen, gibt es noch eine weitere Zeitgestalt: die 'periodische Zeit' der Erinnerung. Was in der linearen Zeit in zunehmende Distanz rückt und schließlich vergeht, wird in der periodischen Zeit in bestimmten Abständen immer wieder zurückgeholt und neu vergegenwärtigt. Im Gegensatz zu der zyklischen Zeit der Riten und Mythen, die auf Wiederholung ausgerichtet ist, geht es bei der periodischen Zeit um erinnernde Wieder-Holungen, um Akte der Kommemoration in der Zeit des Gedächtnisses. Neben Kreis, Linie und periodischer Wiederkehr ist es vor allem auch der Bruch, der kulturelle Zeiterfahrung strukturiert. Verlust und Vergessen müssen nicht das Ende kultureller Überlieferungen bedeuten, sofern auf der Basis materieller Relikte der Funke aus der Gegenwart in die Vergangenheit noch einmal überspringt und die Lücke des Vergessens überbrückt. Wir sprechen in diesem Falle von Renaissancen. Der Vortrag wird die ‚Renaissance’ als eine weitere kulturelle Zeitgestalt untersuchen und drei verschiedene Formen von Renaissance in der frühen Neuzeit, im 18. Jahrhundert und um 1900 vergleichen.
Zeit, wie wir sie gemeinhin erfahren, ist nicht die physikalisch gemessene, sondern die kulturell konstruierte Zeit. Uns sind nicht nur wie den Tieren Sinne gegeben, uns im Raum zu orientieren, sondern auch ein Gedächtnis.
Newton introduced absolute space in order to have an unambiguous notion of change of position and absolute time to define rates of change. These may be called the Newtonian fundamentals. On the basis of very plausible philosophical principles, Leibniz argued that space is not an entity but merely the instantaneous order of the coexisting things that constitute the universe. Time too is not an entity but merely the succession of states of the universe. In Leibniz’s age, the technical means needed to implement his ideas did not exist, and until recently no systematic attempt was made to create a truly Leibnizian dynamics. I shall show how change of position and the rate at which it occurs can be defined in a Leibnizian ontology provided the universe can be treated as a closed dynam ical system. Mach’s requirement that the local inertial frame of reference arises from the dynamical effect of the universe is automatically satisfied. One can add the further Leibnizian requirement that there should be no instanta- neous action at a distance, that inertial mass must be isotropic, and that future states are defined by the least possible amount of initial data. Then the Leibnizian tools by which the two Newtonian fundamentals are achieved are unique, universal and very characteristic in their structure. In fact, they more or less completely explain the dynamical structure of not only Einstein’s general theory of relativity but also gauge theory. The deep sense in which general relativity is timeless has far-reaching implications for a quantum theory of the universe. If the universe has a wave function, it is highly likely to be static. Thus, Leibnizian ontology leads to a Parmenidean vision of the quantum universe.
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or point-sized objects located there; so that properties of spatial or spatiotemporal regions and their material contents are determined by the point-by-point facts. More specifically, this paper argues against pointillisme as regards the structure of space and-or spacetime itself. To keep matters simple, I will conduct the argument almost entirely in the context of “Newtonian” ideas about space and time, and in particular in the context of the classical mechanics of point-particles, i.e. extensionless particles moving in a void. This paper argues that the geometrical structure of space, and-or the chrono-geometrical structure of spacetime, involves extrinsic properties, typically spatially extrinsic properties. Agreed, philosophers attracted by pointillisme typically concede this point. But how exactly to state the qualification remains unresolved. Here, the main question is whether properties represented by vectors, tensors, connections etc. can be intrinsic to a point. I address this question in three stages. In the main stage, I focus on Bricker's (1993) discussion, which is an unusually thorough attempt to relate vectors and tensors in modern geometry to the metaphysics of properties. But Bricker exemplifies a tendency I reject: the tendency to reconcile pointillisme with the fact that vectorial etc. properties seem extrinsic to points and point-sized objects, by proposing some heterodox construal of the properties in question. Thus Bricker proposes that we should re-found geometry in terms of non-standard analysis. I reply that once the spell of pointillisme is broken, such proposed heterodox foundations of geometry are unmotivated. Mechanics provides another striking illustration of the lure of pointillisme, and the tendency to reconcile it to vectorial properties by reconstruing physical quantities. Thus Tooley and others argue that for the sake of securing that a particle's instantaneous velocity is intrinsic to it at a time, we should not construe velocity in the orthodox way as a limit of average velocities - but instead re-construe it along lines they propose. Again, my view is that there is no need for such heterodoxy: instead, we can and should reject pointillisme.
In the Beginning, At the End, and All in Between: Cosmological Aspects of Time
Does time have a beginning? Will it have an end? What is the source of the thermodynamical arrow of time? The purpose of the talk is to give an overview of the implications of recent advances in observational and theoretical cosmology for these fundamental issues about the nature of time.
For a long time, philosophers and physicists have struggled to understand the physical arrows in time and their connection to the nature of time. One view is to regard the various physical arrows as mere evidence for the temporal orientation of all processes. Since develop ment in time is a fundamental property of any physical system, one may see this feature as a physical manifesta tion of temporal becoming from the future to the past. Another, more radical, view claims that the direction of time itself can be explained in terms of some of these arrows. The view is here that the study of physics can give us a complete and correct answer concerning the nature of time. In association with this claim, it is argued that the physical arrows all depend on one master arrow. The debate attempts to pick out either the cosmological arrow or the thermodynamical arrow as the one upon which all other asymmetries rest, and it is thought that this master arrow determines the direction of time. Whatever view one may hold it generates metaphysical difficulties. Part of the problem is due to the well-known fact that in real life, we find only processes that are asymmetric in time whereas the underlying dynamical laws of physics, which are taken to govern these arrows – be they classical, relativistic, or quantum laws – are time invariant. Thus, the majority of philosophers and physicists agree that physical processes do not exhibit an intrinsic arrow in virtue of certain nomological features, i.e. they believe that the asymmetry is not internal to the physical processes themselves. The upshot is that the physical arrows in time, or nearly all of them, are due to an asymmetric distribution of boundary conditions. Any asymmetrical development of physical processes is due to a contingent asymmetry in the distribution of boundary conditions. The basic laws of physics are symmetric in time and provide no help in marking out the direction of physical processes. The talk will discuss whether physics is able to give us a satisfying understanding of time and its direction. First I reject the idea that the observed asymmetry can be explained in terms of objective becoming. This notion has recently been reintroduced in the debate by several authors. Second, I shall argue that none of known physical arrows can be taken as evidence or as being the basis of the direction of time. Contemporary physics does not provide a proper understanding of this direction because it relies on the existence of intrinsically asymmetrical relations of becoming. I still think, however, that physics may contain the conceptual resources to grasp the direction of time.
In the current debate on the nature of time one can identify two competing positions: the eternalist (B-series) and the Aristotelian (A-series) position. Which is the adequate one? We argue for the reality of becoming (A-series) on the basis of the experience, undeniable even for an eternalist, of the change of appearance in consciousness. We begin with formal characterizations of the A-theory and the B-theory on the general phenomenon of becoming. It follows an analysis of the notion of change of appearing to consciousness. It turns out that it is not possible to provide an account of it in B-theoretical terms. For at least one state of affairs p of phenomenal nature it is certain that the reality of becoming is given: A(before, p) ∧ ¬A(now, p).
Wittgenstein’s conception of time changed in the course of his philosophical development. This development leads us to some of the most important conceptual issues con- cerning time, especially time identification. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein identified time as one of the forms of simple objects. Since these objects are pheno- menological, not unlike Russell’s objects of acquaintance, this meant that we have direct experience of temporal relations. Propositions expressing such relations, like all other propositions, are verified and falsified by direct comparisons between them and the reality given. But propositions can be verified in this way only in the present. Hence temporal relations must manifest themselves in the present moment. This does not mean that only the present moment is real, but rather that memory is constitutive of the logical structure of the world. Later, Wittgenstein used the expression “memory time” for this conception of time. From the momentary character of experience it follows that there is in memory time only past and future. Later Wittgenstein gave up the idea of immediate comparisons of language and reality. Such comparisons came to require human activities which take place in the actual physical time that Wittgenstein called “information time”. Hence Wittgenstein came to recognize a duality of temporal concepts in our conceptual system. But what is this duality? There are several different (though not unrelated) distinctions here that are not equivalent but are not distinguished from each other by Wittgenstein from each other or from the distinction between memory time and information time. (1) Memory vs. external evidence as a criterion of statements about the past (2) Phenomenological vs. physicalistic conceptions of time (3) Remembering that as remembering a particular entity, be it person, object, time, place etc. (4) Many cognitive psychologists distinguish from each other episodic memory and semantic memory. Some neuroscientists likewise distinguish procedural and propositional memory. Wittgenstein’s distinction between memory time and information time involves elements from (1)-(3). For instance, one can remember that about the future (“I suddenly remembered that I will be in Boston tomorrow.”) Hence Wittgenstein says that we can have memories that are about the future in information time. In the Philosophical Investigations and elsewhere Wittgenstein argues that physicalistic evidence, not memory, provides the real criteria for statements about the past in our ordinary discourse. This complex of problems is essentially clarified by means of two ideas which are as crucial as any in philosophy today but which most philosophers are unaware (or negligent) of. These two insights are: (a) the role of an identification system over and above the reference system in semantics and (b) The presence of two different identification systems in our actual conceptual practice. The two have been called the public system and the perspectival system. By means of these two ideas not only can we clarify the problems of Wittgenstein interpretation but also the central conceptual problems concerning time.
A Deontic Logic with Temporal Qualification
There are more than enough various (syntactical, semantical, pragmatical) difficulties in constructing deontic logic. We suppose that at least some of them can be overcome by means of the temporal qualification of the relation of deontic alternativeness and by modification of the so-called “standard” models. We use a temporal structure that is discrete, branching “to the left” and infinite in both directions. The system of tense-logic based on this structure has been developed thanks to works by J.P.Burgess. The essence of our development consists of providing the system with facilities for comparing the times of events found on different “branches” of a set of possible courses of events. Our addition to the Burgess system consists of the axioms of discreteness and of axioms that circumscribe characteristics of the special operator “It is necessary that at the appointed time (so to speak ‘in its own term’) it will be the case that some state of affairs is obtained”. For the constructed system proofs of its soundness, adequacy, and thus, completeness have been obtained. There is also the proof of its decidedness. Now it is possible to attach quite natural temporal interpretation to deontic operators and to introduce into the language used special modal-temporal operators. Completeness and decidedness of the tensed logical system apply to a system of deontic logic with above-mentioned modalities.
Das „Jetzt“ bei Wittgenstein – Über Gegenwart und Wandel
Das Anliegen, den Gebrauch von ‚jetzt’ zu klären, ist mit diversen Schwierigkeiten behaftet. Da Aussagen wie „jetzt ist es 6.00“ synthetische sind, so muß auch das, was zu einer bestimmten Zeit über eine bestimmte Zeit gesagt wird, falsch sein können. Wenn der Ausdruck ‚jetzt’ referierende Kraft haben soll, so kann es für den Sprecher also nicht der Zeitpunkt der Äußerung sein, der als Referent von ‚jetzt’ fungiert. Der Sprecher kann sich nämlich im Irrtum darüber befinden, ob der Zeitpunkt, an dem es 6.00 ist oder an dem ein bestimmtes Treffen stattfindet (John Perrys Beispiel), jetzt ist. Angesichts der offen gebliebenen Frage, worauf der Sprecher sich denn beziehe, wenn er ‚jetzt’ sagt, könnte man nun auf die Idee kommen, gerade das Moment des Nicht-Wissens um den Zeitpunkt der Äußerung zu einem bestimmenden Merkmal der Funktion des Ausdrucks selbst zu erklären. So hat etwa Russell ‚jetzt’ als einen Fall eines ‚egozentrischen Terms’ aufgefaßt, dessen Leistung es sei den Bezug zur Zeit einer Äußerung gerade deswegen herzustellen, insofern sein Gebrauch unvermittelt und direkt sei. Genau gegen diese Ansicht sind Wittgensteins Überlegungen zur Bedeutung von temporalen Adverbien im Brauen Buch gerichtet. Nicht nur sagt Wittgenstein im Braunen Buch explizit, daß der Gebrauch von ‚jetzt’ nicht verstanden worden ist, wenn die Referenz von ‚jetzt’ als der Zeitpunkt, zu dem jemand ‚jetzt’ sagt, aufgefaßt wird. Die primitiven Sprachspiele, die Wittgenstein im Braunen Buch vorstellt, sollen auch zeigen, inwiefern diese Ansicht über die Bedeutung von temporalen Adverbien auf einer verkehrten Ansicht über das Gelingen der Deixis beruht.
On the Problem of Defining the Present in Special Relativity: A Challenge for Tense Logic
It is not easy to make sense of our intuition of an ontological significance of the present in the framework of special relativity. Many philosophers have commented on the issue. Einstein famously expressed a strong feeling of that problem to Carnap, and while Carnap tried to dismiss Einstein's worries (Carnap 1963), many, e.g., Prior (1968), have felt that the problem runs deeper. In the 1990ies, a number of definability and indefinability results settled much of the technical side of the matter. If one takes Minkowski space-time as the formal framework of Robb's axiomatisation or related schemes and requires a relation of ontological presentness (event e is in the present of f) to be an equivalence relation, it turns out that (i) one cannot define a non-trivial relation of presentness, but (ii) one can add such an equivalence relation as a conservative extension of the formalism (Rakić 1997). Thus, there are no technical obstacles that would ban a relation of presentness, but introducing such a relation seems ad hoc, as it amounts to introducing a preferred frame of reference. Now cosmology may or may not provide the resources to single out such a frame—for special relativity it would be nice to be able to give an independent, “stand-alone” definition of presentness by adding structure that is less controversial than a preferred reference frame. In my talk I will propose a radically new definition of “presentness” in a branching version of Minkowski space- time. Put bluntly, I will argue that the problem of defining the present is an artifact of a deterministic prejudice. The punch lines will be that (i) within the confines of a single Minkowski space-time, the notion of presentness does not make much sense, as there is no clear notion of change, (ii) there is a formally rigorous framework for incorporating indeterministic events to yield multiple, branching Minkowski space-times, and (iii) within that formal framework it is possible to give an intuitively satisfactory definition of an ontological notion of presentness. My formalism is based on Belnasp's branching space-times (1992), incorporating some of the ideas behind his new theory of causation (2005).
‚Zukunft‘ als Schlüsselkategorie der Geschichtsphilosophie
Ist es möglich, mit den Mitteln philosophischer Argumentation Aussagen über die künftige Entwicklung der Menschheit zu machen? Eine Verneinung dieser Frage folgt aus der bekannten These, dass solche Aussagen nur die Form einer Prophezeiung haben könnten, die mit der Methode der Forschung unvereinbar ist (vgl. Popper, Danto) – eine These, die zu einer received opinion geworden ist. Der Vortrag differenziert zunächst zwischen Aussagen in theoretischer und solchen in praktischer Intention, wobei Antizipation von Künftigem als unumgehbares Element des Handelns thematisiert wird. Diese Art des Zukunftsbezugs prägt auch die Philosophie des Politischen, wie am Beispiel der laufenden Debatte zum Begriff ‚Kosmopolitismus’ (Benhabib, Held, Mouffe, Pogge u.a.) erläutert wird. In dieser Kontroverse zwischen VertreterInnen unterschiedlicher Richtungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie geht es darum, in moral- bzw. rechtsphilosophischer Argumentation abzuklären, welcher Zukunftsentwurf am besten begründbar ist und daher handlungsanleitende Relevanz erlangen sollte. Doch kann hier im strengen Sinn von Aussagen über die Zukunft gesprochen werden? Dagegen scheint nicht zuletzt die Unverfügbarkeit des Handelns (wie u.a. Arendt sie dargelegt hat) zu sprechen. Oder gehört zu einem umfassenden philosophischen Handlungsbegriff die These, dass für die in der moral- bzw. Rechtsphilosophischen Forschung erörterte ‚bessere Welt’ eine Aussicht auf künftige Implementierung besteht, da andernfalls ein politisches Engagement in diese Richtung absurd wäre? Im Blick auf diese Fragestellung erfolgt eine Re-Lektüre von Kants Konzeption einer – in formal-struktureller Form auf Zukunft gerichteten – ‚wahrsagenden Geschichte der Menschheit’, die den Anspruch erhebt, „allen Ungläubigen zum Trotz, auch für die strengste Theorie haltbar“ zu sein.
Wittgenstein liked to quote Augustine as saying: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not" (Confessions, Book XI, Ch. 14, transl. Edward Bouverie Pusey). Time is so obviously a social construct; but again so impossible to conceive of in other than absolute terms. Reviewing the vast array of philosophical reflections on the topic from Aristotle and Augustine through Newton and Kant to, say, Guyau, Bergson, James, Heidegger and Mumford, one might easily end up with the feeling that even when no one asks us, we do not know what time is. One faintly promising way to discuss the concept of time is by looking at it from the point of view of the history of communication technologies. The talk offers a sketch of this history, linking cyclic time to primarily oral cultures, linear time to the emergence of alphabetic literacy, historical consciousness and the idea of progress to the printing press, and the twentieth-century experience of simultaneous time or time- less time to the rise of electric and electronic means of communication, focussing, by way of conclusion, on the radical re-ordering of time relations as a consequence of what has recently been termed "perpetual contact" - the ubiquitousness of mobile telephony. Way back in 1934 Lewis Mumford noted that what is effected by "our closer time co-ordination and our instantaneous communication" is "broken time and broken attention". By contrast, the talk argues that the mobile phone gives rise to a new synthesis of mechanical time and organic time, enabling thereby, also, a fresh look at some old issues in the philosophy of the topic. Wittgenstein liked to quote Augustine as saying: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not" (Confessions, Book XI, Ch. 14, transl. Edward Bouverie Pusey). Time is so obviously a social construct; but again so impossible to conceive of in other than absolute terms. Reviewing the vast array of philosophical reflections on the topic from Aristotle and Augustine through Newton and Kant to, say, Guyau, Bergson, James, Heidegger and Mumford, one might easily end up with the feeling that even when no one asks us, we do not know what time is. One faintly promising way to discuss the concept of time is by looking at it from the point of view of the history of communication technologies. The talk offers a sketch of this history, linking cyclic time to primarily oral cultures, linear time to the emergence of alphabetic literacy, historical consciousness and the idea of progress to the printing press, and the twentieth-century experience of simultaneous time or time- less time to the rise of electric and electronic means of communication, focussing, by way of conclusion, on the radical re-ordering of time relations as a consequence of what has recently been termed "perpetual contact" - the ubiquitousness of mobile telephony. Way back in 1934 Lewis Mumford noted that what is effected by "our closer time co-ordination and our instantaneous communication" is "broken time and broken attention". By contrast, the talk argues that the mobile phone gives rise to a new synthesis of mechanical time and organic time, enabling thereby, also, a fresh look at some old issues in the philosophy of the topic.
Current 'logical dynamics' systems describe updates in communication, belief revision steps triggered by surprising new information, or other immediate responses to observed events. But such single steps live in a much larger temporal universe of long-term, perhaps even infinite, phenomena: the realm of temporal logic. In this lecture, we discuss what happens when we try to merge these local and global perspectives. Issues include: the role of infinity in logical tasks, connections between dynamic logics of update/revision and temporal logics, modelling local dynamics versus 'prepackaging', and potential interfaces between logic and dynamical systems.
Die Theorie der somatisch-neuronalen Entstehung von Werten, die a-chronologische Gedächtniszeit und die Verschränkung von Zeit und Bewerten
Erkenntnis beginnt mit Bewerten. Die Sozialwissenschaften unterscheiden sich grundsätzlich von den Naturwissenschaften, denn sie fussen auf pragmatischen Werten, Bewertungen und Präferenzen, deren Anwendungen den Menschen Handlungen, Entscheidungen und Konfliktlösungen ermöglichen. Die Frage, woher alle diese Werte stammen, war aber bisher ein offenes Problem (Arrow). Das änderte sich mit A. Damasios somatischer, neuronaler Theorie der individuellen Wert-Entstehung, nach der am Anfang jeder menschlichen Erkenntnis ein somatisch-neuraler, gehirnphysiologischer Bewertungsprozess steht. Von der Apperzeption in unseren Sinnesorganen, den Aussenposten unseres Gehirns, gehen Impulse aus, die über elektrische Leitungen auf den Nervenbahnen zu unserem Gehirn und dort zur Amygdala in unserem Kleinhirn führen. Dort erzeugen sie primitive Gefühle. Die veränderten Impulse gehen weiter zu den beiden vorderen Schläfenlappen, wo sie Vorläufer von präferenziellen Bewertungen werden, die uns später bewusst werden können, wie bei Damasio und Howard dargestellt. Werte sind Präferenzen, vice versa, und sie werden als solche in unserem individuellen Gehirngedächtnis gespeichert. Unser primitives präferenzielles Verarbeiten produziert in der unglaublich kurzen Zeit von 1/300 sek. eine Bewertung, die unsere Handlungen bestimmen kann (Beispiele). Verschränkt oder kombiniert man das menschliche Bewerten mit der gewöhnlichen anschaulichen Zeit, dann verändert sich diese zur internen Zeit des Gedächtnisses, analog dazu, wie sich die gewöhnliche Zeit in der Relativitätstheorie ändert. In unserem individuellen Gedächtnis liegen daher zeitlich vergangene Bewertungen unseres Lebens nahezu zeitlos gespeichert. Man erinnert sich z.B. an das schönste Gebäude, das man je gesehen hat. Man wird sich vielleicht auch daran erinnern, dass man es unter einem strahlend blauen Himmel gesehen hat, und dass man nachher in einem hübschen Kaffeehaus war; aber an die kalendarische Zeit, zu der sich all das abgespielt hat, kann man sich nicht mehr erinnern. Dieses einfache Beispiel zeigt, dass die Gedächtniszeit GZ eine anschauliche, interne, imaginäre Zeit ist, in der wir alles mit allem vergleichen und bewerten können, und die sich von dem Modell der normalen Alltagszeit AZ unterscheidet. So hat ein 84- jähriger oder 2.522.880.000 Sekunden alter Mann im Schnitt 7.568.640.000 mögliche Bewertungen gespeichert, die ihm auch geholfen haben, 84 Jahre zu überleben. Der Vortrag zeigt, dass es eine Gedächtniszeit GZ für das vergangene individuelle Leben gibt, und auch eine kollektive Geschichtszeit KGZ - nicht die Geschichte - die von der traditionellen, mathematischen, linearen Zeit Newtons, Leibniz' und Kants ähnlich abweicht, wie die Relativitätszeit oder die quantentheoretische Zeit von der traditionellen Zeit. Es ist klar, dass der Sinn eines gelebten Lebens sowohl des Einzelnen als auch der z.B. einer Nation eigentlich nur von der Summe oder den Häufigkeiten der positiven oder negativen Bewertungen in der individuellen und kollektiven Gedächtniszeit abhängt, aber nicht von den Kalenderdaten. Da wir diese Werte in unserem individuellen Gedächtnisspeichern und gebrauchen, um individuelle und soziale Konflikte zu lösen, stellt sich die Frage nach der Rolle unserer vorgestellten, imaginären Gedächtniszeit, bzw. der geschichtlichen Zeit. Ramsey, Nash, NeumannMorgenstern, Suppes und Leinfellner haben einen Algorithmus, eine mathematisch-statistische Rekonstruktion, wie man in der Gedächtniszeit oder der geschichtlichen Zeit bewertet, aufgestellt; er wird in dem Vortrag behandelt werden. Sie sind zu dem Ergebnis gekommen, dass diese internen Bewertungen den Vorteil haben, Zufallsereignisse, Unsicherheit und Risiken einkalkulieren zu können. Deswegen sind, trotz allem, Bewertungen der zuküntigen Verbesserungen oder Verschlechterungen der individuellen und der kollektiven demokratischen Wohlfahrt in Wohlfahrtsstaaten für die Berechnung von Voraussagen brauchbar. In dieser Rekonstruktion sind Voraussagen nur statistische Erwartungen von individuellen und kollektiven zukünftigen Chancen und Risiken. Sie sind, wie alle Werte, Mischungen von positiven und nicht positiven, erwarteten Werten A und B, wobei [pA, (1-p) B]. Sie alle bedürfen zusätzlich einer wissenschaftlichen Überprüfung, wie in Leinfellner 2005 vorgeschlagen. Das lässt uns die Krise der Voraussagbarkeit z.B. in der gegenwärtigen Ökonomie, in den Politischen Wissenschaften und in der Soziologie in einem neuem Licht sehen. Voraussagen können nur Erwartungen für die Zukunft ausdrücken, aber nicht mehr. Die individuelle Zeit des Gedächtnisses weicht von der traditionellen Zeit wie folgt ab: Der Unterschied zwischen Vergangenem, Gegenwärtigem und Zukünftigem verschwimmt; sie operiert quasi omnipräsent, wie Einstein für die Physik sagte: Unterschiede zwischen Vergangenem, Gegenwärtigem und Zukünftigem sind "only a stubbornly persistent illusion". Weiters hebt sich in der Gedächtniszeit die eventuelle Gleichzeitigkeit von Bewertungen auf, weil die Gleichbewertung die Gleichzeitigkeit ersetzt. Die individuelle Zeit hat Unterbrechungen und Lücken, ist nicht unendlich und nicht kontinuierlich, aber gestattet dennoch willkürliche kalendarische Ordnungen. Sie lässt Umwertungen desselben Ereignisses auch nach beliebig langer Zeit zu, im kollektiven Fall auch nach Jahrhunderten. Die so verarbeiteten präferenziellen Erwartungswerte bewerten und vergleichen alles mit allem in einer Form, die man mathematisch mit Lotterien vergleichen und daher berechnen kann. Z.B.: Man hat den Tag der Heirat vor zehn Jahren als den schönsten Tag des Lebens bewertet, bis man ihn nach der Scheidung plötzlich als das grösste Unglück bewertet. Einstein, der 1917 stolz auf seine Lambda-Konstante war, bewertete sie nach 1929 als die grösste Eselei seines Lebens. Dasselbe gilt, mutatis mutandis, für geschichtliche Ereignisse wie einen verlorenen Krieg für die Verlierer, die ihn begonnen haben. Wirtschaftsprognosen in demokratischen Wohlfahrtsstaaten gelten nur für 3-6 Monate. Verwirklichungen müssen durch Bayes'sche Lernprozesse ergänzt werden, die, in Demokratien, die individuelle und kollektive Wohlfahrt verbessern oder zumindest nicht verschlechtern sollen. Sie nähern sich damit evolutionären Prozessen.
Recently William Lane Craig (Craig 2000, 2001) has attempted to resuscitate an argument, originally given by George Schlesinger (1980), against the tenseless or B- theory of time, according to which the only intrinsically temporal entities are the temporal relations of earlier/later than and simultaneity. According to Craig, an ontological commitment to temporal becoming—the passage of time or events in time, from the future to the present and into the past—is reflected in “the experience of wishing it were now some other time; for example, ‘I wish it were now 1968!’” (Craig 2001, 160) For, following Schlesinger, Craig maintains that what I am wishing for when I wish that it were now 1968 is that rather than the NOW being at say 2005; I should like it to be at 1968. In other words, in wishing that it were now some other time, I am wishing that the temporal particular, the NOW, the temporal property of presentness, or some other metaphysical substitute for the property of presentness, be at some moment in the temporal series other than the moment at which it is now located. Since, however, on the B-theory there is no moving NOW or property of presentness that moves along the temporal series, and there are no suitable tenseless surrogates, Craig concludes that the experience in question cannot be explained by B-theorists and, for that reason, they must maintain that anyone who has such a wish (including B-theorists themselves since such a wish is commonplace) is to that extent irrational. However, if, as Craig believes, the wish that it were now some other time is rational, and if the rationality of the wish can only be explained by appealing to the objectivity of tense and temporal becoming, then the experience of time as reflected in such a wish is a serious obstacle to accepting the B-theory of time. But is the wish rationale? And can it be explained only if the A-theory is true? The aim of my paper is to explore some answers to those questions and in so doing provide a B-theoretic response to Craig’s argument against the B-theory.
Zeit, Performanz und die ontosemantische Struktur des Kunstwerks
Between time and art there are multiple relationships, which are on one hand characterized by the phenomenal or theoretical perspective on time and on the other hand by the various modi of artistic symbolizing. When in the eighteenth century the concept of art has been developed, which formed the base of the philosophical discussion until today, a division of arts according to their spatial or temporal features has been conceived. Quite important in our days is the theory of “Performative Aesthetics” of works of art. Four aspects or levels can be distinguished. 1) Syntactically one has to investigate, whether and in what sense time or elements of temporal structures constitute not only trivially but in a specific and irreducible sense the symbolization of works of art. In this context one may ask, whether it would be more adequate to speak of space- time. 2) Semantically (in the narrow sense) the question is about time as the sphere of reference for art. In this respect one has to differentiate whether the experience of time or scientific and philosophical theories of time can be the object of artistic symbolization. Regarding to the “phenomenal time” e.g. a first-person-perspective on time is presupposed , that refers to the “future” or the “past” of somebody. If the question is about a philosophical theory of time a structure of time could be the object of artistic representation, in which e.g. from the third-person- perspective the “before-afterwards”- relation of time is represented. What the “question about time” means in this context, whether a translation from a theoretical to an artistic system of symbolization of time is possible and what would be the modus of this symbolization, are considerations that concern the para-theoretical or pre-theoretical status of artistic propositions. The last example includes 3) a further level of argumentation, the aspect of the self-referential syntactic-semantic entanglement. If a conception of time is transformed into a work of art, then it must be transposed by the artistic symbolization. Symbolizing space-time must be understood as being not only a denotation, but also a (self- )expression and examplification. The artistic proposition refers to elements of “time” in such a way that it deals with time as a theme and/ or it is about time expressing elements of time exemplified by its own artistic form. 4) On the onto- semantic level every work of art is <the proposition of somebody – about something – for somebody> and becomes “real” within the event of (production and) reception. “Work of art” is to be understood as a 3-place relation of symbolization as an aesthetic process. Thus, the performative factor is brought back to the intrinsic 3-place relation that constitutes the work of art and this implies that every work of art possesses and shows and performs space-time as an elementary condition of sensual cognition (and therefore of the work of art itself). With this concept of work of art the claim of “performative Aesthetics” - “destructing” the traditional work of art turns out to be void. Work of art is an irreducible onto-semantic constellation insofar it reflects in its self-referential and intrinsic performative mode of symbolization the conditions of constitution of the empirical reality and cognition.
For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the time asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the time symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. In this talk I offer an introduction to the current status of this puzzle, distinguishing the central issue from various pseudo-issues with which it may be confused. In particular, I point out that there are two competing conceptions of what is needed to resolve the puzzle of the thermodynamic asymmetry, which differ with respect to the number of distinct time-asymmetries they take to be manifest in the physical world. On the preferable one-asymmetry conception, the remaining puzzle concerns the ordered distribution of matter in the early universe. The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow thus becomes a puzzle for cosmology.
In every day life we presuppose that indexical thoughts trigger the action: the agent has to believe that he himself is in the right space-time position in order to act hic et nunc. Under the reasons for actions we thus subsume not only intentions, information and knowledge, but indexical beliefs as well. For accepting tensed indexical beliefs as reasons for actions we need an ontology with continuants/endurers. A mere four-dimensional event-ontology without tensed facts might be a good ontological framework for scientific, impersonal explanations, but for the personal explanations of actions based on indexical thoughts it will not suffice. I thuse plead for tensed facts (A-series), but not for spatial indexical facts: there are disanalogies between spatial and temporal indexicals.
Die Vorstellung einer globalen Zeit, unabhängig vom dreidimensionalen Raum, in der alle Ereignisse nach ihrer zeitlichen Abfolge eindeutig eingeordnet werden können, wurde bereits 1905 durch die Spezielle Relativitätstheorie von Albert Einstein eingeschränkt. Raum und Zeit können seither nicht mehr getrennt betrachtet werden. In dem dadurch entstehenden 4-dimensionalen Raum-Zeit Konti- nuum ist eine eindeutige Zeitordnung nur mehr für solche Ereignisse möglich, die zumindest im Prinzip kausal verknüpft werden können. Mit seiner Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie 1915, welche die Unabhängigkeit der Raum-Zeit der Speziellen Relativitätstheorie von der Materie aufhob, legte Einstein die Grundlage für die moderne Kosmologie. Es dauerte jedoch 34 Jahre bis Gödel durch seine kosmologische Lösung von Einsteins Feldgleichungen der Gravitation bewies, dass Lösungen mit akausalem Verhalten nicht ausgeschlossen sind. Das Gödelsche Universum wird daher als erstes vollständig ausgearbeitetes Beispiel einer Kosmologie, in der es keine globale Zeitordnung der Ereignisse gibt, beschrieben. Es ist homogen und stationär, d.h. sieht überall gleich aus und ändert sich im Lauf der Zeit nicht. Das akausale Verhalten wird durch eine Rotation der Materie, stabilisiert durch ein kosmologische Konstante, erzielt. Damit werden Zeitreisen in die Vergangenheit möglich, in gewissem Sinn auch solche in die Zukunft, die jedoch nichts mit dem Effekt der Zeitdilatation der Speziellen Relativitätstheorie zu tun haben. Solche Zeitreisen sind jedoch nur für beschleunigte Bewegungen möglich und man muss sich vom Ausgangs- punkt der Reise genügend weit entfernen. Es handelt sich also um einen globalen Effekt, lokal erscheint alles normal. Um einen Eindruck der benötigten Größenordnungen für den Energieaufwand und die notwendigen Distanzen zu bekommen, wird für die einzige freie Konstante in diesem Universum die gegenwärtige Materiedichte des Universums eingesetzt. Auch wenn Gödels exakte Lösung nicht unser expandierendes und daher nicht stationäres Universum beschreibt, so bleibt die Frage nach einem physikalischen Prinzip oder einem einfachen Kriterium, das ein akausales Verhalten ausschließt, offen. In dieser Hinsicht unterscheidet sich Hawkings chronology protection conjecture nicht wesentlich von Einsteins Bemerkung zu Gödels Universum.
Self-awareness and self-knowledge seem to be intimately connected to our experience of time in many ways. In this paper I want to explore some of these connections. Our experience of time seems to be a necessary condition of our self-awareness, and self-awareness in turn seems to play a crucial role in enabling us to know some things about ourselves. At the same time our experience of time seems to constitute an obstacle to arriving at complete self-knowledge. Taking self-knowledge as something one gains through self-perception, there always seems to be something which escapes our experience: the moment of self-reflection. I would like to address the question how this bears on the relation between our concept of ourselves and our concept of time. Is there a possibility to account for some basic phenomenological facts about our experience of time and the awareness we have of ourselves in terms of a so-called deflationary conception of time, according to which time is not adequately represented as a fourth dimension but should be viewed as a non-spatial order in which things change? What we experience when we experience time are, according to this view, changes in three-dimensional things rather than events hypostatized as four-dimensional entities.
Perspektiven der Subjektivität: Das Verhältnis von Systemzeit und Eigenzeit in den perfektischen Tempusformen
In vielen Sprachen sind die perfektischen Tempusformen einem stetigen Umbau unterzogen: Aus verbalen Umschreibungen entstehen sie immer wieder neu, andererseits entstehen aus ihnen auch immer wieder narrative Präteritalkategorien. Perfektische Tempora bezeichnen typischerweise Vorgänge und Zustände mit besonderem Bezug auf das sprechende Subjekt: Sie stellen Wertungen und Schlussfolgerungen dar und sind damit den in eine lineare Zeitskala eingebetteten zyklischen Ereignissen vergleichbar, die eigenzeitliche Geschehnisse aus dem Strom der an der Zeitachse orientierten Begebnisse ausgliedern. Aus sprachwissen- schaftlicher Sicht ist eine eindeutige Beschreibung und Klassifizierung der perfektischen Tempora äußerst proble- matisch. Innerhalb der Tempustheorien stehen einander deiktische und nicht-deiktische Theorien gegenüber: Deiktische Theorien versuchen, den Zusammenhang mit außersprachlichen Kategorien darzustellen („Modell Reichenbach“), nicht-deiktische Theorien heben bestimmte Textfunktionen hervor („Modell Weinrich“). Dazu kommen noch Versuche, textlinguistische und textpragmatische Funktionen stärker zu berücksichtigen. Schließlich sind auch stilistische Faktoren zu berücksichtigen. Angesichts dieser komplexen, problembehafteten Sachlage scheint eine in sich geschlossene und stimmige Tempustheorie utopisch zu sein. Doch ein zu großer Pessimismus ist hier nicht angebracht. Gerade die eigen- zeitlichen Merkmale der perfektischen Tempora zeigen und erklären zugleich, wie und warum die sprach- geschichtliche Dynamik auf universalsprachlichen Kausalitäten aufbaut und damit die Funktionalität der einzelsprachlichen Tempuskategorien immer wieder herstellt. Die sprachtheoretischen Probleme der Tempus- theorien lassen sich damit auf das allgemeine Problem zu- rückführen, sprachgeschichtliche und sprachpragmatische Prozesse adäquat zu berücksichtigen – ein Problem, das besonders die strukturalistische Theoriebildung kenn- zeichnet. Doch die Sprache ist nicht nur Werk, sondern auch Tätigkeit: Das Wirken von Konversationsmaximen und Präsuppositionen zeigt, dass die sprachliche Kommunikation auf einem komplexen Unterstellungs- system beruht, das sowohl die Konstanz der sprachlichen Funktionen garantiert als auch die formalgrammatische Dynamik bewirkt. Zur tätigkeitsbezogenen Sprach- auffassung gehört auch eine begründete und sinnvolle Unterscheidung zwischen objektiven und subjektiven grammatischen Kategorien. Gerade diese subjektiven Kategorien müssen bei diesem Thema besonders genau berücksichtigt werden. Das alles wird anhand von einigen ausgewählten Beispielen gezeigt. Damit soll auch die Anknüpfung an allgemeine zeittheoretische Erwägungen möglich gemacht werden.
In his later work Wittgenstein was fond of quoting Augustine on the difficulty of answering the question ‘quid est ergo tempus?’ (PI §89). But remarks on conceptual problems connected with our notion of time can be found in many of his manuscripts – in early as well as late ones. As Jaakko Hintikka has pointed out, changes in Wittgenstein’s ways of discussing the notion of time tend to mirror more general changes in his philosophical thought. And as regards this sort of change, no period in Wittgenstein’s development involved more radical modifi- cations of his earlier views than the first years after his return to Cambridge in 1929. Starting from Hintikka’s observations, a few particularly striking remarks Wittgenstein makes on the topic of time during that period will be discussed with a view to bringing out their relevance to illuminating certain shifts in his way of thinking.
Time, Music and Grammar. When Understanding and Performing What is Understood are Two Facets of the Same Action
We know that (1) We cannot describe an experimental content. We mean no more, no further than our language reaches. 1- First because time is not an object of experience about which such a question as “what is the nature of time?” could be raised. 2- Another reason which is structural and not specific of time is the following: if we try to explain our representation of the world by formulating a thesis about the nature of the world, this statement will necessarily belong to our to our representation of the world. While we think we describe the world, we in fact attribute to it features that lie in the mode of representation (BT §90, p33-4). Such is the case of our way of qualifying time as the flowing of a river according to a current analogy of time with flowing which is misleading. Time is part of the things that belong to the essence of the world, and as such, it cannot be expressed by language. As in the Theetetes of Plato (182d), Wittgenstein asserts that if the flux thesis were true, the use of language would be useless. David Stern has pointed out this proximity with Plato´s core of argument (in his On Mind and Language, ch. 6) (2) by asserting: “Only present is real” (Ms 107), we stress the “force of the present” as applied to the given. Yet the present is timeless. (6.4311, Tractatus): The queerness of the word “present” with which nothing past or future contrasts, as is the case of instantaneism in solipsism. It is a timeless sort of present. It is therefore a mistake to believe in the present of the “immediate experience” by asserting a temporal value of the present. Our confusion is then due to uncritically sticking to a physical concept of the present. There is a fantasm underlying our illusion: that of perfect contemporeity of our statement with the immediate experience it states. This kind of “present” is a a-temporal feature of Logic, as in Aristotle. When one says “Red and Green at the same time in the same place”, does he utter a contradiction in space and time? This question deals with the status of the internal relation in the Tractatus. (3) Wittgenstein and phenomenology: Time in phenome- nological language will be tackled from points of view: 1- from the point of view Wittgenstein is supposed to have endorsed then rejected in 1929. We will examine the requirements of such a language and the reasons of the impossibility of their fulfilling which lead Wittgenstein to renouncing to renouncing such a language (Ph. Remarks, ch. 7). In 29, what is abandoned is the idea of a direct description of immediate experience referred to objects the status of which is to be reevaluated (see D. Pears´ article: “Le Wittgenstein de Hintikka”, in Jaakko Hintikka, ed. E. Rigal, Vrin, 1998). Time is a king of phenomenal zero-line (Pears in The False Prison)) For which there is no empirical identification. Yet, as a “strange medium” in which regularity, repetition, starting, ending etc. Of a language-game and so forth are meaningful expressions. As there are indeed temporal concepts we use, we could aim at a grammar of time conceived as an ordinary language for “time”. We are then left with the following question: What sort of temporal concepts are they? In what sense could we consider them as “temporal”? Wittgenstein´s later remarks in writings on philosophy of psychology are very instructive as regards a paradoxical situation consisting in the fact that on one hand, the speaker deals with atemporality of the rule, while on the other hand its application is temporal in non-ambiguous ways including morphological aspects of pronunciation, articulation of items, duration, intervals, and so forth. Aspectual features of hearing-as, for instance are unconceivable without time. So far, in order to answer the question of a grammar of time, we have to look at the practice of articulation of words in situations implying hearing what is to be understood. We are then in need of a social conception, not solipsistic, e.g. one which prompts us to reverse the thesis of time as flowing into: “Words have meaning in the flow of life”. We are then invited to look at the context of practice, our technical use in the course of our ordinary life, as opposed to the stream of consciousness (W. James). Time rejoins the status of the medium in which beliefs, assertions, statements take sense (On certainty). A “medium” as such cannot be the object of a question nor be defined. 2- A part of the argument will be devoted to Wittgenstein´s implicit critique of the phenomenological stance of the intimate consciousness of time (Husserl) including the critique of Bergson´s immediate given of consciousness. (4) A therapy one should not consider possible to apply temporal and special concepts to immediate experience. But the phenomenological concepts are a basis for the use of everyday spatio temporal concepts. Yet we suffer form the fact that the description cannot describe that which goes on in reading the description. (BT §102, p 496). The aim of therapy here is to get freed from an obsession: considering that language unwinds in time according to the film analogy (Ph. Rem. § 52), the obsession is to establish a strict correlation between pictures we see projected on the screen (phenomena) with what is on the role of the film in the projector. The fantasm (of a Jamesian sort) here underlying is the possibility to re-live, re-experience all the sensory impressions at the exactly same speed of their primary production. Such a description would have the same structure as what it describes (see here Russell Goodman´s account of Wittgenstein and James in the 30´s, see his book under this title, publ. Cambridge UP, 2002). What is then the point of all that? Not a theory but a therapy. A critique of our temptation to give a definition of time is the point. (5) Is it legitimate to see some positive goal beyond the negative horizon of therapy? From the statement that we use temporal concepts by applying rules in the strange medium of time in different ways according to the contexts, the question of how one follows a rule turns into how do I follow a rule temporally speaking by repeating a theme in music for instance, or saying anexpression a second time and make a language-game start etc…? Different cases show how an element is incorporated in a system thanks to repetition. What is repeated is an internal liaison between the rule and what accords with the rule through action. Time then reveals itself as an internal relation making a game payable at its start according to a kind of non-Kantian synthesis. This kind of synthesis will be explicated in connection with the PLA in the situation of which what is lacking is precisely this (non-Transcendental) kind of synthesis (Note for a philosophical lecture, Ph. O. p 450). See “Game situations repeated themselves in time” (On Certainty § 519), v. Putnam about cultural formations, marked with recurring- features in time I will show that this institutional point of view meets some of Merleau-Ponty´s insights into the institutional process of language.
Cosmic evolution is not only governed by the laws of nature as we define them on earth but also by circumstances which appear accidental to us. These are the initial conditions and parameters of our theories which are not determined by first principles. I shall illustrate this using three examples which could fill entire volumes of books. Only if all circumstances fit together can cosmic evolution find its extremely unlikely path to the creation of humanity. I will discuss various ways of looking at these facts.
Three Concepts of Irreversibility and Three Versions of the Second Law
The second law of thermodynamics has a curious status. Many modern physicists regard it as an obsolete relic from a bygone age, while many others, even today, consider it one of the most firmly established and secure achieve- ments of science ever accomplished. A particularly interesting question is its relationship with the notion of irreversibility. It has often been argued, in particular by Planck, that the second law expresses, and characterises, the irreversibility of all natural processes. This has led to much debated issues, such as whether the distinction between past and future can be grounded in the second law, or how to reconcile the second law with an underlying microscopic mechanical (and hence reversible) theory. But it is not easy to make sense of these debates since many authors mean different things by the same terms. The purpose of this talk is to provide some clarification by distinguishing three different meanings of the notion of (ir)reversibility and to study how they relate to different versions of the second law.
Wittgenstein und Sraffa. Zeitproduktion durch Zeit
The turn of the millennium was a boom time for time. Time was pregnant with countless models: biological, cosmological, physical, astronomical and many others. In contrast to the popular philosophy of time, this study will focus on a single model of time: the social construction of time, time's economy. For we believe that the economic construction of time is the only relevant one, since it is the one from which all the other forms of time are derived. Our task will be to develop a theory which outlines the dialectics of the concepts of free time and production time, labor time and consumption time, and which explains how these concepts structure and dominate the whole sphere of life. Under the pressures of countable and profitable time, time itself is reduced to mere production time. Where nothing is being counted, time just stands still. Time begins passing again once the flow of money is resumed. If you are making money, you are also making time. Only when time is considered in light of the unity of labor and time is it possible to speak of a waste of time, which is simply time during which no work is being done and nothing is being earned or otherwise acquired. Consumption, leisure time and idling are all time lost. Under capitalism, all non-renumerative activities are a waste of time. Money has been the real clock for quite some time. Every bit of time has its price. The worker sells his or her time, work time and living time. The currency of payment is time. Time becomes capital. Time rings out in the cash registers. Correctly translated, the equation "time is money" means "time is a number" or "money is the commodity form of time." Value is brought into being by countable time. Time's value is variable; from the unskilled laborer all the way to the expert, time has a different price. How are values converted into prices? The famous transformation problem of economics finds its answer in time. For time is expressible in monetary and figures and numerals. Ricardo defined labor as value and time as its measure. Price is thus nothing more than the temporal form of value, and money is the value form of time. This is why values can change into prices, or rather why forms of value change into general money commodities, in the use value of which the exchange values of all other commodities are expressed. Ricardo suggested this approach when he wrote: "I may be asked what I mean by value and how I come to judge whether or not a commodity has changed its value. My answer is that I know of no other criterion for judging whether a thing is cheap or expensive than the sacrifice of labor necessary to preserve it. Everything is originally acquired through labor" (quoted in Pierro Sraffa, Warenproduktion mittels Waren, 1976, p. 159). Pierro Sraffa was not only the editor of Ricardo’s Collected Works but also a friend of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He was also of considerable influence on the change from Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language (Wittgenstein 1) to language game. (Wittgenstein 2).
Are the Laws of Nature Time Reversal Symmetric? The Arrow of Time, or Better: The Arrow of Directional Processes
The paper discusses time reversibility (“arrow of time“) and shows that (i) it is not satisfied on the microlevel (ii) it should be more realistically replaced by very improbable recurrence (iii) the “arrow” is in process not in time.
Im Vortrag wird auf den Zusammenhang von Vergessen, zeitlichem Vergehen und Vergehen moralischer Schuld eingegangen. Dabei werden zwei Fragen näher untersucht: 1. Warum ist es moralische Pflicht, die Vergangenheit nicht zu vergessen? 2. Wie weit oder wie lange ist man für die Vergangenheit im moralischen Sinne verantwortlich? Ad 1: Der Erinnerung wird bedurft, weil wir sie in der Zukunft noch einmal treffen könnten. Das ist der praktische Sinn der Erinnerung. Sich aber vorzunehmen, sich an seine Vergangenheit aus diesem Grund erinnern zu wollen, wäre eine moralisch motivierte Zielsetzung. Die Geschichtswissenschaften vermitteln uns, wie etwas war und bestenfalls, warum es so war. Die Lehren daraus müssen wir als moralische Subjekte selber ziehen. „Bewältigung“ ist die Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte in praktischer Absicht. Sie ist feststellendes Erinnern zum Zweck der Aufklärung. Die moralische Pflicht, die Vergangenheit nicht zu vergessen, besteht darin, dass mit der selektiven Suche nach vermeintlich Gutem in der Vergangenheit die Gefahr ihrer Wiederkehr mit allen Fehlern aktuell wird. Ad 2: Ist Verantwortung unauslöschlich und damit Schuld untilgbar? Gibt es keine Entschuldung? Oder können Verfehlungen auch vergeben werden oder sogar Vergebung verlangen? Es wird somit die Frage nach der moralischen Bewertung von Personen im Hinblick auf deren Handeln in der Vergangenheit aufgeworfen, denn moralische Verfehlungen sind immer Verfehlungen, die nur Personen zurechenbar sind. Die Frage der moralischen Beurteilung einer Person ist in erster Linie eine Frage der Beurteilung ihrer Motivation oder der Gründe ihres Handeln. Moralische Werte werden in der Regel statisch betrachtet. Willensbestimmungen, welche die Grundlage moralischer Beurteilung sind, können sich allerdings ändern. Es wird unterschieden zwischen dem moralischen Wert einer Person und den moralischen und normativen Irrtümern unter Inhalten von handlungsleitenden Motivationen (Überzeugungen), die wir gegenwärtig für verwerflich halten, die aber einst in der Überzeugung moralischer Richtigkeit geschahen. Vergebung bezieht sich auf die Beurteilung des moralischen Zustands einer Person, Schuld betrifft die zu verantwortenden Anteile am Miss- lingen des Lebens. Sie ist untilgbar, da die Folgen unumkehrbar sind.
Drei Pioniere der philosophisch-linguistischen Analyse von Zeit und Tempus: Mauthner, Jespersen, Reichenbach
Die historische Entwicklung von den zwanziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts an führte dazu, dass das Werk Mauthners erst wieder ab den siebziger Jahren diskutiert wurde. Die Diskussion teilt sich in zwei Stränge: die Wieder-Entdeckung des fin de siècle und die Erkenntnis, dass Mauthner der erste Analytische Philosoph avant la lettre gewesen ist. Anders als in der klassischen Analytischen Philosophie sind alle seine Analysen erkenntnistheoretisch oder, modern ausgedrückt, kognitiv orientiert. In dem Vortrag werden grundlegende Gedanken zum Problem der Zeit und vor allem der Tempora aus Mauthners Werk in einem modernen Rahmen dargestellt. Seine Analysen sind für die Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft relevant. Mauthners Analyse von Zeit und Tempus ist eng an seine Philosophie, insbesondere die "drei Bilder der Welt" und die These von der metaphorischen Abbildung geknüpft. Wichtige Probleme in diesem Zusammenhang: Die morphologische Charakterisierung von "Zeit" als Substantiv ist ein Unding. - Der vermeintliche, und nur im Sprachsystem verankerte Parallelismus von Raum und Zeit - Die Unterscheidung zwischen subjektiver oder erlebter Zeit, objektiver oder abstrakter Zeit und vorgestellter, vom Gedächtnis gespeister Zeit - Die verschiedenen Arten des "Jetzt", inbesondere das grammatische "Jetzt" - Das System der Tempora nach Mauthner im Vergleich mit Jespersen und Reichenbach - Die struk turelle Zerlegung der Verb-Bedeutung an Hand des VerbAspekts - Die Parameter der Tempora in Satz und Text.