About Time

Wayfarer

Presuming anything is the act of a conscious being, so it is certain that presumption of the physical world presupposes a conscious being. But we know that the physical world existed long before any conscious beings existed (at least on this planet) and, since we know of no conscious beings that exist without a physical substrate, we can be sure that the physical world can exist without any conscious beings in it. — Ludwig V

This is a popular and seemingly knock-down objection to philosophical idealism. After all, how could the mind (or the observer, or consciousness) be fundamental to reality, as such, when rational sentient beings such as ourselves (and ours are the only minds we know of) are such late arrivals in the long history of the universe?

It is this line of argument that is to be scrutinised here.

What is Not at Issue

To begin with, it is important to be clear about what is not at issue. I am entirely confident that the broad outlines of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution developed by current science are correct, even if many of the details remain open to revision. I have no time (irony intended) for the various forms of science denialism or creationist mythology that question its veracity. I am well acquainted with evolutionary theory as it applies to h.sapiens, and I see no reason to contest it.

What the following argument turns on instead is the role of the observer in the constitution of time. I will argue that time itself is inextricably bound up with observation, and that this is the seat of a genuine paradox - one that an appeal to the geological or evolutionary facts, taken on their own, does not resolve.

Time and the Conditions of Succession

The "pre-history" objection baldly states that there was a time before any observers existed, and that this fact alone is sufficient to show that mind cannot be fundamental. But what is taken for granted in this conjecture, without any real argument, is that temporal succession itself - "earlier", "later", "before", "after", and "duration" - is real independently of perspective.

This is the assumption that deserves closer scrutiny.

To say that something happened long before the appearance of conscious beings is not merely to describe a physical ordering of events. It is to place those events within a temporal framework that already has determinate structure: a past receding from a present, a sequence unfolding in one direction rather than another, a sense of duration across change. These concepts are dependent on the intuitive sense of temporal order and sequence which mind brings to the picture.

Physics can describe relations between states using a time parameter, but that parameter by itself does not amount to temporal succession. A mathematical ordering does not yet give us a meaningful before and after. The fact that most fundamental physical equations are time-symmetric illustrates the point: the time parameter in physics functions is an index of relations between states, not an account of temporal succession or passage. Direction, duration, and the sense of "before" and "after" enter only at the level of interpretation, description, and experience. Hence the philosophical problem of "time's arrow", which is understood to be absent from the equations of physics.

There is a rhetorical question I'm often tempted to ask at this point, even though it sounds strange when first stated: does time exist "from the point of view" of an inanimate object? Of course, inanimate objects do not have points of view - but that is precisely the issue! To ask what time is for a rock, a molecule, or a primordial plasma state is already to drain the question of sense. Nothing is earlier or later for a stone; nothing endures, passes, or recedes for a hydrogen atom. To remove all perspective is not to reveal a purer form of time, the essence of time, but to remove the conditions under which temporal notions are meaningful in the first place.

This does not mean that physical processes cease, nor that equations no longer apply. It means only that without a standpoint from which change can be apprehended as succession, there is no meaningful "before," no "long ago," no passage. Time, as time rather than mere formal ordering, is inseparable from the possibility of a point of view - even if that point of view is minimal, primitive, or merely potential.

Kant on Time

Kant opens The Critique of Pure Reason with a section entitled The Transcendental Aesthetic, whose leading divisions are first, On Space, and second, On Time. In this, Kant does not deny the reality of time; on the contrary, he insists that time is a necessary condition of all possible experience. But he is equally explicit that time is not a determination¹ of things as they are in themselves. Time, he argues, is a pure form of intuition² - the a priori (already existing) condition required for appearances to be given as successive or as simultaneous. If we abstract from the subjective conditions of intuition, Kant writes, then time in itself "is nothing." This does not mean that time is unreal, but that its reality is inseparable from the standpoint of possible experience, and cannot be projected back onto things as they might exist independently of appearance.

The idea of a determinate temporal sequence obtaining prior to any possible standpoint is therefore not clarified by appeal to physics alone, but rests on a philosophical assumption that Kant calls into question.

Many will object that science has moved on considerably since Kant's publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 - which is obviously true. But as a matter of principle, nothing that has been discovered since necessarily invalidates Kant's argument, which is philosophical rather than scientific.

Bergson on Duration

Where Kant shows that time is not a determination of things as they are in themselves, Henri Bergson takes a further step by distinguishing between two fundamentally different conceptions of time. What physics measures and represents, Bergson argues, is not time as lived, but a spatialised substitute for it: a series of discrete instants laid out along a line. This quantitative, homogeneous "time" is indispensable for calculation and prediction, but it is not time as it is actually experienced.

Evan Thompson discusses this in a recent Aeon essay on Bergson's debate with Albert Einstein:

To examine the measurements involved in clock time, Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state - the current time - is what we call 'now'. Each successive 'now' of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. — Evan Thompson

The takeaway, as Thompson formulates it, is that "clocks don't measure time; we do."

Bergson reserves the term durée (duration) for lived temporality: the continuous, qualitative flow in which moments interpenetrate rather than succeed one another like points on a ruler. Duration is not composed of separable instants, nor can it be exhaustively captured by clocks or equations. It is the form taken by inner life itself - memory, anticipation, and the felt passage from past to present.

This distinction matters because it sharpens the point already made in connection with Kant. The time parameter of physics can order states and define relations, but it does not, by itself, yield temporal passage or succession as such. Bergson's claim is not that physics is mistaken, but that it necessarily abstracts particular values from what makes time what it is for a conscious being. In doing so, it substitutes a mathematical schema for the reality of temporal existence.

Schopenhauer and Time as an Antinomy of Reason

In his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer directly confronts the conundrum of "scientific time" and "lived duration".

To recap: on the one hand, scientific explanation requires us to say that conscious beings emerge only after a long causal sequence unfolding in time. On the other hand, time itself - understood as succession or temporal sequence - exists only as a form of representation, and therefore presupposes a knowing subject. Schopenhauer insists that both are undeniable facts, and that neither can be eliminated without incoherence.

It is in this context that he writes that the world comes into existence only with the "first eye that opens." The emergence of the first perceiving being does not occur in time in the ordinary sense, because time itself becomes meaningful only with the possibility of perception. And yet, once time appears, it necessarily presents itself as having an infinite past stretching behind that first present moment. The entire temporal history that science reconstructs is therefore simultaneously dependent upon, and explanatory of, the emergence of consciousness.

Schopenhauer does not treat this as a defect of reasoning, but as an antinomy³ inherent in our faculty of knowledge. "Time has no beginning", he writes, "yet all beginnings are in time". The world, considered as appearance, cannot exist without a knowing subject; yet the knowing subject, considered as phenomenon, appears only within the world. The contradiction dissolves only when time is recognised, with Kant, as belonging to the form of representation rather than to things as they are in themselves. Likewise, minds only appear in sentient beings such as ourselves and the higher animals within the world, but the world itself - as a meaningful, temporally ordered whole - is something that is only intelligible in relation to a mind, and can't truly be understood as if from a standpoint outside of it.

Schopenhauer presses the idealist argument still further by showing that this difficulty is not confined to time alone. Why? Because even the most thoroughgoing materialism, which treats matter, space, time, and causality as existing absolutely, silently presupposes the very thing it claims to explain. For in order to describe matter as it supposedly exists "in itself," one must already be thinking, perceiving, and understanding - judging what objects are, declaring them such–and–such, saying they are thus and so. Knowledge, which materialism presents as the final product of a long causal chain, is in fact the indispensable condition of the object's intelligibility from the outset. As Schopenhauer puts it, when materialism is followed consistently to its conclusion, it is suddenly revealed that "the last link is the starting-point, the chain a circle." (<link>)

Conclusion

The point of this discussion is not to reject science, nor to deny the legitimacy of cosmological or evolutionary explanations. It is rather to show why the idealist analysis cannot be dismissed on scientific grounds alone, as if it were a rival empirical hypotheses. To do so is to fall into a categorical misunderstanding. Scientific realism concerns the structure and behaviour of the world as described within a temporal framework; idealism concerns the conditions through which that framework itself grounds intelligibility.

In the final analysis, reality is not something from which we stand apart. As Max Planck remarked:

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

The appeal to a "pre-history" of the universe, taken as decisive against the primacy of consciousness, presupposes precisely what is at issue: a notion of temporal succession that is already meaningful independently of any standpoint. As Kant, Bergson, and Schopenhauer each show in different ways, this presupposition cannot simply be taken for granted. Time, understood as succession or duration, is not somerthing discovered within the world, but a condition under which a world can appear as temporally ordered at all. Remove the observer and temporal succession loses the very sense in which it is ordinarily understood.

Once this distinction is in view, the objection from pre-history loses its force. It does not refute phenomenology or idealism; it merely restates, in scientific terms, one side of an antinomy that those traditions have long recognised. The disagreement, therefore, is not between science and philosophy, but between different levels of analysis - and confusion arises only when conclusions proper to one level are uncritically imposed on another.

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Footnotes

1. By determination (Bestimmung), Kant does not mean a descriptive property, but something that belongs to an object as such - something that would characterise how the object is in itself, independently of any conditions under which it appears. Kant's claim is not that time is unreal, but that it does not determine objects as they are in themselves; rather, it belongs to the form under which objects can appear at all.
2. By a pure form of intuition, Kant means a non-empirical structure of sensibility that makes experience possible in the first place. Time is not something we observe or infer from change; it is the a priori (already existing) framework within which anything can appear as either successive or simultaneous. Calling time a form of intuition therefore affirms its necessity for experience, while denying that it characterises things as they are independently of appearance.
3. By an antinomy, Kant (and following him, Schopenhauer) means a conflict in which reason is led, with equal necessity, to affirm two claims that appear to contradict one another, yet neither can be abandoned without incoherence. An antinomy does not arise from confusion or error, but from the structure of our cognitive faculties themselves when they are applied beyond certain limits. In the present context, the antinomy concerns time: consciousness appears only after a long temporal sequence of causes, yet time itself is intelligible only as a form of representation that presupposes a knowing subject.

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Bibliography

Bergson, Henri Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Translated by F. L. Pogson. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1910. (Originally published in French as Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, 1889.)

Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978–0521657297.

Schopenhauer, Arthur The World as Will and Representation (also published as The World as Will and Idea). Vol. 1. Translated by E. F. J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications, 1969.

Thompson, Evan Clock Time contra Lived Time, Aeon Magazine (Retrieved 6 January 2026).

Mww

↪Wayfarer

Good.

In addition, time as a pure transcendental conception, is that by which logical inference is validated, and that, in turn, falsifies what is claimed as knowledge, re: “we know that the physical world existed….”, by assigning to such judgements logical necessity rather than mediated experience.

boundless

↪Wayfarer

Good OP!

The main reason why, however, I'm not convinced by this kind of argument is that the existence of individual sentient (or perhaps 'rational') beings is contingent. Given that their existence is contingent and, apparently, had a starting point (even if it isn't proper to talk about a 'before' outside their interpretative framework), it seems to me that this position gives no explanation of their existence and their coming into being.

Mww

…..the existence of individual sentient (or perhaps 'rational') beings is contingent… — boundless

The OP and its arguments have nothing to do with the being or becoming of, hence attempts no explanation for the existence of, any kind of creature, individually or in general, but necessarily presupposes the sentient human variety of it, both individually and in general, from which follows the existential contingency of them, is irrelevant.

The argument reduces to the condition that time belongs to the individual human, not the thing to which he and all humans in general relate themselves.

↪Wayfarer

Very good. I'm reminded of the so-called "ripple effect" theory that Christian theologians have sometimes offered to explain how the incarnation worked. The idea is that Christ's incarnation did not merely affect temporal events following his life, but was like a stone thrown in a pond: the ripple went in all directions, backwards as well. The theological reasons why this would be important are probably obvious, and not of much interest to me, so enough said. But it does exemplify another way to break "time" free from "succession".

The OP and its arguments have nothing to do with the being or becoming of, hence attempts no explanation for the existence of, any kind of creature, individually or in general, — Mww

This is true. And while I agree with the OP, I think we need to do better at responding to the type of question that @boundless raises. If evolutionary theory is acknowledged to be true, then we know that consciousness can appear (using the most neutral word possible) as an item in biological history. Will it have causes? Presumably. Will there be counter-factuals we could state that would describe necessary conditions? Probably. So when we say that consciousness is "fundamental to reality", it's pretty clear what we don't mean: We don't mean that the history of Earth had to be what it was, or that, should it have been the case that at one point in the history of the universe, nothing was conscious, that therefore nothing was real. That's not the reality that Kant et al. are talking about. Rather, we're asking into what is fundamental to our reality, as subjects of experience.

We don't want an endless debate about how to use "reality", I trust. But there's a legitimate usage of the term that grounds what @boundless is asking, if I understand them. Within our story of reality as we experience it, what is the further story about how we, as conscious beings, came to be, came to exist as part of the universe's furniture? That does seem contingent. There may also be little philosophy can say about it.

Joshs

↪Wayfarer

Excellent OP! I will have more to say on this later. For now I wanted to quote from a lecture by Heidegger concerning the existence of things before the arrival of humans .

The Earth, the cosmos, are older than the human. They were already existing before the human came to be an entity. One can hardly refer, in a more decided and persuasive way, to entities that are what and how they are independently from the human. Yet, in order to exhibit such entities, is it necessary to make the cumbersome appeal to the results of modern natural science regarding the various ages of the Earth and the human? To these researches, one could right away pose the awkward question as to where they take the time periods from for their calculation of the age of the Earth. Is this sort of time simply found in the ice of the “ice age”, whose phases geology calculates for us?

To exhibit entities that are independent from the human, it is enough simply to point to the Alps, for example, which tower up into the sky and in no way require the human and his machinations to do that. The Alps are entities-in-themselves—they show themselves as such without any reference to the various ages of the Earth’s formations and of human races.When one unhesitatingly invokes entities such as these, which manifestly exist in themselves, and presents them as the clearest thing in the world, one must also however accept the question, with respect to these entities-in-themselves, as to what is thereby meant by being-in-itself. Is the latter as crystal clear as these entities-in-themselves? Can one grant the claim of being-in-itself in the same hindrance-free way as the invocation of entities-in-themselves, with which one deals day in and day out?

The Alps – one says – are present at hand, indeed before humans are on hand to examine them or act with respect to them, whether it be through research, through climbing them, or through the removal of rock masses. The Alps are before the hand – that is, lying there before all handling by the human. Yet does not this determination of entities-in-themselves as present at hand characterize the said entities precisely through the relation to the handling by the human, admittedly in such a way that this relation to the human portrays itself as independent from the human?

… the invocation of Kant is too hasty; for, although Kant experiences scientific representation as empirical realism, he interprets the latter in terms of his transcendental idealism. In short: Kant posits in advance that being means objectivity. Objectivity however contains the turnedness of entities toward subjectivity. Objectivity is not synonymous with the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves.

boundless

↪J

↪Mww

Thanks @J for the acknowledgment. However, my objection is more 'subtle' as it doesn't rely on a particular scientific theory but a more general principle, I would say. If one accepts that the existence of rational beings in this world is contingent (for whatever reason), it seems that there should be an explanation for their existence (especially if one insists that their existence had a starting point, as indeed the evolutionary theory suggests).

In other words: it seems to me that the view expressed by @Wayfarer in the OP doesn't give us an explanation of their (and our) existence. I guess that it isn't necessary to seek such an explanation and remain content with the 'antinomy'. However, the fact that the sentient/rational being's existence is contingent to me 'cries' for an explanation. And, indeed, one might even say that the 'antinomy' is a call for a resolution/explanation rather than a statement that such a resolution is impossible.

Joshs

↪boundless

it seems to me that the view expressed by Wayfarer in the OP doesn't give us an explanation of their (and our) existence — boundless

It depends on what you mean by explanation. The OP is laying bare the self-recursivity of empirical explanations, how the most ancient is interpreted via the assumptions of the most recent and contemporary thinking. Your notion of explanation seems to require that this self-reflexivity come to an end by anchoring itself to some way the world really is in itself. But what if the way the world really is is best described by a phenomenological analysis of the structure of self-reflexivity itself? And this analysis is conducted not from an objective distance but from within this reflexivity?

Mww

The OP and its arguments have nothing to do with (…) any kind of creature….
— Mww

This is true. And while I agree with the OP, I think we need to do better at responding to the type of question that boundless raises. — J

The OP concerns itself with time. The type of objection subsequently raised, re: existential contingency of sentient beings, and therefrom better attempts at responding to such objections, involves an altogether different set of initial conditions.

As the transcendental origin of time is noted in the OP, the logic of relations to it is quite something else.
—————-

'antinomy' is a call for a resolution/explanation rather than a statement that such a resolution is impossible. — boundless

Which is fine; reason itself calls for resolutions, but it is understanding from which any and all empirical resolutions originate. The problem is that, insofar as understanding cannot work with a mere idea, re: the existential contingency of sentient beings in general, there can be no empirical resolution possible from judgements made relative to those ideas, that isn’t either thetic or antithetic, meaning in dogmatic conflict with each other relative to the idea.

Anyway….the OP stands iff sufficiently capable sentient beings are given.

Philosophim

You go over some ground here, so I want to summarize your points to ensure I understand what your OP is trying to say.

1. Ludwig has stated that reality can exist without any conscious beings in it, because consciousness relies on there being a physical world to exist. We know of physical reality that does not have consciousness, but we have not yet found consciousness that exists independent of physical reality.

2. You have no objection to modern day science and learning, so these are all free to consider as known and applicable.

3. You believe that the claim that there existed temporal progression before consciousness needs to be carefully examined and not taken for granted.

4. You believe time in physics does not have an order of progression and only measures a relation between states.

5. Because time is only an observable measurement to an observer, the lack of an observer means time is not observed.

6. You use Kant, Bergson, and Schopenhauer to support your arguments.

Conclusion: Because time is only observed by an observer, time did not exist prior to observers. Therefore, physical reality could not exist prior to observers existing.

A few counter points to consider.

1. Physics does follow temporal progression. Velocity is a measurement of direction and location over time. This seems obvious, so it may be that I'm missing some other implication you were trying to point out there. Now there may be some confusion in saying "Time" is an actual 'thing' vs the observation of change between different objects. I agree that 'time' is not a 'substance' like a cake mix you can run through your hands. It is simply an observation that change occurs.

2.

Time, he argues, is a pure form of intuition² - the a priori (already existing) condition required for appearances to be given as successive or as simultaneous. If we abstract from the subjective conditions of intuition, Kant writes, then time in itself "is nothing." This does not mean that time is unreal, but that its reality is inseparable from the standpoint of possible experience, and cannot be projected back onto things as they might exist independently of appearance. — Wayfarer

Your last sentence does not logically follow. If I measure 1 second forward, then one second later I have recorded and measured one second backwards. Again, follow the velocity of an object over time on a graph. If I set up a crash stunt, I have to measure the forces and time. Once the stunt is complete, I can see if the number of seconds that passed, did. To arrive at the point after the stunt is complete, time would have had to pass in the measure that noted, or else the current measure of time would be off. 1 minute past is what happened to be at the current time correct? Time is simply measured the change of one thing in relation to another thing. But to say time doesn't exist prior to consciousness is to claim there was no change prior to consciousness. An observer can observe and measure change, but an observer is not required for change to happen.

The appeal to a "pre-history" of the universe, taken as decisive against the primacy of consciousness, presupposes precisely what is at issue: a notion of temporal succession that is already meaningful independently of any standpoint. — Wayfarer

Well no, it is meaningful in terms of the measurement we created and observed. But it doesn't mean we've created what we observed. That's like saying length didn't exist before we observed it. Of course there had to be distance between two objects. Observation only adds the measurement of something in relation to our observation of it, so that's true. So the concept of an 'inch' would not exist without consciousness. But the 'length' that we are labeling as an inch would still exist despite that lack of label.

Time is the same. A second is a way we measure time, but that time would exist whether we measured it or not. At the most you can say, "Before there were observers of time, there was no observation and measurement of time." I agree with that completely. But this in no way indicates that prior to an observer of time, that time, or the relative change between objects, did not exist prior to its observation.

Bergson reserves the term durée (duration) for lived temporality: the continuous, qualitative flow in which moments interpenetrate rather than succeed one another like points on a ruler. Duration is not composed of separable instants, nor can it be exhaustively captured by clocks or equations. It is the form taken by inner life itself - memory, anticipation, and the felt passage from past to present.

This distinction matters because it sharpens the point already made in connection with Kant. The time parameter of physics can order states and define relations, but it does not, by itself, yield temporal passage or succession as such. Bergson's claim is not that physics is mistaken, but that it necessarily abstracts particular values from what makes time what it is for a conscious being. In doing so, it substitutes a mathematical schema for the reality of temporal existence. — Wayfarer

Well no, a measurement is not the same as the act itself. Its an observation, and if done accurately and completely, results in an expected outcome in the future, as well as an expected set up in the past. Wayfarer, you aren't experiencing the 'now' of typing your OP, but you did right? You aren't immediately conscious of your typing the OP in the past, but you surely did. What if you bumped your head and didn't remember typing it? Even if you couldn't measure it in your memory, it still happened in the past as we're reading it now. Even if you died tomorrow and no one read your OP ever again, it would still exist.

The 'now' is still the act of change. You can't even observe the 'now' without change happening, as 'observing itself' is change. Can we quantify it as a 100% understanding of what is actually happening? No. We can quantify it within an accurate enough measure to both predict and result in real observable outcomes. But our inability to completely represent the qualification of time into a perfect quantity does not invalidate the qualification that time exists prior to the now. Whether we sleep through our observation of time or not, change still happens.

To recap: on the one hand, scientific explanation requires us to say that conscious beings emerge only after a long causal sequence unfolding in time. On the other hand, time itself - understood as succession or temporal sequence - exists only as a form of representation, and therefore presupposes a knowing subject. — Wayfarer

To clarify, time as an observable measurement only exists as a form of representation and can only be understood by a conscious subject. That doesn't mean that what is being represented does not exist independent of our ability to measure it.

In the final analysis, reality is not something from which we stand apart. As Max Planck remarked:

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. — Wayfarer

Unless we also use science to figure our ourselves. I'm not sure how this counters Ludwig's point either.

The appeal to a "pre-history" of the universe, taken as decisive against the primacy of consciousness, presupposes precisely what is at issue: a notion of temporal succession that is already meaningful independently of any standpoint. — Wayfarer

There is no pre-supposition though. We have concluded that time passes, and we express this quantitatively through measurement. If you pre-suppose there is no temporal succession, you can get invalidated by your very reading and addressing of the just recently made pre-supposition itself. Qualitatively, time still exists independent of our direct observation. The point that time existed prior to humanity is not a quantitative specific claim, but a qualitative one. Nothing in your points indicated that consciousness existed apart from physical reality, nor did you indicate that physical reality cannot exist independent of consciousness. So as I've understood it, what has been claimed is that observers are the only things that can observe time, and if observers don't exist, time is not observed. I don't disagree with this, but I don't think it invalidates Ludwig's claim.

Wayfarer

it seems to me that this position gives no explanation of their existence and their coming into being. — boundless

But as said, I have no reason to contest evolutionary theory or geological history. I’m not providing an alternative account of the evolutionary origins of our species. I suppose you could say that what is being questioned is the support that evolutionary theory provides for philosophical naturalism. Naturalism says, after all, that the mind is of a piece with all the other elements and attributes of humans and other species, and can be treated within the same explanatory matrix. That is what is being called into question here. Which is why I'm not contesting the empirical accounts.

If I measure 1 second forward, then one second later I have recorded and measured one second backwards. Again, follow the velocity of an object over time on a graph. If I set up a crash stunt, I have to measure the forces and time. Once the stunt is complete, I can see if the number of seconds that passed, did. To arrive at the point after the stunt is complete, time would have had to pass in the measure that noted, or else the current measure of time would be off. 1 minute past is what happened to be at the current time correct? Time is simply measured the change of one thing in relation to another thing. But to say time doesn't exist prior to consciousness is to claim there was no change prior to consciousness. An observer can observe and measure change, but an observer is not required for change to happen. — Philosophim

I don’t deny that physical change occurs independently of observers, nor that we can model and measure those changes using clocks, graphs, and equations. But this doesn’t yet give us temporal succession in the sense that’s at issue here.

Physics relates states to one another using a time parameter. What it does not supply by itself is the continuity that makes those states intelligible as a passage from earlier to later. A clock records discrete states; it does not experience their succession as a continuous series amounting duration. The fact that we can say “one second has passed” already presupposes a standpoint from which distinct states are apprehended as belonging to a single, continuous temporal order.

So the claim is not that change requires an observer, but that time as succession—as a unified before-and-after—does. Without such a standpoint, we still have physical processes, but not time understood as passage or duration.

What I am suggesting is that, in your examples, the role of the observer in supplying continuity and relational unity between discrete events goes unnoticed. This is not a personal oversight, but a consequence of how scientific abstraction works. Science deliberately brackets the experiencing subject in order to focus on those measurable attributes of change that can be recorded with precision by instruments. Once this abstraction has been made, the subject — as the individual scientist — can indeed be set aside, creating the impression that objects and interactions are being described as they are in themselves. But this methodological exclusion does not eliminate the subject’s role in making those measurements intelligible as a temporal succession in the first place.

(Something that is made explicit in quantum physics in the form of the “observer problem”. In Mind and Matter (1958), Erwin Schrödinger, drawing explicitly on Schopenhauer, argues that there is an important difference between measurement and observation. A measuring instrument, he notes, merely registers a value; the registration itself contains no meaning. Meaning arises only when the result is taken up by a conscious observer. In this sense, physical description presupposes, rather than replaces, the role of the observer in making the world intelligible. Schrödinger was well aware that such claims would invite charges of mysticism, but his underlying point is methodological rather than theological: physical theory, however powerful, cannot eliminate the standpoint from which its results acquire significance.)

Philosophim

Physics relates states to one another using a time parameter. What it does not supply by itself is the continuity that makes those states intelligible as a passage from earlier to later. A clock records discrete states; it does not experience their succession as a continuous series amounting duration. — Wayfarer

I'm not quite seeing this. As I noted, velocity measures continuity of speed and direction which necessitates time passing in succession. Even a clock has a setup that implies before and after. With 12 starting as the origin, 1 comes after 12, 11 comes before 12. This is a measured succession comprised of 60 minutes each.

The fact that we can say “one second has passed” already presupposes a standpoint from which distinct states are apprehended as belonging to a single, continuous temporal order. — Wayfarer

I don't see that as a pre-supposition, but an observed reality. Why is it a pre-supposition? For example, lets pre-suppose time is not a continuous temporal order. This would mean the future could happen before the past. But we've never observed this. I've never eaten my sandwich before I've made it. So the observed reality as we have known so far indicates there is a past, a future, and that the past always happens prior to the future.

So the claim is not that change requires an observer, but that time as succession—as a unified before-and-after—does. — Wayfarer

I mean, that's a fair claim to explore. Do you have evidence that its not? We have plenty of evidence to indicate that it is.

What I am suggesting is that, in your examples, the role of the observer in supplying continuity and relational unity between discrete events goes unnoticed. — Wayfarer

Wouldn't the observer be observing continuity and relational unity? I mean, if I observe an inch, I'm observing a length of distance. If I observe a second, I've observed a relational change of time from a beginning to an end. You seem to be relying on the observer for observing time, then switch it up and say the observer isn't observing time, they're just making it up. While I agree the relation of a second is made up, it is a consistent agreed upon measurement of observed reality, is it not? And that observed reality of time, the second, has a start and an end right?

Once this abstraction has been made, the subject — as the individual scientist — can indeed be set aside, creating the impression that objects and interactions are being described as they are in themselves. — Wayfarer

The scientific method is attempting to represent reality in a measurable and objectively repeatable way. Science in its fine print never claims it understands truth. It claims it has been unable to falsify a falsifiable hypothesis up until now.

What I do agree with is that we can make a form of measurement like the second, then retroactively apply it. So if a person discovered 'the second', they could then ask, "I wonder how many seconds it took me to finalize what a second was from the time I started work this morning?" There's a definitive answer in terms of representation. But not having this representation does not change the qualification that time passed since they started work that morning.

Now I may still be misunderstanding the point. So to sum, my big questions are, "Why is it a presupposition that time is linear, when the measurement of time requires linearity?" One second has a start and an end. The other is, if you presuppose that time does not require linearity, how does this result in anything coherent? Can you give me an example of what this would be?

T Clark

A thought-provoking OP. Here are some of the thoughts it provoked.

the world comes into existence only with the "first eye that opens." — Wayfarer

You and I are both familiar with this way of thinking about the world, reality. Lao Tzu wrote:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting name.

Nameless, the origin of heaven and earth;
Named, the mother of ten thousand things.
Non-being, to name the origin of heaven and earth;
Being, to name the mother of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu - Excerpt from Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching. Ellen Marie Chen translation

For Lao Tzu it is naming--something human consciousness does--that brings the world into existence. It arises up out of non-being and into being.

The "pre-history" objection baldly states that there was a time before any observers existed, and that this fact alone is sufficient to show that mind cannot be fundamental. But what is taken for granted in this conjecture, without any real argument, is that temporal succession itself - "earlier", "later", "before", "after", and "duration" - is real independently of perspective. — Wayfarer

If we accept what Schopenhauer and Lao Tzu were saying, doesn't the inconsistency you've identified disappear? If consciousness is needed for all of reality to exist, doesn't the "pre-history objection" become irrelevant without us ever having to bring time into the matter at all?

the fact that the sentient/rational being's existence is contingent to me 'cries' for an explanation. — boundless

Indeed, and as I said, I wonder whether philosophy is the right mode to give that explanation. We can't know for sure, but it has the feel to me of a question that, several hundred years from now, people will be amused was considered philosophical and not scientific.

Also, as @Mww pointed out, idealist theories about time are compatible with any story about the specific genesis of human consciousness. The OP is primarily questioning the idea that the apparent linearity or successiveness of time would be evidence against mind as constitutive of reality, since mind appeared at some point in time. But as I wrote, I think "reality" is being used ambiguously here.

Metaphysician Undercover

Physics can describe relations between states using a time parameter, but that parameter by itself does not amount to temporal succession. A mathematical ordering does not yet give us a meaningful before and after. The fact that most fundamental physical equations are time-symmetric illustrates the point: the time parameter in physics functions is an index of relations between states, not an account of temporal succession or passage. Direction, duration, and the sense of "before" and "after" enter only at the level of interpretation, description, and experience. Hence the philosophical problem of "time's arrow", which is understood to be absent from the equations of physics. — Wayfarer

I believe there is something very important hidden within this passage. The "time-symmetric" character of physical equations is a feature of determinism. If everything which occurs is determined, then backward and forward necessarily produce the very same order, only reversed.

It is our sense, our intuition, which tells us that the future is somewhat undetermined, making us realize that we need to chose. This producers the fundamental difference between before and after in our understanding. I can make choices to influence events in front of me, in the future, and even produce the events I want, but the past is fixed and those events cannot now be chosen in that way.

So the matter of "time's arrow" is very real to us. We could assume determinism, fatalism, or whatever, and claim that time's arrow is not a real issue. Nevertheless, in our daily lives we all accept that we cannot alter what has occurred, and we all make choices in relation to the future. And every time we make choices we belie the determinist claim, which the successes of physics inclines us toward.

Now, the underlying importance is related to the way that we understand reality when we reject the determinist approach to time, and accept that the real difference between past and future is demonstrated by the reality of choice. This perspective makes the entirety of physical existence contingent. And what I mean by "contingent" here is dependent on a cause which is selected therefore not necessary.

This is what produces the difficulty for the common notion of physicalism. In denial of physicalism, we do not necessarily insist that consciousness is prior to physical events. All we need to do is to demonstrate how selection is necessarily prior to physical existence. Then if consciousness is demonstrated as posterior to physical existence, we need to identify a type of selection which is non-conscious. Proposals like random chance, symmetry-breaking, or quantum fluctuations, can be shown to be incoherent, and the product of misunderstanding, rather than the required "selection".

Wayfarer

If we accept what Schopenhauer and Lao Tzu were saying, doesn't the inconsistency you've identified disappear? — T Clark

Yes. Few do.

The fact that we can say “one second has passed” already presupposes a standpoint from which distinct states are apprehended as belonging to a single, continuous temporal order.
— Wayfarer

I don't see that as a pre-supposition, but an observed reality. — Philosophim

It's a measured reality - and that is a world of difference. 'One second' is a unit of time. As are hours, minutes, days, months and years. But (to put it crudely) does time pass for the clock itself? I say not. Each 'tick' of a clock, each movement of the second hand, is a discrete event. It is the mind that synthesises these discrete events into periods and units of time. That's the point you're missing.

Wayfarer

The scientific method is attempting to represent reality in a measurable and objectively repeatable way. Science in its fine print never claims it understands truth. It claims it has been unable to falsify a falsifiable hypothesis up until now. — Philosophim

Right - agree. But here we're discussing a philosophical distinction. This understanding of 'the mind's role in the pursuit of scientific understanding' is not itself a scientific matter, right? It's the kind of discussion you will find in philosophy of science, or in the writings of philosophers I gave in the original post. And I do think that philosophers are concerned with disclosing truth, in a broader and less specialised sense than science. Philosophical analyses do not necessarily comprise 'falsifiable hypotheses' in the sense that Popper meant it. They are intended to provide insight and self knowledge.

Philosophim

Right - agree. But here we're discussing a philosophical distinction. This understanding of 'the mind's role in the pursuit of scientific understanding' is not itself a scientific matter, right? — Wayfarer

It is. It is also a philosophical one, but that philosophical role should consider the science known. The quote was to indicate that scientists are not purporting to describe things in themselves as you claimed. I meant nothing more than that.

I don't see that as a pre-supposition, but an observed reality.
— Philosophim

It's a measured reality - and that is a world of difference. 'One second' is a unit of time. As are hours, minutes, days, months and years. But (to put it crudely) does time pass for the clock itself? I say not. Each 'tick' of a clock, each movement of the second hand, is a discrete event. It is the mind that synthesises these discrete events into periods and units of time. — Wayfarer

Yet its a discrete event that has a start and an end. Lets broaden it out to one minute. You start at X second and end at Y second to get a minute. It is a discrete measurement that is broken down into smaller discrete measurements in order. When we measure a minute, we have to watch for 60 seconds. Time passing is baked into the discrete measurement itself. Its not a dot on an x, y grid. Its the passage of coordinates like velocity where the difference between 1 and 2 is one second.

boundless

The problem is that, insofar as understanding cannot work with a mere idea, re: the existential contingency of sentient beings in general, there can be no empirical resolution possible from judgements made relative to those ideas, that isn’t either thetic or antithetic, meaning in dogmatic conflict with each other relative to the idea. — Mww

Not sure of what you mean. To me the antinomy suggests that the 'Kantian' view that we can't make ontological theories about what is 'beyond the empirical' is probably false. Indeed, if one hand I have to say that science strongly suggests that rational beings in this world had a beginning and that, however, we can't make judgments about the empirical world without referencing to our perspective, it seems to me that we might have no 'certainty' about what is beyonf the empirical but we can still speculate about that.

In other words, the problematic claims are about having certainty.

But as said, I have no reason to contest evolutionary theory or geological history. I’m not providing an alternative account of the evolutionary origins of our species. I suppose you could say that what is being questioned is the support that evolutionary theory provides for philosophical naturalism. Naturalism says, after all, that the mind is of a piece with all the other elements and attributes of humans and other species, and can be treated within the same explanatory matrix. That is what is being called into question here. Which is why I'm not contesting the empirical accounts. — Wayfarer

Yes, I don't deny that. What I am saying is that, however, leaves the issue on how sentient or rational beings (depending on which model of 'transcendental idealism' one supports) came into existence. If they are the source of intelligibility of the empirical world.

In other words, I agree with you that the 'time objection' isn't fatal to this kind of views but they still seem incomplete for other reasons.

boundless

But what if the way the world really is is best described by a phenomenological analysis of the structure of self-reflexivity itself? And this analysis is conducted not from an objective distance but from within this reflexivity? — Joshs

I don't see how this does address my points. What is the source of intelligibility of the empirical world? These 'transcendental' idealist/phenomenologist approaches, as I understand them, say that it is the faculties of the rational or sentient beings. Fair enough. However, it seems to me that the question that follows up is: considering that the existence of these beings seems to be contingent (and, indeed, the analysis of the empirical world suggests that), how did they come into be?

Indeed, and as I said, I wonder whether philosophy is the right mode to give that explanation. We can't know for sure, but it has the feel to me of a question that, several hundred years from now, people will be amused was considered philosophical and not scientific. — J

Perhaps. But notice that IMO it is also because it seems that knowledge itself is seen in 'all or nothing' terms. IMO it is better to think that knowledge also comes into degrees (with the extreme being something like 'perfect knowledge' and 'absolute ignorance').

To borrow a Biblical expression, "we see like through a glass, darkly". So we have a distorted perspective but we are not 'blind'.

The OP is primarily questioning the idea that the apparent linearity or successiveness of time would be evidence against mind as constitutive of reality, since mind appeared at some point in time. — J

Yes, I agree with the OP that the time objection doesn't refute the view expressed by it. However, the view leads to more questions than answers IMO (not that it is a bad thing necessarily).

boundless

For Lao Tzu it is naming--something human consciousness does--that brings the world into existence. — T Clark

Also @Wayfarer

This is very similar to Ven Nagarjuna's views (however, Nagarjuna would perhaps disagree that what remains after 'erasing' objectiification is the 'Tao'*):

10

When the perfect gnosis sees

That things come from ignorance as condition,

Nothing will then be objectified,

Either in terms of arising or destruction.

...

12

And even with respect to most subtle things

One imputes originations,

Such an utterly unskilled person does not see

The meaning of conditioned origination.

...

21

Since there is nothing that arises,

There is nothing that disintegrates;

Yet the paths of arising and disintegration

Were taught [by the Buddha] for a purpose.

22

By understanding arising, disintegration is understood;

By understanding disintegration, impermanence is understood;

By understanding how to engage with impermanence,

The sublime dharma is understood as well. — Ven Nagarjuna, Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning

Oddly, enough, as a (panen)theist, I actually agree that 'things' arise thanks to a rational mind that is able to distinguish, classify 'things' etc. However 'we' are not responsible for that differentiation.
Also, if 'our' minds are responsible for differentiation, how could we arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated (?) world?

This is something that non-dualist views IMO do not explain (whether Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu etc).

*At one point the Tao te Ching says that the Tao precedes the 'One', so perhaps the Tao Te Ching is even more similar to Madhyamaka Buddhistm than what it appears (i.e. reality is at the ultimate level 'neither one nor many' etc)

T Clark

This is very similar to Ven Nagarjuna's views (however, Nagarjuna would perhaps disagree that what remains after 'erasing' objectiification is the 'Tao'*): — boundless

Interesting. I had never heard of Nagarjuna. So, what is left after objectification? The Tao is also known as non-being and is often not considered a thing at all.

The philosophy I am most drawn to isTaoism, but I have been surprised to find how common ideas such as this are found in many different philosophies—both eastern and western.

T Clark

Oddly, enough, as a (panen)theist, I actually agree that 'things' arise thanks to a rational mind that is able to distinguish, classify 'things' etc. However 'we' are not responsible for that differentiation.
Also, if 'our' minds are responsible for differentiation, how could we arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated (?) world? — boundless

I don't think what the Taoists call "the 10,000 things," i.e. the multiplicity of the world, arise only from rational thought. Our minds are doing a lot we are not fully aware of. I am strongly drawn to the idea we are all subject to human nature--both ours as human beings and our own as individuals. Taoists call this "Te." As I understand it, our human nature includes a structured mind that limits and directs us to a particular relationship with, particular knowledge of, the world, including a particular division of the Unity, whatever you call it, into the vast universe of things we find ourselves in.

If that's right, or at least plausible, I don't understand why we still can't "arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated world."

Joshs

What is the source of intelligibility of the empirical world? These 'transcendental' idealist/phenomenologist approaches, as I understand them, say that it is the faculties of the rational or sentient beings. Fair enough. However, it seems to me that the question that follows up is: considering that the existence of these beings seems to be contingent (and, indeed, the analysis of the empirical world suggests that), how did they come into be? — boundless

In Kantian Idealism, subjectivity is treated as a kind of substance or object with faculties, just as you described it. When we start with objects a cause is implied. So we are led to ask what is the cause of this transcendental cause? To be fair to Kant, his transcendental subjectivity is not the cause of , but the condition of possibility of making the world intelligible in terms of empirical causality. So it makes no sense to look for an empirical cause of Kant’s categories. Husserl’s transcendental subjectivity is very different from Kant’s idealism. It is not a ‘being’ in the sense of a substance or an object, and it has no faculties. It is a site of interaction. Still, you would say we still need to ask how this site came into being, even if that genesis is not an empirical cause. That is a question concerning history and time. Some would argue that time has a cause or origin outside of itself, that it ‘came into being’. Others, like Kant, say that time is the a priori condition of any being or existent, that it does not itself come into being from somewhere or something else. But Kant considers transcendental subjectivity to be an atemporal condition of possibility of time.

In Husserl, transcendental subjectivty is nothing but the structure of time itself. It is not contingent; it is contingency itself. Transcendental subjectivity is not a set of atemporal conceptual conditions that are then “applied” to time. Rather, subjectivity is itself internally temporal through and through. The fundamental structures of consciousness, retention, primal impression, and protention, are not conditions of time from the outside, but are the very way time is constituted as time. There is no pre-given temporal form that consciousness then inhabits; temporality is inseparable from the flow of conscious life itself. Transcendental subjectivity is therefore not “before” time, nor “outside” time, nor a condition of possibility in the Kantian sense of a formal constraint. It is a self-temporalizing process.

Mww

The problem is that, insofar as understanding cannot work with a mere idea,…..
— Mww

Not sure of what you mean. — boundless

Yeah, my fault. I never should have gone so far into the metaphysical weeds, probably further than required for grasping the OP’s basic ideas, and certainly much further than most folks are prepared to accept.

I was only voicing concern for attributing to time plausible explanatory ground for the existence of sentient beings. It’s like…seeking an answer the truth of which is impossible to prove, given from something the truth of which is impossible to know.

Wayfarer

You start at X second and end at Y second to get a minute. It is a discrete measurement that is broken down into smaller discrete measurements in order. When we measure a minute, we have to watch for 60 seconds. — Philosophim

Of course, no contest. But the point is, the observer is watching, measuring, deciding on the units of measurement. The relationship between moments in time and points in space is made in awareness.

To clarify, time as an observable measurement only exists as a form of representation and can only be understood by a conscious subject. That doesn't mean that what is being represented does not exist independent of our ability to measure it. — Philosophim

I'm saying that in the case of time, that this is just what it means. We're not talking about rocks, trees and stars - but time itself. And the argument is that time has an inextricably subjective ground, that were there no subject, there would indeed be no time. Now obviously that's a big claim, but I've provided the bones of an argument for it in the OP. It can also be supported with inferential evidence from science itself.

What is the source of intelligibility of the empirical world? — boundless

Intelligibility is not something the world produces, but something that arises in the relation between a world and a mind capable of making sense of it. For a contemporary cognitive-science way of expressing this without metaphysical commitments, John Vervaeke’s notion of “relevance realisation” points in a similar direction: intelligibility emerges as an ongoing activity of sense-making enacted by cognitive agents in their engagement with the world.

I had never heard of Nagarjuna — T Clark

A major figure in Mahāyāna (East Asian and Tibetan) Buddhism. I am hesitant to bring Nāgārjuna into the debate, as the scholarship sorrounding his interpretation is difficult. This lecture might be a useful intro, from the Let's Talk Religion channel that I watch from time to time.

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