• Joshs
    5.6k
    If we move to the secondary sense of "time", as what is measured, we find the conception of a continuity without any nows.Metaphysician Undercover

    But it is a continuity based on the continuity of magnitiude.

    “Aristotle says that time ‘follows’ change and change ‘follows’ magnitude. Aristotle uses the notion of following to justify a claim he makes about the continuity of time and of change: the claim that time is continuous because change is, and change is continuous because magnitude is.”(Time for Aristotle)
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    If we move to the secondary sense of "time", as what is measured, we find the conception of a continuity without any nows. The nows are seen as artificial. Therefore, when Heidegger says “The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present..." in your quoted passage, this is a misunderstanding of Aristotle. It conflates the distinction between the primary sense of "time", and the secondary sense of "time", which Aristotle tried to establish.Metaphysician Undercover

    Artistotle is interpreting time as something present-at-hand, according to Heidegger. Whatever secondary sense you're referring to, it's not at all clear. "Continuity without any nows" is what, exactly? Perhaps citing Aristotle to support whatever claim you're making would be helpful.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    Timelessness has the idea of change wrapped up in it. The concept of change is dependent on eternity.frank

    This sounds like the Aristotelian idea of time as change , change as continuity and continuity as akin to the continuity of magnitude. Eternity is linked to infinity via continuity.
    Heideggerian time is not a continuity, it is finite.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    By hand, it might take you a minute or two to work out that 357 x 68 = 24,276. A calculator or computer will do it faster, but still take a measurable amount of time. But how long does it take 357 x 68 to be 24,276?Srap Tasmaner

    This assumes "time" in the sense of physics, as sequence of seconds. That's not what I'm referring to.

    When we see something as "present" before us, as "here," this is a mode we're in as a human being. Heidegger calls this the present-at-hand. Something being "present" in this case does also indicate time -- the time of the "present" -- but how we conceptualize this present can vary. The traditional way of thinking about it is as a measurement, a "second," a moment, a "now-point." Time itself gets objectified, quantified. Time itself gets interpreted as something "present-at-hand," in other words.

    This is the point.

    So how else can we interpret time? First we should use a different word when talking about something other than the traditional/ordinary view of time: temporality. Temporality refers to various "ecstasies" of human activity -- for example, projection and anticipation. Both projection and anticipation is where the concept "future" will arise from, and where we will eventually quantify as a "not-yet-now," an approaching now-point.

    So you see that in this respect, asking how long it takes for a number to be a number is meaningless. Numbers -- and words -- are products of the human mind, of the human being.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    By hand, it might take you a minute or two to work out that 357 x 68 = 24,276. A calculator or computer will do it faster, but still take a measurable amount of time. But how long does it take 357 x 68 to be 24,276?Srap Tasmaner

    Wittgenstein says the meaning of something like 357x68 is the foundation of a language game, just as the statement ‘this is my hand’ is the foundation of a language game wherein it doesn’t occur to us to doubt the truth of the statement. One could then ask, how long does it take this thing to be my hand? The type of certainty that we accord the solution to the equation is what he calls a form of life. So the ‘time’ of the equation or ‘this being my hand’ is the time of its contextual use in a language game. It has no existence outside of the occasion of its use as a particular sense.
  • Heiko
    519
    Wittgenstein says the meaning of something like 357x68 is the foundation of a language game, just as the statement ‘this is my hand’ is the foundation of a language game wherein it doesn’t occur to us to doubt the truth of the statement. One could then ask, how long does it take this thing to be my hand? The type of certainty that we accord the solution to the equation is what he calls a form of life. So the ‘time’ of the equation or ‘this being my hand’ is the time of its contextual use in a language game. It has no existence outside of the occasion of its use as a particular sense.Joshs

    Aren't you doing now what you accused logics of, namely sacrificing meaning and sense to form? Now we are doing "language games" - Chips are dealt, we'll throw a few forms around and see what being and time are. Yey!
    But wait - a game is something with changes of states of affairs so maybe they are time after all. Damn...
  • Heiko
    519
    This seems like a good opportunity to take my chips and leave the table.
    Good luck to everone and congratulations to the winner in advance.
  • frank
    15.7k
    Timelessness has the idea of change wrapped up in it. The concept of change is dependent on eternity.
    — frank

    This sounds like the Aristotelian idea of time as change ,
    Joshs

    Time as change is Carlo Rovelli, actually.

    change as continuity and continuity as akin to the continuity of magnitude. Eternity is linked to infinity via continuity.Joshs

    I don't know where this is coming from. Think of Einstein's thought experiments. Motion is relative to a stationary point.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.9k
    asking how long it takes for a number to be a number is meaninglessXtrix

    Yes, well, that’s the point of saying that mathematics is ‘timeless’, but you and @Joshs keep wanting to say something else, only I don’t know what it is.

    I can see the argument that mathematical objects are present-at-hand, and connecting that to a conception of permanence and so forth. I don’t happen to know if that’s how Heidegger talks about them, but it’s what I would expect.

    Numbers -- and words -- are products of the human mind, of the human being.Xtrix

    And? What does their being the products of Dasein tell us about their being?

    Mathematical objects are locked in a permanent now because we have made them so. They cannot be what we intend them to be unless they are ‘timeless’ in this way. Is there some reason we cannot so intend?
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    I don't know where this is coming from. Think of Einstein's thought experiments. Motion is relative to a stationary point.frank


    “Einstein's theory of relativity established the opinion that traditional philosophical doctrine concerning time has been shaken to the core through the theory of physics. However, this widely held opinion is fundamentally wrong. The theory of relativity in physics does not deal with what time is but deals only with how time, in the sense of a now-sequence, can be measured. [It asks] whether there is an absolute measurement of time, or whether all measurement is necessarily relative, that is, conditioned.* The question of the theory of relativity could not be discussed at all unless the supposition of time as the succession of a sequence of nows were presupposed beforehand. If the doctrine of time, held since Aristotle, were to become untenable, then the very possibility of physics would be ruled out. [The fact that] physics, with its horizon of measuring time, deals not only with irreversible events, but also with reversible ones and that the direction of time is reversible attests specifically to the fact that in physics time is nothing else than the succession of a sequence of nows.”( Heidegger, Zollikon seminars)
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    I thought you might find this helpful. It’s notes from Heidegger’s zollikon seminars:


    The English language has an atomistic view of being, which tends to reduce being to discrete entities and objects. This view underlies modern logic, mathematics, and science. Ever since the German logician and mathematician Frege and the English philosopher Russell laid the foun-dation for "logical atomism" in modern, analytic philosophy, it has been argued that there are three meanings of Being: "the 'is' of existence," "the 'is' of predication," and "the 'is' of identity." 7 This atomistic view is especially contrary to Heidegger's understanding of the unified meaning of being (BT 202; ZS 155). Heidegger argued that this atomistic view reduced the primordial multidimensional meaning of being to these three theoretical categories, in spite of the fact that they are always already based upon an implicit preunderstanding of being (ZS 20, 96, 155, 236, 325) by human Da-sein in its contextual, practical being-in-the-world [Zuhandenheit, ready-to-hand].

    By treating the "is" of existence, which Heidegger called the presence-at-hand of things [Vorhandenheid , as a mere propositional function ("there is at least one value of x for which the propositional function is true"), Frege and Russell tried to eliminate the whole "question of being" from philosophy altogether. Via the existential quantifier (3x) "being" was reduced to the meaning of "a" bring, that is, an entity. The "ontological difletence" between being and beings (entities) (ZS 20-21) was overlooked or forgotten as was the "analogical" character of the concept of being as understood in ancient and medieval ontology (analogia entis) . 8 Modern science too had come to deal only with "objects" (ZS 136-44). Yet being can never be totally made an object of reflection because of Dasein's finitude and being's historical self-concealment (see BT sec. 71-76; Contributions to Philosophy, 75-87, 312-54).
  • Nothing
    41
    Do you guys know that in mathematical logic is proofed, there are truths you can not proof. ?
  • Nothing
    41
    Please somone show me the time which is not right now. You watch picture, which was taken in past, right know in your computer with bits, colours.... You have memory, neurons are conecting right know, phisically show me time which is not exactly right now ?
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    Mathematical objects are locked in a permanent now because we have made them so. They cannot be what we intend them to be unless they are ‘timeless’ in this way. Is there some reason we cannot so intend?Srap Tasmaner


    Husserl makes a distinction between bound and free idealities. Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities.Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrence made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance.

    Mathematical idealization is unbound (within the strict limits of its own repetition); no contextual effects intervene such as was the case in the attempt to repeat the same word meaningfully.

    Derrida picks up on this , arguing that contextual change implies change in meaning-to-say, and a mathematical ideality can be manipulated without being animated, `in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification'.Such an ideality can be repeated indefinitely without alteration, because its meaning is empty.

    “Numbers have no present or signified content. And, a fortiori, no absolute referent. This is why they don't show anything, don't tell anything, don't represent anything, aren't trying to say anything (Dissemination,p.350).”

    I believe Wittgenstein says something similar , asserting that mathematics is pure syntax and is meaningless by itself.

    I should note that Husserl and Derrida treat the concept of idea in the Kantian sense:an ideal object of any kind is an ideality in the extent to which it is identically repeatable again and again. So mathematics wouldn’t be ‘timeless’ since it only exists by being repeated, but content could be considered timeless in that it is empty and thus unchanging.

    But we never invoke number without an intentional meaning context to which we want to apply it, and here is where Wittgenstein and Heidegger disagree with authors like Russell and Frege on the role and basis of mathematics.
  • frank
    15.7k


    There was a time when you seemed to understand that A and not-A are two sides of the same coin. You forgot?
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.9k


    So mathematical objects (expressions, theorems, etc.) are not ‘timeless’ but are perfectly repeatable, either because they’re unbound by the context of their use, or because they’re meaningless. At least the idea of repetition gets time in there, so I’ll think that over.

    BTW: turn off autocorrect or proofread your posts.
  • Mww
    4.8k


    Just to show you’re being read......

    I can’t show you a time that is not right now. I can’t show you a time at all.

    I can show you something that is in time now, and was in its own time before and probably will be later.

    Sorry.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    There was a time when you seemed to understand that A and not-A are two sides of the same coin. You forgot?frank

    In classical logic, ‘not-A’ is represented by everything in a specified universe of meanings that is not ‘A’. In phenomenology, the ‘A’ springs out of the same pragmatic context as the ‘not-A’. The two sides belong to a shared context of relevance. Relevance is ‘irrelevant’ in classical logic.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    asking how long it takes for a number to be a number is meaningless
    — Xtrix

    Yes, well, that’s the point of saying that mathematics is ‘timeless’
    Srap Tasmaner

    When did I say mathematics is timeless? That's what I'm arguing against.

    Numbers -- and words -- are products of the human mind, of the human being.
    — Xtrix

    And? What does their being the products of Dasein tell us about their being?
    Srap Tasmaner

    Yeah, I don't like the word "product" either really.

    I think what it tells us about their being is that they occur in a certain mode of our being -- call it an abstract or linguistic mode, of which I would include mathematics and music. Quantities and geometric shapes are human phenomena. This is a Kantian move, really, but with the "subject" and "time" as interpreted differently.
  • Nothing
    41

    Thnks for answer,
    try time think one time you consider cycles and another time you say there is no cycles. If it is only now, tomorow never comes, past doesnt exist, or you show me, where ? Please try with cyles. I am looking into: time exist because cycle exist
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.9k
    I think what it tells us about their being is that they occur in a certain mode of our being -- call it an abstract or linguistic mode, of which I would include mathematics and music. Quantities and geometric shapes are human phenomena. This is a Kantian move, really, but with the "subject" and "time" as interpreted differently.Xtrix

    That’s helpful for explaining what you’ve been trying to get at. There’s more to do, but I could definitely see preferring to start here.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    Artistotle is interpreting time as something present-at-hand, according to Heidegger. Whatever secondary sense you're referring to, it's not at all clear. "Continuity without any nows" is what, exactly? Perhaps citing Aristotle to support whatever claim you're making would be helpful.Xtrix

    If time is objectified it appears as a flow or movement from past through present to future. But this is an abstraction; for lived time there is only now, not a 'dimensionless-point' now but an infinitely expansive now in which, and only in which, the future and the past exist as such.
  • frank
    15.7k
    In classical logic, ‘not-A’ is represented by everything in a specified universe of meanings that is not ‘A’. In phenomenology, the ‘A’ springs out of the same pragmatic context as the ‘not-A’. The two sides belong to a shared context of relevance. Relevance is ‘irrelevant’ in classical logic.Joshs

    No offense, but you seem kind of like a computer that's been programmed to have philosophical discussions, but the code needs some tweaking.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    I think what it tells us about their being is that they occur in a certain mode of our being -- call it an abstract or linguistic mode, of which I would include mathematics and music. Quantities and geometric shapes are human phenomena. This is a Kantian move, really, but with the "subject" and "time" as interpreted differently.
    — Xtrix

    That’s helpful for explaining what you’ve been trying to get at. There’s more to do, but I could definitely see preferring to start here.
    Srap Tasmaner

    Was it the reference to Kant that helped? I'd like to know for future exchanges I might have with others.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    Thnks for answer,
    try time think one time you consider cycles and another time you say there is no cycles. If it is only now, tomorow never comes, past doesnt exist, or you show me, where ? Please try with cyles. I am looking into: time exist because cycle exist
    Nothing

    It's difficult for me to follow you. When you say "Please show me, where? Please try with cycles," I'm at a loss, for example.

    So even though this wasn't directed to me, I'd ask: What is your question, exactly? What do you mean by "cycles"?
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    If time is objectified it appears as a flow or movement from past through present to future. But this is an abstraction; for lived time there is only now, not a 'dimensionless-point' now but an infinitely expansive now in which, and only in which, the future and the past exist as such.Janus

    I think you're taking liberties, because Heidegger is never so clear, but I also think that you almost have to be correct. When meditation is taught in eastern traditions, there is an emphasis on the "now" as well -- and past and future are seen as an illusion of some kind. The only "reality" is the one unfolding in the present.

    Seems true. On the other hand, is this not simply another interpretation from a present-at-hand mode of being? While the now might not be quantified, we're stilling conceptualizing it and speaking of it. If anything, I see us as only being able to piece it together second-hand, in a way -- like automaticity or even deeper aspects of our being that are unconscious, and in fact largely beyond our ability to be it to individual awareness (like the internal workings of our liver and circulation).
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    No offense, but you seem kind of like a computer that's been programmed to have philosophical discussions, but the code needs some tweaking.frank

    That’s why I’m on this forum, to invite tweaking. But that usually works better with substantive replies and questions than with one-liners.
  • Nothing
    41

    It is provocation. Time doesnt exist because you have to know time is consequence of pyhsical nature, so you notice time because cycle occur, people know it hapened one day because sun make one cycle, and if you go as deep as you can, you know smth happened because you saw cycle, change happens out of this, and we say this happening: time. It is a consequence not a real thing to hold on
  • Nothing
    41
    For joke: think a body as 100 billion wathces, they count time how many "time" we have to grave. It is funny because we have all the sam watch, but different energies, if you sleep time goes on, you study, time goes, you got married yesterday time.... always same time for all of us, but different capabilities as body,... energie
  • Janus
    16.2k
    I think you're taking liberties, because Heidegger is never so clear, but I also think that you almost have to be correct. When meditation is taught in eastern traditions, there is an emphasis on the "now" as well -- and past and future are seen as an illusion of some kind. The only "reality" is the one unfolding in the present.

    Seems true. On the other hand, is this not simply another interpretation from a present-at-hand mode of being? While the now might not be quantified, we're stilling conceptualizing it and speaking of it. If anything, I see us as only being able to piece it together second-hand, in a way -- like automaticity or even deeper aspects of our being that are unconscious, and in fact largely beyond our ability to be it to individual awareness (like the internal workings of our liver and circulation).
    Xtrix

    I am taking liberties in the sense that I don't claim what I am saying is what Heidegger would say. I don't say the past or future are illusions, but that they exist, as past and future, only now. This does relate to Husserl's notions of retention and protention. Do you think Heidegger would say that dasein, the 'being-there', is now?

    I am not suggesting that there is a succession of nows, although it might appear that way as we hop from one 'island moment' of conscious awareness to the next. Underlying that there would seem to be no succession, but a continuity or continuum.

    Perhaps everything we say "is another interpretation from a present-at-hand mode of being", but isn't it true that we experience the past and future only now? The present can be thought as the now regardless of what is consciously experienced as present. Or it can be thought simply as what is consciously experienced as present. Same word, different senses.
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