Time

The article argues that the relationship to time is at the root of what makes us human and that culture arises with and from efforts to transcend death, change and the rhythmicity of the physical environment. Time can be tracked through systems of time measurement and later transformed from a process of nature into clock time, a time to human design that is abstracted from context and content. In this form time can be traded with all other times. With contemporary (...) science and new information and communications technologies, which operate in a new all-encompassing temporal spectrum that extends from nanoseconds to millennia, clock time is no longer appropriate to the associated present-oriented transactions and futures are traversed in the dual sense of the word. By historically locating temporal relations, the article provides both a new understanding of socio-cultural relations and a perspective on social change. (shrink)

From a diachronic perspective this dissertation is a study of the history, evolution and transformation of a Greek military attribute--endurance--into a major philosophical concept. Furthermore I investigate the place, function and rhetoric of this transformed notion in various branches of Greek philosophy and its expression in a "demilitarized" and "militarized" format. From a synchronic perspective I investigate this Greek notion's abiding impact upon Roman philosophy, early Jewish martyria literature , and in particular upon the earliest extant documents of Christianity, the (...) letters of the apostle Paul . ;My analysis begins with an investigation of this heroic concept in its most natural matrix--the battlefield--first attested in European literature in the Iliad as well as in subsequent Greek literary and artistic descriptions dealing with warfare . The warrior standing firm with courage in the thick of battle becomes a figure of praise, the archetypical image of Greek masculinity and heroism. Upon this capacity for battle endurance rested the security and the freedom of the warrior's polis . From its military setting this concept would exercise a widespread impact. It entered into the vocabulary and concepts of Greek athletics, art, poetry, drama but most importantly philosophy where it would undergo a radical transformation, becoming an aggressive moral virtue in contexts of conflict, hardship, danger, persecution and martyrdom. Diachronically I trace this process of appropriation and transformation from Democritus, Plato and Aristotle, to the Cynics and Stoics, especially Seneca. ;The sage figuratively portrays himself as a warrior standing firm in battle against attacking enemies, whether internal or external --a basic "combat" motif which is almost never found in ancient Israelite or Judahite literature . Moral endurance is now thoroughly "demilitarized," though still considered one of the aggressive ethical virtues. In this form, endurance is understood within the framework of certain characteristics and specific rhetorical conventions . The sage's appropriation of this military notion signals a claim to a paradigm shift in the ancient Greek model of heroic endurance. The sage of endurance now declares himself as the new "virile man." ;In section 2, I analyze the Pauline concept of moral endurance against the background of Greek and Roman philosophical traditions of endurance. I argue that Paul basically participates in many of the features of philosophical endurance rather than Hebraic notions of endurance . It appears both in its "demilitarized" and "militarized" formats. It remains an aggressive virtue in contexts of hardship and conflict. In its demilitarized form Paul re-echoes many of the rhetorical and conceptual elements of the sage's endurance . In his militarized usage, Paul draws upon the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition of the "stand firm" exhortation. In the history of ideas, Paul's unique contribution in the development of this concept revolves around his Christ-centered ethics and the alliance of this aggressive moral attribute with the gentler charism of love. (shrink)

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The problem of future contingents is regarded as an important philosophical problem in connection with determinism and it should be treated by tense logic. Prior’s early work focused on the problem, and later Prior studied branching-time tense logic which was invented by Kripke. However, Prior’s idea to use three-valued logic for the problem seems to be still alive. In this paper, we consider partial and paraconsistent approaches to the problem of future contingents. These approaches theoretically meet Aristotle’s interpretation of future (...) contingents. (shrink)

This is an attempt to sort out what is it that makes many of us uncomfortable with the perdurantist solution to the problem of change. Lewis argues that only perdurantism can reconcile change with persistence over time, while neither presentism nor endurantism can. So, first, I defend the endurantist solution to the problem of change, by arguing that what is relative to time are not properties, but their possession. Second, I explore the anti-perdurantist strategy of arguing that Lewis cannot solve (...) the problem of change, for he cannot account for how some properties are possessed by objects in time. However, I argue that this strategy fails, for if by saying that objects in time can have properties ‘timelessly’ we mean “at no particular time” and “tenselessly”, only objects outside time can have properties in that way; but if we mean “for all the time they exist”, or “essentially”, perdurantists can account for this. Finally, I argue that actually perdurantism cannot solve the problem, but for different reasons: for either it sweeps the problem under the carpet, denying change, and in general subverting our conceptual scheme in a dangerous way, or it becomes equivalent to the endurantist picture that properties are had at times. Nor perdurantism is justified by the Relativity Theory or the B-theory of time, because while endurantism is certainly comfortable with presentism, it need not be committed to it; and even if it were, presentism need not be refuted by the Relativity Theory. (shrink)

Offers a history of the philosophy of time and a comparison of the ways of conceiving the temporal, concentrating on European philosophy and its impact the connection between time and money in Western civilization.

I think I would not err in saying that Dvoretskii's chronicle of our times, The Man from Outside, is stimulating unusual interest on the part of theater companies and audiences. It has been produced on two Moscow stages, something that is quite rare. It is playing in Leningrad, Kiev, Vilnius, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Kuibyshev, Murmansk, Novokuznetsk, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Sverdlovsk, Simferopol, Stavropol, and other cities. Judging by the reviews, the play and its productions are successful everywhere. It is as hard (...) to get a ticket to Moscow's Malaia Bronnaia Theater as to Spartacus at the Bolshoi or Hamlet at the Taganka. (shrink)

In Every Thing Must Go James Ladyman and Don Ross argue for a radical version of naturalistic metaphysics and propose that contemporary analytic metaphysics is detached from science and should be discontinued. The present article addresses the issues of whether science and metaphysics are separable, intuitions and understanding should be excluded from scientific theory, and Ontic Structural Realism satisfies the criteria of the radical version of naturalism advanced by Ladyman and Ross. The point underlying those topics is that successful scientific (...) research presupposes metaphysics, and that basic epistemic virtues common to metaphysics and science may allow us—as opposed to what Ladyman and Ross suggest—to increase our understanding of the world and to put constraints on allowable metaphysical theories. (shrink)

On Choice of Time Metric. What criteria ought to be satisfied by those observable processes which, accompanied by a function assigning values to intervals of that processes, serve as the standard for measurement of time? In how far do the criteria which can reasonably be established admit of an unambigous definition of time metric? That are the questions to which I have addressed myself in the paper. Peter Janich has aimed at solving the problem with careful avoidance of any reference (...) to physical theory. Although this paper owes a great deal to his ‘Protophysik der Zeit’, reasons will be ad-vanced that it is in principle impossible to give a foundation of time metric without any reference to physical theory. It follows that taking results of physical theory into account is unavoidable as far as a definite decision concerning the choice of time metric is aspired. At first sight reference to law-like assertions on the duration of temporal intervals appears to be paradoxical for it means to take something which originally ought to be submitted to experimental test as the standard for measurement. Poincaré is fairly conscious of this problem, yet explicitly acknowledges that there is a mutual relationship between definition of time metric and physical theory. It will be shown that this kind of mutual relationship which even might be termed as circular does not void physical theory of empirical content. Thus in the final part I am concerned to free the position which recommends reference to physical theory from its paradoxical image in order to advance a conventionalist account as a sceptical, but nevertheless fully satisfying solution. (shrink)

“But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had.”—That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o'clock here” means; so you also know what “It's 5 o'clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock.”—The explanation (...) by means of identity does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there “the same time”, but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there. (shrink)

The Energy-Time Uncertainty (ETU) has always been a problem-ridden relation, its problems stemming uniquely from the perplexing question of how to understand this mysterious Δ t . On the face of it (and, indeed, far deeper than that), we always know what time it is. Few theorists were ignorant of the fact that time in quantum mechanics is exogenously defined, in no ways intrinsically related to the system. Time in quantum theory is an independent parameter, which simply means independently known (...) . In the early 1960s Aharonov (1961-64) and Bohm (1961-64) mounted a spirited attack against the ETU, which sealed its fate to the present date. By emphasising that time is always “well-defined” in quantum theory, they were led to the conclusion that no ETU should exist, a view shared by many in the 1990s, if Busch (1990) is to be believed. In a similar vein, I emphasize that (a) physical systems occupy a particular energy state at a particular instant of time, if at all; (b) even in absence of all time-measuring instruments, it is still trivially warranted that one can measure a system's energy as accurately as one pleases, and simply announce “The system's energy is exactly E NOW!”, a possibility which no quantum mechanics of any sort, or any physical theory whatsoever, can afford to tamper with or change, except circularly. One never loses one's own perception of time, when one measures the energy, a fact which no measurement conceivable can interfere with or affect. Both (a) and (b) uniquely entail that energy and time are compatible, if not indeed intimately interconnected, contrary to what the relevant uncertainty seems to affirm. In response to Aharonov's and Bohm's initial problem, I reinterpret ΔEΔt ≥ h , as directly derived from authentic quantum principles, without however having to assume a direct incompatibility between its related concepts, attributing their complementarity to conditions other than ordinarily assumed. (shrink)

Zeno argued that since at any instant an arrow does not change its location, the arrow does not move at any time, and hence motion is impossible. I discuss the following three views that one could take in view of Zeno's argument:(i) the "at-at" theory, according to which there is no such thing as instantaneous velocity, while motion in the sense of the occupation of different locations at different times is possible,(ii) the "impetus" theory, according to which instantaneous velocities do (...) exist but these are only contingently and causally related to the temporal developments of positions,(iii) the "no instants" theory, according to which instants in time do not exist, and hence instantaneous velocities do not exist, while motion, in the sense of different areas occupied during different time intervals, is possible.I argue that, despite the fact that there have been interesting and relevant developments in mathematics and physics since the time of Zeno, each of these views still has serious drawbacks. (shrink)

The main aim of this work is to present a unified treatment of three philosophical problems about time which have come to be regarded as distinct and unrelated. These are: the question of whether time is to be conceived as self-existent or as a relational structure among events; the question of what constitutes the direction of time; and the question of whether temporal becoming may be considered an objective feature of the natural world. ;I contend here that the third of (...) these questions should be answered in the affirmative. This automatically provides us with an answer to the second question, for the direction of time may be construed as the order in which events come to be: that is, in terms of the relation of possible succession. This in turn requires the provision of a foundation for the theory of time in terms of an intrinsic relational structure among possible events. ;In chapter I, I give a preview of these conclusions and lay out my strategy for establishing them in the succeeding chapters. ;In chapter II, I trace the historical development of the modern physical concept of time, and give a detailed discussion of both Leibniz's and Newton's treatments of it. I use this discussion to introduce a number of issues about time: in particular, the opposition between "actualist" and "possibilist" conceptions, the association of time with spacetime and the concept of inertia, and the connection of time homogeneity and the concept of energy. Newton's classical treatment of temporal transiency by means of his fluxional system is also examined in detail, and both his and Leibniz's theories of time are construed as attempts to reassert the continuity of temporal becoming and motion in the face of Descartes' assertions of the atomicity of temporal becoming and the relativity of motion. ;In chapter III, I argue that the absolute-relational controversy may be resolved by taking the essential structure of time to be that of a local chronological ordering intrinsic to possible events. . . . UMI. (shrink)