Over the last two years, The Philosophical Debate has fielded such varied topics as cloning, time, religion, the meaning of learning, and the benefits, dangers, and sometimes futility, of man's inexorable march towards technological perfection (or destruction).
A question that is often raised, particularly when dealing with topics of a social or technological bearing, is one of purpose and meaning. Do these discussions have any bearing on the world at all? It would seem overly idealistic to assume that the discussions of a few students and faculty in a small room, in a small city, on a corner of the continent could have any bearing on the grinding procession of either technological or social views in the world at large. Perhaps this would pose an interesting topic for discussion in the future, providing, if nothing else, a beautiful irony--a debate held to concerning the ultimate futility of the debates themselves.
The point that is overlooked so often in these discussions, however. is that perhaps the purpose of the debates is not to change the world, but to change the self. To consider these topics, to discuss them with others, this is a process that forces, to varying degrees, those that participate to grow. The discussion of issues, for the discussion's sake, seems to be a dying art. The transformation of society is a lofty goal, and one not to be scoffed at (although the issue of what society should be transformed into is a prickly one), but when attempting such goals, it would perhaps be wise to first determine if the self needs transforming. While it may not be possible to determine a path for the development of society, it is almost definitely impossible if one cannot determine a path for the development of the individual.
Some Things to Consider. . .
Does time exist independently of the mind or is it something that we superimpose on the world? Often we are able to wake at a certain time without the aid of an alarm clock: when we are sleeping, are we somehow in touch with time? Would an understanding of time alter how we make time meaningful? How do our habits affect our notions of time? If all motion stopped and you were still conscious, would you be aware of time? If human minds were gone from the Earth, would time still exist? Can we have a relativistic notion of time and still have a sense of time that is useful to us? Does our perception of death reflect our notion of time? How much of your life do you really remember? Does how we understand history reflect how we understand our Selves?
Highlights From the Last Meeting. . .
According to Stephen Hawking, time is the measure of increasing disorder, directly connected to space. It is independent of the mind. In this teleological view, we start with the Big Bang and the matter and energy expand outwards. There are two options; indefinite diffusion or diffusion to the point where matter can no longer resist gravity and it begins to retract.
St. Augustine said that time conflates into space, that time is understood it terms of the change of space. If time is a function of space then it does not make sense to talk about time before creation. Therefore it is a logical absurdity to talk about what God was doing before creation.
What difference. in terms of meaning, does it make whether time is dependent on us or independent of us? We experience it the same either way. Is it really time itself in which we are searching for meaning? Knowing whether time is or is not independent of our minds would give us a different focal point; the meaning of time itself would either be coming from our own mind or be put there by some external force.
We can think of time as either empty or full. The physical notion of time leaves it empty with the myriad of events existing to fill it up. Under this notion we are active; there is more pressure on us to fill the time with meaningful events. If it is already full, then we are passive, just following along the events that already exist in time.
Motion is a relation between time and space. If all motion stopped and we were still conscious, would we be aware of time? (Of course. this is hypothetical; if all motion stopped we would be very dead.) In visual representations of reality the only way that we have to communicate to the audience that time has stopped is to stop the motion.
Cryogenics is the
study of the behavior of matter near absolute zero (273oC).
Although we have come within a millionth of a degree of reaching the theoretically
lowest possible temperature, we do not know what would happen if we were
to lower the temperature enough to stop the energy and movement of the
molecules altogether. Time can be seen as a measurement of physical change-
when the Earth rotates15o, an hour has
passed. Without a standard measure of time, our modem world is not possible.
And our relation to time is?
Is the mind capable of transcending time? When we are involved in certain activities, e.g., thinking, reading, writing, or doing math, we become unaware of the passage of time. (Like last quarter when i was at my computer -writing a paper and suddenly realized that a spider had built a web from my shoulder to the wall. -t.) Is thought an absence of time? It can only be an absence of your subjective awareness of time-. while your mind is "somewhere else," clock time still passes around you. For Martin Heidegger, "to be human is to be a temporal event of self-manifestation that lets to other sorts of entities first come to 'emerge and abide' in the world" (Cambridge Encycl. of Philosophy).
Time is not a noun for Heidegger, but rather it is how one's being (Dasein) relates to the world. Time also gets in the way of our understanding of Being. He says that our time order is interrupted by Being revealing itself. If you really want to experience Being, you have to be able to slip off your own sense of time and look at time from the perspective of other people. In the experience of Being you transcend time. He refers to time in terms of "moods." For example, we might think of fun time vs. boring time, considering not the speed of the passing time but how we perceive quality in it.
Do we become comfortable with a certain mood of time and integrate that mood into our character? For each one of us, time is something different. People may be perpetually on fun time, laid-back student time (whatever that is), or they may operate under a constant sense of urgency and order. What happens when someone who is accustomed to one time-mind set gets forced into another?
Ever since Immanuel Kant, we have been leaning more and more toward understanding time in terms of mind-dependency. Further, this notion has become, whether externally or internally, more and more relativistic. (Relativism here should not be confused with relativity theory, in which time is constant within kinetic-spacial frames.) But our world cannot work on relativistic time. For Kant, time and space are concepts that we superimpose on the world. The Kantian anchor, or reference point, was that our intuitions of time and space were based on reason, which we would all use in the same way. Even though our notions of time come from inside of us, time itself would still be constant. Just because time is created by us does not mean that we can control it; it is formulated under and operates by objective laws which are independent of us--the laws of reason. To have an understanding that we have an intuition of time we must be able to transcend time, which reason allows us to do.
How is meaning understood differently in a relativistic notion of time from that of a notion of time that has an anchor? For Christians there is a beginning and an end imposed by God. For the Ancient Greeks the reference point was Nature, and all natural phenomena were seen as cyclical. How do we find a meaningful referent with relative time? If there is no reference point, does it really make a difference? Or does everything fit into the framework of time itself?
A reference point is something outside of time to which we can refer.
If there is nothing outside of time, what would we mean by freedom? If
everything is playing out laws that govern them then they are determined.
If we want to assert a radical notion of freedom (not Kantian, where we
follow the laws of freedom. . .), then we have to assert something that
exists outside of time. If something is built into you instinctively, are
you free in doing it? Animals have an instinctive notion of time, but it
is reactive, not active. They are not free; they are in harmony with time.
Does Death Disturb You?
How does death fit into our notion of time? Either death is freedom from time--liberation--or it is the end of freedom in life and the cessation of meaning. In the Old Testament, there is no concept of an immediate after life; all meaning was predicated on events within the boundaries of mortality. In Judaism, lineage was very important; it was believed that one must have some sense of beginnings and ends to make sense of life.
Death can be seen as the end of the time for the individual, but time does go on beyond us. The value of time for the individual must come from inside the individual. The Existentialists constantly want to remind us of our finiteness.
Transcendence of time or notions of eternality, or life after death devalues time that should be very precious to us. Understanding ourselves in terms of finitude forces us to think more about the value of our time. The more we try to emphasize transcendence of time, through, for example, knowledge or religion, the more we de-emphasize the time that we have in the here and now.
The one way to control time is to bring it to an end. We could do this as individuals by committing suicide or as a collective.
Time to Kill
By Micheal R. Torrance
Why do we give something that really has no meaning so much power over our lives? Time is simply a concept created by the human intellect and for all intents and purposes has no real meaning. And yet it runs our lives.
A couple of Sundays ago, I was playing with my nieces in the swimming pool. I did not take off my watch; I didn't feel I needed to--it was waterproof. When I got out of the pool, I dried off and looked down at my watch. Boy was I in for a surprise. My waterproof watch wasn't all that waterproof So, stuck without a watch for the rest of the day I felt lost. I was restless until I got a chance to go and buy a new watch.
These events started me thinking about the meaning of time and its power. My conclusion was that time has no meaning. It is an abstract concept that was created to control our lives. Time does not exist anywhere in the real world. The Earth spins on its axis making a complete revolution in twenty four hours.
Not true. The Earth spins naturally, no matter what we say. Summer becomes Fall, Fall to Winter, Winter to Spring. People are born, live, and die. Day becomes night only to become day once again. All these things are the natural occurrence of things. They have nothing to do with time, and yet, for the sake of our own minds we equate it all with the passage of time.
We all equate our worth of things by time. The older an object, the more precious and/or expensive it is. The longer something lasts, the better it is. We even equate our own worth by time, always looking for that job that pays the most per hour. Why? Why does meaningless time have so much power over our lives?
I don't know and I probably never will. All I know is that I've got my new watch, that I no longer feel lost, and that it's 11: 30 and I have to get ready to go to work.
Ps-My waterproof watch dried out, and it's working Just fine now.
The Subject is Death
By Carol Linskey
The subject of death, in general, and thoughts imagining our own death in particular, is a rare and uncomfortable topic. And I tread here modestly, perhaps because I am young and it doesn't seem necessary or proper until, that is, I give it more thought. The thought is inescapable that life has a finitude that always ends in death. At least, life as we come to know it, i.e., on this earth. So even though I am half-conscious (at best) of death as an inevitability, how does it inform my life? Uncertainty lures me to the bookshelf.
Lawrence L. Langer's study, The Age of Atrocity, Death in Modem Literature, examines the subject of death from an artistic point of view, and this is a more comfortable jumping off place. The book is very well done, capturing questions asked and unasked by myself, confronted by the experience of surviving when someone I know has gone from this life. Langer writes, particularly, in the first chapter of a phenomenon called "inappropriate death."
The theme is followed throughout the book from different perspectives. The modern period, comprising roughly the first half of this century, saw much disintegration in the value of human worth, a "contempt for the body and a scorn for the human image that discount the value of a single life" (2).
The horrors Solzhenitsyn
recounted are inarguably examples of inappropriate death. But they
are also perhaps too distant for us here at the end of the century to assimilate
into our own perspectives, unless we are mindful of experiences currently
lived in Sarayevo or in Africa, or Korea. We experience inappropriate death
every day, through the media, and sometimes within our own families and neighborhoods.
Given that, need we concern ourselves with the question of death as these
writers were impelled to do because of the necessity of their historical
epoch? Is it because we live in a relative peace-time, and demographically
longer than ever before (except for the time of Methusela and Noah), that
the subject of death is less relevant? Perhaps even taboo? Is the subject
of life more relevant? How so? Is there a real separation between the two?
Is there really much difference between the way we prepare for death now
than fifty or a hundred and fifty or two thousand years ago? Finally, what
can be called an appropriate death"?
Water Music
-t.
Leaves, floating on erratic rivers,
we are alike in fall from summer
trees,
borne by the wind to our death -
to the water,
separated by undercurrents
of Nature's breath
gliding softly over placid
glassy stillness, life below,
until it shatters into
rapids
where
we
scream
inside
like
children
on
amusement
rides...
one
final
crash
deposits us once again onto
muck-smothered stagnant water
where we listen for the
pregnant sound of
rapids.
Announcements
There will be a social gathering on Friday, June 6th at 7:30 pm. If you are interested in attending, contact Dr. Nordenhaug in the Philosophy Department
Have a safe, happy, and thoughtful Summer.