[coberst]

Movement Gives Meaning to Time

Long, long ago, I took a course in physics at Oklahoma Agriculture and Mechanical College now called Oklahoma State University. That physics course defined speed to be equal to the distance traversed by an object in a unit of time. For the initiated that is s=d/t. It was assumed that distance and time were more primitive concepts than was motion.

I live in the mountains and often go hiking. On occasion some motion among all the other fluttering motions going on within my perception halts all activity, my pulse races, chills run down my back, and all my attention is focused upon a particular motion. Later I consciously analyze the situation and discover that that motion was similar to a dangerous motion as defined by my genes. We are hard-wired to respond to motion. I discover every time such an incident occurs that motion is number one and time is not supreme.

“What we call the domain of time appears to be a conceptual domain that we use for asking certain questions about events through our comparison to other events: where they are “located” relative to other events, how can they be measured relative to other events, and so on. What is literal and inherent about the conceptual domain of time is that it is characterized by the comparison of events.”

“This does not mean that we do not have an experience of time…What it means is that our real experience of time is dependent, is always relative to our real experience of events. It also means that our experience of time is dependent on or embodied conceptualization of time in terms of events. This is a major point: Experience does not always come prior to conceptualization, because conceptualization is itself embodied. Furthermore, it means that our experience of time is grounded in other experiences, the experience of events.”

What, if anything, is time ‘in itself’? I suspect no one can answer that question because such a thing, I guess, does not exist. We are able to talk of time only with metaphors.

Common linguistic expressions: “That’s all behind us now. Let’s put that in back of us now. We’re looking ahead to the future. He has a great future in front of him.”

A Moving Time Metaphor: “There is a lone, stationary observer facing in a fixed direction. There is an indefinitely long sequence of objects moving past the observer from front to back. The moving objects are conceptualized as having fronts in their direction of motion.”

How does cognitive science, as constructed by the embodied realists, look at ‘time’?

Cognitive science examines concepts as they come ready-made from the unconscious. Language expresses our ready-made concept of time and with this the cognitive scientists constructs the mechanisms and the human experiences that have gone into the development of this living concept. I call it a living concept because some experience I have later today might very well modify it somewhat without my conscious awareness.

As Rumsfeld might say ‘we take the concept we have and not the concept we might wish to have’.

Events and time: oscillating pendulums mark time—drummers mark time—subatomic particles mark time—time marches forward—time does not march backward—time is continuous and also segmented—time is never alone but is often marked by an event.

Spatial time: is that central time or GM time?—time is located with reference to the observer, it is behind, in front of, in the present, past or future—there is moving time that comes toward me or away from me—time is never alone but is often marked in spatial terms.

Time flows like a river. Time stands still and the observer moves. The observer stands still while time moves. There is trouble down the road. What length of time will you be staying? We are coming up to Christmas. We passed the deadline. The days dwindle down to a precious few. The deadline sneaked by me. The future is ahead of us. Put the past behind you. Time is never alone but is often marked by my presence.

All this time orientation occurs in many languages and occurs widely around the world; these conceptions of time are not arbitrary, but are motivated by “by the most basic of everyday experiences”. Time is conceived with metaphors. We do not speak of time-in-it-self we think of time in metaphor. In many metaphors, time is conceived as a container. “He ran a mile in five minutes”, in locates the event within a metaphorical temporal container, i.e. a bounded region. “The race occurred at 10 A.M.”, locates time at a temporal location.

Our subjective life is enormous. We have subjective experiences of desire, affection, and achievement. We make subjective judgments about abstract ideas such as importance, difficulty, and morality. Much of what makes up our conceptualization, reasoning, and visualization of these subjective matters “comes from other domains of experience”. These other domains are mostly sensorimotor experiences.

Within the human unconscious there is a constant copying of the neurological structure of actual experiences onto subjective concepts. In other words, below the conscious radar our unconscious is selecting copies of the neurological structures from real life experiences and placing those copies onto subjective concepts. Our concept of time is an accumulation of the neurological structures of real experiences; thus we have such a varied and sometimes contradictory comprehension of many subjective abstract concepts such as we see with ‘time’.


Time is a human conceptualization. Is there a literal aspect of time? Yes, time is directional, it is irreversible, time-defining events are regular and iterative. But we can hardly think or speak of time without metaphor. This is the case because we invent the concept of time unconsciously by our experiences as we move through space and time in our daily activities.

Many of our concepts are just like this concept of time. Our subjective concepts, our abstract concepts, such as value, causality, change, love, nation, patriotism, God or gods, etc. are all human constructions that happen below the conscious radar and exist because our unconscious activity creates them.

Can you conceptualize ‘time’ without using metaphors? I cannot, it appears that no one can.


Ideas and quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”—Lakoff and Johnson

[InfiniteNow]

Movement itself is a meaningless concept if time is not in place first.

[coberst]

I live in Smoky Mountains of southwestern North Carolina. I often walk the back roads and trails in these mountains. On rare occasions I see a motion in the forest that causes the hair on my neck to standup and a cold chill goes down my spine. My reaction is instinctive, it is not conscious; it is a feeling that just happens.

I suspect almost all creatures are more sensitive to motion than to anything else in their world. I have no doubt that motion triggers meaning for almost all creatures as automatically as fear triggers meaning that results in the reaction of fight or flight.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by coberst

I live in Smoky Mountains of southwestern North Carolina. I often walk the back roads and trails in these mountains. On rare occasions I see a motion in the forest that causes the hair on my neck to standup and a cold chill goes down my spine. My reaction is instinctive, it is not conscious; it is a feeling that just happens.

I suspect almost all creatures are more sensitive to motion than to anything else in their world. I have no doubt that motion triggers meaning for almost all creatures as automatically as fear triggers meaning that results in the reaction of fight or flight.

Hey I was where you are a couple of years ago collecting fish for a population study of sorts. I was in a river that flowed toward the Mississippi instead of the east coast, one of the few to do so in NC.

So about time, it's about time? I read your post and I am still a little bit confused. Are you saying that time is a human concept that doesn't exist outside human perception or that humans name the concept of time to measure motion or is there a third choice?

I have to say that while the concept of time is indeed something humans use to measure movement. Time none the less exists outside of human perception. The decay of radioactive elements mark time and we were not aware of them when we first started measuring time.

[modest]

Originally Posted by coberst

Movement Gives Meaning to Time

Long, long ago, I took a course in physics at Oklahoma Agriculture and Mechanical College now called Oklahoma State University. That physics course defined speed to be equal to the distance traversed by an object in a unit of time. For the initiated that is s=d/t. It was assumed that distance and time were more primitive concepts than was motion.

...I discover every time such an incident occurs that motion is number one and time is not supreme...

What, if anything, is time ‘in itself’? I suspect no one can answer that question because such a thing, I guess, does not exist. We are able to talk of time only with metaphors.

I think time is the more primitive concept than motion.

Your equation is spot on and quite revealing s=d/t or speed(motion) equals change in distance over change in time.

This is the most primitive definition we can give motion: change in space over change in time. Motion is therefore a relationship between those two concepts (space and time) and must depend on both. If we graph it, it would look like so:



I would submit that a concept which must rely on the comparison of two other concepts is by definition less primitive than the two concepts it compares - I can think of no situation where that is not true. In other words, comparing time and space with motion is less primitive than either time or space.

I don't think there would be a good argument that our brains consider motion more primitive than time. I can imagine what five minutes is like without going through a process such as "one mile is the distance I can run in five minutes therefore I can imagine five minutes as one mile in time". The brain can understand time without referencing motion. It is therefore at least as primitive a concept to the brain as motion.

~modest

[coberst]

Moontanman


I am saying that time is a human creation that results from an instinctive awareness of perceived movement plus it is also a fundamental aspect of human awareness as a result of the human ability to move about in space. We can get an understanding of our comprehension of this concept by examining the metaphors that are generally used in English and in many cases in other languages.

We have many uses of the concept “time” and measuring the decay of radioactivity is one of them.

[coberst]

Modest

I measure time principally by remembeing what I have done since the last time I looked at a clock. If I cannot remember what I have done since looking at a clock I am not able to accuratly "tell time".

[modest]

Originally Posted by coberst

Modest

I measure time principally by remembeing what I have done since the last time I looked at a clock. If I cannot remember what I have done since looking at a clock I am not able to accuratly "tell time".

Ok, I'm sure that's true. Something else true: I know how long I've slept when I wake from a deep sleep because my brain did stuff while I slept. What does either of these two things have to do with motion?

Point was: we can imagine what time is and use it as a concept without involving motion. As a concept it is as primitive as motion (if not more so).

~modest

[coberst]

Modest

I guess we shall just have to agree to disagree.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by coberst

Modest

I guess we shall just have to agree to disagree.

Since this *is* the philosophy forum, I must ask: "Why?".