A Companion to the Philosophy of Time

Adrian Bardon, Heather Dyke, Adrian Bardon, Heather Dyke

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781119145691, 9780470658819
• eBook ISBN: 9781118522059
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

A Companion to the Philosophy of Time presents the broadest treatment of this subject yet; 32 specially commissioned articles - written by an international line-up of experts – provide an unparalleled reference work for students and specialists alike in this exciting field.

• The most comprehensive reference work on the philosophy of time currently available
• The first collection to tackle the historical development of the philosophy of time in addition to covering contemporary work
• Provides a tripartite approach in its organization, covering history of the philosophy of time, time as a feature of the physical world, and time as a feature of experience
• Includes contributions from both distinguished, well-established scholars and rising stars in the field

Part I

The History of the Philosophy of Time

1

Heraclitus and Parmenides

Ronald C. Hoy

Once upon a time, two giants of the ancient Greek world expressed contrary views of time – views so fundamental and provocative that they continue to resonate in contemporary debates about the nature of time. Neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides wrote explicit theories of time. Instead, they wrestled with a basic philosophical problem: do our ordinary, “common sense” beliefs accurately represent reality, or do they distort it for the convenience or flattery of mere mortals? Both rejected in harsh terms many common beliefs. Both put forward alternative radical metaphysical views. What makes their claims important for later students of time is that Heraclitus and Parmenides each fastened upon some problematic aspect of the temporality of the world, and they each made what bothered them central to their dramatic rejection of common beliefs. Importantly, they focused on different features of the human experience of time as the source of metaphysical error. In their different ways, they articulated views of time so different and provocative that philosophers and scientists can find themselves still wrestling with the same issues, and, in effect, taking sides. Or so the story has been going for about 2500 years.

1. The Given Temporal World of Mortals

Neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides wrote much, and what they did write is challenging: oracular, poetic, and obscure.¹ In the fifth century BC, people made a distinction between the mortal and the divine, but the divine was not primarily transcendent as often later understood. Rather, the divine is immanent, and its primary defining quality is to be everlasting (or eternal or immortal). The Greek gods were not transcendent, always nice, or infallible, but they were usually assumed to be divine in the sense of everlasting or eternal. Humans are mortal and attempt to last for as long as possible, often by trying to understand challenges or forces that are divine. The ancient Greeks were beginning philosophy (and natural science) by beginning to conceive the divine (the eternal) in non-anthropomorphic terms. They began to formulate possible explanations for the cosmos and its changes in terms of the properties of water or fire, for example, without hubristically assuming that water or fire have personalities like humans, or, that their behavior is being directed by a super-person. But this was a start and stop process, and the ancients made frequent use of reference to gods – especially in more oracular and poetic writing. Both Heraclitus and Parmenides did so. But their literary use of gods is not crucial to their philosophical challenges. Even if Greeks believed that Zeus (being eternal) knows more about time than we mortals do, the problems Heraclitus and Parmenides find do not stem primarily from our not being Zeus (from our not being eternal). Rather, they stem from philosophical (or logical) puzzles that challenge common beliefs, ones that mere mortals can discover and try to solve.

To start, we need a brief summary, a brief characterization, of “common temporal beliefs.” Do we have to go back and try to recover the temporal beliefs of the average Greek of 2500 years ago? No. Both Heraclitus and Parmenides were profoundly right about one thing. They both suggested that even after people have been told the truth (i.e., their new radical theories) mere mortals will likely persist in their “two-headed” (or “blind” or “deaf” or “asleep”) beliefs. That is, they will continue the kind of common temporal narrative (or story) with which Heraclitus and Parmenides will each find different faults. If they are right, we should be able to characterize a cluster of common temporal beliefs (common to ancients and moderns) using contemporary idioms. Let’s try.

Evolution has equipped humans with sensory systems able to register their more or less local environment. We can see, hear, and feel what is around us at some time. So we believe things like, “I see the Youghiogheny River.” These sensory systems are useful for coping with present opportunities and dangers, so these deliverances have an imperative character and are indexed with the emphasis, “I see the river now,” or, “I see an angry bear now.” Evolution has also equipped us with considerable memory capacity and an ability to model (plan for) alternative futures: “This is the same river I fished successfully last year with caddis flies, so if I want to catch fish tomorrow perhaps I should get some caddis flies.” We typically believe there is some determinate (fixed) Past, and some indeterminate and open Future, one that we believe we can influence.² We believe that the same objects can be in the past, the present, and the future: “I am the same person that caught fish in this same river last year, and I will be the same person that catches fish in this same river tomorrow (I hope and predict).” Moreover, evolution has biased successful humans with more or less urgent concern about the future: “don’t dwell on the past, the hour is late, we better hurry and get those flies now.”

Next, future things (whether events or objects) seem to be in some way “moving” constantly closer to us – or to the Now – or, perhaps it is we and our present that are constantly moving towards them (whatever they are). Whatever, time is commonly thought to be in some way dynamic and asymmetric. Or so it seems to be given in our experience, in both our perceiving and our thinking.

According to such narratives, evolution has enshrined this dynamic temporal perspective in our “ordinary language” or in our “phenomenology.” Our ordinary language, some will say, is irreducibly tensed, marking both linguistic and ontological distinctions between the past, present, and future. And if all human experience (including all knowing) must conform to a priori, phenomenological “structures of consciousness,” then this dynamic temporal perspective must be fundamental in some way. These claims are controversial. The point here is simply that the kind of simple temporal beliefs we have been discussing are the same kinds of belief “common mortals” held back in the time of Heraclitus and Parmenides.

There is one more kind of common mortal belief involving time that should be noted. It might not be quite so common since it involves more abstraction. Suppose last year Tom catches three trout in the morning and two in the afternoon. Then the belief, “Tom caught three trout earlier than he caught two trout (on such-and-such a day in such-and-such a year)” will always be true, no matter whether or how time “moves.” Suppose there are three bettors who want to wager that on a specific day Tom catches three trout in the morning and two in the afternoon. Suppose the three bettors put their wagers in the form of a “tenseless” sentence: “Tom’s catching three trout by noon is earlier than his catching two after noon on June 3, 2011.” Suppose one of the bettors is a contemporary of Parmenides, one is a contemporary of Tom, and the other is Tom’s great-great-granddaughter (Tom being dead). Do the three bettors make the same wager; do the same facts make their wagers true or false? If you are inclined to think this is so, then you might be inclined to believe that there are some eternal truths about the temporal world, for example, beliefs about the earlier-than/later-than relations amongst specific events. In other words, you might be inclined to believe that there are some truths about the temporal world that are not themselves subject to the “movement” of time and for which the distinction between the past, present, and future is irrelevant.³

We might be at risk of straying from “common” mortal thoughts about the temporal world. Perhaps many people never consider the eternal character of such earlier-than/later-than beliefs. But it is common knowledge that there are eternal truths that constantly apply to the temporal world. The paradigm is mathematics. Whenever you catch three fish and later two fish, you have caught five fish. It seems common knowledge that three plus two equals five, not just now but always.

To review: mortals have a complicated tool kit of “common” beliefs involving time. They believe the same things can exist in the past, present and future, and these different “parts” of time have different characters and imperatives. They believe that time (including the parts of time) in some way “flows,” so that things are constantly changing their relation to a special time called the present, or the Now. Yet they also can recognize that there are some truths – including some truths about time – that are not dependent upon temporal location nor subject to change in time. This package of common understanding of time is what Augustine meant when he famously said:

what in discourse do we mention more familiarly and knowingly, than time? And, we understand, when we speak of it; we understand also, when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not.

⁴

2. Heraclitus Embraces the Flux of Becoming, Making It and Its Logos Divine

Heraclitus taught a comprehensive philosophy, taking stands in what later would be called epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics. Here we will try to focus on claims that illuminate what he takes to be true about time. But even in his own time, Heraclitus was referred to as “the riddler,” or “the obscure.” Posterity works with fragments of a collection of epigrammatic, poetic, oracular declarations – riddles. During the subsequent 2500 years, Heraclitus has been interpreted in a variety of more or less controversial ways. Depending upon their location in some other philosophical context (in religion or cosmology or ethics, for example) later philosophers have likely made many anachronistic mistakes. It is the large job of scholars specializing in ancient philosophy to track these interpretations and diagnose their mistakes. In this small space, the aim is to try to discern the character of Heraclitus’ “view” of time to see if he foreshadows or provokes later theories. This project flirts guiltlessly with anachronism. It will be a bonus if it helps clarify some of his riddles.

Heraclitus’ work begins with a declaration of success combined with pessimism about being understood:

This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be [or happen] in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.

(Fragment 1. McKirahan 116.)

“Logos” is an ancient Greek word that translators rarely translate.⁵ Here it can be taken to mean both the general principle or rule (or measure or proportion) according to which all things happen and Heraclitus’ words or account of this general principle. Heraclitus claims to have discovered the true logos, but he says people will be like the “inexperienced” when they experience his words. Though the logos is common (applying to all things, including all people’s experiences), people fail to understand it as they should even when their attention is drawn to it – as though they live in their own dream worlds.

Heraclitus proceeds to offer a dizzying variety of epigrams and oracular riddles covering a wide variety of topics: from war to meteorology to eating and more. Later philosophers are challenged to understand the logos that covers them all, and there is no shortage of controversy.

Let’s jump into Fragment 67:

God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger; he undergoes alterations in the way that fire, when mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them.⁶

There is some scholarly discussion of what “god” means here. Most point to some immanent “sum of all things” conception. And Heraclitus says that the cosmos is not made by the gods and is the “same for all”:

The KOSMOS, the same for all, none of the gods nor of humans has made, but it always was and is and shall-be: an ever-living fire being kindled in measures and being extinguished in measures.

(Fragment 30, McKirahan 1994, 124.)

Notice that the cosmos is uncreated and eternal. For Heraclitus, it is divine. Not worrying, then, too much about the exact sense of “god” in Frag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The History of the Philosophy of Time
• Part II: Time as a Feature of the Physical World
• Part III: Time as a Feature of Human Experience
• Index