Abstract
‘Time is said in many ways’, to paraphrase Aristotle. In this essay, time is comprehended in four distinct yet parallel ways: subjective time, event time, conventional time, and landscape time. Subjective time measures the interval between two subjective experiences recorded by memory. Event time represents the order of events involved in a process. Conventional time is the measurement of a given physical interval registered by a clock and intersubjectively assumed as common. Landscape time refers to the current disposition of all changing facts in the universe. These four types of time are independent and autonomous from one another, as the essay will demonstrate. Although distinct, these time types can be related, collectively contributing to our understanding of the concept of time and how we use the term in language. The conclusion supports a pluralistic view of time, where time is partitioned into four categories, each explaining a distinct portion of reality.
Introduction – Time in the History of Philosophy
Time was not a major concern of the Greek-Roman philosophical tradition. From one side, time was conceived as the form of the appearances, that is of what it does not exist. Parmenides, essentially, banned time from his ontology, as the only things that exist is ‘the being,’ which was to be intended as eternal, meaning a-temporal, an object that does not change, hence does not exist in time.[1] Any subsequent metaphysical approach which endorsed implicitly or explicitly any form of Parmenidean ontology (something that does exist in its perfection because it never changes) is, in a way or another, banning time in a very fundamental sense.[2] Both Plato and Aristotle essentially (here intended ‘literally,’ i.e. in their understanding of what ‘really exists’) endorsed Parmenides’ vision. For some interesting reasons, today this notion is called ‘Platonic,’ but the conception of a perfect unchanging being independent from how things look like in and through time is, in fact, originated by Parmenides.
Essentially Plato redefines and articulates Parmenides’ conception in his theory of ideas, where ideas are mind-independent, and unchanging objects, hence eternal.[3] In fact, where objects and things pertain to what appears to be (‘the appearances,’ and only contradictorily exists)[4] ideas are perfect shapes whose content is actualized in the world through a multitude of imperfect realization – the things or, more precisely and convolutely, ‘what appears to be as a thing that instantiate a particular combination of shapes/ideas.’ Therefore, time does exist only as a degenerative, secondary consequence of the existence of appearances, which is already a degraded condition of being in comparison with the realm of ideas, perfect and unchanging as they are. The ideas, and their overarching structure following the good-order (and the good, in general), are time-independent in a strong sense and, in fact, they are immune from any causality and participation of what today we would call ‘the world of physics.’ In the classic tradition, what we naively and specifically intend as ‘entropy,’ it was intended as time itself. Time is what destructs everything and everything is destroyed by time.[5] This negative notion of time is related to the correlate (more fundamental) negative notion of change. Change is the source of all evils in Plato’s understanding of morals,[6] as what changes degenerate from perfection and, ultimately, disappears.[7]
A different, slightly less negative conception of time is offered by Aristotle, who is more neutral on the matter. Time is only due to the multiplicity of ways we explain or describe what exists. There is no single way, according to Aristotle, to make sense of reality (of what it exists) without accepting the lack of a unique explanation for it. Hence, reality can be one, but it is described through multiple categories (actuality and potentiality, in the essence and per accident), and explained through diversified types of causes (material, formal, efficient and final).[8] If the world is a world of causes, then it is a world of time.[9] There is no way to eradicate time from an event constituted by a cause that comes first and an effect that necessarily follows from that cause. Causation without time is impossible.[10] However, Aristotle also denies that time is a fundamental component of the being as all things are considered. Only superficially the universe exists in time, the underlying substance(s) are eternal or uncorruptible and, as such, unchangeable. However, their complex interactions generate a multiplicity of events whose nature is, by definition, existing in time. Aristotle seems the man who arrived at the conclusion that something is not as bad, after having believed the opposite for all his life and, then, he keeps alive a clear form of psychological skepticism. The ‘pure being,’ or the Aristotelian God, is just a being that thinks about itself all the time and, as it does not change at all, it is eternal.[11] The circle is closed: the being in its perfection and self-sufficiency never moves and never changes, therefore it is eternal, where any other form of being is determined by external causation and interferences with secondary events. In other words, they exist in time (general), and they have a time (specifically). As such, they degrade and disappear. In conclusion, Aristotle does have a unifying theory of time, but he clearly sees time as the derivative component that is associate to change and, as such, to destruction. What does not change is perfect and, as such, eternal. Only God is perfect, hence, only God is eternal.
The major classic traditions (epicureans, stoics, and skeptics) all have an open contention with time, as they essentially all agree that things are in time and in time degraded and destroyed.[12] However, the stoics accept a progressive notion of history (natural evolution at fundamental level and general human history) as everything tends to increase the overall order (and the goodness) of the universe. But it would be, again, improper to believe that they also fully embrace this positive appreciation of time, as they also admit that humans are troubled by fear and death, passions that can be overcome only accessing a form of eternality of the soul through reason, meaning, understanding how the universe is determined toward the best in its essence and everything else does not matter.[13] Exactly because passions as such are intrinsically existing in time, they have a limited duration. They can be destroyed through proper reasoning and sufficient time. Paradoxically, time generates evil (human passions) but also provides a solution (the elimination of human passions), providing good luck or reason’s work. It is only with the Christian tradition that time is partially rescued from what was fully considered the entropy of life, the inevitable garbage of the universe, a garbage from which nobody is spared.
The Christian tradition revolutionized the folk perception of time. First, Christianity brought time to an end. Life ends where afterlife starts. Once dead, the soul joins the heavens ‘waiting’ for the resurrection of the body. Assuming salvation, time is a rescue from the intrinsic imperfection of life, where time ends where the better life starts. Although life is doomed to pain and evil even under the best circumstances, the subject can access to a different existence at the end of his/her duration in this world.[14] In a very paradoxical understanding of existence (doomed to failure and precondition of salvation), time is both negative (as a form of persistence in the evil) and positive (as it ends with the soul joining God). The judgement over the moral quality of time intrinsically depends on what time is measuring here. Christianity did not change the general perception of time as a destructive force, but the fact that subject’s time and universe-time are both finite, meaning, non-cyclical. The subject dies until he/she is resurrected (but there is a clear sense in which life is once and for all over when death comes). Ultimately, the world ends when God will judge all the souls and their conduct in the final judgment. Interestingly, then, whereas time does not end for any subject’s soul (the single major religious point of all Christianity), as the subject shares with God a form of eternality, the world is over forever. Assuming that those who deserved are finally secured in Heavens, time assumes a positive connotation as now the unity of body/soul which constitute the being is finally happy forever (understanding what this would mean if far beyond any human cognition as perpetual happiness/wellbeing etc. is a form of stability unthinkable for the human mind).[15] For all the complications of such a theory of time, Christianity introduced the idea that time terminates for the good, although time also marks the interval of evil. As such, time is finite and destructive, and its importance is related to salvation.
In the modern philosophy, there are three significant elaborations of the notion of time. After Descartes distinguished the res extensa (extension) from the res cogitans (thought), he implicitly divided time in what can be measured into what exists outside thought and what can be perceived as part of the thinking activity.[16] Spinoza elaborated this point further conceiving one of the deepest metaphysical conceptions of the being and time.[17] From one point of view, the absolute substance, or what it exists, is necessarily infinite and, as such, eternal. The absolute substance does not change in its essence; hence it is time insensitive.[18] Single properties of the absolutely infinite substance are also infinite and eternal (e.g. the extension and thought are both eternal).[19] Moreover, all subjects are modus (a finite configuration) of the infinite substance. As such, their existence is depending on the substance, and they are not equated to the substance (as they are single finite configurations of it).[20] Therefore, subjects cannot be assumed as systems to measure the unchanging substance, because the substance does not have any change. As the infinite substance is infinitely subdivided into infinite modus related through causal relations, each modus tends to endure through a given interval of time until it is destroyed by other modus. As a result, modus exists in time and only for a limited amount of time. Their interval of existence as a specific configuration of the infinite substance is called ‘duration’. Duration assumes a critical component of all Spinoza’s understanding of the modus and their existence in contraposition with the infinite substance. In Spinoza’s theory is a mereological combination of whole and parts such that the whole is overall unchanging in nature and, as such, eternal. On the other hand, all single parts of the substance do change, hence they exist in time.[21] Notably, time can be intended in multiple ways, depending what portion of reality we are trying to understand. As the subdivision of the modus is endless in time, as the infinite substance is eternal in the stronger sense possible (there is not ‘start or end’ of time), time is linear in general terms. Only the modus are time-sensible as their existence and destruction through infinite causal relations establish the existence of time. However, one can aggregate modus if they are part of the same event (e.g. a car is an event composed by subsections whose subdivision is not important if we are studying the car at a given level of abstraction). Therefore, different timings are conceivable. In addition, cyclical time could also be understood as the way to record specific cycles of existence and destruction of specific things that are aggregated and destroyed at constant intervals of time. This is all compatible with Spinoza’s conception. Interestingly, in Spinoza duration is limited by external factors and, in idealized condition, a modus could exist forever (meaning, preserving itself through time into the existent). In this regard, time is a result of the events related through causal relations such that time is a way to understand reality, but it is not an intrinsic component of reality. From this point of view, it is just a statistical matter that things tend to be destroyed by other things through time, but time per se is not a cause of destruction.[22] Time, as such, is not negative, it is indifferent. Time is linear and circular depending on the type of event considered. Possibly, Spinoza’s account is the most flexible when it comes to the metaphysics of time, as it can accommodate also for the subjective-time, more elaborated by Immanuel Kant, closer to the empiricist tradition in this respect.[23]
From the traditional empiricism, time is interpreted as a flow of perceptions, already clearly in Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkley, and far more explicitly in David Hume.[24] However, their main contribution to this discussion is somehow limited, as they primarily outline that time is mainly a subjective matter, meaning that time is intrinsically a construction of the flow of perceptions and, in Locke and Hume, in the mind’s understanding of causation. Causation is a product of subject’s cognitive association between two events which share qualitative and quantitative features, and one (the cause) precedes the second (the effect).[25] Although I always believed that Hume had clearly Spinoza in mind in all his metaphysics, and relative critique of the notion of causation, there is not much to be added into the discussion, as the causation stabilize the order of time.[26] The open problem in the classic empiricism exploited by Kant is, indeed, the logical nature of the subject. In fact, the main problem in Hume’s empirical skepticism is how to establish that the subject(s)’ thinking is not a random or arbitrary phenomenon, unrelated to any rule and reality.
Kant’s understanding of human cognition offers an improvement on the two aspects. Kant intends to understand how the subject is able to formulate the epistemic judgements – what today philosophy of language would call ‘propositions’ or declarative sentences, i.e. descriptions of the world such as ‘there is a table’, ‘today is Monday’ etc.. Any act of epistemic judgement is based on simple operations of the intellect, which essentially unifies the multiplicity of perceptions into a unity in synthetic judgements. The intellectual operations require the ability of the subject to place the experienced objects into the space and time dimensions. Space and time are a priori forms of experience; in other words, experience is a product of space and time as basic structural forms of the subject. In other words, the subject places experience within a certain space at a certain time, and time and space are two dimensions of any subject’s experience. Hence, we don’t know if anything has any proper space or proper time, but the subject irresistibly places any experience into a specific space and a specific time and it cannot do otherwise. “Time is a necessary representation that underlies all intuitions. In relation to phenomena in general, it is not possible to eliminate time as such, while it is entirely possible to remove all phenomena from time. Time is an a priori given.” (emphasis added).[27] However, space is an external intuition because it reveals something that is not part of the subject as such. Time, on the other hand, is entirely part of the subject and, for this reason, is also called the “inner sense.” Kant explicitly grounds time into the sequence of perceptions that are ordered in time. In this sense, we can think to Kant’s vision of time as the subject disposition to place events into a recording system that unifies his/her experience. A good analogy would be the old movies’ film: the film is empty, but it has the capacity to record events saving the light projected from the objects into empty slots of light-sensible film. As a result, a given series of events are recorded in a non-random order given to them by the subject. The order of the events is time itself. Kant does not consider memory as a major component of our understanding of time, but this would bring us too far. The point here is that the subject unifies, and records models of reality expressed through acts of judgment. Each act of judgement is a timestamp over the experience. In this regard, Kant has in place an entire theory of subjective time that, essentially, holds independently from other notions of time that try to reduce time to external events. As long there is a rational subject structured similarly to what we call ‘I think’ or ‘cognitive subject’, Kant’s philosophy of time and cognition will have something to say.[28]
Kant could be considered the pinnacle of the Enlightenment.[29] However, he is not representative of any specific general conception (or school of thought). In fact, as Spinoza and Wittgenstein among others, he will always baffle any reduction. That said, the Enlightenment, as common understanding of the world and ‘folk philosophy’, allows for a shared vision of time. For the first time since the Middle Age, passing through the early modern philosophers such as Montaigne and Descartes, the general philosophical take was essentially free from religion, if not openly against it. Here with religion must be intended mainly the multiple versions of Christianity, but other religions can be added as well. At a very general level, the Enlightened philosophers rejected the negative conception of the world as doomed to sinners. In full opposition to this idea, they strived for the opposite direction, where life can be happy and perfect, if rational.[30] However, the Enlightenment assumed the Christian tradition of time as linear and finite, but it removed the happy ending, as salvation does not follow from the end of life.[31] Hence, the Enlightenment maintained time linearity and finiteness without embracing a specific solution for the afterlife, essentially an open problem among several philosophers.[32] However, crucially, there is a convergence on evaluating life more important and primary source of the good in moral terms. As happiness is achievable, life cannot be as bad. As a result, the Enlightenment stabilizes the notion of time on the Christian tradition, but it reverses the moral and qualitative judgment over it: time is essentially positive, as life is all we have. Interestingly, this is the seed of all the following conception of the contemporary naïve philosophy, or shared vision of the world among people, a mild form of decadent sensationalism.[33] All the relativism, instability, and ultimately negativity over life is a vindication of the Enlightenment superficial reduction to sensationalism, an over reduction that cannot be easily discharged.[34]
Interestingly, whereas empiricists attempted to address the concept of time within the subject, the idealists went into the opposite direction. Without entering into the detail of the varieties of German idealist tradition and relative followers, Georg W. F. Hegel tried to elaborate a vision of the universe as determined by the evolution of the Geist into reality. The single (human) subject is just a piece of the complex evolution of history, where time is intended as a series of discrete intervals that mark the evolution of the Geist. From its perfect abstraction but immateriality, the Geist negates itself into the matter and history starts. Time is not necessarily linear, as the historical intervals can vary, however, as time marks the progression of the capacity of reality to arrange itself toward the maximum level of rationality ad infinitum.[35] Hegel is able to merge the classic vision of rational being that tends toward perfection through a self-ordering rational process (as in the Stoics or in Gottlob W. Leibniz) a progressive notion of time. Meanwhile, the time that affects the single ‘accidents of history’ is limited and finite. This reasonably convoluted dance of time which moves through irregular intervals when it comes to measure (the) history (of the Geist) we can close this section with Marx, as he essentially made the leap between Hegel and the crowd possible.
Marx embraces Hegel when it comes to the general metaphysical structure of reality, hence, he interprets time is a positive, progressive understanding as a process of liberation of the people from slavery. The steps from serfdom to freedom are complicated by the resisting social forces that create the intervals of the historical time irregular, although sequential in nature.[36] However, Marx willingly inherits the idea that reality tends toward a more rational order as history is determined by laws that drive the change for the good, even when disrupted by the dialectic negation of one side of the competing historical force (a portion of the society that typically resists change). However, the presence of laws of history guarantee that time proceeds toward the good, which is the realization of human freedom in action.[37] At the same time, at least Marx embraced the Enlightenment’s idea that time is positive if it measures life, but there is nothing else beyond it.
Time is said in many ways – Why there is no single way to understand time
Since I started developing the theory of eternal truth (or eternal truth theory) I realized how useless is to endorse unilateral accounts in philosophy. Unilateral accounts are typically those that understand the world in one way, which discredits or downplay an important piece of evidence.[38] For instance, a given religion has to be unilateral by definition as it is excluding any other religion.[39] In philosophy, idealists try to solve all reality within the subject and realist try to ban the subject from time to time. Either way, there are unsolvable problems exactly because there is something clearly true in the idealist position as much as there is something true in the realist position. There is no clear way to reconcile such strong and profound competing intuitions and they must be intended as part of the same field to try to solve a common open problem.[40] However, unless very specific reasons allow a specific debunking of a branch of a given theory, such general, metaphysical accounts of reality, whatever it means, cannot be defeated. They are ways in which rational subjects formulated theories about the world. In fact, it is much more interesting to think how competing theories outline alternative conceptions of the same problem instead of siding unilaterally. In this regard, time theory is no exception.
The four-time classes and their independence
There are four different ways to understand time which have very little in common, unless we want a vague and general definition of time to be unable to identify clearly what time means in a given specific context. The four competing versions of time are: (1) subjective-time, (2) event-time, (3) conventional-time, and (4) landscape-time. These four categories of time are autonomous and notionally independent but there relations among them are possible (they are ‘reciprocally indifferent’ but not unrelatable). Proving that (1-4) are autonomous is easy. Let’s take a sentence such as
(I) ‘I feel better than in recent past.’
does express a given relationship between two events (a) ‘feeling better’ and (b) ‘feeling worst’. This relationship assumes the two events a and b, where a comes after b. In general terms, ‘coming after’ here means that a and b are part of an ordered set of items such that they can be put in correspondence with integers such as they can be described through very simple mathematical relations.[41] To understand the sentence (I) ‘I feel better than in recent past’ a reader must assume the existence of specific internal subjective emotional states and relate them into an order such that the subject expressed a change over his/her perception at the present moment. It does not require any relation with the external world (feelings about internal states can be totally disjointed the world). It does not require any relation with any conventional form of time (e.g. calendar), as the statement is fully understandable without any need to place the relation in conventional time (when is the day in which the subject felt ‘worst’ and when ‘now’ is). Finally, the expression does not require any universal form of time (landscape time) to be understood. Then, we proved that subjective time is autonomous from (2-4) time-types. Let’s now introduce the second time-type.
(II) ‘The players reached the fortieth (chess) move with 40) … – Qd1.’
The number ‘fortieth’ identify a sequence of events that in chess are called ‘moves’. Moves are ordered from the origin (t0 or the starting position) to the checkmate or any end position (tn). Any move is in between t0 and tn by definition. Chess language incorporates this rule for readability: ‘(1) Nf3’ states that the Night in the square G1 moved to the square G3 at move 1. The sentence describes a very specific situation on the board and relativize the notion of time to what happened in that game at move 40. There is no clear way to solve this notion of time with the others. In fact, this is not the description of an internal subjective feeling as the move is existing on the board at a given move-number.[42] It is not related to any form of conventional time (whatever the clock). In fact, it does not even matter how long the players thought on the moves, there is only the fact that they moved 40 times each. Finally, there is no reference to any sort of landscape-time, meaning a (at least idealized) universal clock as the game can be played in London (UK), in London (USA), or somewhere in outer space. It does not matter, because the sentence would be perfectly true in any of those physical spatial coordinates. Therefore, (2) event time is also autonomous from (1, 3-4). The point can be clearly generalized stating that the time T of any event E that can be described in an arbitrary discrete number of independent steps e0… en is the sequence identified by the order of each single step in relation of all the others such that e1 comes before e2 and after e0. This time is labelled as event-time as it is intrinsically depending on the event described. The event itself is the clock through which the time-event can be measured.
(III) ‘Today I am going to talk at 2:30 PM UTC.’
This sentence seems clear to understand because it reads as an ordinary utterance. However, ‘today’, ‘2:30’ and ‘PM’ and ‘UTC’ are all conventions. In fact, conventional time is the way in which multiple subjects coordinate their different subjective experiences and events in which they are involved in. First, ‘today’ could be different with a different measurement of a standard day (for instance 25 hours instead of 24). The same observation can be reiterated for any section of a conventional time unit (being it seconds, hours, or days), hence it applies to 2:30. The use of PM is intended to discriminate the section of the day, and the day-unit is conventional, therefore PM is also conventional. Finally, UTC is an international convention among independent states placed in different parts of the planet Earth. The conventional nature of this is clear by the simple observation that if humans were living on Mars, all these conventions could be different. For those who would like to argue that there must be something special about these conventions, we would reply that, firstly, time conventions are all based on the biological clock that all humans seem to have (so called ‘circadian rhythm’). The need of light anchors the interval of time in which our body works synchronized with the Sun, as the main way to access photon throughout the day (which usually associated mainly with the light-exposure time of the day).[43] An inverted biology with an inverted circadian rhythm would have produced different time conventions (or the same conventions would have been less likely applicable as their associated coordination costs would have been much higher). This would be perfectly illustrated by nocturnal animals that live their cycles in opposition with sunlight. Secondly, if the solar system would have been arranged in a different way, the calculation of the days would have been different, meaning that it is a matter of chance that the day is in fact as it is. Our biology evolved with the sunlight during the day and stars during the night, hence it synchronized with the ‘landscape time’. However, this does not change the conventional nature of this time type.
(IV) ‘As we are moving away from the sun, winter is coming.’
The notion of landscape-time is the most complicated of the four time types, but it must be assumed as a form of limit for allowing common expressions about time. Even in absence of conventional time, the subjects experience to be part of a bigger world in which they coordinate or conflict over time. This ‘over time’ is expressed by a sense of being part of the same universe, which is understood differently in different contexts, but usually is what is required to be assumed to make sense of multiple parallel beings. In (IV) ‘As we are moving away from the sun, winter is coming.’ time is expressed through the general change over the weather in relation to the actual distance from the sun. However, the landscape-time is more fundamental in its implicit form.
Everything we generate through language is an event that exists in the universe in parallel with other events. If I say ‘There is a chess piece on the table’ I am almost invariably eliding ‘at time x’ whatever the way to express x. The elision is due to the obvious fact that I am expressing that sentence in a given present, and there is usually no reason to be explicit. This implicit time must be assumed because the spatial relation discovered between the chess piece and the table is observed, which means that the event ‘Spatial_Relation(Chess Piece, Table)’ is expressed through language by a subject whose existence is diachronically related to the event described. In this sense, to make sense of the ‘common present’ between the event and the subject, we must assume the existence of a time in which both the subject and the event are both situated. The background of simple, ordinary sentences require the existence of a generic notion of landscape-time, which is generically the present condition of the universe in which the subject(s) and the event(s) are all part of, where the universe is intended to be the total sum of all the different dislocations of all events (and subjects, here intended as events among others). As this time type is not subjective, event-dependent, and conventional, it must be assumed as independent from the other three time-types.
Landscape-time is the what is require to make sense of the general unity assumed existing for making sense of all the rest of time-types. For instance, even if a subject S is sleeping, S will not believe that time was over until S was awake again. In the same fashion, a chess player does not believe that the world is in suspension between moves. This notion of time is not conventional, as it must be assumed existing in absence of any convention. Let’s assume otherwise. Before the invention of the calendar, humans would have been unable to understand time continuity and they would have been unable to believe that objects would have survive even when they were not present to experience them through sensorial perception. This is obviously nonsense, and it is contrary to what we know from written texts about the past. The sheer fact that humans where able to generate history is, in fact, the proof of the fact that they always believed that objects persists in their being even in absence of direct perceptions. For instance, any cartographic outcome displays information that is supposed to be time-insensitive. As a result, human understanding is grounded on this notion of ‘general permanence’ and ‘general change’ that we assume as a unity and precomprehension of the universe.
The four time classes and their autonomy – Measurements as proof of mutual autonomy
As we proved the mutual independence and reciprocal subdivision of the time types, it is now the autonomy’s turn. Logical independency implies that the metaphysical conditions of existence of the four-time types are different and unrelated. However, it is possible to believe that there is a unified way to regulate them, which would practically mean that there would be a way to unify time through a common system of measurement. However, as already seen in the proof of independence, this is not the case. Let’s go through each specific case.
(I) ‘I feel better than in recent past.’
Measuring (I) is impossible with a physical clock such as pendulum, a glass, or an hourglass. It is impossible and meaningless at the same time. We can try to synchronize our ordered perceptions with an independent clock, but this is a pure correlation, as there is nothing intrinsic in the system of measurement adopted. In fact, without conventions, it is only the subject’s memory which is able to store the information about when a given perception appeared and when it disappeared. The subjective world is defined by the subject themself, and intrinsically depends on its memory. In fact, let’s assume a subject without any mnemonical capacity: he/she would shrink their time perception to the present alone and would be unable to formulate (I) as technically there is no ‘recent past’ recorded. This simple consideration shows why memory is such a critical component of our inner life as cognitive subjects: without it, we live a perpetual present, and time is squashed to the instant. Then, given two subjects S1 and S2 of exactly same physical age, assuming that the set of experiential belief B1 of S1 and B2 of S2 are such that B1 > B2, then there is a clear sense in which S1 is older than S2. S1 is older because he/she is quite literally more experienced than S2. Here with ‘older’ we mean that S1 stored more information about the past experience than S2, though both subjects are of the same biological age. This very counterintuitive point is shown in multiple ways by common experience. A person with a very bad memory who talks about his/her inner life would exhaust it very quickly in comparison with a person who has a very good memory and recollection of past experience. There is a clear sense in which the two subjects have a very different past-length.
It could be possible to argue that here time is tracked and measured by the combination of our senses (that pump perceptions) and our memory (which orders them into the storage). As a result, different memories of different subjects with different experiences would measure subjective time very differently.
Finally, subjective time is usually stored in association with perceptual change and subjects’ inner productive activity, usually associated to decision-making. With ‘decisional activity’ we simply mean the instances in which a given subject’s will determines itself toward a course of action mentally and then physically. In this regard, the subject stores the memory of his/her inner life depending on its richness: a given subject S1 that took an arbitrary N number of decisions will store at least some of them into his/her memory. Therefore, assuming the same conventional time for simplicity, assuming that S1 took N decisions and S2 took M decisions where N > M significantly, S1 and S2 will have a very different time-perception, where for S1 time will have flow quicker than S2. Ultiamately, the richer the inner life is, the greater the subjective time-span is. In absence of any subjective change, the subject does not store or recall any perception, which also means that his/her inner clock will be stuck where it is. As an example, let’s assume that Paul is deciding over a series of events to act on, let’s assume that Pauline is on the bed staring the roof, they will record their subjective life wildly differently and, ultimately, there is a clear sense in which Paul experienced time quicker than Pauline. If Paul and Pauline would reiterate this situation for every day of their life, their subjective time would store a very different number of perceptions associated to their inner life. As a result, they would have two totally different subjective times.
As it should be clear, there is no clear way to reduce subjective time to time-landscape and to conventional time.[44] More interesting, instead, is the case of reduction of subjective time to event-type time. In the decision-making example, each subject’s decision adds an event in the inner calendar of the subject, providing its storage into the memory. However, clearly, the more subject’s inner actions, the higher the likelihood of their recollection in the memory (as no decisions cannot be stored anywhere) and its associated reasoning, which also count as inner series of events. In this sense, it seems that there is a sense in which subjective decision-making can be measured as an event-type time.[45] This is more than legitimate. For instance, a chess player would recall at least some of the decision he/she made over the board associated to a specific series of moves. However, subjective time could include much more than the single decisions, as we have already seen. It could include all the sensorial perception in between two different decisions. For instance, Paul could recall that he was almost deciding over a given move before he was annoyed by Pauline’s noisy cough. The noise distracted him, and he changed his moved. Paul can remember all these events (which are all part of his inner life), which shows clearly that Paul’s inner time ticks over much more than single discrete events related to subjective decision-making (although decision-making and its reasoning is a critical way to live a full life strictu sensu).[46] Decision-making and reasoning are two essential features of inner subjective time.
Ultimately, only assuming that all subjects’ inner life is the production of a discreet number of beliefs would reduce the subjective time to event-type time. I don’t believe this is reasonable, as in fact we can still understand what it means that one recalls only two decisions but nothing of what was perceived in between (as Paul’s example but without the recollection of the personal experience in between decisions). In practice, the subjects’ sense of internal fluidity just is irreconcilable with an ultimate discrete approach in this regards.[47] This point is confirmed by the fact that subjective time could be understood simultaneously as discrete and continuous, as showed by the chess example. It appears to be partitioned in sets of beliefs when expressed through language, but the packages of partitioned information are continuous by nature. As it is arbitrary deciding how to measure and intend subjective time (continuous or discrete), subjective time cannot be reduced to event-time in absolute terms.
(II) ‘The players reached the fortieth (chess) move with 40) … – Qd1.’
Time here is recorded as a sequence of steps indicated as ‘40) … – Qd1’ and ‘the fortieth’ move, as it assumes the presence of other 39 before (otherwise the statement does not make sense). In this example, the chess game is intended as the unified event that we are measuring in time. Notably, the measure is independent from the subjective time (as the example in the last section proved). In fact, the players can have a very rich or poor inner decision-making thinking and limited perception that nothing change. Hence, once again event-type is autonomous from subjective time. In chess, we can measure the distance between two positions by the number of moves (called ‘tempi’ in chess). The measuring clock here is the processual event that unfolds move after move. Conventional time does not measure the event-time, but it can create a synchronization between two different events using one to measure the other. For instance, I can use a hourglass to measure the time a player has to move. I can synchronize multiple games on my hourglass using the hourglass to synchronize the games. However, when focusing on a specific event G (a specific game of the many, for instance) the time measured through the hourglass H is clearly irrelevant. We want to know the sequence of the steps required to produce G, independently from H. This does not apply to chess only. It applies to any basic understanding of processual events that can be usefully described through a list of steps where the steps are numerically oriented with 0 as origin and N as final number.
Event time is relative to the process we are considering. Let’s come back to the chess games and their synchronization with the hourglass. Physically, the event is given by the combination of the games played meanwhile the hourglass runs. Then, as a combination of multiple games, the general event is the result of each single game and the hourglass. The clock is part of the event measured necessarily, as intrinsically part of the event itself. Let’s assume that the clock is, in fact, irrelevant. Then, the only way to measure time is following the moves of the games, coming back to the absence of synchronization. We can use any clock, just not all clocks work as well. However, as a clock is just an event among others which are all synchronized by the clock itself, any process could be used as a clock. For instance, I can measure time through the length of a given song, assumed as a unit of time. I can measure my body’s time through the nails cut etc.. Ultimately, there are good and bad clocks only in function of what we want from them (regularity of the interval, reliability of measurement, accuracy over time etc.).
Event time excludes the existence of an absolute time. Let’s assume that there is such a thing as the Newtonian ‘absolute event time’. What we want to measure is the universe, intended as totality of all possible processual events. Then, where the clock would be? If it is inside the universe, then there is no way to record the origin of time (as the clock was not ticking then) and the end of it (as the clock would not tick then anymore). In both cases, the implicit assumption is that there is an idealized subject that is reading the clock and it makes the clock ticking and it stops at the end. Then, this subject would be the real cock him/herself. Then, the notion of ‘absolute event time’ is an idealized subject that records time outside the universe. This is clearly (at least physically) nonsense. In short, if the clock of the universe is inside the universe, it is impossible to measure time. If the clock is outside the universe, then it would be an event itself, which means that is part of the universe (which is an obvious contradiction). Finally, not even a God-like entity is a good clock, though considerable external to the universe. God is an eternal, unchanging entity. As such, it is not very good in time recording, as the clock has to be synchronized with what is changing. As a result, there cannot be any absolute event time and everything can be a clock. Hence, there is a clear sense in which the universe is eternal. The best way to measure event time is to study the process itself, dividing it into parts and ordering the parts in a sequence correlated to the integers.
(III) ‘Today I am going to talk at 2:30 PM UTC.’
The system of conventions to make this statement possible is immense and we will not cover them here. However, they all require a systematic process of coordination between all the individuals that are involved in the conventional time. As in the old days people had literally to synchronize their clocks using one assumed to be the right one, today the system of rules and technology used to implement them requires atomic clocks, institutions devolved to calculate the time flowing, and the force of the states used for enforcing it. Conventional time exists because of the general coordination need, as otherwise the subjects would simply live independently. However, independent life is not as productive, and humans are a social entity. As a result, they need coordination when it comes to achieve a common goal. The fact that conventional time is autonomous from subjective-time and event-time is pristine. As we have already seen, the fact that all the human community can agree on a universal clock (atomic clocks these days), does not change the fact that this agreement could change or being different, hence it is conventional. As the meter is a convention, also the division of time is conventional in this sense. Conventional time is then autonomous from the other forms of time, and it requires social conventions and technological instruments to exist.
(IV) ‘As we are moving away from the sun, winter is coming.’
Finally, the landscape-time is a limit notion to make sense of statements about the fact that the universe is changing all the time, and each present condition is in fact different from the last one and the next one. This time type is vague as it is implicit in our general expressions about the evolution of the world intended as a whole. However, we already proved that there is no absolute event time. Interestingly, the German idealists tried to reduce all time to the subject’s time in this sense, meaning that the subject was ultimately the universe itself, hence its time was the absolute time. However, exactly because of what we can understand from the use of ordinary language and the supposition of multiple subjects, we structure our linguistic communication assuming that the subjects are part of something that is changing and they are all immersed into it. This time is expressed in different ways, but it can be intended as following. Let’s come back to the chess tournament. Each player has their own subjective time. Each game is an event in itself and the sequence of the moves measures the changes over the board (e.g. time). The hourglass is synchronizing the events physically (event time) and conventionally (conventional time). However, it is clear that there is something that all these events have in common. The description of the scenario implies a sense of common time that goes beyond the convention and the hourglass. It is captured by the intuition that they are all part of the ‘same present’. In a sense, landscape time is simply the precondition of a contextual understanding of common time, independently by specific measurements. It is a prerequisite of our way to conceive the world, where the ‘world’ is always assumed in portions that, somehow, we see unified in time. This notion of time is a limit of our understanding and, as such, it cannot be articulate much further, but without it, our language does not a unifying (time) glue. We could even call this form of time as ‘noumenal time’ recalling the role of the noumenon in Kant’s first critique.
Time, Practical Philosophy and Theory of Sociality – Considerations
This pluralistic conception of time should be understood as a way to understand time in four parallel ways all equally necessary, but sufficient, to have a full understanding of what time means in ordinary language and in different ordinary circumstances. The pluralistic conception is in line with the theory of eternal truths, as it shows how different conceptions of time are not mutually exclusive and all part of the same effort to explain something we refer to with the same word but point to four different meanings.[48] In this regard, the new ‘quantum thinking’, that wants to let us think all in once, is not new. Philosophy always worked in this way, and some of them explicitly so.[49] Single philosophers could have been unilateral in their conceptions, meaning that they pretended to exhaust all time-related meanings with one single conception of time. However, philosophers considered as a group always ‘quantum thought’.[50] Only considering all parallel notions of time all in once makes possible to appreciate what we mean when we talk about time. Now, let’s turn us to the subject’s existence in time to explore subject’s possible rational attitudes toward time.
A practical cognitive subject produces beliefs and actions. Beliefs are produced by cognitive processes that compute over other beliefs as Turing Machine computes over machine-states through specific computational rules.[51] There are four different kinds of beliefs: factual (‘this is a table’), dispositional (‘I want a table’), normative (‘This table is functional’), and spiritual (‘I feel attached to this table’). Actions are the result of a decision-making process, which is the computation of specific dispositional beliefs over factual, normative, and spiritual beliefs. Any action A of a given subject S at conventional-time t is the result of a series of beliefs B1…Bn such that B1…Bn determine the belief Bd that defines the disposition of S over A. As a result, any action is a belief itself (as it is a factual belief). Any subject’s determination of any course of action will depend on his beliefs. Let’s assume that this is not the case. Any goal is a dispositional belief about a specific factual content. ‘I want an ice-cream’ means: there is me (a subject), there are a set of objects ‘ice-creams’, there is the set of objects that are mine, there is the intention to act such that I can specifically act ‘eat’ at least one object identified as ‘ice-cream’. If I do not know the existence of the ice-creams, if I do not know how to get one, if I do not know how to eat it etc., I cannot act. Know what and know how are categories of beliefs (factual, and normative). This does not mean that the subject has to be aware of all the computations over his/her beliefs to produce them. This form of internalism would definitely be too strong, and it is unrequired.[52] However, it must be assumed as if at play, as otherwise we cannot understand how subjects’ acts.[53]
A subject takes action according to his/her dispositional beliefs produced through computation over other beliefs.[54] According to what the practical cognitive subject knows about the situation in which he/she is in, he/she will be able to maximize the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the action ceteris paribus. At the same time, the more he/she computed new beliefs about a given course of action, the more value this course of action would tend to assume. In fact, a reason for a given course of action is a normative belief over the factual beliefs required to act and the action itself (now a factual belief). Therefore, the reason that justifies the action is produced and endorsed by the subject as intrinsic part of the decision-making process. Then, a subject can produce new beliefs or act. This means that there is a clear sense in which the subject’s existence is discrete or can be described as such. As a result, the best way to think about time in this regard is clearly event-time, as it measures the progression of the belief computation and actions. In fact, this would be apparent if the subject would linguistically describe what he/she thinks and does. But this is a simplification and an illusion of our language, as the inner perceptive life of the subject is, indeed, continuous, and not discrete, as proved by Hume’s attack to individual identity and the Theseus’ Ship Paradox.[55] That said, when it comes to appreciate how to be strategic about time, it is better thinking in processual event-time instead of subjective time.
Subject’s decision-making can be partitioned according to the different content identifiable by his/her dispositional beliefs. For instance, ‘I want an ice-cream’ identify food (kcal intake). ‘I need to make money to buy an ice-cream’ identify currency (financial transaction). ‘I need to have an ID card to buy cigarettes’ identify a social informational artifact (bureaucratic paper). Although the variety of dispositional beliefs’ content is as vary as the natural and social facts, we will simply over the following categories:
[a] resource intake;
[b] sheltering and management;
[c] movements to guarantee (a & b), including transportation;
[d] general maintenance;
[e] family;
[f] sociability;
[g] bureaucracy;
[h] finance;
[i] communication, and
[j] work.
These areas aggregate different critical aspects of subject’s dispositional beliefs. They all can be described as parallel sections of belief computation as they all require a thinking-process able to compute a result. As argued elsewhere, more complex societies technologically will tend to increase the list, as to survive in a given social environment is required a finite list of technologies to be manipulated and used.[56]
At any given conventional time t, a subject S can produce a given dispositional belief Bb to determine his/her will over his range of choice C1…Cn to change the world according to the content of Bb. The causal motivation for S activity could be internally or externally induced. Internal decision-making can lead S to act for S’s own reasons. External events can pose S’s a current situation in which S’s evaluates his/her position as worst off, if not acted upon. Let’s call ‘a move’ any action or belief production that the subject S can perform at any given time. S can make the following moves at any given time:
[I] S is forced to make a move;
[II] S can make a move even in absence of any forcing move;
[III] S can wait for a move to play;
[IV] S can wait for a forcing move to play.
If [I] S is forced to make a move, S has to produce a belief or act, as S is called to act from some external event. This could be induced internally or externally, depending on the circumstances. [II] S can usually make a move in absence of any forcing event. A ‘forcing event’ can be defined as an event about which, if not acted on, would cause severe consequences for S or if S would be in the position to evaluate the event, S would produce a negative normative belief about the factual belief and S would compute a dispositional belief on which S would act on. When S has options, S can just go ahead. [III] In absence of forcing moves or in absence of spontaneous moves, S can wait to play until [I] or [II] would be the case. S’s attitude is to delay any decision, in which case S has to produce a dispositional belief whose content is equivalent to ‘wait, and don’t take any further step until something changes’. The stipulation of the dispositional belief ‘wait’ is the last move S makes before wait (‘wait’ is still a move). [IV] [III] is totally discretional over S future moves, however, S can decide what kind of condition would trigger the determination over action. In this regard, typically, practical cognitive subjects tend to decide when something forcing happens and they wait until that. In healthcare, a subject could decide to act only if a serious pain appears or some trophic part of the body does not work anymore. This is in contrast with those who try to act in anticipation of forcing moves (‘I go to the doctor regularly’, ‘I have a healthy diet’ etc.).
Subjects’ existence can be understood as the decision-making processes that they undertake over the multiple boards [a-j], where [a-j] can be furtherly partitioned in sub-boards. The subject does not have total agency over his boards and sub-boards but they maintain some. First, the subject can order the boards such that the boards are ordered by prioritization. It must be intended that the prioritization process could be rational, irrational, or just random. Second, the subject has some capacity to drive more change over a board in spite of another (e.g. he replies to all the bureaucratic mails, but he does not go to the gym). Third, the subject can create a subfield of a given board adding a specification over it through his/her knowledge of the field (e.g. one board is ‘research’ and ‘modern philosophy’ and ‘Spinoza’ are my two sub-fields etc..) If it is a discretional field, the subject can delete one sub-field (‘I used to play chess, but now I play go and risk’ means ‘I have two sub-field in my well-being category play, which is divided into two subfields go and risk etc.’) What the subject cannot do is to avoid delete all the games in which he/she is involved (it can be done simply through suicide, which is also an action to be taken).
There are moves that solve more problems in once (e.g. ‘I want an ice-cream’ and ‘I want to eat’ are solved by the same factual condition). Assuming a minimal rationality, S’s will would want to determine the freedom of choice over the moves counts in more than one board as positive. Problems over cost-benefit are usually raised by the fact that positive moves over a given board can be wrong on another board (e.g. ‘I played chess all day and I did not work’). In general terms, the best moves are those that maximize S’s utility cross-boards. Giving specific conditions, S can opt to focus the attention over one single board over the others. It is also possible that S does not want to play any move (as we know, any action or belief production are timely, energetically, materially, and computationally expensive). For instance, it is wise to know when to stop, when to rest, when to wait until the time is ripe.
[1] At least, it is reasonable to state this, meaning that a Parmenides must have intended as time not a flat external sequence of instances of an idealised subject looking toward the being. In other words, time does not exist without change. This must have been the case because Parmenides clearly defended the notion of the being’s perfection exactly because of its unchangeability. In a sense, even in the presence of an external sequence of instances perceived by an idealised subject looking toward the being, meaning a ‘flat’ notion of time, the being would not change and, essentially, trivialise time.
[2] This would stand even in presence of an external sequence of instances perceived by an idealised subject. For an argument on this point applied to Parmenides’ philosophy, see the previous footnote.
[3] Plato’s debt to Parmenides is known since the ancient times, as one of the most important Pato’s dialogues has Parmenides himself as the main discussant. The dialogue is quite dense and uneasy to read. It does not include a clear solution, but it outlines a way to think through the problem of the being and ideas. In the dialogue, Socrates is the ‘junior partner’ of Parmenides, who is the main voice of the dialogue. In this sense, Plato’s reflection over Parmenides’ thought must be assumed significant.
[4] Because appearances today show a given thing in a given way, but tomorrow they change, and they show what look like a similar thing differently from what it was yesterday. Therefore, it seems that the same thing is and is not, which is a contradiction. Therefore, what is intended as ‘appearances’ must be intended as non-existent.
[5] In fact, although in the classic tradition the overall conception of time (absolute time) is cyclical (everything goes back to the origin and starts all over again), it still embraces a combination of notions, namely time = change + chaos. In the classic tradition, when a lifespan-time interval is considered, time is unidirectionally flowing toward the destruction of a given thing. Therefore, although everything could come back cyclically for an infinite (indefinite) number of cycles, for subsections of the cyclical time relativised for each thing, time brings destruction or death.
[6] Which is almost an amoral understanding of evil, as evil is a byproduct of destructive social change that usually happens at a political level. It would be interesting to debate how Plato understood the single subject/individual and what room is left to him/her. I argue that, intuitively, there is not much (positive) space for the individual, but this is far beyond this semi-informal discussion of the notion of time.
[7] From this second section of the Platonic understanding of change one can argue that only society understood as a whole can fully be considered as genuine subjects. But Plato seems to have the individual at the centre of his epistemology as, after all, it is Socrates who ultimately produces knowledge about philosophy and morality, and only philosophers must be in charge of the rest of social compartments for their (single) wisdom. Interestingly, however, one can (possibly rightly) argue that Plato is not very much interested in how knowledge is formulated (epistemology) as much as to show what reality is and what is not (ontology).
[8] See Pili, G., “Aristotele – Vita e opere”, Scuola Filosofica, (2011), https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/588/aristotele.
[9] This point is shared by all the philosophy of causation, see Reiss, J. Causation, evidence, and inference, London: Routledge, 2015.
[10] That is why any causation theory tends to be quite sceptical of any notion of time travel. Time travel seems to make sense only if the thinker deliberately suspends everything he/she knows about causes and effects (and their time-relation). In fact, all the paradoxes of time travelling are determined by a violation of one or more causational principles. For an interesting example, especially the grandfather paradox, see: Wikpedia, “Novikov self-consistency principle”, (Accessed, 2024), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_paradox#:~:text=A%20temporal%20paradox%2C%20time%20paradox,other%20foreknowledge%20of%20the%20future. For more possibly Brennan, J.H. (1997). Time Travel: A New Perspective (1st ed.). Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications. p. 23. ISBN 9781567180855.
[11] Effectively, for both Aristotle’s and Christian God(s), time starts when things start to move (or created). Therefore, in a sense, these God exists in time from the perspective of the universe. This shows, again, that there is a clear sense in which time as a flat sequence of instances perceived by an idealised subject does not apply to the idealised subject itself (God in this case). Aristotle and Augustine could have been thinking at different metaphysics but they converge in the incapacity of conceiving time without events. Therefore, they did not consider time a subjective experience, unless in the sense that the subject mirrors reality and, as reality changes, the subject also detects change.
[12] See Pili, G., “Epicuro – Vita e opere”, Scuola Filosofica, 2011, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/597/epicuro.
[13] See Pili, G., “Gli Stoici – Felicità come armonia dell’anima”, Scuola Filosofica, 2022, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/11293/stoici-e-la-felicita.
[14] Apparently, as the human soul participate somehow to God’s perfection, already during life some level of perfection is attainable through God (the grace). The grace, however, is the act of rescue from God, thus, it is unclear whether this life has anything fully perfect in a way or another. It is unclear to me where the body plays any positive role as Jesus had a body, and hour existence is tied to the body, which plays the major role into the resurrection. This is all very far from the topic, and from my personal understanding of the world, therefore, it was only mentioned without any pretense of exhaustion.
[15] Such a condition implies the absence of any change. Perceiving myself without any external change would require an ability to perceive the flow of time without any flow of external perceptions. Subjective time requires the ability to detect change through perceptions. Moreover, psychologically, in a perpetual condition of happiness I would be unable to distinguish my current unchanging happiness condition with any other. As a result, without external changing inducing any changing in my perceptions, without any internal changes in my perception of the self, I arrive to a point to imagining myself without anything. As a result, “perpetual condition of happiness” is a pseudo-expression as happiness cannot be related to any “perpetual condition”, being it internal to the subject (flow of perceptions) or being it an internal condition of the subject (self-perception).
[16] See Descartes, R., Meditations on first philosophy. Peterborough:Broadview Press 2013, Pili, G., “Renato Cartesio – Vita e le Meditazioni Metafisiche”, Scuola Filosofica, 2011, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/661/descartes, Pili, G., “Riflessioni di storia della filosofia: teoria della verità e dell’errore nelle Meditazioni Metafisiche”, Scuola Filosofica, 2011, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/684/riflessioni-di-storia-della-filosofia-teoria-della-verita-e-dell%e2%80%99errore-nelle-meditazioni-metafisiche.
[17] Spinoza, B., Ethics: Demonstrated in Geometric Order, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 2018.
[18] As we shall see later, this is the standard understanding of what I call ‘landscape-time’, meaning what is used as a sort of external, universal reference of time.
[19] It is easier to understand this point thinking to a general notion of ‘color’. As a general quality, color never changes its nature (qualitatively, red is always red and will always be red). The single composition of things which has a specific color can change through time, but not the notion of color itself.
[20] A proof for this point would be that the destruction of the body and mind of a given subject does not imply the end of the infinite substance, as the infinite substance still maintains all its properties unchanged. Therefore, where the subject is determined in his/her existence by the properties of the substance (and by the configurations of many modus of the substance), logically does not imply the converse.
[21] However, the modus, as part of the eternal substance, are not entirely destroyed, as their nature is intrinsically determined by the nature of the infinite substance. Therefore, even the modus maintain a form of eternality when considered in their self. From this point of view, Spinoza tries to defend a specific notion of eternality of the soul, as the soul is combination of ordered ideas whose capacity to endure time is technically limitless.
[22] Although, if I recall correctly, Spinoza explicitly stated that the capacity of bodies to perform vital functions critically depends from other external entities such as water and food etc., such that their removal cause the destruction of the body. However, here the point is only that any modus strives for existence until an external bigger force destroys it. In this regard, nothing exists programmed to be self-destroyed. For a totally independent vindication of this point, see the conception of aging presented by Sinclair, D., Sinclair, D., (2019), Lifespan, London: Harper Collins, and Pili, G., “Longevità – Perché invecchiamo e perché non dovremmo farlo – David Sinclair”, Scuola Filosofica, 2021, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/10908/longevita-perche-invecchiamo-e-perche-non-dovremmo-farlo.
[23] For an analysis, see below.
[24] See Pili, G., “David Hume – Vita e pensiero”, Scuola Filosofica, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/665/hume-d
[25] See Hume’s masterpiece, Hume, D., A treatise of human nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1896.
[26] See Pili, G., “David Hume – Vita e pensiero”, Scuola Filosofica, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/665/hume-d.
[27] Machine translation over Italian language from Kant, I., Critica della ragion pura, Torino: Utet 1787, 106.
[28] For a general analysis of the critique of the pure reason, see Pili, G., “Capire la “Critica della ragion pura” di Immanuel Kant,” Scuola Filosofica, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/38740822/Capire_la_Critica_della_ragion_pura_di_Immanuel_Kant.
[29] See Pili, G., “Capire la “Risposta alla domanda – Che cos’è l’illuminismo” di Immanuel Kant”, Scuola Filosofica,
[30] Naturally, the fight was over the notion of rationality, but in the Enlightenment there was a full appreciation for science and technology, a faith on humanity probably never as shared ever since.
[31] This intrinsically depends on the single philosopher and how far he/she reinterpreted the notion of time and salvation. Deist and theist visions emerged, which shows even more the dept of the Benightment on this specific metaphysical aspect.
[32] And more broadly, it still remains and will remain as ‘the problem of life’, see Pili, G., “Life as an Open-Ended act of Creation – Or Why Life is Unsolvable”, Scuola Filosofica, 2023, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/11416/why-life-is-unsolvable.
[33] Under the assumption that there is such a thing.
[34] For a critique, see Pili, G., “La verità della relatività – Un’analisi breve contro il relativismo, semantico, epistemico e morale”, Scuola Filosofica, 2011, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/431/la-verita-della-relativita-unanalisi.
[35] Possibly so, as everything seems to be squashed toward the present, where the present is by definition the last moment of rationality in relative terms. It is unclear if in Hegel there an ending of the evolution of time, but this is beyond the scope of the article.
[36] Obviously, major philosophical debates are based on this very point.
[37] On this and previous points Karl Popper moved war to Marx, see Popper K., (1945),
The open society and its enemies”, London: Routledge, and Pili, G., “Capire “La società aperta e i suoi nemici” di Karl Popper”, Scuola Filosofica, 2021, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/10663/societa-aperta-karl-popper.
[38] See Pili, G., “Life as an Open-Ended act of Creation – Or Why Life is Unsolvable”, Scuola Filosofica, 2023,
[39] Ibid.
[40] This does not mean that all competing accounts are equally palatable, as the evaluation of a given theory depends on several factors, including explanatory power, simplicity, coherence, and consistency etc.. However, providing two competing theories T1 and T2 equally well-formulated according to all the standards there is no reasonable way to establish which one should be the standard one and they should be considered in parallel equally capable of exhausting different aspects of the same reality. In our case, subjective-time and event-time are two competing ways to understand time, but they do not cover all the meaning associated to ‘time’ as such. Therefore, a philosopher should consider them both in parallel as capable of exploring two different sides of the same coin.
[41] To be clear, numbers are only a way to think and describe an interval of instances, but those instances are not themselves numbers: the flow of subjective experiences about the world would still happen and the subject would have a notion of the past even without any basic mathematical notion.
[42] Where the realization of the ‘board’ here is totally irrelevant, which also proves once more that any physical description of the ‘board’ is irrelevant and, as a result, physical time is not applicable to understand what time means in this context.
[43] See the rich series of podcast on the topic Huberman, A., et. All, ‘Light Exposure and Circadian Rhythm’, Huberman Lab, 2021-2024, https://www.hubermanlab.com/topics/light-exposure-and-circadian-rhythm
[44] This is brilliantly exploited by Marcel Proust in his main novel.
[45] See next analysis’ section.
[46] This was one of my major developments in my first treatise, Ethics (Etica), written in 2005 and never published. There the main argument was basically the following: subject’s will is well determined by good reasoning of specific circumstances under which the subject can take good or bad decisions. However, whatever the quality of the decision, which is directly proportional to the amount of knowledge of the specific circumstances in which the subject is part of (and including the subject him/herself), the simple determination of the will over the internal freedom determines the richness of the inner life. Therefore, the more a subject determines him/herself according to his/herown knowledge of the circumstances, the more the subject will experience a rich life. Beyond the problem of good and evil and the underappreciation of the formulation of moral laws for determining the will toward the good, which is not perfectly addressed in the essay, I still embrace the results of the work in its entirety.
[47] This kind of move was the one I implicitly endorsed in another critical essay, Theory of Sociality (Teoria della Socialita’, 2012) also unpublished. I do not have anything in opposition to describe the inner life of the subject as if it is the discrete production of beliefs. This is a good case in which we can logically argue that is possible, but logics here is not everything as we all experience a continuous short-subjective time (short memory recollection gives us the sense of an ongoing past-present fluidity every single moment). Modelling the subject over a discrete production of beliefs is possible but it is unilateral, as already argued.
[48] Again, see Pili, G., ‘La storia come libera creazione delle verità eterne’, Scuola Filosofica, 2017, https://www.scuolafilosofica.com/5915/5915.
[49] As we have seen, Aristotle or Spinoza, for example, have the capacity to explain the same event or object in multiple ways simultaneously. In general, all rationalist philosophers have understood that properties are multiple and independent and, as such, they have to be considered in parallel and at the same time. Distinction does not mean exclusivity for them. The empiricists tend to be more exclusive as they are more constrained in what they accept in their ontology when it comes to properties.
[50] Psychologically, all my essence resist to the use of the words ‘quantum thinking’, however it makes it clear in the current parlance what we mean here.
[51] This point was explored in a unpublished paper, Pili, G., ‘Non-revisability condition and theory of justification’, Unpublished, 2015.
[52] Although I am incline to argue that the more a subject tends to be aware of all the knowledge and actions he/she produces, the richer life he/she is going to have. Therefore, although philosophically and in practice internalism is somehow limitedly wrong, it still captures something fundamental about the subject.
[53] This all section is a simplification of the theory of sociability.
[54] I contend that this is always the case depending on how ‘believes’ are intended to be and how accessible they must be. Essentially, beliefs are states of mind whose content can be identified by language. They are descriptively and explanatorily useful, they what can be assumed to be a functional status of the mind. This does not require a strong realist attitude toward them.
[55] Strawson, G., ‘Hume on Personal Identity’, in Paul Russell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Hume, Oxford Handbooks (2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 July 2014), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199742844.013.23,
[56] This point was explored in Pili, G., Filosofia pura della Guerra, Roma:Aracne 2015, chap. 5.
[57] This was fully explored in Pili, G., Filosofia pura della Guerra, Roma:Aracne 2015, chap. 1.
[58] There is a clear upper limit fixed at the army level.
Giangiuseppe Pili
Be First to Comment