In class we learned that Aristotle thinks that
time is a constant attribute of movements and does not exist on its own but is
relative to the motions of things. Time is defined as "the number of
movement in respect of before and after", so it cannot exist without succession;
also he seems to say that to exist time requires the presence of a soul capable
of "numbering" the movement. I understand why we need a soul present
to “number” the time but the part I’m still confused on is his view on the “now”.
I understand how a “now” cannot possibly exist with other “nows” and how you
wouldn’t be able to connect them; however I cannot shake the idea that the
“now” is the form from which time actualizes itself. We are all constantly
existing in this “now” moment throughout all of time. If the “now” doesn’t
exist then is the soul a separate being all together from time since we can
never actually be IN it? Yet for time to exist the soul has to be there to
number the movements still? Please help me pals.
I think your question is a good one. I find the now very perplexing as well. I do think, however, that Aristotle would say that the now does exist, it just isn't time. Rather, it is an attribute of time. I think this avoids a problem that always seems to come up when talking about the now: what is it? If the now is the present moment, how can you ever have a grasp on it? Even if you say "this is now," now (the present moment) seems to disappear before you've even finished the sentence. Further, there could be infinitely many nows; you could mean now, as in this second or now, as in this millisecond. You could constantly divide them, and if the now was a part of time, it would mean that the present moment is infinite.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the title to this blog post is very clever! It gave me a good chuckle.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, I am not sure I could explain it better than Matt did. I will add that the second part of his explanation is derived from 218a15-ish, in case you'd like to find it in the text.
To reiterate what Matt said in a slightly different way, the now does not belong to time but rather is an attribute of time, a limit that belongs to time (218a10 & 20). If the now did belong to time, time would no longer be continuous, it would be discrete.
I didn't get the impression that the now does not exist. I could be totally mistaken though. Where did you find that idea?
Additionally, could you help direct me towards the section that explains the now is the form from which time actualizes itself? Thanks!
-Mackenzie
The phrase "the 'now' is the form from which time actualizes itself" is a little misleading, I think. That might be what's confusing our way of looking at things. If we want to talk about time as an entity, then that would make sense. The animal that is time pops its head up "now;" that's the little segment that we see. But if we want to discard the idea of an entity altogether, the now looks similar but not identical. Imagine we merely have motion and no intelligence to look onto it. Therefore we have no time, according to Aristotle (223a23). But we still have motions and their coincidences, which means as soon as an intelligence hops onto the scene, it will start observing these movements, measuring them against each other, and thus perceiving time. But there is no "now" within these movements by themselves, because there is nothing to indicate when "now" is. The "now" arises when an intelligence observing time calls it out. Once it has been located, it's already gone; that's just the nature of this. But conceptually, we can (almost mathematically) put a definition on it, as Aristotle does. Time is just the boundary between past and future (222a10).
ReplyDeleteAll this is helpful, I think. Time cannot be "made of" nows just as the line cannot be "made of" points - and in light of Book V, we now see why! Being "made of" separable parts means that something is not continuous. But time is certainly continuous. The "now" must be a "limit to time" or a boundary marker that separates the time of one motion from another *for us*, but not for time. The now is not the stuff of time, just a handy (and necessary) part of experiencing time as times.
ReplyDeleteIn one sense, time exists because it is the number of motion apprehended by a soul. In another sense, though, time has no independent being and so is not a "this" or a "something" that things or beings can be "in." What beings are in, we call that place. But place is derived from the being's own limits and so is not prior to the being either.
Neither time nor space nor "matter" are prior to the selfhood of independent beings (self moving things - animals, plants). We are not "in" them, they are "of" us. That's how I read it anyway.
Quick reiteration of what everyone else has said: the now DOES, in fact, exist (yay!). I don't really feel as if anyone addressed your question fully about being IN time though. Aristotle states, "this is the being-in-time: the being-measured of the being of them by time" (221a9). Which is not exactly as clear on its own as he says it is, but later I think he explains it quite well: "But things are in time as in number, and if this is so, they are surrounded by time just as things in place are by place" (221a20ish). This definition seems to be making time out to be a THIS that something can be in, just not in the customary sense of the term THIS that we are used to. In this section between the two quotes I used, Aristotle talks a lot about being numbered in time. For anyone familiar with "The Unreality of Time," this sounds extremely like the C series that McTaggert determines as the way in which time works. (The C series is equatable to the alphabet. All "events" in time have a position and will always be before something and after something, in the same way that B will always be before C and after A. McTaggert goes on to dismiss time's reality but that's of no concern here.)
ReplyDeleteThis is where the now gets really interesting. It seems as though this "numbering" of things IN time is assigning them nows...which is kind of true. Like has been quoted a few times already, the "now" is the boundary between the past and the present. There is no motion without time, and without an intelligent being there would be no perception of time. The importance of these facts leads us to understand that, while we can be mislead to think of time as a movie reel with consistent "nows" passing through the projector, the continuity of US ensures that time will be continuous (just like the mechanism of the movie reel is continuous). Since we are continuously in motion, and motion and time must work in tandem, it follows that we have a continuous time in which things can still be pin pointed as falling at particular "numbers" within time in relation to all of the things "surrounding" them.
Now let's make this even MORE interesting and tie in all of the mathematical ridiculousness I've been pulling into this philosophy thang we've been doing. The same way that we solved Zeno's Paradoxes with a concept of the infinite is how we solve this problem of "putting together" the nows to form a continuous picture. By our continuous motion, WE are an infinite series of infinitely divisible segments being added to each other to benefit with the beautiful output of a whole, AKA our perception of time!
My last comment will be to say that it appears to me that Aristotle would have very much liked the concept of fourth dimensionality...
I will preface this by saying I'm not entirely sure I follow Tucker's argument, but I will point out something that seems important: there is in fact motion without time, but there isn't time without motion. As Trey suggested, time is a relation of motions. This seems important, because it seems like in the latter half of your post, you are referring to time as if it were a thing. Each now in which you assign a thing exists only as a limit of time, which is to say only as a limit of something that relates motions to one another. Our perception of time isn't a putting together of nows, its a relation of motions.
ReplyDelete