hypnagogue said:
However, the subjective instant actually occurs over some duration of objective time (called the specious present). If one wants to define "present" in such a way that it is an instant rather than a duration, the specious present will not do. And indeed, I think Dooh would not be satisfied to call a duration of time "the present," or else he would have been satisfied to call the duration between stimulus detection and registration in consciousness the present and would not have started this thread.
I interpreted his point as that possibly there is past but no present because we perceive events after they occur. It also seemed he was inferring something about objective reality from how consciousness works (i.e., by saying “Every single thought that we have are considered past. So does that mean that there is a past and future, but no present.”) My answer was simply meant to distinguish between objective reality and our conscious experience of it. It seems you think I need to elaborate.
Your point about the specious present is a good one, one of my favorite discussion topics because I believe it supports the theory that time is a mental “sense” rather than anything actual.
I think it was Augustine who first suggested that time is mental. In my debate with Tournesol found here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=77232&page=9 where we discussed if the past is real I argued, “. . . I think my view is even more radically event-dependent than his [Leibniz] because I claim the ‘time’ you speak of is nothing more than a psychological sense created by our from-birth, never-ending awareness of the incessant changes in physical events that go on around us, and to us, every moment we exist. . . . People who carry around the psychological sense of time (and I think most of us do) may project their subjective experience onto objective reality so that time to them is not in their head, but part of the fabric of physical reality.”
My point was that physical change and rates of change are occurring everywhere in the universe; for objective sciences the measurement of the rate of physical change is what figures into physical models, but in consciousness, time (or the “sense” of time) is memory-dependent.
In case everyone isn’t familiar with the term “specious present,” William James described it as an awareness of the present that has duration. For example, one might observe a person riding a bicycle and experience that “in the present,” yet any movement must occur over an interval, so “present” for consciousness can and often does involve an interval of time.
Another issue is simultaneity. For example, a photon emitted four light years away four years ago and a photon emitted two light years away two years ago might reach our retina in the same instant. Although they were emitted at different times, we experience them simultaneously. To consciousness they happen one way, but in objective reality they happen another way.
Finally, there is the fact that at any moment consciousness is receiving information from a variety of sources. A “now” I just experienced included feeling the morning coolness, a slight headache, the weight of my clothes; it included seeing sunlight, my computer screen, the books around it, my cat walking by; it included hearing birds outside, smelling an evergreen wreath, the lingering taste of orange juice. I experienced all that as a single moment even though it lasted over some relatively short period of time.
So is it accurate to say everything occurs in the present? Doesn’t it seem like the rules are different for physical reality and our experience of it?
I think first we have to define “present” to answer the question. We might say the present is all that exists in any given moment. Yet how long is a moment? If it has any duration, then the present is compromised. It seems the only moment that will do is if we can stop all change in reality. If there were no movement/change then we’d have a definable moment. However, as far as we know, it is impossible to stop all movement, so either there is no such thing as the present, or the present, as an aspect of time, is concept. I choose the latter.
If no humans were around, the universe would keep burning, spinning, expanding, forming stars and exploding them etc. perfectly fine without us to define the present. One meaning of the “present,” then, is our concept for a theoretical static moment in objective reality. Let’s call that theoretical static moment a
temporal point, and say rather than like a geometrical point which is dimensionless, a temporal point is timeless. It doesn’t matter if it really exists in the physical world, it is a useful concept anyway. For what it describes I believe it is accurate to say everything happens in the present; that is,
all events (and all events that make up events, ad infinitum) occur at the point they occur, not before or after they occur.
If we can define a “present” for objective reality, does it apply to consciousness too? Memory allows us to perceive continuity, simultaneity, and multiplicity for a specious present, but is there something in consciousness similar to a temporal point which is timeless? This is a profound issue in my opinion, at the core of the debate to characterize the nature of consciousness. My own opinion is that consciousness does possesses a “point” which is both dimensionless and timeless, around which all conscious growth and change take place. I know it as the basis of subjectivity, the true self, the very “heart” of my being, and which when experienced keeps me steadily present. But of course, not everyone agrees.
