No Time

So I have been slacking on the posting. It has been hard for me to get back into the swing of things since the holidays. I just don't seem to have enough time. But it turns out that time might not even exist. I love the way Western science has wrestled with this for years.

Meanwhile the Buddhist have been saying the same thing for years (even before Jesus Christ):

Regarding the Buddhist concept of time, our philosophy has. adopted several positions. The Sautrantika school, also known as the "Holders of Discourse," affirms that all phenomena and events exist only in the present moment. For this school, past and future are nothing other than simple concepts, simple mental constructs. As for the Madhyamika-Prasangika school, the Consequence School of the Middle Way, it generally explains time in terms of relativity, as an abstract entity developed by the mind on the basis of an imputation, the continuity of an event or phenomenon. This philosophical view &scribes, therefore, an abstract concept whose function is dependent on the continuum of phenomena. From this point on, to try to explain time as an autonomous entity, independent from an existing object, proves impossible. That time is a relative phenomenon and can claim no independent status is quite clear; I often give the example of external objects which can be easily conceived of in terms of the past or future, but of which the very present seems inconceivable. We can divide time into centuries, decades, years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. But as the second is also divisible into multiple parts, milliseconds for example, we can easily lose our grasp of the notion of present time!

As for consciousness, it has neither past nor future and knows only present moments; it is the continuum of a present moment being trans . formed into another present moment, whereas with external objects the present disappears in favour of notions of past and future. But further pursuit of this logic will lead to absurdity, because to situate past and future we need a frame of reference which, in this case, is the present, and we have just lost its trace in fractions of milliseconds.. . .

I remember being throughly confused when my philosophy professor was explaining how Kant says time starts at the same time of space, and that while both are, in a sense, constructs-- it is the only way we can experience our surroundings...

Now, don't quote me on that as I am pretty sure I got the concept wrong. I better go read Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics again. If anyone knows, please, feel free to post the proper concept in the responses.

Philosophical throw-down!

I have been on vacation (and more), so it has been hard to concentrate. I did come across this, though, and thought it was pretty funny.

Turns out there is an intellectual dispute among philosophers and one of them is a Miami boy. I can't wait to get a Phd. and get into stupid arguments that no one cares about.

Sunday Reading

There is an article in The New York TImes about a "new" philosophy. Though I don't see how this is any kind of new philosophy.

Maybe someone knows better than I, but this seems like it would fall under some kind of philosophy of science and technology.

And then there is the thought experiment that the article brings up:

Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about “Gödel” only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: “Gödel” is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. “But it seems to me that we are not,” Kripke declared. “We simply are not.”

To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean “we,” kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates — one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. “We simply are not”: well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?

My problem with this question is that what we are really refering to in this example is not Godel or Schmidt but the actual theorem. Words are, after all, just empty signifiers, so what we call the theorem (the words we use to "name" the theorem) matters very little. It doesn't matter if we call it Schmidtz or Godel.

Did I miss something? Also, why do philosophers have to justify what they do now? I am not saying that mixing genres here is bad. I have been wondering why philosophy isn't used by more professions, but as soon as something is a little too hard, no one wants to put in the time and effort to understand it and use it. What I am asking is why are these people using outdated philosophical concepts.

Philosophy is behind our laws and religion, and is involved in psychology, literature, art, language etc. We should be embracing it more and using it more in our daily life.