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Philosophy of Time

What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; but if someone asks me to explain it, I don't know. (Confessions xi, 17, quoted in PI § 89)

Philosophical investigations -- conceptual investigations. The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between factual (hypotheses about the nature of things) and conceptual (rules, conventions, definitions of words) investigations. (Z § 458)

A.  Nothing is more intimate to us than our native language, and yet --

Augustine has a picture of meaning: words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for. (PI § 1)

But the word 'time' is not defined ostensively (i.e. by pointing at an object or phenomenon). 'This is a cow' and 'This is a fire', but not 'This is time'. The use of the word 'time' is not learned or taught that way -- i.e. its part of speech is not name-of-something. So there is no bearer of the name (ibid. § 43) 'time' to study.

But how to use the word 'time' in everyday life -- like St. Augustine, we know. Perhaps it is the concept 'time' (or, "our conception of time") that perplexes us. -- But what does that mean? The meaning of the word 'concept' is no clearer than the meaning of the word 'time'. If pictures are meant, we have lots of those --

What is this curious thing "time", that flows, stands still and flies, that has a past, present and future all at the same time, and a ghost-like presence that is both familiar and distant?

But that is not the place to begin our investigation, for before anything else there is a word, namely 'time', which is only spoken sounds or ink marks on paper (the purely physical aspect of language, PI § 108), and the question is what gives that word meaning?

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Outline of this page ...

• Method and preliminary result
• Time and Authority
  • Language at work, language at play
  • Logic of language versus philosophical illusions
  • Standards of time
    • What are we measuring when we measure time?
• Time Travel
  • The picture is there, but is it a picture of anything?
  • Order and Regularity: We remember. Without memory there is no time.
    • The perception-conception of change (Percepts without concepts are blind)
      • Aristotle: Time is the perception of change
  • The word 'time' is not the name of a place in space
    • 'Fourth Dimension'
• The pictures words suggest versus the meaning of words
  • A picture that gives a false idea of how a word is used in the language
• Endnotes
  • Time and the order of events
  • Time travel in The Time Machine of H.G. Wells
  • Ribbon and Particles ("Pictures of Time")
  • The Circle of Time
  • Traveling to the Future

Socratic knowledge

"I know until someone asks me." But then does Augustine know what time is? Not according to the standard Socrates set for philosophy: "If a man knows anything, he can explain what he knows to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1).

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Method and preliminary result

We begin by examining our concept 'time' -- that is, with the use of a word in the language. And we find that the concept 'time' is connected to the concepts 'to measure' and 'regularity' and 'standard' (or 'authority') and 'change'.

What are we measuring when we measure time? A length of cloth, a length time: false grammatical analogies: to measure the earth, to measure time. (Is there a general definition of 'to measure'?)

We must keep strictly to the order of our inquiry, to ask first about the meaning and only then about the truth or falsity of hypotheses. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 105 46 c: 1929]; Plato, Republic 339a-b) 'What is the use of the word 'x' in the language?' versus 'What is x?' (Z § 458)

Not all nouns are names

Further, there are no hypotheses about a phenomenon named 'time' because there is no phenomenon independent of conceptualization to point to. And any conceptualization is metaphysics, because although the word 'time' is a noun, it is not a name; being a name is not its use in the language.

Not all names of things name things

Note that the words 'thing' and 'phenomenon' are so broad in meaning that any word may be said to be the name of some thing or phenomenon, and thus calling 'time' the name of a thing or a phenomenon obscures the fact that the problem is the use of a word rather than the nature of some elusive thing. Logical grammar versus syntax: not all names of things are names of things.

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Time and Authority

B.  If I doubt that my clock is "keeping correct time" -- I check it against another clock. But that can't go on forever. Suppose, to choose a clock everyone knows, I live in London and I take Big Ben as my standard. Then can I -- i.e. is it logically possible -- doubt its accuracy? What meaning would the word 'doubt' have here? But if Big Ben says it's 12 o'clock noon when I can see that the sun is only just rising over the horizon (i.e. at dawn), can't I have doubts? Take any clock you like as the standard, if that happens then I'll have doubts -- and if it happens too often, I'll give up on clocks, as will everyone else.

So 'correct time' is connected to day and night, sunrise and sunset. Logically? Yes, because its meaning depends on them. But 'noon is when the sun is at its highest point in the sky'? The meaning of 'highest point' is rather indefinite. (Perhaps for my ancestors working in the fields it was not.)

On the other hand, in this verse from Through the Looking-Glass, iv ("The Walrus and the Carpenter"), something which never happens is described, or I think it is described:

Can the sun shine in the middle of the night? In which sense of 'can'? Is it logically possible -- i.e. can it be described and drawn? It has been described and drawn. What is clear, however, is that if we say that the sun "can" shine in the middle of the night, we are not using the sun and its absence as the standard of 'day' and 'night' -- i.e. we are defining those words by some other means.

We are appealing to some other standard -- but to which exactly? The poem describes something which never happens in the lower latitudes (We do not live in "the land of the midnight sun" where 'day' and 'night' are defined differently) -- and there simply are no rules of grammar here (no normal "language game").

Rules for language use (definitions, explanations of meaning) exist to do some work in our life, and so we should not be surprised to find that there are no tools where none are needed.

Language at work, language at play

C.  People who live on the earth's surface keep time with day and night as their points of reference (what their clocks must conform to). How would a people who lived exclusively under the earth (i.e. underground) keep time?

How would a people who lived at one of the earth's poles keep time? Could they have only two times: the light time and the dark time? But human beings need to sleep, eat and work, and they cannot (biologically) space these activities out to once every six months.

Would historical facts make anything clearer here, for example, facts about how human beings began measuring time (in contrast to simply responding to sunrise and sunset)? What was the purpose of the earliest clocks (but planting and harvest and cattle migration all went on before there were clocks)? Language is part of our natural history (PI § 25); concepts have a history. [The origins of a concept and concept-formation, e.g. common names. The origins of a concept may not be clear.]

But on the other hand, is Augustine perplexed by our natural history -- or by the language he is already familiar with, our language of everyday life? "Does time flow like a river?" is not a question for natural science. Or is it -- e.g. the psychology of time passage ("time hanging heavy", "time flying by")? But the experience of time is not the meaning of the word 'time'. Cf. When deprived of oxygen, man becomes disoriented -- but "being disoriented" is not the meaning of the words 'deprived of oxygen'. [Note 1]

Logic of language versus philosophical illusions

The important thing is to describe how we actually use our language (Wittgenstein compared using words to playing games according to rules, which he called "language games"; how do we use the word 'time' seen in that context?) rather than be misled by what philosophers dream up when they kidnap words from their normal use and imagine all manner of things about their meaning. To solve Augustine's problem we must look for the use of the word 'time' rooted in our life, not for a rootless, conjured up "abstract object".

D.  Nowadays we keep time by checking with an authority (A clock is an authority), rather than by stepping outside the door to see the sun. Within limits? Suppose they were put to the test somewhere? The authorities become arbitrary and make a distinction between 'real time' and 'imaginary time', the former being the official time, rather like daylight-saving and standard times gone mad.

This happened once upon a time in a provincial town, when the clock on the town hall ran erratically and there was a long bureaucratic delay in its being repaired. The mayor and the local nobility, guardians of the social order, followed the town hall clock's time regardless of the consequences.

E.  Night watchmen kept time by watching the constellations change. This was important to them: it determined when their "watches" began and ended, or e.g. when soldiers were to get ready for the day's march. During the day people kept time by noting the location of the sun (directly overhead was noon; -- but what did they do on an overcast day?) What is to be said but: they kept time by noting regular occurrences, i.e. sunrise and sunset and the succession of the constellations in the night sky. Were there no sunrises or successions, we would not have the concept 'time' that we do have.

Standards of time

The word 'time' has no meaning independent of how time is measured.

Sidereal time: Describe a tribe that uses the stars as their clock, as their only clock, for they sleep in the daylight and live at night. And when the sky is quite overcast and there are no stars visible -- how then do they keep track of the time: how do they regulate their life if they cannot use the stars to tell time?

That question shows that we use more than one standard to measure time, that we appeal to one standard in some circumstances, and to other standards in other circumstances.

After the French Revolution, so the story is told (and I don't know if it's true), the government tried to impose a "metric" (i.e. a ten day) week, but the animals refused to leave the barn on the seventh day. How does a donkey keep time? This is not an impertinent question, because there is human behavior that we call "instinct" too.

What are we measuring when we measure time?

It may be that it is not one thing but many things that are used by man to measure time, or to keep track of time, to organize life. To regulate: to make rules. There used to be a style of clock called a "Regulator".

F.  Imagine a people living on the dark side of the moon, and further imagine that there are no stars (or that the people pay no attention to them). They keep time by the eruptions of a particular volcano; they "feel" that the eruptions occur regularly -- that is, by their "sense of time", the experience of time, subjective time (duration). But how do they know whether the eruptions are regular, one every hour, say, as we would note that by our clocks? The question is nonsense: the people do not know -- and they do not not-know either. The question is nonsense, i.e. an undefined combination of words, because we have not specified a technique (rule) for determining how the word 'regular' is to be applied here (i.e. how verification is to be made).

Does the people's sense of time determine the meaning of their word 'regular' -- or do the volcanic eruptions determine the people's sense of time? If the people's sense of time (which is subjective) determines the meaning of the word 'regular', then 'regular' is not an objective concept. (Cf. in music, following the clock-like metronome versus following the gestures of the conductor which are determined by the conductor's sense of time.)

Imagine that the people pay no attention to the volcanic eruptions either. Instead the people's oldest man is their time keeper: the people start work and end work, wake and sleep and so on when the old man tells them to. Whatever seems right to the old man (PI § 258) ... And it is nonsense to ask whether the old man is an accurate (regular) time keeper, because he alone is the standard of regularity. [Note 2]

Our concept 'time' is tied up with the concepts 'regular' and 'habitual'.

But imagine that the people pay no attention to the old man either. Instead everyone decides for himself when to do whatever. "That's enough work for now. It's time to rest and eat." Do these people still keep time? They no longer have objective -- i.e. standard time; no Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Co-ordinated Time).

[Man without time: no months, no days, no hours of the day, no years (French Equatorial Africa as it once was) | Acquiring a new concept: learning to keep track of time (one African man's experience).]

G.  Our non-scientific situation with respect to time-keeping is not like when people kept time by the sun and constellations; rather, it's like the people whose clock was the old man. We have our time-keeping, not by observation of regular occurrences, but from authority, ultimately from the atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.; and mediately from the radio or television or Internet -- which is the standard by which we set our clocks at home. In this way, too, objective time may seem inscrutable to us: it is not in our hands. (Within limits, of course.) We think: "They must know what they're doing", like the people's old man.

How does a clock's mechanism work? You think: "I'm lacking some facts that the clockmakers know." And you are -- but are these facts what you need to know in order to know "what time is"? The clock's mechanism is not the meaning of the word 'time'.

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Time Travel

H.  'Going back in time'. Clear off a table top; this space (i.e. the table top) will now be our universe, and we will be the universe's deity. Then place a few objects on the table top; these will be the elements of our universe. Call this situation 'time number-one' (or, t1). Now move one of the objects; call this 'time number-2' (t2). Now return the object to its original position. Then with that replacement we are back in t1: we have "gone back in time".

We think: But it's not really t1. -- Oh, but it really is t1, because there is no other standard of time in our universe except that of the arrangement of objects on the table top. Now move the object to where you moved it before; then it's t2 again: we have "gone forward in time".

Our concept 'time' is connected with our concept 'change'. Without change there is no time.

The theater -- the stage -- is the universe. And time there is whatever the playwright (the old man) says it is. And with every performance the universe is "carried back in time": Hedwig shoots herself (rather than the wild duck) time and time again. -- Though actually, we may want to say, she does it only one time: it's t1 over and over again (from the perspective of our universe, or of Hedwig's deity, not of Hedwig).

The director moves the actors on-stage, he moves them off-stage; -- he moves the universe "backwards" or "forwards" in time at will. Director: "Let's have t3 now. No, rather, we'll do t4 now, and t3 this afternoon."

Order and Regularity

I.  But if there is nothing more than stage-settings, then how can we arrange them in order, beginning to end? We remember. Without memory there is no time. (There is also, of course, the laws and regularity of nature to consider: some combinations of events don't "make sense" based on man's life experiences. But is there only one way to put a puzzle together? Cannot imagination supply many others, however implausible they may be? And then we say, "Come now, be reasonable." And then some poor fellow is sent off to the gallows. But we also say, "Stranger things have happened" and "There are more things in Heaven and earth ...")

Russell's proposition 'The world came into existence 5 minutes ago, memories and all'. Question: is reality what we remember it to be? That is, is reality whatever man remembers it to be, and nothing else but that?

The life of an insect is timeless, if insects have no memory.

The perception-conception of change

By 'time' do we mean 'the perception of change'? Not necessarily 'measurement of change', although sometimes to perceive change will be to measure it. There is no essence of time (i.e. sometimes measuring, sometimes not).

I have used the form of expression 'perception-conception' to indicate that this is a single act: unconceived perceptions are incoherent (as conceptions without perceptions are fantasies).

The concept 'time' would not exist if man did not exist. Therefore we can ask about the concept 'time' -- but not about "time itself" (which is an undefined combination of words. Remember that concepts define phenomena, not vice versa: "phenomena without concepts are blind"). The proposition 'Time is real' is nonsense, unless that simply means that there is a word 'time' that has a use in our language.

The word 'time' is not the name of anything whether physical or "abstract"; name-of-something is not that word's role in our language; 'time' is a noun that is not a name. And as conceptions without perceptions are fantasies, the Platonic Form 'time-ness' or 'time-hood' is fantasy (Parmenides 133c).

And the same is true for every other human -- (as if we knew of any other kind!) -- concept as well. The proposition 'Sheep exist' is a statement of fact -- in human language, that is it is a statement of fact. But apart from human perception-conception, what is a sheep? There is no "thing in itself", no "the world" independent of man: because 'the world' is a human concept -- it belongs to our life form; it is our life form's concept.

Are there other life forms that have something equivalent to human concepts, e.g. cats or fish? We make analogies (PI § 360).

Aristotle on time

By 'time' it does seem that we mean 'the human perception of change'. Aristotle says in Physics 219a4 ff. that the change need not be an external movement, however, for man may also note the changes in his state of mind as a passage of time.

The word 'time' is not the name of a place in space

J.  Backwards and forwards in time -- time as a moving sidewalk ("The moving concourse of history"). This picture comes from trying to apply the logical grammar of space-words (3 dimensions) to the "4th dimension" -- i.e. to the word 'time', although the grammar of that word is completely different.

Time is not a dimension; it is a co-ordinate. That is a rule of grammar (definition, explanation of meaning). If time were a dimension, one would have to ask for a box's length, width, height and time if one hoped to get the size box one wanted.

The movie that was made of H.G. Wells' book The Time Machine (with Rod Taylor and Alan Young) in 1960. The inventor places his miniature time-traveling machine on the table top and throws the machine's switch; the machine disappears. His colleagues who have been called to witness this demonstration of time-travel are perplexed: where has the machine gone? They want an answer according to Cartesian geometry: some co-ordinates on the x, y, z axes. Well, the machine has "gone somewhere", and where do things go but in space? The colleagues need to remind themselves of another grammatical category ("part of speech"), because spatial-grammar has no application here. "Where has it gone?" the inventor says, "No, no, the machine is still [pointing] here, in the same space [at the same x, y, z co-ordinates], but it is here at a different time. [An object needs co-ordinates like x, y, z and t.]" No, the colleagues don't understand, can't "take this in". The disappearance is merely a conjuring trick for them: the machine must have (spatially) gone somewhere when it disappeared.

Their perplexity is about the logic of our language; their 'must' is logical, but wrong. Not that the colleagues have to believe that the machine time-traveled (nor do we; this is only a story after all). But what the inventor says should not be nonsense (meaningless) to them -- or to us -- either, if we understand the grammar of the word 'time'.

'Fourth Dimension'

The introduction of the "t co-ordinate" may help this understanding along; talk of a "4th dimension" may alleviate perplexity -- or lead to more, because 'dimension' belongs to spatial-grammar. (I use the expression 'fourth dimension' figuratively here: we locate an object in space, and we also "locate" an object in time -- but time is not a place. [Note 3] [Ribbon and Particles (Pictures of Time)]

[Compare the remarks about "finite but unbounded" space in the Philosophy of Science, about creating clarity or furthering obscurity.]

K.  The theater again. The actor is standing center stage. The director is angry: "What are you doing! We're rehearsing t4, not t7." The actor is in the right place (x, y, z) but at the wrong time (t). He is "forward in time"; he needs to go "backwards in time".

A standard of time, points of reference. With the table top example, there were few points (elements, objects), and, so, to "move around in time" was easy: there was very little we had to control. But to "move around in time" in our actual universe; -- that would be far more complicated than the theater: the time-travel machine has to change (or rearrange) the whole world -- everything. "It would take the power of God to travel in time." That, anyway, is one picture.

L.  God the chronometer. This is another way we get into perplexity about the grammar of our word 'time'. On the one hand, we bring the deity into our considerations -- and on the other, we then forget that we have. We want to stand both inside the universe and outside it -- at the same time. We keep wanting to appeal to a standard outside the universe. But, then, who will keep time for God? Which is the next question we shall ask in our craving for an absolute standard. But any standard can be (grammatically) absolute, Big Ben included -- if we treat it that way. And then the sky may sometimes be inky black at 1 p.m. But can it be 1 p.m. if we have a night sky? Here we are appealing to another standard, and not as we have just said we would -- treating Big Ben as absolute.

And this shows us something important about the grammar of our word 'time': that it is not fixed by a single standard in ordinary life.

But what would be the point of choosing that standard (e.g. Big Ben)? It seems that we keep time -- for purposes, e.g. when to get up, when to quit work. Without electric lights, we might not want to try to work in darkness. Imagine a people who did not have even fire; these people would not have the freedom to be as casual about sunrise and sunset as we are.

M.  How do I know that this instant is the same length of time as that instant? "One might last much longer than the other, and I wouldn't notice." I'm thinking: "perhaps there are long pauses between some instants. We do not notice, but God does." ("The world stops.")

"Maybe this second on the clock is very long while that second is very short -- how do I know that it's not like that? Maybe it's not just "as we say"; maybe the hour really did go by very quickly, the seconds being shorter than usual."

These are not a practical doubts -- that is, not doubts that arises in the practice of using the word 'time' to do its work in everyday life. "... philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday" (PI § 38).

The answer, of course, is that I don't know -- i.e. "don't know" because the questions (i.e. combinations of words with the syntax of questions) are nonsense. And nonsense because I haven't given them a sense, e.g. specified what standard we are to appeal to in determining the length of an instant or second. (These are cases where "the meaning is the method of verification"? But, question: Can't "what the eye of God sees" be used to give them a sense? But then we would have only a picture, and not an hypothesis.)

N.  'Whatever time it is, it is always now.' This is either a rule of grammar (definition, e.g. of the word 'now') or nonsense. It is nonsense unless its contradiction is also not nonsense: 'Whatever time it is, it is never now.' A rule that cannot be broken is not a rule (not what we mean by the word 'rule'). Compare the proposition 'Wherever I am, I am here' which is also grammar or nonsense.

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The Pictures words suggest versus the Meaning of words

A picture-language "suggests a use" -- and we take it as a matter of course that we know how to use the picture. But the question remains: does the picture have any application to the facts? For presumably the suggestion is that the picture can be compared to the facts -- i.e. that the picture is a picture of the facts. But how is it to be compared to the facts? (PI II, vii, p. 184)

"You surely know what 'It is 5 o'clock here' means; so you also know what 'It's 5 o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock." -- The explanation by means of identity ... 'the same time'...

I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there "the same time", but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there. (PI § 350)

Is it the same time here as it is in London? Well, London is in a different time zone. So that, our time plus five or six hours, say. Yet, we think, that's merely a matter of convention: surely in reality it's the same time in London as it is here -- namely: now. What's happening here now and what's happening there now are happening simultaneously. "The meaning seems to float before our eyes": It's the same present moment, now, and more emphatically: right now. But the question is: is our concept 'time' any more absolute -- rather than relational -- than our concept 'extension' (PI § 252)? To the grammar of 'time' as to the grammar of 'length' belongs: how do you determine what time it is, how do you measure what length a body has?

In this particular case again you can really say that: The meaning is -- i.e. is given or explained by -- the method of verification. [Another example is the proposition 'Time moves faster at higher altitudes'.]

Perhaps we have a picture like this: Here I am in my room; there is no doubt about what I am doing and what time it is. So I call to mind a picture of events in London: there is my friend taking a walk to the post office. I see it all so vividly before my mind's eye, the river, the afternoon sky, etc. I look at my wall clock, I picture Big Ben ... Now aren't my writing and my friend's walking taking place at the same time -- isn't that what we mean by the words 'the same time'? [Note 4]

The picture is there, but is it a picture of anything?

A picture is conjured up which seems to fix the sense unambiguously.... a picture which forces itself on us ... but does not help us out of the difficulty, which only begins here. (PI §§ 426, 425)

These words may lead me to have all sorts of images; but their usefulness goes no further. And I can also imagine something in connection with the words: 'It was just 5 o'clock in the afternoon on the sun' -- such as a grandfather clock which points to 5. (ibid. § 351)

The picture is there ... But what is its application? (ibid. § 424)

Suppose the sun were habitable, and some fellows went to live there, and they brought along their grandfather clock. Very well, the hands point to 5 o'clock ... "in the afternoon" (17 hrs). But here on earth the concept 'afternoon' connects up with the rising and setting of the sun. We have as yet no idea what meaning 'afternoon' is to have on the sun -- any more than what '5 o'clock' (of our 24 hour day) is to mean there.

[The sun was] a round passionless clock that told eternity. (Bruce Marshall. The Stooping Venus ("Fifth edition") [c. 1926], v, 3)

So, I have a picture of my friend in London. But what is the application of that picture? To what facts does it apply -- what does it describe? A fashion illustrator draws a girl in a dress. We think: this must be a portrait of some actual girl. But, of course, there is no "must" about it. The figure is a possible human figure, and that may be the full extent of the drawing's portrayal of reality; it is a picture, but it need not be a picture of any actual girl. And my picture of my friend walking to the post office need not be a picture of an event occurring "at the same time" in London -- that need not be its connection to reality.

'How do we compare the picture with what it is said to be a picture of?' means 'What is the method of verification?'

[Time pictured as a Gestalt-shift, an example of a metaphysical proposition which gives a sense to 'Time is not real', if by 'a sense' here is meant 'a non-verifiable picture'. How G.E. Moore could have responded to McTaggart's assertion that "Time is unreal".]

A picture that gives an incorrect idea of how a word is used, a false account of the word's grammar

"But Augustine's perplexity is not about the word 'time' -- but about time itself." Meaning what? What we might say is that Augustine is confused by the many pictures he associates with the word 'time'. In answer to the question 'what is time?' he points to these pictures, and he is confused by them.

What we deny is that the picture ... gives us the correct idea of the use of the word ... We say that this picture ... stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is. (PI § 305)

But is the use of the word the problem? We may want to say: "What we deny is that these pictures give us a correct idea of time itself." But what would "time itself" be if not what is revealed by our use of the word 'time'? Because the word 'time' is not defined by pointing at the bearer of a name (PI § 43); it is defined by a description of its use in the language, and that use is not name.

The difficulty here is not to understand something very complicated, but to see something very simple: what we are looking for is not to be found in some mysterious physical or metaphysical realm, but in grammatical differences between parts-of-speech. Then we will see that the combination of words 'What is time?' is, like the combination of words 'What is a geometric point?', not something profound but a grammatical joke (ibid. § 111). That is Wittgenstein's grammar or logic of language meaning.

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Endnotes

Note 1: Discovering the history of a concept may put an end to our confusion, as for example in the following case:

Drury wrote that, when at the end of the 19th century the phenomena of hypnosis were studied scientifically, it was discovered that patients under hypnosis "could recover memories that were not available in the waking state", and that commands given to a hypnotized patient would be carried out by the patient although the patient was not aware of being obedient to the commands and "would invent a fictitious motive for their behaviour".

Now having used hypnosis in suitable cases for the last twenty years I know that these are indeed facts. They are facts which the language of every day life is not equipped to describe except in terms of a long circumlocution. So it became convenient to introduce a special terminology and to speak of "unconscious" memories and "unconscious" motives.

But every adjective is in deadly danger of being transformed into a substantive. So it came about that psychologists began to speak of "the unconscious mind", as if some new entity had been discovered. A mysterious second self that accompanied us all at all times and was the "real" source not only of dreams and neuroses, but of art and mythology, history and religion. This superstition has done infinite harm.

[The danger in the case of the word 'time' is not of an adjective but of a noun being transformed into a "substantive" -- i.e. into the name of some thing. Not all syntactic nouns are names.]

Drury wrote that the science of psychology consists of "highly skilled procedures requiring years of apprenticeship. To communicate these skills from one generation to another" psychologists have developed their own technical language. And to join in these activities one must learn this language. "The danger arises when one learns the language without mastering the skills it is meant to mediate."

Source: "Fact and Hypothesis", M. O'C. Drury's reply to a review of his book The Danger of Words, in the journal The Human World, Volumes 15-16 (1974), p. 138.

If we speak of "a recovered memory", remember that we can, by definition, only remember something that has actually happened. Which means that there must be a way to verify that an event occurred apart from the testimony of the patient. "I remember that it was the second house on the left." -- But here we are, and the house is not there. -- "Well, I thought I remembered that it was ..."

For instance if someone recovers their memory of an accident. "The road was wet, and there were many leaves on the road." And here is an accident report written by witnesses to the event which also states that the road was wet and covered with fallen leaves. Does that count as verification? Is it sufficient? What do we call 'the verification of a memory'?

Time and the order of events

But if that is so, then aren't our concepts 'time' and 'causality' connected? And isn't this what leads people to speak of time as flowing like a river that only travels in one direction? "This happened because that happened -- and this had to have happened before, not after, that." So we say, but what kind of necessity is this?

The concept 'ordered events' is connected to -- i.e. is part of the definition of the word -- 'time' (A came before B, B before C). But 'constantly ordered events' or 'causality' (B because A, C because B) is not.

Without the concepts 'correlation' and 'cause', we would have no basis on which to reconstruct events for which there were no witnesses or of which we had no memory. But, although they are an important way of our life, reconstructions are not essential to our concept 'time' (i.e. to the grammar of the word 'time'). (The regularity of nature, relationship to time.) [BACK]

Note 2: The people of Königsberg kept time by the comings and goings of Immanuel Kant, because the old professor [old man] was so regular in his habits. (Harvey Hewett-Thayer, Hoffmann: Author of the Tales (Princeton: 1948), p. 113) [BACK]

Note 3: I don't know whether physicists have redefined the word 'time' to make "time" a spatial dimension -- and that is not part of our investigation (As in the philosophy of mathematics I am only going to talk about the language I know) -- because it is our normal concept 'time' that Augustine (and philosophy) is perplexed by. Our question is a grammatical one, or in other words: I am looking for rules (conventions) for using a word, not for a theory about what "something" (who knows what thing) really is. Investigations of the logic of language meaning are investigations of concepts (i.e. of rules for using words).

Time travel in The Time Machine of H.G. Wells

I have now (August 2001) read the book on which the movie The Time Machine was based. The "Time Traveller" tells his guests that he does not know whether the miniature time machine has traveled to the past or to the future. But, either way, his guests have objections:

I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it would still be here all this time [i.e. the time since it appeared to disappear], since it must have travelled through this time.... But, if it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room [i.e. before the Time Traveller carried the little machine from his workshop into the room from which it appeared to disappear]; and last Thursday when we were here ... (H.G. Wells, The-Time-Machine-book (1895), Ch. 1)

The guests (and indeed the author) are imagining time as "literally" a fourth dimension -- of space. This is shown, if by nothing else, by their use of the formula 'travelled into the future', 'travelled into the past', on the model of an object's traveling from one bit of space to another. If the machine is to travel from t6 to t1, it must travel though t5, t4, t3, and t2, just as a man traveling south from London to Paris must cross the Channel. Indeed, in the story itself to travel in time takes time: although the journey can be accelerated or slowed down, it is never instantaneous, any more than, as we are told at school, is the journey of light.

[Time travel -- traveling through time -- sounds as if time were like a medium clear and not viscous, not like treacle but like air that you can travel in or through.]

However, 'time' is not the name of a spatial dimension (which is why the word 'literally' is in quotes above: there is in this case no literal sense to contrast with a figurative sense). "Travel" from t6 to t1 would indeed be instantaneous, because all this so-called travel would amount to would be -- rearranging the furniture. If on Monday (t1) I placed my writing-desk against the north wall, on Tuesday (t2) against the west wall, Wednesday (t3): south, and today (t4): east; there is no need for me move the desk first against the south wall (t3) and then against the west wall (t2) if I wish to recreate the situation that existed on Monday (t1). No, I have only to move the desk from the east wall (t4) directly to the north wall (t1) in order to "travel into the past". [Travel "into the future".]

Ribbon and Particles ("Pictures of Time")

Picturing going backwards and forwards in time is picturing time as a ribbon (or magnetic tape recording), and therefore imagining that to go from time point A to time point C on the time line ABC it is necessary to pass through point B (and all other time points between A and C).

An alternative picture, in contrast, is of time consisting of independent particles, such that it is not necessary to travel to time point B in order to travel from time point A to time point C. Yet what is the role of causality in this picture -- for isn't causality the red thread that runs through the time line, establishing the connection between time points A, B and C? But time particles are not here pictured as randomly arranged, but as arranged in a fixed constellation which displays their relationships: the time particles are discrete despite being causally bound to one another.

The Circle of Time

The picture of time as a carousel (merry-go-round) that one might get on or off at any point (in time). The apparent trouble with this picture is that a circle is a closed figure, meaning that there is a limit to time, that time is finite, say it were 500 years and could be no longer. On the other hand, a circle can broaden, its circumference expand (cf. a line can be extended indefinitely), so that leaving point A needn't result in returning to point A (Nietzsche's eternal return). That is, the merry-go-round picture is visually finite, but mathematically unlimited. The present and the past are in place, but the future needn't be. The picture is there -- but I don't see what if anything can be done with it.

Traveling to the Future

It makes no sense (it is nonsense) to speak of someone time-traveling from the present to the future, for by 'future' we mean what has yet to happen, which is something that has no existence except in our imagination. By the word 'future' we do not mean something that has already happened. If time is pictured as a ribbon, it is a constantly lengthening ribbon, never completed but always being added to. To believe that future human events are pre-determined is metaphysics (instinct or superstition).

If it is possible to time travel to the past, it does not follow that it is possible to interact or take part in past events, only that past events may be observed.

The only way to travel to the future is to first travel to the past and then to travel from that past point towards the present. In any case, it's not possible to travel beyond the present, except in one's imagination into an imaginary future, a possible future.

You might think that if there is a word 'future', and if "the meaning of a word is the thing the word names", then the word 'future' must be the name of some place. But our language doesn't work that way. How do we use the word 'future'? We do not use it to name something that already exists. To say that what may happen necessarily will happen is metaphysics: a prediction (scientific theory) is not a statement of fact. These remarks are all "conceptual", i.e. they concern pictures created by the imagination only. [BACK]

Note 4: In my example my friend could as easily be eight light years away on the star Sirius as in London.

Moritz Schlick wrote:

The most famous case of an explicit formulation of our criterion [of meaning] is Einstein's answer to the question, What do we mean when we speak of two events at distant places happening simultaneously?... Einstein's philosophical opponents maintained -- and some of them still maintain -- that they knew the meaning of the above question independently of any method of verification ... ("Meaning and Verification" in The Philosophical Review, July 1936, p. 342-3)

Although it is not always the case that the meaning is given by the method of verification, in this particular case it is. [BACK]

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