Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T11:59:41.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Problem of Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

J. Alexander Gunn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The problem of Time is one of the most fascinating and yet most difficult of those questions to which the human mind applies itself in philosophical thought. Dean Inge, in his Philosophy of Plotinus, has referred to this problem as ‘the hardest in metaphysics,’ and we know that “from the time of Parmenides and Zeno to that of Mr. Bradley and M. Bergson, there has been no other problem that has seemed so baffling as that of Time.”

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 14 , April 1929 , pp. 180 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1929

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 180 note 1 Mackenzie: “Notes on the Problem of Time,” Mind, July 1912.

page 181 note 1 It is dealt with fully in a forthcoming work by the present writer: Time: an Historical and Critical Study in Philosophy.

page 182 note 1 Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phdnomenologische Forschung, Bd. viii, 1927.

page 182 note 2 Alexander: Spinoza and Time.

page 182 note 3 Stout, Bergson, Ward, and Broad have rightly insisted upon the fact that we do so perceive change. This is important, for the fact that we experience continuity needs emphasis.

page 183 note 1 Alexander, : Space, Time, and Deity, vol. ii, p. 143.Google Scholar

page 183 note 2 Smith, Kemp : Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge, p. 80.Google Scholar

page 183 note 3 Kant (as Kemp Smith here notes), under the influence of those very assumptions from which he was endeavouring ta break away, inconsistently adopts the method of invoking the revival of past experiences as a method of explanation in his exposition of the “syntheses of apprehension.”

page 183 note 4 Smith, Kemp : Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge, p. 84.Google Scholar

page 184 note 1 Cf. Dr. J. E. Turner's shrewd criticism of Kemp Smith in his Theory of Direct Realism.

page 184 note 2 We do find time given with events, and in this sense we derive our knowledge of it from happenings. It is given with the events, however, and in this sense may be regarded as a priori.

page 185 note 1 If we accept Dunne's facts (while rejecting his theories), the “seeing” or “foreseeing” occurs in dreams. We cannot here examine in detail either his facts or his theories. The latter have to be treated separately from the empirical section of his book. His theories, as we may show on some other occasion, are based on certain misconceptions or confusions. His facts are in another category, and must be taken in conjunction with those of the other writers mentioned, especially the careful investigator Osty. The main point to notice here is that these cases involve very difficult problems about the status of the Future. This subject is being dealt with in the writer's forthcoming book on Time. It must suffice here to say that, if these men are right, then the Future cannot be as Broad maintains, a mere non-entity. Cf. Osty: Supernormal Faculties in Man. Flammarion: Before Death, chaps, viii and ix. Dunne: An Experiment with Time.

page 185 note 2 The anticipation, however vivid or true, would not be the equivalent of the event itself.

page 186 note 1 Even Dunne's, forecasts (based on dreams) are limited to his own future experiences. This is a vital point in his theory. (An Experiment with Time, 1927.)Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 As, for instance, to quote a recent book, MissSturt's, The Psychology of Time (1925).Google Scholar Miss Sturt's work as a strictly psychological contribution is useful, but her knowledge of metaphysics is based on misapprehension, and is an indication of the mischief which results when the psychological standpoint is confused with the metaphysical.

page 190 note 1 In spite of J. W. Nicholson's contention in the Aristotelian Symposium about the spectra-unit as a natural unity.

page 190 note 2 “ There is no intrinsic reason why time should not be strictly reversible and unroll backwards as in some dreams.” This is nonsense. Miss Sturt (p. 145) equates awareness of time and time itself. A moment of time is simply a state of mind! Time for psychology can have no structure! Its structure is that of the events of the universe. Again note the mischief of a purely psychological, subjective view of time. Reference is made by Holt in The New Realism to abnormal cases of awareness in which the order of events appears reversed, but this is an illusion of perception.