This is only a rough sketch, the English wasn’t corrected,
etc.
THE DURATION OF THE PRESENT
Once I asked the fruit-seller in the corner of my
street what is the duration of the present. She answered without hesitation:
the present endures 24 hours. For people trained in philosophy this might sound
as an absurd, if not as a ridiculous answer. But in the end of this paper, I
hope to show that there might be a grain of truth in an answer like that.
If we ask
philosophically what is the duration of the present, we soon reach the limits
of paradox. If we suggest that it is a minute, it is a false answer because we
are including seconds of the future and seconds of the past in this present,
and our situation is not very much different from that of the fruit-seller.
Since the minute has 60 seconds one could ask if this duration could not be of
1 second. But since the second has 1,000 milliseconds, there are future and
past milliseconds involved in the second. And, of course, each millisecond can
be also, so it seems, infinitely divided. This brings us to a prima facie answer regarding objective physical time: the present has no
duration. But if the present has no duration, the present does not exist. The
question about the duration of the present seems to lead us to the paradoxical conclusion
its inexistence.
There is a counter
to this conclusion. Physicians believe that the shortest length in the universe
is Planck’s length, which is about 1.6 x 10-35 m. Since the highest
possible speed in any referential system is the speed of light, which is 3 x 108
m/s, the shortest time would be the time taken to pass the light through the
shortest length. Since Δt = d/v, dividing the shortest length by the highest
possible speed we would get the shortest time of the universe, which would be
53.39 x 10-44 sec.
Naturally, even assuming that there is nothing
wrong in the reasoning above, there is a serious problem for the explanation of
what we properly and conventionally understand as the present. As much as
Plank’s length, Plank’s time is so extremely small that cannot be effectively measured.
It extends far above the minimal measure of time we have already arrived at,
which is of 10-18 seconds. The consequence is that even if we
consider the present as having the duration of the Plank unity of time, this
would not be something that we would be able to feel or sense or experience as
the present. This could be the present for the physicist. But it would not be
the present as we understand it in our current usage of the word.
I
How to get rid of this dilemma? A first answer is to
bite the bullet and to conclude that the present has indeed no existence, no
reality. Some would say that the distinction between past, present and future
is in the end only an illusion, though a persistent one. What exists is the
earlier, the simultaneous and the later, regarding a chosen frame of reference.
We would easily adopt eternalism, the block view of the universe, in which
past, present and future are only sections of one only space-time…
However, why we
have this persistent tendency to find the present so special? Why are we all at
least intuitively presentists, believing that only the present really exists,
that the true reality is that of the present world surrounding us?
One could
answer rejecting presentism and endorsing eternalism. If the whole time, from
the past to the future is real, then we should dismiss the present as an
illusion. The relativity theory has shown us that what is present is present
only relative to a frame of reference, but it can be past or future relatively
to other frames of reference. Otherwise we will be lead to subjectivism about
time.
However, even
if we think so, the present continues to exist and having reality when
considered upon innumerable different frames of reference since all that we
have made was to multiply the presents. One could object that this
multiplication makes the present subjective. But this is not true. We can fix a
frame of reference (for instance, our own) and agree intersubjectively within this
frame of reference about what is present, future and past. And in this sense
the present is objective. Remembering Einstein’s famous experiment with the
train, if we are outside the train, we can agree intersubjectively about the
simultaneity of events and consequently about events simultaneously given in
the present. And this interpersonal agreement gives us all the criteria of objectivity
that is demanded for by the usual sense of the word.
II
Another
possible answer to the problem is to retreat to the subjective experience of
time. We need to renounce to the objective present and appeal to something like
the specious present. We have the feeling of the present. This feeling is
caused, not by the above noticed nothing, but essentially by our short time
memory and our short-term expectations. I remember the beginning of the sense I
am writing and I am able to expect what I will say now that I am ending this
sentence. This is which gives me a feeling of the present, the impression that
the present has some duration. One could try to answer our question saying that
when speak of the present we are in fact speaking of the specious present and
only misleadingly intending the objective physical time. Since the only present
that we can see as lasting is the subjective specious present, this is the only
present that for us exists, which seems to open the doors to all kind of
idealist metaphysics which seems to most of us today unpalatable.
This answer stands
until we ask what is the cause of the specious present. This cause cannot be
other than the objective physical present. But here we are once more lead to a
paradox. Since the objective physical present is a nothing, since it does not
exist, it cannot be the cause of anything. We seem to be leaded from idealism
to solipsism.
Our attempt
to save the present leads us to inconsistences, it seems. Is there a way to
scape from the absurd of having to deny the reality of the present as we experience,
which would also lead us to deny that the specious present mirrors something real?
III
I would like to propose an easier answer to the
problem. The objective present that we usually refer to is not a nothing, not
something unreal, it is not even something really subjective. It is not a
moment, an instant in the absolute sense of these words, supposing that this is
a meaningful sense. It requires a duration in time, as much as the what we have
called specious present. Consequently,
something like the specious present is what we mean when we speak about the
objective physical present: a short duration of time in which we are able to
apprehend the change of objects or of facts or even of anything essentially
unchangeable in the flux of time that we can feel in changes going on in our
own minds. In other words: the present
time is the time we need to apply our conceptual rule in order to experience
the world.
I think that
this answer can be made more consistent if we consider it as a problem
concerning the reality or existence. Assuming by hypothesis presentism, present
are all things that are real, that exist. But what means reality, existence?
Something that demands duration in time, for sure. There is no instantaneous
existence or reality. Existence is being in time, said Kant. If we agree with
Frege and understand existence as the falling of an object under a concept, we
have a possible process. Since Frege’s concept of concept as the abstract
reference of a predicate is very improbable, we can understand the concept as a
conceptual sense or (in accordance with Dummett’s interpretation) we can view a
conceptual sense as a conceptual rule and the existence of something as the
effective applicability of a conceptual rule, or, conversely, as the
disposition of something (an object, a tropical property) of having its
identifying conceptual rule effectively applicable to itself. In this case
existence or reality demands duration in time. And this is a subjectivist move,
since application and not applicability is something that demands the existence
of a cognitive perceiver as a subject. Even the rule does not need to exist
when we speak of its effective applicability, diversely from its actual
application. Moreover, the actual application of the conceptual rule can be
seen as something objective, since it can be considered interpersonally.
To see this
point clearly, suppose that something, say, a blue lake, exists now in an
uninhabited planet of another galaxy that was never detected by any cognitive
perceiver. This thing has the possibility of a conceptual rule being applied to
it (the effective applicability of a rule), a rule able to identify it. This
disposition of the object (that could be only imaginary) of having a rule
effectively applicable to it is what we call its existence. If the blue lake
exists, this means that the identifying conceptual rule for its existence would
be effectively applied if, under the right circumstances, a cognitive perceiver
able to form and apply this rule were there. However, this disposition does not
demand that someone effectively applies the rule to it or even that this rule
is instantiated in the mind of any cognitive being of any world; the conceptual
rule does not need to exist, though it surely needs to be able to exist.
The point that
is important to our concern here is that the application of a rule demands
time. We cannot have instantaneous perception of anything. And even things that
exist without having had any perceptual rule applied to it exist only because
if a conceptual rule were applied to them would be seen as existing in a
process involving time. My conclusion is that not only the specious present
endures in time, but that the objective present captured in the specious
present must also endure in time – enough time to involve the application of an
effectively applicable conceptual rule.
There are, of
course, at least two assumptions of my reasoning that could be questioned. The
first is my adoption of an improved Fregean view of existence as a second order
property of a something of having to itself an identifying conceptual rule that
is effectively applicable.[1] This
view is plausible, insofar as the competitive view regarding the existence as a
first order property leads us to the undesirable conclusion that there is
nothing that does not exist. The second assumption is my adoption of
presentism: the only real things are those that are present. This is also plausible,
since it is in conformity with our best common sense. Past things were real; future things will be real. Therefore, the only things
that are real are those given to us
in the present enduring moment.
[1] A defense of this view of existence
as a property-property is presented in the chapter four of my book Philosophical Semantics: Reintegrating
Theoretical Philosophy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018).
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