Time as Space

Posted on May 17, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy, Science |

OK, this one I just had to make a comment on beyond adding it to the sideblog. Over at Developing Intelligence Chris Chathan has a post on reversing time by crossing your hands. The paper discussed shows that the perception of temporal order may be reversed if you cross your hands. The theory is that people determine temporal order by reconstructing external events in terms of their spatial location. In other words place determines time.

Why I find this so interesting (beyond the obvious interesting things it shows about the mind) is how it relates to the phenomenology of time and space. Lots of philosophers have argued that temporal spacing is related to spatial spacing. (This is a big deal in Derrida of course although arguably it is in Heidegger as well)

To me whenever I find that how we experience our experiences of time and space show they are intertwined it is fascinating. I’m not saying we don’t ultimately keep them separated merely that each notion is in a sense contaminated by the other.

Comments

5 Responses to “Time as Space”

While I agree with you that notions of time and space are connected (though I don’t make distinction between them in our perception and metaphysically), I’m not sure those experiments necessarily show reversal of temporal order. Given that what produces this phenomenon is crossed arms, to me it seems more likely it is just a mix-up about where the first and where the second touch happens.

I”m skeptical about the relevance of that paper to the phenomenology of time and space. It may confirm the hypothesis that subjects “determine temporal order by reconstructing external events in terms of their spatial locations in the external world”, but this determination may not be phenomenologically accessible to subjects — it may happen on a level that is not consciously experienced. So, phenomenological time and phenomenological space may be causally related thanks to some subconscious brain processing, but I don’t think that’s the kind of relation that phenomenologists have argued for.

Tanasije, I think though that’s sort of the point. I don’t think it entails a significant reversal. Rather it suggests that time is determined by place. Of course we can rig up experiments like that all the time in physics where some mark at a place represents a time.

Ponder, what do you think phenomenologists are arguing for and which phenomenologists are you thinking of? (Since there is great disagree between say Heidegger and Husserl on these points)

My thoughts go this way…

One of the paradigm cases in which we talk about time, is where we recognize two events A and B as happening one after another. For example we see (or feel, or otherwise perceive) event A happening before event B.

But in this particular case, if A is for example event of touching subjects’ left hand, and B is event of touch on his right hand, and if A happens before B, maybe he doesn’t mistake B as happening before A, but mistakes A as being touch on his right hand, and B being touch on his left hand. (Now you being pragmatist might ask what is the difference between the two cases, but it seems to me that those are two different illusions. That is, while the end result is the same, in both cases it is different illusion, in one it is genuine reversal of the time process, and in the other mistaking of where events A and B took place. Maybe, that those are different we can point by saying that it might be possible to combine the two, and hence get to case where two wrongs will make right…)

Anyway, I wonder if the situation is as I describe it, it is right to say that it is reversal of temporal order.

I don’t know about the details, so maybe I’m missing something…

I recognize what you are saying. But the point is that space is part of our measurement of time and vice versa. Screw one up and you screw up the other. The ultimate point, as I see it, is that the phenomenology of time is always already contaminated by space and is always already mediated.

This might just be the pragmatist in me speaking since the pragmatic critique of Descartes is that there are no unmediated signs.

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