I personally can say that I had a very strong belief that if I awake and the last day I remember is Tuesday it should be Wednesday and not Monday. It was quite a shock to learn that isn’t true.
Yes, it can be very distressing to have a strong intuition challenged. It would be very distressing to learn that arithmetic for large integers didn’t work the way I assumed it did.
But in math, the intuition precedes the emotional significance. I don’t start out being emotionally attached to a certain answer. Rather, I start out emotionally neutral about the question, I form an intuition about the answer, and then I am emotionally attached to being right.
So, the emotional significance can’t be used to explain where the intuition came from. In the case of math, the universality of the intuitions can be explained by our common biological and cultural heritage, and by our common experience with how the enumeration of things works.
In the case of time, we have the same biological and cultural heritage, and we have the same experience with time itself, but we arrive at different intuitions about the relationship between time and ontology. This is what I find puzzling.
Different perception can easily lead to different intuitions.
What are the different perceptions that would explain the different intuitions about whether the future exists?
What are the different perceptions that would explain the different intuitions about whether the future exists?
You don’t have a qualia for “becoming” therefore it’s no important concept for you. Other people perceive a qualia for that concept.
I’m not 100% sure on that but I know that it’s a common stumbling block when talking about the experience of being. Some people do have a qualia for that others don’t.
In the case of time, we have the same biological and cultural heritage, and we have the same experience with time itself
I don’t think that’s the case. Typical mind fallacy makes you believe that other people have the same experience with time itself.
If I would guess than I would think that people who are strongly associated with their bodies are more likely to prefer A-theory while nerds without a relationship to their bodies prefer B-theory.
For that matter I personally don’t feel a strong preference for either of the two.
What do you claim to know, and how do you claim to know it?
Fair question.
In the framework of Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy (PP) there’s a qualia called “feeling of existence/being”.
It took me roughly a year to get a handle around that concept and identify it for myself. I went from a state where I didn’t know what a person giving a lecture about PP meant with “feeling of existence/being” as opposed to “feeling present” to having an my own phenomenological references sorted (there’s also a related qualia of “globality” and one of “depth” in the PP-framework).
I can say whether I feel that qualia of “feeling of existence/being” more or less, in a quite similar way than I can say whether something looks more or less red.
In addition to teaching PP Danis Bois also went to a French university and become something like visiting professor of philosophy. In that role he gave lectures about phenomenologically and existentialism and according to him it’s next to impossible to get across to his audience what he means when he speaks about “sense of being”.
I would guess that as far as “becoming” goes, things are similar. The semantics that the OP quotes that talk about “particular basic experience of “becoming” is the immediate reason for their attachment to the A-theory” suggest this. “Basic experience” is what people say when they mean qualia.
Unfortunately I’m not good at distinguishing change qualia. When reading Feldenkrais and going to his list of perception test I can do the things that most people can’t do according to Feldenkrais. Then Feldenkrais lists things that can be perceived and among them is Rhythm. I have never really thought of rhythm as something that can be perceived of a basic level as a qualia. It triggers I’m me my “notice confusion trigger”.
Rhythm might be in the same box of strange time qualia as “becoming”, but it’s something where I have to speculate at the moment. In a year my thoughts on the matter might be more clear.
That’s basically my thoughts from a PP perspective.
I also have experience with time perception within NLP’s timeline therapy. If you tell people to remember something, you can ask them where those that they remember come from. Some people perceive the past as something behind them. Others as something right to them, others in the front.
You can mess around with that representation and produce psychological effects with it. It can be quite intensive work and I have multiple reference experiences with it. Those experiences and a bit of theory about timeline therapy lead to intuitions about how things are. It’s however not easy to summarize which specific experiences lead to which specific beliefs. Unfortunately NLP is also no subject with well structured theory.
There’s an unfortunate paradox. Things in which I’m confident are usually hard to argue. I believe them because the are consistent with a wide array of observations I made in different contexts. They are not condensable to a short text.
I know the effort it took me to get a handle around “feeling to be/exist” from my own experience and I know about the research on phenomenological primitives and how hard it is to learn new ones.
I went from a state where I didn’t know what [a] a person giving a lecture about PP meant with “feeling of existence/being” as opposed to “feeling present” to [b] having an my own phenomenological references sorted
[c] I can say whether I feel that qualia of “feeling of existence/being” more or less in a quite similar way than I can say whether something looks more or less red.
It’s the jump from [b] to [c] that I question. I’ll take it as given that you have some consistent phenomenological referent for what you call a “feeling of existence/being”.
The difference with Red is that you can point and verify with other people that you both call the same things red. I don’t see any similar verification method with “feeling of existence/being”.
I would guess that as far as “becoming” goes, things are similar.
So would I, but from my perspective, people would be better off labeling their feelings as “feelings of gloob1”, “feelings of gloob2″, to avoid smuggling in conceptual connotations to the feelings they’re having, and avoid identifying them with the feelings other have, without evidence of any relation between them.
Do you have such evidence?
When reading Feldenkrais and going to his list of perception test
I’ve read much of Feldenkrais, but that doesn’t ring a bell (it’s been a decade now). What book is that from? Is that what it was called?
I’m familiar with NLP and it’s theories on the manipulation of sensory modalities. Interesting and plausible to me. I’ve never put them to the test, however. I like Jonathan Haidt’s various moral modalities. And I have my own theory on truth modalities.
I’m open to the possibility of such explanations, but also worry that they can too easily answer all questions. “Well, he just uses different sensory modalities.” “Well, he just has different qualia referents than you do.”
Going back to the original question that you explained away with qualia:
What are the different perceptions that would explain the different intuitions about whether the future exists?
The phrase “the future exists” simply violates what we mean in english by the words. “Exists” is a verb in the present tense, referring to state in the present, and whatever you want to say about the future, it’s pretty well agreed that it aint in the present.
I’m fine with treating time as another dimension, and talking about objects 4 dimensional spacetime objects. All sorts of “future” objects would “exist” in that model. But most people don’t have that model.
Me, I think the people who identify exists_everydaymode with exists_spacetimemodel are just conceptually confused by their high falutin ideas. Exists_everydaymode didn’t cease to exist when we got our fancy new spacetime model to play with, and it’s relevance and functionality didn’t cease to exist either. “I have cancer” is really distinguishable in important ways to us from “I had cancer.”
For that matter I personally don’t feel a strong preference for either of the two.
Do you have this experience of “becoming”?
If so, then it doesn’t seem to lead you to support one theory strongly over the other. Why then do you think that it explains the split in intuitions between different people?
If you do not experience “becoming”, why do you think that it is a distinct quale that only some people have, rather than a (mis)interpretation of qualia that we all share?
Yes, it can be very distressing to have a strong intuition challenged. It would be very distressing to learn that arithmetic for large integers didn’t work the way I assumed it did.
But in math, the intuition precedes the emotional significance. I don’t start out being emotionally attached to a certain answer. Rather, I start out emotionally neutral about the question, I form an intuition about the answer, and then I am emotionally attached to being right.
So, the emotional significance can’t be used to explain where the intuition came from. In the case of math, the universality of the intuitions can be explained by our common biological and cultural heritage, and by our common experience with how the enumeration of things works.
In the case of time, we have the same biological and cultural heritage, and we have the same experience with time itself, but we arrive at different intuitions about the relationship between time and ontology. This is what I find puzzling.
What are the different perceptions that would explain the different intuitions about whether the future exists?
You don’t have a qualia for “becoming” therefore it’s no important concept for you. Other people perceive a qualia for that concept.
I’m not 100% sure on that but I know that it’s a common stumbling block when talking about the experience of being. Some people do have a qualia for that others don’t.
I don’t think that’s the case. Typical mind fallacy makes you believe that other people have the same experience with time itself.
If I would guess than I would think that people who are strongly associated with their bodies are more likely to prefer A-theory while nerds without a relationship to their bodies prefer B-theory.
For that matter I personally don’t feel a strong preference for either of the two.
What do you claim to know, and how do you claim to know it?
Fair question.
In the framework of Danis Bois perceptive pedagogy (PP) there’s a qualia called “feeling of existence/being”.
It took me roughly a year to get a handle around that concept and identify it for myself. I went from a state where I didn’t know what a person giving a lecture about PP meant with “feeling of existence/being” as opposed to “feeling present” to having an my own phenomenological references sorted (there’s also a related qualia of “globality” and one of “depth” in the PP-framework).
I can say whether I feel that qualia of “feeling of existence/being” more or less, in a quite similar way than I can say whether something looks more or less red. In addition to teaching PP Danis Bois also went to a French university and become something like visiting professor of philosophy. In that role he gave lectures about phenomenologically and existentialism and according to him it’s next to impossible to get across to his audience what he means when he speaks about “sense of being”.
I would guess that as far as “becoming” goes, things are similar. The semantics that the OP quotes that talk about “particular basic experience of “becoming” is the immediate reason for their attachment to the A-theory” suggest this. “Basic experience” is what people say when they mean qualia.
Unfortunately I’m not good at distinguishing change qualia. When reading Feldenkrais and going to his list of perception test I can do the things that most people can’t do according to Feldenkrais. Then Feldenkrais lists things that can be perceived and among them is Rhythm. I have never really thought of rhythm as something that can be perceived of a basic level as a qualia. It triggers I’m me my “notice confusion trigger”.
Rhythm might be in the same box of strange time qualia as “becoming”, but it’s something where I have to speculate at the moment. In a year my thoughts on the matter might be more clear.
That’s basically my thoughts from a PP perspective.
I also have experience with time perception within NLP’s timeline therapy. If you tell people to remember something, you can ask them where those that they remember come from. Some people perceive the past as something behind them. Others as something right to them, others in the front.
You can mess around with that representation and produce psychological effects with it. It can be quite intensive work and I have multiple reference experiences with it. Those experiences and a bit of theory about timeline therapy lead to intuitions about how things are. It’s however not easy to summarize which specific experiences lead to which specific beliefs. Unfortunately NLP is also no subject with well structured theory.
There’s an unfortunate paradox. Things in which I’m confident are usually hard to argue. I believe them because the are consistent with a wide array of observations I made in different contexts. They are not condensable to a short text.
I know the effort it took me to get a handle around “feeling to be/exist” from my own experience and I know about the research on phenomenological primitives and how hard it is to learn new ones.
It’s the jump from [b] to [c] that I question. I’ll take it as given that you have some consistent phenomenological referent for what you call a “feeling of existence/being”.
The difference with Red is that you can point and verify with other people that you both call the same things red. I don’t see any similar verification method with “feeling of existence/being”.
So would I, but from my perspective, people would be better off labeling their feelings as “feelings of gloob1”, “feelings of gloob2″, to avoid smuggling in conceptual connotations to the feelings they’re having, and avoid identifying them with the feelings other have, without evidence of any relation between them.
Do you have such evidence?
I’ve read much of Feldenkrais, but that doesn’t ring a bell (it’s been a decade now). What book is that from? Is that what it was called?
I’m familiar with NLP and it’s theories on the manipulation of sensory modalities. Interesting and plausible to me. I’ve never put them to the test, however. I like Jonathan Haidt’s various moral modalities. And I have my own theory on truth modalities.
I’m open to the possibility of such explanations, but also worry that they can too easily answer all questions. “Well, he just uses different sensory modalities.” “Well, he just has different qualia referents than you do.”
Going back to the original question that you explained away with qualia:
The phrase “the future exists” simply violates what we mean in english by the words. “Exists” is a verb in the present tense, referring to state in the present, and whatever you want to say about the future, it’s pretty well agreed that it aint in the present.
I’m fine with treating time as another dimension, and talking about objects 4 dimensional spacetime objects. All sorts of “future” objects would “exist” in that model. But most people don’t have that model.
Me, I think the people who identify exists_everydaymode with exists_spacetimemodel are just conceptually confused by their high falutin ideas. Exists_everydaymode didn’t cease to exist when we got our fancy new spacetime model to play with, and it’s relevance and functionality didn’t cease to exist either. “I have cancer” is really distinguishable in important ways to us from “I had cancer.”
Do you have this experience of “becoming”?
If so, then it doesn’t seem to lead you to support one theory strongly over the other. Why then do you think that it explains the split in intuitions between different people?
If you do not experience “becoming”, why do you think that it is a distinct quale that only some people have, rather than a (mis)interpretation of qualia that we all share?