With our move to the new forum, I thought it might be a good idea to shine a spotlight on change and adaptation.
Adaptation can refer to either product or process. In this thread, we’ll be referring to the process, which can be either short-term or long-term. Long-term adaptative processes are associated with the theory of natural selection, in which species adapt to changes in the environment over a long period of time, the purpose being survival.
“Natural selection” – it is nature that selects – it is the environment that selects - which species will survive.
In this thread, we’ll be considering the process of human adaptation within the short-term – i.e. within a single lifespan.
The stimulus for adaptation remains the same – change. Adaptation is a response to change.
The earliest record of the idea that “flux is fundamental” probably comes from Heraclitus - “You cannot step into the same river twice.”
Life changes. Change is the one true constant. Births, deaths, upheavals, wins, losses, and even the weather.
So, are we in a constant state of being, or becoming?
Is it our own self-concern for existence that propels us?
Is adaptation a responsibility or an instinctual drive?
Who or what has the selective powers? Do we act, or are we acted upon?
Is it like Satre said? – “We constantly remake ourselves through choices.”
Life exists in the critical phase transition between negentropy and entropy.
If we are too unchanging, then we are like a brittle rock, waiting to be cracked, crushed and pulverized into a fine dust that returns to the background flux from whence it came… We are then not ourselves, but rather our environment.
But if we are too changing, then we are like a fluid moving on the terms of the background flux, as opposed to our own. We are then not ourselves, but rather our environment.
Life exists only in partnership with its environment. To be unchanging enough to be ourselves, but to be changing enough to be alive. We are acted upon and thus shaped by the environment, but we also act upon and shape our environment, creating the partnership that co-defines us both.
I am intentionally vague because I can’t elaborate much further. This is a profound topic.
Also, I disagree with Heraclitus on the claim that the only constant is change. How can you even establish the presence of change if not for the continuity of the object that changes? Change is when object x is in state 1, and then in state 2. If you have no notion of “the same object”, the what you have is object x in state 1 and object y in state 2. That is merely a difference, but not change.
So, something makes object x be object x, despite its change in state. That something must be something about object x that remains both in state 1 and state 2: something that is constant to the backdrop of the change. We would have no notion, feeling or understanding of change without having a notion, feeling or understanding of constancy. And I think this goes both ways, because there is no way to define constancy without reference to change. Constancy is not an object’s self-identicality across the span of an instant (to even talk about anything across the span of an instant is dubious in the first place). Constancy is an object’s self-identicality across instants, across time. And time requires change and constancy to be defined. The progression of time is the change of time, but also the constancy of time as time. It is perhaps the most basic of change; the very tick of the clock, upon which all other change is built.
Some counter this by saying that we can have time without change. That reality is an unchanging spatiotemporal block. These are the eternalists, who believe all moments in time co-exist in a singular, unchanging, 4-dimensional NOW. The sensation of change, of time ticking, is just an illusion, caused by our movement through this unchanging, 4-dimensional manifold.
I think that immediately shows the obvious contradiction: they’ve just kicked the can down the road. Our movement through that 4-dimensional manifold then IS something that changes. However small and insignificant that change may be, change it nonetheless is, implying some meta-time whose ticks allow for the change in which little 3-dimensional sub-manifold we experience out of the full, 4-dimensional manifold. It is called the Moving Spotlight Theory I think, and it solves no problems. Change still remains real.
The only possible caveat here is that of a hypothetical person that I call the frozen omphalist. They’d say that not even their perception of the 4-dimensional manifold changes. No, they are stuck RIGHT here in THIS instant. No… THIS instant. No-no, THIS instant. You get my point. They are frozen.
But they are omphalists, because they must account for the illusion of having continuously moved up to THIS very instant by claiming that THIS instant is equipped with a gigantic repository of fake memories that paint a very convincing, smooth fiction of having continuously moved through time up till this very moment. I call that temporal omphalism. As far as I can see, this is the only form of Eternalism that doesn’t collapse back into the realism of change, and it is quite silly. In fact, it is a piece of self-undermining, radical skepticism, because if we are frozen omphalists, then logic and rationality is nuked out of existence. At that point, the frozen omphalist is left with absolutely no basis for their absurd philosophy anyways.
So, change is real, and so is constancy. And in our eternal partnership with the ever-changing environment, what is it within us that remains constant? It may not be any list of first-order predicates. In fact, if reality is described by an infinite-order logic, then perhaps we’ll find the predicates that hold of us constantly somewhere far up in the transfinite hierarchy? Maybe they’re ת-order predicates? Whatever they are, they’re the ones who supply us with our constancy. And if they’re too constant, we will break and cease to be, and become one with the background. But if they’re not constant enough, then we’re already there.
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and illuminating essay. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
This is so true. We are made from the environment, we interact with it all of our lives, in-takes and out-takes, both mentally and physically, and then at the end of our lives we are returned to it. I once read a very poetic description of life as a series of waves dipping into and out of the earth.
This makes me think of self-identity, and the importance of diachronic unity across a lifetime - the feeling that you are the same person you were and will be in the future. Wonder if you have any thoughts about that.
The cells in our body are constantly being replaced - but the cells in the brain never are. They do change, in how the neurons are connected, which I suppose fits the definition of adaptation, but are never exchanged.
I actually believe we live eternally, depending on how you define “we”. Our egos may die, because they are too narrowly defined to survive the unrelenting, endless march of time and the boundless change that comes with. Time is not that which kills everything. It is change that kills; but it killing you is, however, a matter of time.
But self-identity always prevails, for it is as boundless as the change that chips away at it. In fact, self-identity is as much chipped away at by change, as it is fed by change. Even if every first-order predicate that once held of you has now stopped holding of you, there may be plenty of second-order predicates that constantly held of those shifting first-order predicates. And some of those second-order predicate before only held vacuously, because they pertained to conditionals with yet-to-be-realized antecedents, that through change became realized. As such, the identity then woke up those second-order predicates as the deeper truth about themselves. Second-order predicates that describe not how the individual merely is, their synchronic identity: but rather how they change, their diachronic identity, which is the only real identity they have.
This is what I mean by how identity is not just chipped away at by change; it is simultaneously fed by it. The only real identity is the identity that self-transcends and contains itself as such. But this self-transcendence that we are.. it may be too deep, too profound, too higher-order, to ever put into our limited languages.
So, when we die, be it physically or during a psychedelic trip, that is merely the loss of the body and/or ego, it is not the loss of our fundamental identity. We do not cease to be. As such, there is not the loss of the pure consciousness tied to this more identity, which is why I think we keep on living (assuming a sufficiently inclusive notion of ourselves).
We never die, but parts of us do all the time. And my model here seems to entail that we should be becoming deeper, more profound, more fundamental beings, increasingly tapped into our higher- and yet higher-order predicates, as our more superficial selves, our egos, die over and over. But I think this process of deepening can be reversed. I think we can accumulate lower-order predicates across a long-term periods, and as such, be lulled back into a lower form of consciousness as a lower-form of identity forms once more.
We fall back asleep in this infinite hierarchy of dreams, just like we once woke up.
As such, my view of the afterlife is not a simple Heaven & Hell versus reincarnation. I believe both may describe different kinds of afterlives. We may ascend (rather, self-transcend) after death, thus waking up to a higher state, but then fall back asleep again, now dreaming the life of a different human, or perhaps an even lower life form.
And I believe this dance up and down the endless hierarchy of dreams within dreams never ends, and somewhere on this ladder, God sits. Or perhaps God is the ladder. I have no idea. What do you think?
Related to this, and interesting in its own right; after only a year, about 98% of the atoms that made you up have been replaced. (no link because I’m not allowed to add one, but Google Science: The Fleeting Flesh for a source).
Whatever constant description actually holds of us, it may be so complex, large, profound and difficult that we stand no chance of ever grasping it… unless our very attempt at grasping it is it.
Perhaps we are defined as nothing more than as our own self-discoverers? That may be the only constant that holds of us. And if so, we all have the same definition; but we are different instances thereof. This would then work as an explanation for the claim that we are all one, all the same being. In this case, we’d all be the universe grasping itself.
We are God’s infinite eyes staring at each other, fractally mirroring ourselves in the perfectly reflective sclerae of our fellow watchers, like Indira’s Net. This is the only constant truth of our existence, our nature at the most fundamental level.
This depends on how you look at time. If you look at the passing of time as a force, which acts upon you, which you must adapt to, then it is actually that force which kills. In this way, change is not necessary, but time is. Therefore it is time that is the true killer.
The important question here, is whether the identity you refer to is real, or just imaginary. This “identity” is based in the supposed continuity of the object which you referred to. Object x remains object x, despite changing. But that it remains as “the same object” is just an assumption which we make, to help us understand why so many things seem to stay the same as time passes. The reality might be that it is actually a different object recreated at each passing moment. Then it’s really not the same object, but just appears to be.
Very interesting post. The deep history of this idea is the dialectic between Parmenides (what is cannot be subject to change) and Heraclitus (you can never step in the same river twice.) The problem posed by that dialectic was addressed by the Aristotelian universal - which could maintain its identity while also changing. Something which was lost with the advent of nominalism.
All we are is an adaptive creature. In my own theory, it is adaptability that is the root cause of consciousness itself.
My theory is that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs propelled conditions on Earth that were so rapidly changing that the evolutionary trait that became a priority was the ability for lifeforms to be adaptable to conditions within a single lifetime. So generational shifts through natural selection became quicker until the trait of adaptable brains formed.
These adaptable brains could process the environment and make predictive models in order to change behavior that could supersede instincts when necessary.
In humans, or rather, pre-Homo sapiens, this adaptability became the major trait and it started to influence all of their behavior. It formed strategies for hunting, defense, social structures. And to be able to adapt as a group; forming more advanced communication in order to be able to organize adaptively.
Jumping to modern humans, we’re still these apes, constantly adapting to external conditions. It’s the core of everything about us, but it’s obscured because we are trapped in an illusion of control and free will.
The evolutionary traits we evolved have reached such a complex form that we don’t see the strings pulling on us by the external, and so we believe we are free and behind the steering wheel of our own change.
But we are an ever-changing entity, constantly reshaping how we adapt to everything. Even our internalized strategies (ideas, ideologies, conceptual understanding) change slowly with new conditions.
There are no real constants in the universe, even the constants we have in math weren’t constants at the origin of it. If everything is ever-changing, then we are no exception… we just believe in constants because it’s comforting.
Just because a change is so long we believe of it as a constant, doesn’t mean it is constant.
It is a human folly to filter the scale and slow change of the universe through their fleeting existence.
They are the causal result of previous conditions. Every choice we make is because of a previous condition; even the composition of our mind that defines how we choose based on a previous current condition is, in itself, a previous condition formed by other previous conditions.
Nature and nurture produce conditions that become the cause to the effect (choice). And a “choice” becomes the condition and source of the next choice and so on.
The complexity of this deterministic universe is higher than our ability to comprehend it. We don’t see the threads pulling our choices, so we experience them as being free. Our sanity depends on it.
It is actually possible to experience an unpleasant feeling when focusing on this. If you try to concentrate on noticing all the causes to everything you do, even the slightest hand movement, each sensory input, each thought leading to the next. Becoming aware of the dominos of choices and behavior can create a deeply unsettling anxiety.
Luckily, it requires an active effort to reach that awareness; our default state is our neurons trying to find a low energy resting point; the predictive coding that our brain operates on functions in an autonomous way to lower the energy cost of adaptive response programming. So the energy required is easily pushing us into that illusion more than enabling us to experience the strings pulling.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if some minds get caught in such thinking, essentially causing a mental breakdown.
We’re not evolved to have such awareness and our cognitive function depends on the illusion being the default state.
Excellent explanation, thanks so much, though I am not quite totally sold on a completely deterministic model of the human mind.
I’d just like to add that one of the greatest features of the human mind is that it can imagine/come up with novel responses to randomness and uncertainty.
How could change not be a necessary part… of change? The move from alive to dead is change. Time taken in isolation from change is meaningless. But for the sake of argument, let us consider time as perhaps empty, vacuous change. In such a case, then, the march of time alone would bring nothing but the empty change of the tick itself, the change of the index, each index value differentiated by nothing other than being a different index value. How could that change anything, let alone kill anything?
Time is not the culprit. Change is. But time is the medium for change, or perhaps change is the impetus for time. Maybe both. I don’t know, but I know that time does not pull the trigger. Time, at best, allows change to pull the trigger: at worst, it merely offers a medium for change to pull the trigger. My best/worst here is referring to the best case/worst case for your model’s accuracy, and in any case, your model cannot be correct as is.
The only way to say something of the ilk that “time” is the killer, is to equate time and change. You explicitly did not equate them, because you said change is not necessary. But even if you meant to equate time with change, then I would say there’s some expressive power and truth lost in such a conflation.
I like to think of time and change as the, respectively, quantitative and qualitative sides of the same coin (and perhaps we could call that coin dynamicity?) They are mutually dependent and complimenting each other. Perhaps then, the best way to phrase this is not what I originally said either, but rather to say that it is the entire coin that kills us. It is dynamicity that kills us.
But in the dynamic duo of time and change, it is nonetheless change that is forceful, that drives cessation and becoming. Time is rather the enabler, the acceptor and/or the container.
What do you think?
This is a difficult point. My philosophy regarding objects is rather complicated and also an area I am actively developing as I build my system. But, I am a phenomenologist and objective idealist. I believe phenomenology and semiotics are the most fundamental studies, from which even ontology, epistemology and truth emerge.
I think that all we really have is a singular object (the background, pleroma, God, whatever you want to call it), which fills everything and is entirely atomic in a sense. There are no components in the form of objects going together to create the whole. No, the whole is the only object there is.
But there are predicates. To make a simplified analogy, imagine this entire object, this fullness, as a geometric plane. Then, predicates are these loops thrown onto it. They slice out portions of this continuous, cohesive object. These are not divisions there, inherent in the object, in the plane. That object is atomic, after all. No, the divisions ARE the predicates, the predicates ARE the divisions. The predicates are no more, and no less, than the imposition of a boundary onto a sub-region of the entire plane; of the otherwise atomic, continuous object. Each specific predicate is a specific boundary, its distinction from other predicates stemming from itself, not from the arbitrary region it cut out.
The different relations between these boundaries (these predicates) can give us various formulae. But that’s not the point here.
The point here is that, in a way, I somewhat agree with the idea you mentioned, the non-realism of objects. You see, these predicates immediately define, in a sense create, an interior; a sub-region of the primitive, singular object. This interior IS a pseudo-object, what we think of as a normal, and often tangible, “object” or thing.
The predicate that cuts it out is its defining predicate, it’s identity predicate. Its substance however, is just the universal, singular object. Not all of it, but some arbitrary sub-region of it, which is, due to that total object’s atomicity, the same as any other sub-region. The only difference it has from other objects stems from the difference between its defining predicate, and the other pseudo-object’s defining predicate.
Now, as a semiotician, a core fact of my philosophy is the existence of semiotic primitives/primes.
Things, first and foremost, are. Not everything has a formal definition. If all things had a formal definition, then the network of definitions would be entirely circular, and have no ground, no basis in any reality outside of it. The real network of definitions (not a dictionary, but the actual structure of meaning) is digraph with sources. These sources are the ground, the formally undefined building blocks of all formal definitions.
There is no defining these primitive predicates, and since all logic relies on formal definition, there is nothing logically derivable about these primitive predicates. One can scientifically derive things about them; derive facts like other predicates seeming to correlate with these primitive predicates… but we may find no logical truths regarding them, other than their pure being and self-identicality.
So, what happens if a (pseudo-)object is defined by a primitive predicate? Well then, you have a primitive object. Most objects that we interact with are primitive, I think.
Like, if you look at the cup standing on your desk, and you call it Cup A, then you may wonder what its formal definition is. Well, if you give it one, you now have a different object. A related one; the reflective Cup A. But the actual primitive phenomenon on your desk: it has no formal definition. All it has is a primitive predicate that defines it; that wraps around it all times, until the object ceases to be at least.
And when does it cease to be? You don’t know. You may know many of the scenarios that make the reflective Cup A cease to be, because you indirectly defined those scenarios by formally defining that object.
But the primitive Cup A… it exists, or ceases to be, on its own, primitive and thus utterly unknowable, indeterminate terms. Let’s say the cup is white. If someone repainted it, would it be a different object? Maybe the reflective cup A is defined as being white, but the original, primitive object had no such explicit criterion.
So, does it cease to be when repainted? You don’t know, and you will necessarily never know… unless you do it. The only way to know the boundaries of a primitive predicate is to cross them. You must cross that bridge when you get to it.
This solves the Ship of Theseus. If the ship is a primitive object, then the answer is, “we don’t know and we cannot know how much needs to be replaced before it is a new object.” But, let’s say you have some strong opinions on what the answer to the Ship of Theseus should be. Well then, you have now given yourself a framework for defining a Reflective Ship of Theseus. This is a formal definition that formalizes its identity. But any formal definition ultimately terminates in primitive predicates, and as such, inherits some of their pure qualia and logical indeterminacy: but its identity is still more decidable. And you can always make more and more precise reflective objects, but you will never excise the indeterminate primitivity from which they spring.
This all may have seemed a bit like a digression, but I saw no other way to answer your question without giving you the metaphysical stance behind my answer. I will re-quote you in order to answer with this context:
In my system, it is not an assumption whether any specific object has endured some experienced change. If you experience the primitive object’s continued existence, despite (or perhaps because of) whatever changes it endured or endures, then you know the object is still there. Because you experience (judge) it so. It is not a matter of external fact, but a matter of subjective phenomenology.
Once we start entering the realm of more reflective and abstract objects, with formal definitions, we can no longer merely experience the object’s endurance through change. Then, we must prove what changes it can, and cannot endure, and prove what is the case in any scenario we find ourselves in. That process still, of course, terminates in pure phenomenological judgement, because the definitions that we logically manipulate in the proofs terminate in primitive predicates; but this is layered, structured judgement, beholden to logic (and for even more elaborately defined objects, this process is beholden to science too).
Absolutely. Nominalism is attractive due to its superficial simplicity, but I think it is utterly absurd when really reflected upon. Years ago at an earlier stage of my system building, I was really trying to make nominalism work. It did not.
The thinker who subscribe the reductive ideas like nominalism are, ironically, afraid of their own thoughts. When one starts to really think about thinking, and think about thinking about thinking… things get dizzyingly meta, slippery and scary. It feels better to, effectively, just deny the reality of thought… ironically enough, doing so by thinking.
We only find the real and final Truth when we realize even our abstracta are concrete phenomena. Many find such ideas obviously wrong, because they wrongly think that if such were the case, we would be infallible. But I see many mechanisms for fallibility despite the tangibility of the abstract, especially when we deal with scientific or intersubjective falsity. But even logical falsity is achievable, because there is no such thing as the singular logician. The logician has to cooperate with his past and future selves, and this cooperation allows for falsity.
So we can be perfect in our grasp of the abstract, and nonetheless be imperfect in our reflection thereupon.
I almost agree but the way I put it is that formal ideas such as the real numbers are indeed real. But they are not phenomenal in the literal sense of ‘something that appears’. They are what classical philosophy called ‘intelligible objects’ although in the metaphorical sense of ‘an object of thought.’ But I agree they’re real - the problem for modern thought is they’re not empirical.
Sorry, let me rephrase that. The point is that any particular change is contingent, therefore not necessary, while change in general may be necessary as you say. So this means that being killed is not necessary, as a particular type of change which could be substituted for something else.
Consider what I am saying like this. As time passes, the future is always becoming the past. Tomorrow, Feb 21, will become yesterday. This passing of time, is an activity which is a force on the living beings, existing at the present, which necessitates that they adapt, as whatever comes flying at them out of the future, needs to be predicted and dealt with. Otherwise the living being will be pushed into the past, by this force, and become a thing of the past (dead).
The issue is that we understand “change” in terms of observable, physical change. But all physical change is in the past by the time it has been observed. So we understand “change” completely in terms of past, what has happened. We can call this “the present becoming the past”, that is what we observe. If we restrict “change” in this way, we haven’t the means to understand “change” on the future side of the present, “the future becoming the present”.
Just like there is change on the past side of the present, there must also be change on the future side of the present. Observable physical change is on the past side of the present, so on the future side it must be unobservable, nonphysical change. This is understood in physics as “force”. It is not “empty, vacuous change”, but something nonphysical which has the capacity to cause observable, physical change.
I think you are mixing up cause and effect. The passing of time is the cause, change is the effect. Death is a change, but death is not the culprit it is the effect. Time is the cause.
We can use the ‘two sides of the same coin’ analogy to understand cause and effect. Death is the change, the effect. The effect does not kill us, the cause does. However, if we ask, what is the cause of change (in general), the only possible answer is the passing of time. So it’s not change which causes death, because change goes on throughout life without any particular change necessarily causing death, but it is the passing of time which causes death, because as time passes death becomes inevitable.
I don’t think that an ontology like this can support the reality of change. Change can only be supported as things moving in relation to each other. If all is one, then nothing can move and “the one” cannot change. In order for the one to change, you need to allow that it consists of parts which move in relation to each other, but then it’s incorrect to say that they are “one”. The ancient way of looking at it is that if something moves, then there must be space for it to move in. So it cannot be the case that all is one because there must be the thing, and space as well.
I don’t think your theory of primitive predicates resolves the problem, but I can’t say that I understand very well.
But Plato taught that the senses deceive. So sense experience is not enough to justify the claim of knowledge. That is the basis of the point I made. You see a chair sitting in front of you for example, and you experience it as an object with continuous existence. But it may be an illusion, like a succession of still frames creates an illusion of continuity. So, suppose the object, the chair is like this. In a very rapid progression, it is there for a moment, then gone, then there, then gone. It may even be the case that the amount of time that it is there is much less than the amount of time that it is not. In a similar way, we sense a chair to be a solid object, but we now know that it consists of parts which are really quite far apart, such that there is more space than solid parts within.
That makes more sense. But just like any particular instance of change is not necessarily the killer, any particular instance of time’s progression, any particular tick, is also not necessarily the killer. I don’t see why pointing that out is relevant. And also, if you compare time-in-general to some-particular-change, then of course time seems more important. But the actually relevant comparison here is time-in-general versus change-in-general.
This is again missing the point. I don’t need to adapt because today becomes yesterday. A lot of the time, today is effectively the same as yesterday, with no need for adaption. And whenever I do need to change, I don’t need to adapt because today became yesterday… I only need to adapt if today has changed from yesterday.
We don’t adapt to time. We adapt to change.
We don’t die to time. We die to change.
But I think I am starting to hone in on the spirit of your point here. You think time is the prime mover of all change, so time is, ultimately speaking, the killer. Time is the ultimate force, the first cause; and change is just the effect. Now, I think I already countered this view in my previous post, but now that I see more clearly that this is your stance, I can address it more effectively.
And this confirms it to me. We are talking here about why things change. Is time the ultimate why, or is change the ultimate why? I’d like to avoid the terminology of “cause and effect”, because it has physicalist baggage, and it is more restrictive in its meaning. Often, cause and effect is more about change within the medium of space-time, and when we start analyzing the “causes” of things that are more fundamental than that medium, then “cause and effect” becomes too restrictive and non-fundamental. They’re not applicable when understood in their traditional sense. Of course, this is just terminology, not the matter, and not so important. But I’ll use “reason” as opposed to “cause”, and “consequence” as opposed to “effect”, making my terminology more fit for the atemporal and non-spatial structure that describes the hierarchy of the logico-metaphysical ground of reality. This isn’t even that esoteric of a move either, because many (if not most) contemporary physicists agree that spacetime is not fundamental. So even according to them, there is such a thing as reason and consequence beyond its more specific, restrictive cause-and-effect, which only emerges from the former as reality manifests.
The Logico-Metaphysical Origin of Time v. Change
Let’s start at the beginning. This analysis will assume there is a first moment. This is not an assumption is just take for the sake of argument. When I was younger, I was quite partial to the idea of reality having existed for an eternity, forever. This seemed to solve the issue of ex nihilo and in general, all the difficulty surrounding “the first moment” and all of that. But years of philosophizing and formal logic has made me realize that infinity solves nothing, and if anything, is only liable to add more problems. Infinity is unable to solve the issue of the first moment, regardless of if its conceived as potential or absolute infinity. If you disagree, we could probably open a whole new discussion on that, because discussing it here would perhaps break this discussion’s scope.
With that disclaimer, I will move ahead.
The first moment
By definition, we have t=0 at this moment. But we have no change. No change has occurred (by definition), and no change is occurring, for no change can happen across a moment (instead, change happens between moments).
So… therefore, time is more fundamental than change. Time began first, time is the prime mover of the eternal alternation between temporal progression and change, and time is thusly logically prior to change… Time is the reason, and change is the consequence. Heck, in this picture, we could even say time is the cause, and change the effect. I disagree however.
Before I explain why, I would like to defend the notion of t=0 at the first moment from what I think would be an incorrect counter-argument.
Time is nothing without its progression. There is no time if all there is, is a singular moment. Time is an axis, isomorphic to the mathematical construct of the number line. But which number line? Let us assume that time is a discrete axis. I am a fervent believer of time (and space) as discrete, though perhaps with some fractally manifesting potential infinity involved.
However, I think that whatever I prove here where I assume time is discrete, will still be true if time is instead modelled using the real number line (though, such a modelling is very difficult to do).
Peano Arithmetic (\textsf{\textbf{PA}} form here) requires two or three primitives to form the structure of the number system to which it pertains.
The two definitely essential primitives are the following:
The object that is 0
The successor function S
The function S is equivalent to the function f(x) = x +1, but it is logically prior to it, because the addition operator +, and the number 1, are all merely formally defined in \textsf{\textbf{PA}}, which is itself constructed from taking 0 and S as its primitives.
But what is this third primitive that \textsf{\textbf{PA}} may need to have? Well, it’s the notion of the entire number system, \Bbb N, whose structure is defined through the axioms that take 0 and S as its primitives (and also logical connectives and all that, but that’s even more fundamental and beyond my scope here). I would argue that \Bbb N, although never directly defined with a := formula, or some clear definiens-and-definiendum structure, is nonetheless defined through the axioms that relate it to (and thus ground it in) the two other primitives. But to argue for this, I’d have to get into my technical definition of what a definition even is, and I don’t think that is necessary for these purposes.
Because the point I am getting to here, is this: if all you have is 0… then you don’t have enough. You don’t have \Bbb N, you don’t have the number line. You need S, that is, you need +1…
I agree with all of that. But the erroneous move, I believe, would then be concluding that t=0 is impossible, because when t=0, there is no t to be. Specifically, the contradiction could be laid out like this:
(t=0) \implies (t=\text{UNDEFINED})
That would entail 0=\text{UNDEFINED}, which is either contradictory, or just a formalization of the fact that in this case, time is undefined. In other words, this argument is trying to say that when t=0, time does not exist.
But this is wrongfully conflating the absence of the state-of-affairs that t=1 (that is, that t=0+1) with the absence of the successor function, S. When t=0, we have that S logically is, but is yet to have been applied, its output yet to be realized. And this is still true to this day, because the S has yet to be applied enough times to realize all its possible inputs. Every collection, including \Bbb N, is a work-in-progress. Reality is a work-in-progress. I believe this, because the realization of reality is always finite, but the potential of reality is boundless.
So, when t=0, the progression of time is defined, and potential, but yet to be realized. The state-of-affairs that is t=1is, but is yet to exist, yet to be actualized. All things are, but not everything exists, or is actual.
With that out of the way, we may proceed.
The Realization of Time and Change
My above section may have seemed like I was arguing in favor of your view, and not my own. Well, I wanted to defend the idea of time being there from the get-go from an erroneous attack, but also; doing this actually sets up the explanation for my own stance.
You see, although time is when t=0, we see that time, in a sense, does not exist when t=0; time is not yet realized when t=0. That is what the above erroneous argument does show. Not that time isn’t defined when t=0, but that time is not realized, because the number line that defines it has no been realized. Time is realized only as a point, and that is no realization of time at all.
And in the same way I defended the unrealized being of time when t=0, I defend the unrealized being of change when t=0. You cannot save one without the other. You don’t get one without the other.
When t=0, we have t=1 as an unrealized thing. That means we have the progression (the change) from t=0 to t=1 also as an unrealized thing. Both time and change are unrealized.
And the realization of time (the move from t=0 to t=1) is simultaneously the realization of change!
Both begin as unrealized when t=0, and both are realized by the time that t=1. Some would argue that change realizes first, because change operates, in a sense, between moments. But change is not realized until the next moment has arrived. Change forever stuck between moments is… no change at all: or more specifically, no realized change. Merely ideal change.
What Even Is Time and Change?
Let’s move away from these vague terms, time and change, and put their baggage aside.
My above account give us three concepts:
The temporal axis, which is the part/aspect of reality that corresponds to \Bbb N when this logico-mathematical concept is applied to this topic. The temporal axis is the container.
The distinction between the content of moments. The temporal axis is constituted by moments (different t-values) who are tagged onto contents (state-of-affairs). For different t-values, the content is different. Point 2 regards specifically the mere existence of this difference.
The movement between the current moment, to the next. As I explained in my first post, I think eternalism is absurd. The past may be real, but the present is not merely a point in a static spatiotemporal manifold. The temporal axis has a final, realized moment, which we call the present. Then it is has the next, unrealized moment, which we call the immediate future. There is a constant movement between the two. The final, realized moment of the temporal axis is different from… the final realized moment.
Let us call these concept 1, concept 2 and concept 3. They are, relatively speaking, rigorous and logical… as opposed to time and change. The mapping from the latter to the former is tricky, and to some degree, a matter of semantic arbitration. Also, as you may have noticed, the former consists of three things, but the latter of two…
So, I think the a reasonable mapping has that time maps to concept 1. Time is constituted by moments, after all.
Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious that change maps to concept 2. Distinction, or just inequality, is a very fundamental relation, and this concept is more fundamental than change. When the inequality relation holds between the contents of two moments, then that relation is an instance of change. Change is the temporal sub-category of the difference relation. DifferentFrom(x,y) merely means that x\ne y, but ChangedFrom(x,y) means that x\ne y, and that both x and y are the contents of respective moments.
So… what gets mapped to concept 3? Well, we could call concept 3 temporal progression; the progression of time; the tick of the clock. And many people conflate that progression with time itself. But it does not make sense to me to say that time is the progression of time.
But I could have started my mapping differently. I could have refrained from calling the temporal axis time, and instead just left its name as the temporal axis. Then, I could have said that it is temporal progression that is meant by the term time. That would mean that time does not progress; time is the progression of the temporal axis.
But there is a potential issue with that mapping. Because it looks like temporal progression can be seen as change; perhaps pure, empty, vacuous change; the bare minimal essence of change. Because how can the clock tick without changing?
So whether it makes sense to say time = temporal progression hinges on whether temporal progression falls under the category of change. Because if it does, then we wind up with time being a type of change, which I think is conflationary and loses the spirit of the language we’ve been trying to make precise. Of course, how we define terms is ultimately arbitrary, and as long as we always have terms for the important concepts, and we all use them in the same way, we’ll be fine. But I think a terminology that collapses time into a type of change is counter-intuitive.
So, is temporal progression just a form of change, or is it perhaps pre-change; more fundamental than it?
Is The Tick of The Clock Logically Prior To The Change?
Why is the content of one moment different than another? We have arrived at the heart of the issue now, I believe. And I see three different possible logical structures for how the progression of time interweaves with change. I don’t claim this to be a comprehensive overview of all possible models, but these just seem the most intuitive to me:
Model 1
Maybe, first and foremost, the clock ticks. A new moment arrives. Only once it has arrived, is it determined if and how it is different from the last. In this model, the progression of time is logically prior to the change of content.
I think probably this line of thinking would require more granularity than “potential moment becomes realized moment”. I think in such a model, the most precise and logical pipeline would be like this:
The present moment (realized) [t=i] →
The new present moment (unrealized) [t=i+1] →
The new present moment (realized) [t=i+1] →
The new-new present moment (unrealized) [t=i+2] → …
Perhaps we’d need to switch out (un)realized with (un)determined. But yeah, the point here is basically that the ticker brings a new moment, but that moment doesn’t really have determinate content at first. And so it changes from general to particular across the span of a moment. But the second you introduce change across a moment, you are potentially opening up uncomfortable questions about if there’s then actually a more granular number line of moments. I mean, the essence of the above model could perhaps be achieved just as well if each step is +1 from the previous, and instead we say that reality evolves from particularity to generality to particularity, and so on. Or maybe indeterminate vs determinate is the better dichotomy.
The specifics of this kind of model is not the focus here though. It’s how it applies to the question of our debate.
In this model, it seems like it is the ticker that gives change the permission to be realized. But… in this model, who is the killer? The change or the ticker? The ticker is what permits the change to come, but the change is what takes you from alive to dead. There is nothing inherent about the move from t=i to t=i+1 that kills you, but it sure is what permits your killing. And without its permission, you would not be able to die, or even change. So, it seems in this model, change pulls the trigger, but the ticker (the temporal progression) issues the gun license. Since they’re both essential, I think in this model, we should say it is both change and temporal progression that kills you. If you equate time with temporal progression, then you’d say that it is both time and change that kills you.
As I mentioned in my previous post, time and change are two sides of the same coin, a coin I called dynamicity. And I said, perhaps it is most accurate to not say that change is what kills, but rather dynamicity. In any case, this model does not say temporal progression (time, if you may) kills you on its own.
Model 2
Perhaps instead, the moment changes first. And to index, or retroactively allow this change, the clock must tick. In this model, the ticker is merely sub-type of change. A very important sub-type.
It is an independent aspect of all state-of-affairs, that changes simultaneously with the change. I think the intuition of this model gets at the very heart of why we have time in the first place.
“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”
—Ray Cummings, probably
During my investigations into time, this is pretty much the view I came to. The logical structure of reality demands time because of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Why? Because certain essential facts of reality have the following structure:
P \implies \neg P
The fact P is essential, and so is the implication that takes us from P to something contradicting it, and thus so is \neg P. The only way for reality to contain all these essential facts is to change the identity of all of them. But this identity change cannot change their fundamental, inherent, intrinsic nature (for that would defeat the purpose, they are essential as they are, after all).
No, it specifically only their extrinsic nature that must be different; their relation to the whole. And this capacity for purely extrinsic difference is supplied by the temporal axis (the concept 1 from earlier). If we embed the contradictory implication above into the temporal axis, we get everything we want:
What exactly i and c are, is left indeterminate, as this is a general scenario. Also, what you see here is that ALL formulae involved have a temporal position, a time index. The antecedent, the consequent and the entire conditional itself. And the entire conditional is clearly an eternal fact, because that which it regards is properly temporally indexed.
I don’t know if other people view time this way, but I find it very elegant, because it explains why we even have time, and it also explains the directionality of time through the directionality of logical implication, of logical priority. As such, we thusly see that the cause-and-effect relation is merely a type of the reason-and-consequence relation, specified in that it is reason-and-consequence embedded within the temporal axis.
Also, this does not demand determinism! It is often true that \neg P is a lot more general than P. If logic merely demands that \neg P, there is still often a lot left to determine the content of the next moment, which thus implies there is indeterminism. So just because this model says cause-and-effect is a type of logical implication, it does not commit itself to determinism.
In this model, the index is merely a component of the full state-of-affairs of a moment. It is specifically an extrinsic component, as opposed to an intrinsic one. But still, it is just a part of the content of a moment. And as such, differences in that index for different moments are just a part of the difference in content for different moments. In other words, the ticking of the index is merely a kind of change. Temporal progression is merely a kind of change; pure, vacuous and extrinsic change…
As such, temporal progression is just a part of the change that kills, but it is change that kills. And to equate time with temporal progression in this model seems unwise.
Model 3
In both the prior models, we uphold the reality of the temporal index. To an empiricist, this is problematic, however. As you said yourself, we never see the progression of time without change. Model 3 is the model of claiming the irreality of the temporal index as an essentially independent aspect of moments.
Because what is the tick of the clock, if not the change of the clock? In this model, we see the temporal index as merely an abstraction from change, not real beyond its being the regularity of some patterns of change. This would mean that temporal progression inheres in change as the repetition of a pattern, and it is only real as abstract counting thereof. If there was no patterned change, or no change at all, there would be no way to count the number of repetitions in the change, and thus no way to have the ticker tick. As such, the ticker is not just tied to change; it is completely non-existent, even in concept, outside of it.
From a purely empirical standpoint, this is the most parsimonious model, I’d say. I don’t agree with it, as a I am more of a Model 2 guy myself, but it is interesting.
And in this model, it is clearly change that is the killer. The temporal progression is just an abstraction from change and has no force, or even permitting capacity, on reality. It has no real effect on its own. It is merely a description of patterned change, nothing more. Heck, we could even imagine a reality where change was subject to absolutely no regular patterns. I imagine things could die in such a reality too. So this model overwhelmingly classifies change, and not temporal progression as the killer.
As such, it does not matter whether you map time to temporal progression, or to the temporal axis, in this model. Either way, time does not kill.
Conclusion
In the first model, you could potentially argue that both time and change kill in tandem. In the two other models, it is change that does the killing. And I find model 2 to be best, though I think there could be value in the other models. So, my personal conclusion from this investigation is that: change kills, but time contains the murder.
The above is in no way sufficiently rigorous, comprehensive and profound to settle a debate of this magnitude. But I think it is a good start. It also offers a good glimpse into my system at its current stage, so I’m sure there’s value for in me in laying it out there to be critiqued and potentially improved upon. I think it offers some value to others as well, not so much because it helps us answer the specific question of this debate, but also because it has to involve so many other important topics along the way. A discussion like “which kills, time or change?” is a good way to actually bring our attention to even more fundamental questions that really ought to be answered first.
Mhm yes, I struggle with this too. I might be trying to make the term “phenomenon” less useful by cramming all the things I like into it. But, there is a fundamental isness to thoughts, the same isness that holds of percepts and emotions. An isness that does not hold of things that are not my thoughts, percepts or emotions (but perhaps someone else’s).
I think the isness of thoughts is FAR more subtle than that of percepts and emotions. But it is there. But it seems to require vessels. I cannot bring the thought of something without either creating a fuzzy percept of that thing (mental imagination), or spotting that thing around me, or finally; brining its signifier to mind.
There is no thought of book, without the percept of an actual book, an imagined book, or the percept of the signifier (be it actual or imagined), which is “book”. That is, to me, the most problematic property of thoughts. They are dependent on vessels; percepts and emotions.
This is the kind of things that keep me up at night. I mean, just try it. Try to think about something without resorting to sensuously imagining it, actually sensing it, or imagining/sensing its signifier.
But there is a very strong flip side here. How come, when I try to think of book, I successfully produce its sensous character or the sensuous character of its signifier? It may be dependent on these vessels to be manipulated, but it seems to be independent of them in its being, because it seems to precede them, since it is capable of bringing forth these vessels.
I liken it to a person who is alive, but paralyzed. They exist without a vessel, but if you want them to move and interact with everything else, they need a vessel. And this person, due to existing, has the power to summon that vessel. Their ability to summon that vessel is a proof of their existence.
The same is true for thoughts. If you want thoughts to move and interact with each other, then those thoughts must first summon their vessels (through you as the summon instrument), and then they step into the vessel, and those vessels’ impressive phenomenological character can seem to drown out the incredibly subtle character of the thoughts they transport. Whether you call the character of thoughts, in this model, phenomenological content, is somewhat a matter of semantic arbitration. But I think it is important to have a good universal category, and intelligibility and perceptibility/feelability are, to me, all a part of the same fundamental category. And that category is the most important one, because it grounds us as the nexus of our own reality, where all parts of that reality are “True” as they are. Only in translation can error occur.
Descartes’ Demon can have all his fun. If I must live in an illusion, I shall study every flicker of that illusion. Even if it is false as a translation of that which is beyond; the illusion nonetheless is, it is itself and is True as such. I pick the reality I inhabit as my home. I will understand my home as best as possible, and then I will brave the chasm between it and the home of my neighbor. If he does the same, we can reach scientific certainty that we’re living in the same reality (structurally speaking, at least), even if that reality is an illusion. Who cares? Reality is reality, illusion or not.
I wonder what you think about all that, given that seem to agree on the intelligibility of thoughts. Also, @Meta_U, you said this in your post:
I didn’t want to make my other post too big, so I didn’t mention it. But you can consider this post of mine as the response to this point.
Phenomenon originally denoted an appearing (Greek phainomenon). So, in this strict sense:
A rainbow is a phenomenon.
A pain is a phenomenon.
A perceived tree is a phenomenon (qua appearance).
But nowadays, the word is used much more broadly, to denote an instance, pattern, or range of related matters:
“Consciousness as a phenomenon”
“The placebo effect as a phenomenon”
“The internet as a social phenomenon”
In this usage the word is not referring to a specific ‘appearance’ but to the entire structured domain of related manifestations.
In this broader sense, “phenomenon” can mean something like:
A coherent field of observable (or reportable) events that stands out as explanatorily significant.
So bear with me here. The reason I bring this up, is because in the discussion of nominalism and Aristotelian universals, universals are not themselves ‘phenomenal’ in the literal sense. They are, instead, ‘intelligible acts’ - formal ‘ideas’ that are grasped by rational intellect (nous).
So what kind of reality do ideas have? I’m arguing that ideas such as natural numbers or logical laws are formally real, but not existent qua phenomena. This was the original (pre-Kantian) meaning of the term ‘noumenal’, meaning ‘object of intellect’. (Kant adapted the word for his own lexicon but in so doing, also subtly changed its meaning, which is a matter of regret.)
Accordingly I think it is essential to understand the distinction between phenomenal appearance and intelligible reality - which is precisly what was lost with the abandonment of classical metaphysics - as you previously agreed. Of course, this logic is still preserved by modern exponents of Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy (typically, Catholic intellectuals, although I think it has a significance beyond that.)
So - when you say
there is a fundamental isness to thoughts
Where I think this is discerned most clearly, is actually in mathematics, where the expression ‘=’ is unequivocal. Hence the esteem with which arithmetic was held in the classical tradition; while statements about what things are, might always be subject to revision, the ‘is’ of ‘=’ is unequivocal, in a way that empirical statements are not. Hence the expression, ‘to know with mathematical certainty’.
Of course such expressions are nowadays deprecated as romanticism in favour of empirical accounts of cognition etc. The modern turn toward empirical explanation has been extraordinarily powerful, but it has also encouraged a narrowing of what counts as real — particularly with respect to formal and normative realities.
But, on a positive note, and getting back to the original post, where I came in was with the claim that ‘the Idea’ (in the Aristoteliean sense) is what enables the concept of something retaining an identity while changing. And that is deeply embedded in our whole way of thought, especially in biology, for which Aristotle was the identifiable forerunner. We still speak of morphology and form as indispensable in biology. It’s worth remembering who first made morphē philosophically central.
I think I’m starting to see why we have a difference of opinion. You do not grasp the passing of time as a thing in itself, instead you make representations of it, like the tick of the clock. This reduces the passing of time to a change which cannot be described. And that is somewhat unintelligible to you.
Because of this, I think you have no way to relate to the reality of the future. You have the clock ticking at the present, and every tick that has disappeared into the past, as your reality, but the future cannot be sensed in anyway, so it has no reality to you.
You made a long post, with some parts, especially the mathematical analogy, quite difficult to understand, but I’ll choose some quotes to point out what I mean.
Do you agree that change occurs as particular instances? That is the reality of change. So “change-in general” would be an abstract concept. And if you take that abstract concept, what is its meaning other than things not remaining the same as time passes? So there are two constituent parts, things, and passing time. Then the passing of time is logically necessary for change, and therefore logically prior to change.
This demonstrates the problem I referred to. My example was “tomorrow”, as the day in the future (Feb 21 at the point of the example), becoming yesterday, a day in the past. Since you do not relate to a day in the future, you changed the example into present and past (today and yesterday). Because of this you totally missed the force of the example, which was not to talk about the present becoming the past, but to talk about the future becoming the past.
It is the force of the future which produces the need to adapt. Try this example. Imagine there is a missile fired at your location. Unless someone acts it will destroy your location, 10 minutes in the future. It’s not the fact that the missile is now hundreds of kilometers away, which forces you to act, it is the possibility that it will destroy your location (in the future) which forces you to act.
Notice that this is described as a “possibility”. It is the fact that it is a mere “possibility”, rather than necessary (fate), which makes you act to avoid that outcome. So it’s not the case that the future exists as a predetermined death to you in 10 minutes. That is a future possibility, and at this point the probability looks pretty high. However things can be done and you might not die. The point now, is that it is the future possibility which forces you to act.
So, time is going to continue to pass, and future possibility will be actualized as time passes, this you cannot alter. However, you can influence which possibilities will be actualized, and this is change and adaptation. Therefore “change” we can do something about, shape and form it to our liking, or adapt if necessary. The passing of time, we cannot. The latter is what kills.
I suggest that we can avoid this problem by refusing to restrict “cause” in this way. We have a good example of this in Aristotle’s “final cause”, which is roughly speaking “intention” as a cause. The problem with using “reason” here, is that we don’t have the means to say that reason acts to produce an effect, except through final cause. And when we look at the passing of time, we’d ask for the reason why time passes, when we’d really be look for the cause of time passing.
This is where the difficulties with your view toward time, in respect to the reality of the future start to become very problematic. Let’s assume t=0 as you propose. Do you agree that at this point there could be no past time? However, if time is going to become a reality it is necessary that there is future. At this point, t=0, the future, as the possibility of time, is necessary, while the past is completely contingent, and nonexistent.
I find this whole number line model to be very problematic. Your “function S” already assumes that time is passing. But it has no real source for its future. Whenever time is passing it is necessary that there is a future, as explained above, or time could not pass. In the case of the successor, a person, or a machine could aways be pulling out the next number, but that implies that the future is made up as we go, by actions which follow a rule. However, the argument I made demonstrates that the cause of succession (passing time) must be itself, in the future, prior to the succession.
So here it is here. We have t=0, and S is not yet applied. However, we cannot say, as you do, “that S logically is”. Imagine if there was infinite potential at t=0, what will occur does not have to follow any logical order. Only after t is set in motion does S become a reality. We infer S after the fact, as descriptive induction, but at t=0, there is not the required necessity.
The only logical necessity which is relevant, is that if t is set in motion it must have been caused. And, since it is seemingly infinite potential, the only restriction as to how time may progress, is provided by the actuality which “choses” from that potential. This is why theologists talk about God’s Will. Why does the universe exist the way it does? Because God decided that was good. The act which cause time to start passing must come from the future, and is totally unconstrained by the past because there is no past.
So this is only partially true, which is probably why you say “in a sense”. At t=0 there was necessarily a future. There must have been or time could not start. So if we define time as past and future, at t=0 there was half of time.
To support your position “time is not yet realized when t=0”, we would define “real time” as the passing of time. This is an activity, which would be prior to all physical activity as a requirement for it. However notice the logic I laid out, which demonstrates that the future itself is necessarily prior to real time, as the passing of time.
The point to recognize here, is that at the point of t=0, t=1 is just a possibility. As such, there would also be many other possibilities, that’s what constitutes a possibility, one of a multitude. So now, we look posteriorly, from our perspective and we describe what happened as a number line. But this is not necessary, it might have gone t=0, t=5, t=4, t=6, or some random order.
Here, we get to the critical point. You have posited a “progression of time” as concept 3, because it is necessary for understanding the nature of reality. However, the way that you relate time to change robs you of the means for understanding what the “progression of time” actually is.
Above I gave two possibilities for “time”, a compilation of all future and past, or the actual passing of time at the present. You said “time is not realized” unless it is passing, so I took that to be how you understood time. Now you say it doesn’t make sense, but then you are left with the eternalist position which is even worse.
I propose that if you start to look at the future, in a way similar to how I describe, then “time” as the passing of time will start to make a lot more sense.
So in Model 1, you ask what brings the new moment. The answer is, the future does. Time comes from the future, that is the cause of it passing. The future is forcing itself into the past, that’s what makes the clock tick. And, any being living at the present, will also be forced into the past if it does not change itself and adapt itself.
Model 2 does not suffice for me, because you place the law of noncontradiction as more fundamental then time. But I think this is backward. You say time is necessary to uphold the law of noncontradiction, so that is the reason for time. When you replace “cause” with “reason” you reverse things. Then we do not have the premises required to make your conclusion. We can say that the existence of time has caused that law to be valid, but we cannot conclude that this is the reason (intent) behind the creation of time. It could just be a coincidence or byproduct of the true intent.
Model 3 I don’t even consider because it leaves time as an abstraction with nothing real corresponding. But clearly the passing of time is very real.
Consider AlveK, that this is the reason why you do not relate to the future in the same way that I do. The “possibility” which is the future, cannot be sensuously imagined in any way. This is very difficult to grasp, but we do conceptualize it. The whole reality of what I will do tomorrow cannot be grasped sensuously, because it consists of possibilities and decisions which will be made at the time. This is where we use symbols and words, to think about things without sensuously imagining them. The symbols have meaning rather than corresponding images. We very clearly think about things without the aid of sense images.
The nature of “possibility” also has a significant relation to the fundamental laws of logic. What Aristotle showed is that we must allow for a violation of either the law of noncontradiction or excluded middle, to accept the reality of possibility. In possibilities not yet decided, like his example “there will be a sea battle tomorrow”, we must allow that the proposition is neither true nor false, or both true and false. He opted for the former, neither true nor false, a violation of the law of excluded middle.
I’m a Model 3 guy, of the three presented, although I’d condition it as transcendental rather than empirical. And I think it relates to your first post, in which you were asking for the recognition of change through constancy, the constancy provided by time, which, in and of itself, never changes.
Kudos on a well-thought series of posts. That being said, am I to understand the necessity for human intellect with respect to time and change, is presupposed herein? Even so, it seems worth mentioning that time and change, being substantially different, require correspondingly different origins and modes of representation.