Analysis of perceived space and

time

by Radoslav Dzhidzhov

ABSTRACT

As the title suggests, in this essay I look at the

classic problem of space and time, but the approach I

follow, which I consider fundamental in the whole

problem of space and time, is the philosophy of space

and time as we ordinarily perceive them. The bulk of

the paper consists of three parts: the ontological

foundations of my study, an attack on common-sense and

metaphorical conceptions of space and time that

occlude our grasp of their true nature and pervade

even science, and, finally, an attempt to really grasp

this nature, i.e., to understand space and time as

they are. In the end, I close with a word on how the

theory I develop relates to the

philosophy of space and time informed by physics.

Preamble

Man’s life, from everyday matters to such relatively late

and high products like the science of physics, is guided by

the perception and conceptualization of space and time. Yet

what are these “things” space and time man perceives and

conceptualizes? I try my hand in the current essay at this

perennial burden for philosophy, but I bring together space

and time here not because, say, contemporary physics unites

them in one entity, spacetime, but because I’ve found they

present an analogous problem, admit of analogous approach, and

come off as analogous “things”. Before we see all this,

however, let me say some prefatory words.

1. The point of departure

At the beginning of this paper let me formulate what I

deem should be the true starting point in any philosophy of

space and time, whether this point is made explicit or left

implicit:

The Fundamental Axiom of the philosophy of space and time

Our experience of the world is spatial and temporal, and we

perceive space and time

1

(or, more precisely, restricted magnitudes of them, since no

single spatial/temporal perception can comprise all space/time

there potentially can be).

Space and time as ordinarily perceived are what we all are

familiar with. For instance, along with the objects I see in

looking around the room– the table, the chair, the walls – I

somehow also have a sense of space; this is what I mean by

“perceive space”. Similarly, this looking is accompanied by a

temporal perception as well: I perceive that the looking

defines a magnitude of time, i.e., lasts a certain duration1.

This ordinary perception of space/time should be the

foundational cornerstone of any philosophy about them, because it

is precisely with space and time as ordinarily perceived that any understanding of

them begins and makes the most basic and familiar sense. Space/time are

first and foremost the referents of (ordinary)

spatial/temporal perception, and ultimately any thesis about

them should be related (or at least proved relatable) to this

perception, with an explanation how such a thesis concerns1 Excepting some inessential nuances (mostly of a stylistic

nature), time and duration mean basically the same in this essay.

As a whole, time is the more general term, meaning any duration

whatsoever; duration, or what comes to the same, a magnitude of

time, is more particular, referring to an event (as being that

event’s duration).

2

space and time as we ordinarily perceive them. In particular,

this holds for physics, which is seen far and wide today as a

fundamental source of ideas about space and time; but the

ordinary perception of space/time predates physics, indeed any

science, and, absent any proof to the contrary, I assume space

and time as ordinarily perceived are the ultimate origin of

the concepts of space and time in physics. (I say “ultimate”

because it might be that drawing in physics on this bedrock

origin of spatial/temporal perception is mediated through (a)

secondary source(s); and considering that physicists grow up

like the rest of us as people of common-sense, we can expect

precisely common-sense to be such a mediator – for better or

worse.) So however advanced the concepts of space and time in

physics may be, they must be related (or at least proved

relatable) to space/time of ordinary spatial/temporal

perception if physics is to claim a say on the question what

space and time are. And for instance the following does claim

that the space-times physics employs are “directly related” to

our everyday experience:

In string theory, loop quantum gravity, and most other approaches

reviewed in this book spacetime plays a fundamental role. In

string theory a given spacetime is used to formulate the theory,

3

in loop quantum gravity one tries to make sense of quantum

superpositions of spacetimes. It is these spacetimes in the

fundamental formulation of the theory that are directly related to the

spacetime we see around us. [p. 99, Dreyer, italics mine].

On the basis of the preceding I suggest the philosophy of

space and time as ordinarily perceived, the main topic of this

whole paper, should come before and constrain the philosophy of

space and time as informed by physics – indeed, any philosophy

of space and time, the more so since, in my opinion, our whole

theorizing about space and time, in physics as well as in

philosophy, is perverted with commonsensical and metaphorical

conceptions, and we need to start from the very foundation,

i.e., from space and time as ordinarily perceived, if we are

to ensure we have grasped them right as they are and do not

start theorizing about them already with certain

misconceptions.. Accordingly, this is what the current paper

has for its task, and it will try to accomplish it as follows:

the next (2nd) section lays the ontological foundations

for the philosophy of space and time as perceived;

some of the way to this philosophy will be cleared in the

section that follows, where I will warn against

4

commonsensical and metaphorical (mis)conceptions of space

and time;

the main points of the philosophy of perceived space and

time come in the penultimate (4th) section.

Not letting the past simply disappear beyond the horizon, but

keeping it alive and moored to the present, is something I

find valuable and fascinating. But it won’t be possible,

within the confines of this essay, to discuss in much detail

how its ideas relate to available positions in the debate on

space and time, specifically the ideas of Aristotle, Kant,

Husserl, and Heidegger, or to the philosophy of space and time

informed by physics (although I say some words about the

latter in the last section). A more comprehensive undertaking

which incorporates significant pieces of the past will have to

await, first of all, judgment if the ideas presented here are

of any value, and whether, as I claim, my theory, in approach

if not completely in end results and all the details, is the

one true foundation to the whole problem of space and time.

2. Ontological foundations

5

I will specify in this section the ontological foundations

(and presuppositions) on which the main discussions of this

paper rest.

The chief concepts of our study are just two, object and

event, which, by dint of referring to what there basically is

in the world, seem to me correspondingly to be basic in

ontology. As I take the ontological concept of object, it is

certainly akin to the venerable metaphysical concept of

substance, but an excursion here into the vicissitudinous

history of the latter would be unnecessary; I merely want to

say that in the extension of the former concept, object, I

include what one might expect: the table, the tree, the horse,

etc. In general, an object is a (more or less) concrete entity

of which I (typically) have sensorial consciousness. (I say

“more or less” and “typically”, because the default position

on, say, atoms should be, I think, that they are objects too,

although their concreteness is not absolutely clear-cut and I

have no direct sensorial consciousness of them.) The concept

of event, on the other hand, I take to range over states of

affairs that come to pass in the world: the eclipse of the

moon, the occurrence of a thought, etc. In the current paper I

6

won’t dwell long on these two concepts, object and event, as they

are not its topic; rudimentary operational grasp of them, such

as I think I do provide, will suffice. However, at a later

stage in the development of our ontology we may elaborate on

them, and one such elaboration I deem promising is the

metaphysical counterpart of Einstein’s union, in physics, of

matter and energy, which in our case will be the union of

object and event, to this effect: there is no event without

some underlying object, and there is no object that is not

involved in events.

For now these two concepts, object and event, will be my

primary concepts as I begin my analysis of perceived space and

time; the former will introduce space, the latter time. In

each case, I will also use two further and auxiliary concepts,

namely extension2 and system (of objects) for the concept of space,

and their temporal counterparts, phase-extension and sequence (of

events), for time.

Thus further in the ontology of objects and events as the

foundation to my study of space and time here, I need to say

2 Familiar short for the more accurate but also cumbersome

and unfamiliar dimension-extension (the dimensions being of course

length, breadth, and height).

7

objects have extension, and, analogously, events have phase-

extension. Descartes, for instance, was clearly seeing the

first when he wrote (speaking of “corporeal substance” instead

of objects):

But although any one attribute is sufficient to give us a

knowledge of substance, there is always one principal property of

substance which constitutes its nature and essence, and on which

all the others depend. Thus extension in length, breadth, and

depth, constitutes the nature of corporeal substance [p. 297,

Descartes].

Some terminological remarks are due in relation to this

passage. Descartes speaks here of extension as a “principal

[or essential] property” of objects, but I’d rather call

“properties” particular and mutually independent, often also

easily changeable, descriptive features of an entity (object

or event), say, the particular colour or taste of an object.

(One consequence of this choice is that I can now speak freely

of an entity losing or gaining a property.) On the other hand,

instead of “essential property” I’ll use “essential

determinant” for whatever in this entity is determinative of

(i.e., shows) its whole nature, shows how the entity is

constituted overall; one way such an essential determinant

8

might manifest itself is as an unvarying universal across all

particular cases. For instance, this can be the basic

metaphysical structure of all entities of a certain kind,

objects or events, what such entities necessarily and

basically show themselves to be in actual existence. This

structure can hardly be distinguished from the entities and

called their “property”, since it is what these entities

themselves are bound to boil down to in actual existence.

Outside this terminological elaboration, I agree with

Descartes that extension, i.e., having extensions or

dimensions (length, breadth, height), is an essential

determinant of objects, since an object cannot be but

basically (dimension-)extended; analogously, phase-extension

is an essential determinant of events, since an event cannot

take place but basically as phase-extended, i.e., basically as

extended (or happening or unfolding) in phases. In short,

extension/phase-extension show the basic and unvarying

metaphysical structure of objects/events.

Another elaboration is in order here, one I will belabour

because it is crucial for my paper and also because it will

help, I hope, to dispel a widespread confusion. The eventual

9

counterpart of objectual extension is phase-extension, not

temporal extension, as one might presume; I take it “temporal

extension” is the same as my preferred term, “duration”, but

“extend in time” is to all appearances a metaphorical

expression, with no demonstrable literal meaning I can see.

Anyhow, in what follows now I’ll try to show that the two

concepts, phase-extension and duration, are completely though

subtly different; and as we shall see duration does follow –

by necessity – on the heels of phase-extension, so that’s why

it’s necessary to grasp phase-extension right as a non-temporal

essential determinant of events if we are to use it

legitimately in explaining how duration of events, time in

general, derives from it. The great subtlety here is that even

if one feels temporal duration is smuggled in here this need

not mean I presuppose it; rather, it might simply be that

experientially, i.e., when considering how the world is lived

through by a mind, duration of events goes in parallel with their

phase-extension, and then the task, to which I shall apply

later on, is to explain this.

Phases are easy enough to illustrate; take as an example

the event of a man’s life: it comes in phases, such as

10

childhood, adulthood, and old age. (These of course can be

considered events in their own right, and broken in turn into

other, finer phases, for instance the content of each day of

this man’s life becoming an individual phase). The whole event

then, taken in its entirety, is a particular extension of

phases that follow one after another in order, and such, it

seems to me, is simply the nature of events, i.e., they extend

(or happen) in phases. Accordingly, phase-extension as a

concept is descriptive of the nature of events as constituted

by phases. This account makes appealing, I hope, my contention

that precisely phase-extension is to events as extension is to

objects, i.e., an essential determinant that shows, in a basic

way, the overall constitution of the respective entity: events

are essentially constituted as phase-extended entities, just

as objects are essentially constituted as dimension-extended

entities (or “extended” for short). Or, to put it negatively,

an event’s duration cannot be an essential determinant of this

event, simply because the duration does not reflect in any way

the overall constitution of the event. Consciousness of the

duration, i.e., the temporal perception, is a sui generis form of

awareness, with its own distinctive phenomenology, and it

11

simply has nothing to specify concerning the overall nature of

the event.

*

I also mentioned (p. 4, end of first paragraph) objectual

systems and eventual sequences, so let me illustrate briefly

what I mean. It seems to me it is fundamentally in the

constitution of the world, quite apart from, and I think

antecedently, as a necessary condition, to, its spatiality and

temporality, that objects get ordered (by agents, by the laws

of nature, etc.) in systems, and that events do not happen all

at once but are sequenced. Thus for instance I see the objects

around me – the table, the chairs, the walls, etc. – ordered

in a spatial system, the room, or I can take (breakfast-

jogging-working) as a sequence of events that make up part of

my day.

*

So much for the ontological grounding the main work of

this paper requires. What comes next is the negative part of

this work, namely my attempt to undermine commonsensical and

metaphorical adulterations of space and time. After that is

12

the positive part, where I attempt to grasp space and time as

they are.

3. The metaphorization of space and time

In common-sense, as this manifests itself in common

language, one finds the earliest quasi-theory of space and

time (here quasi-theory = a jungle of notions of varying

trustworthiness). Looked into more closely, this quasi-theory

turns out to be heavily metaphorical, and it is with this

metaphorical theorization of space and time that I will find

quarrel this whole chapter. But even before this it should be

conceded that metaphorization, i.e., the (implicit) likening

of a thing to something else, is a philosophically inferior kind

of explanation, because it tells you what something is like,

not what it is. Absent any other way of explaining something –

and such an absence has to be argued for – metaphors should be

shunned in philosophy, however expedient and tempting they

might be in the case of invisible, immaterial, non-concrete

space and time.

Now I take these three qualifications – invisible,

immaterial, non-concrete – to be self-evident truths about

13

space and time, or at least the default position and free of

the initial burden of proof (not that I know of any

alternative position in this respect). If one doubts space and

time are not invisible, one might ponder what colour or shape

they are; or if one suspects they are material, one might

ponder how much they weigh; or, finally, if one thinks they

are concrete, like the ball or table I see, one might ponder

how to locate them precisely in the world. One might then want

to press me and say that, for instance, electromagnetic

radiation ostensibly also qualifies on these three counts, so

can I be more specific in defining space and time? But the

differences between radiation and space/time should not be

difficult to spot: radiation manifestly interacts with

material objects, it has physical sources, and is at least in

principle traceable to (fairly) concrete objects, photons (one

can shoot them off lasers one at a time). Prima facie (and far

beyond), space and time are not like this.

3.1. The metaphorization of space

Common-sense often thinks and speaks of objects as being in

space, as when it says for instance, “The book is in space”, so

we may well ponder the ontological significance of this “in”

14

and what relation it defines between objects and space; it

seems space in such locutions is understood as a kind of

container for objects, as the where the extension of objects

takes place3. We shall turn shortly to this task (from last

paragraph of p. 10 on); but before this let me put in some

relevant words for the sake of clarification and establishing

connections between my ideas and ideas to be found here and

there.

One can already see that this conception – quite common-

sense and crude, really – of space as a container for objects

to be “in”, where their extension takes place, is problematic

on its own terms, since in defining space it has recourse to

“container”, “where”, and “take place”, but it’s not

immediately clear to me if common-sense understands these non-

spatially and escapes a circle. In spite of this, something

like this idea seems to underlie one of the key positions in

the debate about space and time:

The substantivalist is sometimes said to regard space and time as

being akin to containers, within which everything else exists and

occurs. In one sense this characterization of substantivalism is

accurate, but in another it is misleading. An ordinary container,

3 A notable representative of this view is of course Newton

(at least on one reading of him) [p. 302, Mcguire].

15

such as a box, consists of a material shell and nothing else. If

all the air within an otherwise empty box is removed, the walls

of the box are all that remain. Contemporary substantivalists do

not think of space and time in this way; they think of them as

continuous and pervasive mediums that extend everywhere and

“everywhen”. The air can be removed from a box, but the space

cannot, and if space is substantival, a so- called empty box

remains completely filled with substantival space, as does the

so- called “empty space” between the stars and galaxies. Roughly

speaking, a substantivalist holds that space and time “contain”

objects in the way that an ocean contains the solid things that

float within it [pp. 2-3, Dainton]

In what follows I shall discuss space, rather than time, in

relation to this container (or medium) characterization, since

I don’t see in what sense, literal or metaphoric, time can be

a container or (a medium). And I shall focus on the container

characterization, since it is the more comprehensive, while

the more particular medium characterization offers, it seems

to me, no advantages against my objections. Notice also that,

whether substantivalists realize it or not, their container or

medium conception of space seems to have the same origin as my

own theory, what space appears to be in ordinary spatial

perceptions; for one can hardly deny that to untutored common-

16

sense space does look something like a container (or medium).

Still, I will argue shortly that this position is untenable.

Before this, another relevant point: objects are in the

(physical) world sure enough, but are they in something else

over and above merely the world, in space? This would seem a

strange redundancy; I don’t quite see any need for, as it

were, filling the world with such containing space for objects

to be in. I’m of course relying here on the very reasonable

assumption that there is a distinction between the world and

space; and prima facie, we should require this to be evident in

any sensitive theory of space4. On the other hand, physics for

instance seems to me deaf to this requirement: the familiar

three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system one uses on

elementary levels supposedly to model space ranges over the

whole (physical) world, and I don’t quite see how it picks out

space precisely; this same original sin – insensitivity to the

distinction between (physical) world and space – is

transmitted to the space-times of the more advanced levels of

4 I hope my theory later on makes it intuitively evident that

space is not the world, and I suggest here we satisfy ourselves

with this “intuitively” rather than demand an articulate account

of how space and world differ, since this will require a

(lengthy, I suspect) discussion on the concept world.

17

physics, and that’s why it seems no coincidence that Minkowski

called his “the world”:

Minkowski took his space-time ontologically: it was not merely

a geometrical representation of the world of space and time as

described by Einstein’s SR; rather it was the world. When he

said, ‘‘A point of space at a point of time, that is, a system of

values x, y, z, t, I will call a world-point. The Multiplicity of

all thinkable x, y, z, t systems of values we will christen the

world,’’ (Minkowski 1952: 76) he was making self-consciously a

metaphysical statement, proposing a new ontology [p. 13, Craig].

In general, I suspect many a reader whose conceptions of space

and time are mainly informed by modern physics will feel

tempted to draw on this science and object to the ideas

developed in what follows. I suggest such temptations be

resisted: as I discuss briefly towards the end of this paper,

nothing, not even empirical success, can guarantee, without

additional argument, that physics has got right the concepts

of space and time.

Let’s cut short here this aside and look more closely at

the “in” and at the container-metaphor. First, the “in”: in

locutions such as “the book is in space”, what kind of

ontological relation is presupposed or established between

objects and space, and, hence, what kind of idea about space

18

(so that objects can be in it)? The same relation, it seems to

me, as in locutions about objects being in other objects, as when

I say, “The orange is in the bowl.” (And anyway I don’t see

here how else to reach the truth about space, which is the

mysterious to understand, than by proceeding from an

ontologically more transparent and clear-cut case that is

supposedly analogous.) This latter use of “in” is

ontologically legitimate, if any is: it specifies a relation

between two objects (orange and bowl), i.e., it relates

ontological like and ontological like. But is it ontologically

legitimate to carry this relation over to objects and space?

What should give us here an initial pause and make us

suspicious that this is not so is the apparent ontological disparity

between objects and space. Can the number 4 be in the Pacific?

Space is invisible, immaterial, impossible to locate

precisely, and the difficulties with specifying its

ontological category are notorious, so why suppose objects can

be in it, the way they are in other object? And what should

make us further suspicious is that the in-relation between

objects, as opposed to in-relation between objects and space,

can be specified fairly well: when the orange is in the bowl,

19

the two touch, or, more strictly in the language of physics,

the two objects attract each other gravitationally but at the

same time repel electrostatically; but no such interactions

can be perceived between the orange and space. I will try in

the next section to specify the real relation between objects

and space, but whatever this relation is, I can’t quite see it

as such that objects are virtually “in” space. (Similar

objections apply, mutatis mutandis, if one thinks of space as a

medium, the way the ocean is a medium for the fish; water is

matter, as is all the fish, so the in-relation between the two

is ontologically legitimate, if any is; but by what right

think that this in-relation can be carried over, with full

ontological legitimacy, to objects and space?)

This illegitimate in-relation between objects and space

leads to, or goes hand-in-hand with, or is perhaps itself the

consequence of, the idea of space as a (kind of) container

(for if objects are in space, space must be something, a

container, for instance, where objects can be in). But this is

certainly a metaphor: all real containers I can think of – the

glass, the room, the house – are objects, i.e., concrete

individual things, while no perception of space reveals it as

20

anything of the sort, for what is this container without

boundaries or walls to speak of? (If one sticks to the medium

metaphor, one may ask oneself what in common a real medium,

say water, has with space.) In fact, for common-sense all

these object-containers – the glass, etc. – “enclose (or

contain) space”, and so a curious inversion seems to be in

play here, as common-sense takes space as the container and

all these real containers (together with all other objects) as

contained in turn. We may well wonder what has inclined people

to think of space this way, as a container; probably not only

a metaphorical bent, but some inductive-like, largely implicit

reasoning like this, I guess: the glass is a container (for

liquids), and it is contained in turn in the box, which is

also a container; this, in turn, is contained in another

container, the room, the room, analogously, in yet another

container, the house, and so on. Intuitively, such analogy-

based container-within-container reasoning is accompanied by

the amplification of space, so taking this amplification to

its limit (perhaps at infinity) and imagining the objects out

(forgetting the while that one used them in the first place

for the analogy), one presumably gets all of space as the

21

universal container of objects. But the result of such

reasoning, to say nothing of the reasoning itself5, is at least

suspicious: by such limit-taking and imaginary subtraction one

might very well get, instead of space, the whole physical world

without the objects – if this can be thought at all! – and

this world, though perceived as spatial when it has objects,

is not space itself, so I don’t quite see how removing the

objects from it is supposed to make it space, of all things.

3.2. The metaphorization of time

As regards time, on the other hand, there is the common

notion that “time passes”, between events (as when a doctor

tells me, “Some time must pass between illness and full

recovery.”) or even during events (as when I say, “Quite a lot

of time must have passed while I was studying”). Indeed, this

supposed passage of time is sometimes taken quite seriously

even by philosophers, so given then the popularity with

common-sense and the importance for many philosophers of the

notion that time passes let us dwell on it. From the two

common-language expressions above we can gather that time is

5 Purely formally, the reasoning does not seem bad; but what

I find suspicious about it is its implicit belief it can have the

container without the objects contained after it needed these

objects to define the container in the first place.

22

something that passes between events, or while events phase-

extend (i.e., happen), or perhaps even something that passes

with or without events – a view that will probably remind my

reader of another of Newton’s famous ideas:

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its

own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external

[Rynasiewicz].

To begin with, I should say I can point to nothing concrete,

independent, distinct in the field of human experience that is “time

passing”, the way I can point, say, to a car that passes by. I

simply can’t discern anything distinctive in this field to

which I can intuitively apply the concept time and see “pass”

in any sense. It seems we’ve run across another metaphor. What

about the two expressions I used as examples? I don’t

literally find anything like “time passing” between the event

of my illness and the event of my full recovery; in-between is

simply another event, my convalescence, which runs in phases.

Similarly, I don’t really find anything like “time passing” in

the background to the event of my studying; on a basic level,

it’s simply this event in its phase-extension that I actually

have in mind when I say “Quite a lot of time must have passed

23

while I was studying.” Events that come and go in phases: this

is all I can see in such cases of presumed “time passing”.

However, there is of course the “now”, which advances

incessantly and thus suggests a passage after all – or so it

seems from other temporal conceptions we find “ready-made” in

ordinary language. But if we look closer, we can see that a

consciousness of a now can very well be simply an event in its

own right, one which has the peculiarity of repeating itself

indefinitely and which we associate with other events we are

conscious of (the hitting of the ball, as when I say, Now I’m

hitting the ball, etc.). U. Coope tells us Aristotle was after

a similar idea, namely that the mind brings into being the

nows and therefore even time itself:

It is our counting that creates the ordered series of nows. [...]

Without these counted nows, there would be no single before and

after order within which all changes were arranged. Without them,

that is, there would be no time [p. 172, Coope].

Nevertheless, all this is not to say there is nothing

special about the now or there is nothing of note behind

locutions such as “time passes” (i.e., no real experiences

suggestive of something like passage). In particular, one must

not believe Aristotle’s and my own temporal theory invite the

24

idea that the now is strictly subjective and corresponds to

nothing that has to do with the external world. This is not

so: each now marks a unique state of the world, and a unique

opportunity for action, a call for doing what one could not

quite have done or hope to do; each now summons one to engage

with the world, reminds one of one’s being in it. Yet while it

is true that this event of the now repeats itself

indefinitely, one should bear in mind this need not imply any

now- or time-passage, or a transfer of a property “now” from

one phase of the world to the next. And as regards events,

one can certainly say that events pass, if by this one means

the basic ontological fact about the world that the events in

it begin and end, following one another and extending in

phases; but over and above this there is no such independent

thing as “time passing”. (In short, I don’t see the need for

this doubling of passage, so that both events and time should

pass; I claim only events pass in the sense of “phase-

extend.”) What common sense does here is, it seems to me, draw

on the true experience of events passing, and in a flight of

fancy unifying all this passing in a fictitious thing, “time”,

25

that passes6, or using “time passes” as a proxy when it is too

lazy to look for and name the event that is actually passing.

In general, as regards the whole problem of time I don’t

think I can find on a fundamental level anything besides

events, their phases, and their sequences. Time does not pass

from one event to the next, nor does it pass outside events

and while their phases run, nor is it something in which events

happen (one is prone to hear this as well, i.e., that events

happen in time), and it is least of all something of the

flowery sort Newton fancied (“absolute, true, mathematical,

flowing of itself and from its own nature without regard to

anything external”). Much as untutored common-sense takes the

moon to shine with light of its own, it also takes time to

beam with wholly independent being of its own, as in

metaphorical phrases like “time passes”, “time will tell”,

“time will ruin us all”, etc., which decouple time from its

“flesh”, events, and endow it with the ghost existence of

something independent and agental.

6 Something ordinary with common-sense: think of the real

experience of seeing water falling down from the sky, and the

expression common-sense has to describe it, “It’s raining”, as if

there were something, a “it”, behind all this water falling which

does or is the raining. 26

*

I cannot hope in this paper to address all metaphors about

space and time, and anyway the burden of proof about a

metaphor being good should be on the philosopher/scientist

espousing it; yet I hope that the metaphors I have addressed

suggest, if nothing else, that metaphorization is, as a matter

of philosophical principle, a crude, inferior method; all

these ideas of containers, media, river- and flow-like

passages are not unlike creation myths like the hatching of

the world from an egg. Once and for all we must brave the

difficulties of grasping space and time as they are, what I

attempt in the chapter that follows, hoping also that the work

in this section has contributed in a positive way for this

task, namely by clearing some of the way to more authentic and

direct experience, hence also conceptualization, of space and

time.

4. Grasping space and time as they are

27

I will try first to relate (objectual extension and

system-orderability)/(eventual phase-extension and

sequantiality) with space/time by this, as I see it,

Fundamental Thesis in the philosophy of space and time

As extended, an individual object defines a magnitude of space,

in the shape of the object I see. In exactly the same way, a

system of objects also defines a magnitude of space, in the

shape of this system I see.

Analogously, as phase-extended an event defines a magnitude of

time (its duration). In exactly the same way, a sequence of

events also defines a magnitude of time.

It is of paramount importance at this place to dwell

sufficiently on the meaning of “define” in this Thesis, since,

peculiarly, with it we make a key but explanation-requiring

transition from an essential determinant of objects/events,

namely extension/phase-extension, together with their system-

orderability/sequantiality, to space/time. Let’s see in more

detail how this happens. (We shall focus on individual

objects/events, since the case for systems/sequences of them

does not require much additional consideration.)

28

How does, say, a book, as extended, define a magnitude of

space? Immediately, this is how – this is our preliminary and

preparatory approximation to the actual answer. But “im-

mediately” not in the ordinary temporal sense, as “right

after,” but in the metaphysical sense of signifying little by

way of mediation. An extended object I see is simply quite

obviously a spatial thing, without needing much to qualify it

as such, a thing that immediately has to do with space

(defining a magnitude of it, as I claim, or “sitting in

space”, as common-sense is apt to say). In fact, I don’t think

it can be otherwise, i.e., it is by necessity that an extended

object I see defines a magnitude of space I perceive; Husserl,

for instance, says7 cryptically at one place, “Space is the

necessary form of thinglihood”, and the closest I come to

understanding this is precisely in the sense I’m getting at

here: given an extended object, a magnitude of space cannot

but emerge. Accordingly, a magnitude of space, in depending on

an extended object to be defined, emerges as a peculiar

supervenient8. Thus in the case of space (and also of time, as

7 In the original: Der Raum aber ist die notwendige Form der

Dinglichkeit [p. 43, Husserl].8 I take some etymological liberties here, and use

“supervenient”, which quite legitimately is an adjective, also as

29

I’m about to suggest) “define” of The Fundamental Thesis above

spells out a relation of (necessary) supervenience between extended

objects, which are the underlying relatum, and space, which is

the supported one. Note also that the magnitude of space an

object defines is different from the volume of this object, for

instance because the volume ideally presupposes the object is

closed (a box, etc.) or almost closed (a cup, etc.) on all

sides, while a magnitude of space does not. Imagine I come

across what looks like a box, but of course I cannot be sure

it has six walls since I can see only three:

In this case the same magnitude of space is defined

irrespective of whether what I’m seeing is merely three very

thin walls and nothing behind them (so that practically I

can’t really speak of any volume).

The same goes for magnitudes of time, or durations: they

are supervenients on events as these phase-extend, in an

exactly analogous manner as magnitudes of space supervene on

objects as these in their turn extend. Upon reflection, the

event’s duration as I perceive it in an ordinary temporal

a noun, meaning of course “a thing that supervenes.”

30

perception does appear as a necessary supervenient upon the

event’s phase-extension. That is, the extending of the event

phase-by-phase, as per its nature, is necessarily durational

for me: living through the event as it phase-extends cannot

be but accompanied by a perception that the event lasts (or

lasted) temporally a certain duration. Speaking atomistically,

associated with each phase I perceive is a now: for instance,

if one observes for a couple of seconds a car passing by one

will of course be conscious of phases this car-passing

consists in, and each such phase is associated with a now (now

the car is near me, now near the tree over there, now at the

corner further on, etc.) Speaking holistically9, to say here

that whole duration is supervenient on phase-extension is to

say that for me the perceived duration of an event co-obtains

with this event’s phase-extension, and, again as in the case

of objects and space, this is by necessity. The outcome of these

ideas on time and the ideas from the previous section is the

fragmentation of time into durations: strictly speaking, there is no9 I am not prepared at this point to explain how, if at all,

the individual nows get synthesized in a unified duration, but I

think it is here that Husserl’s temporal theory, with the

retention-impression-protention schema of “time-constituting

consciousness”, can be of help. A brief account of this topic is

[Findlay].

31

such thing as (simply) time, time in general and independent

from events; that is, there is no universal time, unless this

be the time of the world if that were an event and one could

lent any credence to the theologically acceptable but

otherwise fantastic notion of an Infinite Intellect to

comprehend the world as an event and therefore perceive

universal time as its duration.

(There is, by the way, a curious subtlety here, which I

don’t want to explain but merely to note, so as to obviate an

accusation of short-sightedness. I observe a car passing and I

am conscious of the duration of this event; but the formation,

on a cognitive level, of this duration is an event in its own

right, so should it not define a magnitude of time in its own

right, i.e., should it not have its own duration? Curiously, I

think not. That is, the car-passing event has its duration for

me, but the formation of this duration does not have its own

and distinct duration. Whatever the reason for this

peculiarity, it is great luck, because it spares me the worry

about an infinite regress into events and durations here.)

So we see that an individual object defines in its

extension a magnitude of space, and, analogously, an event

32

defines in its phase-extension a magnitude of time (duration);

thus both space and time are ontologically analogous, in that

each ultimately supervenes, space on objectual extension, time

on eventual phase-extension. Furthering this analogy, we can

see that objects/events can be ordered in systems/sequenced,

and thus define greater spatial/temporal magnitudes. For

instance, we can see how galaxy superclusters are ordered,

mainly by gravity, to form the largest spatial system known to

man, the observable universe, which defines all of space we

know; on the other hand, the beclouding of the sky, the rain,

the sun breaking through again, etc. make up a sequence of

events whose duration is greater than that of each individual

event. So I should say magnitudes of space/time supervene not

just on single (dimension-extended/phase-extended)

objects/events, but also on (systems of objects)/(sequences of

events).

In general, magnitudes of space/time supervene by

necessity on (dimension-extended) objects and systems

thereof/(phase-extended) events and sequences thereof. Let me

dwell here on both “supervene” and “necessity”. Consider, for

comparison, the position in the philosophy of mind of a

33

substance dualist, such as myself: I take the mind to

supervene on matter and be impossible without it, yet be

distinct from it and of real being of its own. I mean

practically the same when I think that (magnitudes of)

space/time are supervenients, in that they need objects/events

to get defined and are impossible without these, yet they are

distinct from objects/events and have real being of their own

which is different from that of latter. And I further think

that this supervenience comes about of necessity, this time in

contrast to my position in the philosophy of mind, where I

believe that even if you had in a lab all the matter a human

body consists of and if you could arrange it in precisely the

same manner you observe this matter is arranged in a normal

human, you wouldn’t get – least of all by necessity – a human

being with a mind; it would simply remain a lump of matter:

howsoever the mind might supervene on matter, it is not by

necessity, I believe. You may or may not share my philosophy

of mind, but bear with me in using it as a foil to my claim

that space and time do supervene of necessity; but what kind

of necessity is this? It’s important to see that it is not

ontological necessity, i.e., in ontological cognition, and as

34

long as I do not use the imagination to simulate

spatial/temporal experiences, I can perfectly well grasp

(objectual) extension and system-orderability independently

from spatial magnitude, and (eventual) phase-extension and

sequantiality independently from temporal magnitude. For

instance, dealing in ontological cognition with a given region

of the world, say my room and its object, i.e., thinking

ontologically (but without imagining!) the existence of this

room and its objects (all their properties, essential

determinant(s), and, as a whole, their constitution specified

to the last possible detail) – this thinking, though

potentially infinite, need not involve the idea of space.

Similarly, I can very well think ontologically (a sequence of

phase-extended) events without bringing in time, as when, for

instance, I explain to physics students in ordinary language,

“A lot of time passed between the birth of the universe and

the formation of the Solar System”, it is precisely a

perception of time that I actually lack; I can have in mind

here only certain events which stand exterior to me since I

have not lived through them as they phase-extended and

followed one after another in a sequence, and as a result it

35

is precisely time that I cannot associate with them, however in

ordinary language I may speak of time. In fact, it is this

independence for ontological cognition of (objectual extension and system-

orderability)/(eventual phase-extension and sequantiality) from spatial/temporal

magnitude that makes our ontological derivation of the latter from the former

ontologically legitimate.

The necessity whereby spatial/temporal magnitudes arise

from objects/events is of another kind: one may call it

experiential, meaning that, as actually experienced (or imagined

as experienced) by a mind, an extended object/a phase-extended

event (or a system/sequence of such) necessarily define a

magnitude of space/time this mind perceives. Actually

experiencing (or imagining), as opposed to ontologically

thinking, my room – say, by looking around through it (or

imagining doing so) – is necessarily accompanied by a spatial

perception; similarly, (imagining or) actually living through

an event (or a sequence of such) is necessarily accompanied by

a temporal perception. In other words, while in ontological

cognition we may perfectly well keep apart (objectual)

extension and system-orderability/(eventual) phase-extension

and sequantiality from magnitudes of space/time, when we

36

actually experience (or imagine we experience) an (extended)

object/a (phase-extended) event (or a system/sequence thereof)

a magnitude of space/time will always be present as well, as a

necessary result of supervenience. And I think the reverse

holds too: if I experience a magnitude of space, an object

will be present as well, just as, if I experience a magnitude

of time, an event has started phase-extending for me.

Consequently, despite the confused (and confusing) talk of

space as “a pure form of sensible intuition” in the

Transcendental Aesthetic, I think that in his more lucid

moments, when refusing to grant space absolutely objective

existence and regarding it as existing only in the appearance

of the world to us, Kant was getting at a profound truth. In

ontological cognition I feel no necessity to recognize such a

thing “space” that, say, virtually separates the Earth from

Jupiter, even though the contrary might appear to us when

actually looking at the Solar System, and though we might

speak of “the vast space between” us and that gas giant.

Still, ontological cognition has to recognize the existence of

certain possibilities and the non-existence of others, for

instance the existence of the possibility that travel from the

37

Earth to Jupiter might take years by now-available means.

(Later on (pp. 28-31) I discuss a hypothetical relation

between space and possibilities.)

*

It is of course true that no proposition in concepts can

preserve the original evidence of direct perception, and any

theorizing is bound to wedge a certain discrepancy between

this evidence and the resultant theory about it, yet I hope

that my approach in this chapter has been sufficiently

foundational, minute, and gradual to mirror, on the

theoretical plane, how space/time appear in ordinary, original

spatial/temporal perception. In short, I claim my theory is

faithful to space and time, and this, I suggest, is no mean

virtue to be demanded of any theory of space and time, given

the exceeding difficulties to pinpoint them exactly.

One aspect of space/time that should have been captured is

the quantitative determinateness of spatial/temporal perception, i.e., the

basic truth about these perceptions that they capture various

magnitudes of space/time. If, on the other hand, one isolates

from a perception of space/time its (quantitative) magnitude

one is left with a perception rather of spatiality/temporality,

38

i.e., of spatial/temporal character, which stays the same

across perceptions. In other words, perceptions of space

differ only in their magnitude, as do perceptions of time.

So I claim that our spatial/temporal perceptions show

various magnitudes of space/time. But surely, someone will

say, this is already implied in our everyday practice as we

measure space/time by yardsticks /clocks, and so, in

particular, time after all might pass and clocks measure this

passage? In fact, this measurability of time, if true, would

seem to be one of the most ancient philosophical insights

about time; U. Coope tells us Plato expressed it: “[A]ccording

to the Timeaus, time is essentially measurable [p. 87, Coope].”

And, as regards space, what is more natural than saying, “I’m

measuring the space between the table and the chair”, when I

span the yardstick between these two objects? Yet, despite the

overwhelming familiarity and seemingly unproblematic nature of

such measurement practices, I will argue now – paradoxically,

I confess – that we measure neither space nor time this way

(and I don’t imply there is any other way to measure them by

physical devices). This, I hope, will further show the

ontological peculiarity of space/time, the disparity between

39

them and their respective ontological bases, and how blind

we’ve grown to all these ontological subtleties due to

everyday, habitual practices and ordinary ways of speaking and

thinking.

Let’s begin with time. I think it is only in colloquial

language that one can speak legitimately of “measuring time”

by clocks, if time is understood as something independent from

the workings of the clock which the clock measures just as a

ruler might measure the length of the book. Strictly speaking,

a second one observes the clock performs is not a “measured

period of time that has passed”, anymore than a full circle of

the earth around the sun is (a year of time measured to have

passed), or for that matter, the motion of any celestial body,

or the workings of any mechanism, is: a clock does not

“measure time” any better than a steam engine does, or a comet

passing by the earth does. Ontologically, the workings of the

clock (and their visible consequences on the face, say the

change from 8 to 8:01) are on a par with the workings of the

engine and the motion of the comet (or the revolution of the

earth): they are all events, and I don’t see how any one of

them can be singled out as ontologically suited to measure

40

time. (Anyone who thinks otherwise should explain what is so

special about clock mechanisms that they pick out time and

measure it, while a steam engine’s mechanisms do not.) However

I may look at the clock second-hand passing from 1 to 2, I

will see no pure time running the while and the clock

measuring of value “1 second” – this, one might say, is

obvious, but, I say in return, still merits repeating if we

are to shake off inveterate habits of faulty thinking. A

second clocks show to have elapsed is an operation – an event,

ontologically speaking, or motion, physically speaking – which

all contraptions of the same kind, clocks, perform in

(approximately) the same manner, so as to have the same

meaning for all individuals observing it, or to lead in

(approximately) the same manner to other events that have the

same meaning for these individuals (all their clock faces

showing 8 o’clock, etc.). What has got laden with the meaning

“time measured by clocks as passing” is basically a sequence of

events – the carrying out, on a mechanical level, with its

visible consequences on the clock face, of seconds, minutes,

hours – that can serve as a public, shared background everyone

can monitor and so connect their private life with public life

41

by. This idea of “measuring time by clocks” is, I think,

ontologically shallow, i.e., I think it is not grounded in any

special ontological affinity between time and clocks such that

the latter pick out and measure the former; behind this idea

is rather a well-established practice on which we have a firm

operational grasp, and it basically consists in comparing events:

whenever, say, one presumes to “measure” the time one has

played football, what one basically does is compare the event

of one’s playing and the events of the clock (mechanical

workings that lead to the face showing various numbers) that

took place while the playing-event phase-extended. The

following passage about a physicist’s idea of time will fit in

here well, I think:

Time is what a clock measures. We all have a long-standing

working definition of what this means, and when a new technique

is developed for measuring time, it is judged on whether or not

it agrees with existing clocks. Fundamentally, this is all we

mean by the accuracy of a time measurement; if it agrees with the

steady evolution of the Earth around the Sun and the moon around

the Earth, and all the other processes we take to proceed at a

constant rate in nature, then it serves its purpose, because we

have no other direct access to the free parameter t [p. 334,

Steinberg]

42

(And of course, if nothing else this way of thinking about

time, as what clocks measure, is not very helpful for another

reason, namely because it is likely, and has equal right, to

define in turn clocks as “what measure time”, and this gets us

in an explanatory circle.)

So ordinary time measurement basically comes down to

comparing events. That humanity has come to “measure time” by

clocks simply shows, to my mind, that for practical reasons

this particular mechanism, the clock, has been singled out

with its events as the global benchmark against which all

other events are compared, much as for the sake of

practicality money (in all its mutually convertible

currencies) is used as the global benchmark against which all

material goods are measured. Of course, I grant that there

must be something about the world that makes such comparison

of events practically serviceable; for instance, if you and I

split off and agree to meet up again in an hour, then the

clocks we carry must produce events (physically, motion) in

such a manner as to enable us to carry out this meeting. But

then again, this need not mean that there is some universal

time, or even subjective times suitably synchronized in some

43

mysterious manner, that the clocks tap into and measure. (The

reason why clocks precisely, or even celestial motions, have

been chosen as a benchmark is, I suspect, the regularity of

clock or celestial events; yet I’m prepared to argue, if

challenged, that even this regularity does not presuppose some

time these events measure.)

Just as I think that what is ontologically legitimate

about such presumed cases of time measurement is basically the

comparison of events with events, so I also think that when it

comes to presumed cases of space measurement the only

ontologically legitimate practice of measurement is,

basically, the comparison of objects with objects. This takes

place when, for instance, I span the yardstick along the

length of a book; I compare ontological like with ontological

like in such a case, one object with another. But preposterous

though it may seem, and although it is so natural to say, “I’m

measuring the space between the table and the chair” when I

span the yardstick between them, still I don’t think I measure

space in this case, anymore than I measure space when I place

a book, or any other object and not the yardstick, between

table and chair; it all comes down to manipulating objects in

44

the world. Surely we have some commonsensical and practical

grasp of what it means to “measure the space between table and

chair”, yet when I say “I measure the space between to be 30

cm”, all this ontologically means is that I can place between

chair and table another object, the yardstick, from where I

see 0 on it to where I see 30. But ontologically I’m in this

case not nearer measuring space than I am when placing a book

between; I agree that space arises (as a supervenient) off the

two-object system table-chair, but I don’t quite see how there

can literally be space between the two, the way there can be,

say, a book. (What I said earlier (pp. 10-11) about “in” can

now be applied, mutatis mutandis, to “between”.) In my opinion,

we simply have to give up this habit of thinking (implicitly)

of space as something in the physical world – say, between

table and chair – we can perfectly well measure by putting a

yardstick alongside it; our spatial perceptions, which are our

original, and in fact, as far as I can see, only, access to

space, do not show it in any physical connection with physical

things, so I can’t quite see how any physical device can be

coaxed to pick out space and measure it. Putting the

yardstick between table and chair has only one consequence for

45

space as I understand it, namely that space arises in a new

way as a supervenient compared to how space is perceived

without the yardstick. (Another reconfiguring the objects in

the room will lead to space arising as a supervenient in yet

another way, and so on. In this regard space shows the same

causal sensitivity to its material basis as another

supervenient, the mind, does.) Or to put my point differently:

if indeed space and the extensions of objects could both be

measured by yardsticks, it would seem that ontologically they

must be basically the same (just as the extensions of any

object are ontologically basically the same as those of

another, and that’s why both can perfectly well be measured by

yardsticks). But, ontologically, extensions belong essentially

to an object, and so if space is ontologically the same as

extensions, it must also, it seems, belong essentially to some

object as well; and which object could that be? (If nothing

else, the oft-noted ubiquity of space makes it futile to try

to single out such a special object.)

All in all, I don’t think we measure space/time by

yardsticks/clocks, anymore than weighing and measuring the

brain weighs and measures the mind. I freely admit this goes

46

against established practices of speaking and thinking, but it

may be we are so deeply involved in such practices that we

easily conflate space and time with their supervenience basis,

objects and events, and so we are constantly in error about

their ontological nature (much as physicalists arguably go on

confusing mind and brain). If so far I’ve steered true on

these precarious philosophical waters then we simply have to

recognize the subtlety that space and time are ontologically

incommensurable with their supervenience basis and are bound

to evade any attempt at tracking by physical devices; running

a clock to “measure time” merely results in setting up another

sequence of events in the world, which, if observed, will

define its own magnitude of time, i.e., duration in the

observer’s temporal perception, and the workings of the clock

are no measure for this duration.

I also admit that I owe a more complete theory of how

space and time arise as supervenients, and how they are

related to their bases, objects and events – a task which

currently challenges me with difficulties as formidable as the

analogous task non-physicalist philosophers of mind face (how

are mind and brain related, connected, distinct, etc.). The

47

analogy between the difficulties might in fact be no

coincidence, given the constitutive role I assign to the mind

in the existence of space and time; it might be that the three

– space, time, and mind – are equi-supervenient, i.e., arise

as supervenients all together, with the mind providing the

requisite cognitive structures for space and time to arise by

supervenience off objects and events. This is for a more

advanced theory to decide. For now, if we take into account

that space and time are immaterial, non-concrete, and

invisible, then the impossibility to measure them by any

physical device should seem a bit more justified, and the

difficulties with specifying what they really are more

understandable. (Think here also of the difficulties with

mapping out the mind: how many faculties/modules does the mind

have, which are they, etc.?)

*

One last question to round off this constructive section:

if space and time are indeed as presented so far, what is

their function in human life? It is imperative that I answer

this question, since I don’t want to end up with two

supervenients that are suspiciously redundant, at best by-

48

products secreted in cognition. (One may remember this was one

of the charges I raised, way back (p. 9, last paragraph),

against the container conception of space: what use could be

introducing such a container in the world?)

I discuss the function of space this way: first, I

describe what intuitively seems to me to be the function of

space, regardless of what space is, a supervenient or not;

this function can be specified without the whole paper so far.

Then, however, I argue that precisely space as a supervenient

is suited to serve this function.

Take a region of the world, say the system of objects my

room is; visual cognition of it comes with a perception of

space. It strikes me as intuitively true that this perception of

space presents to me – concretely, “in the flesh” – possibilities for acting in this

region of the world: for instance, with various

(evolutionarily profitable) possibilities I can hide or run

away or prowl and sneak about or, more mundanely, place the

orange between the book and bowl on the table. I say I’m

presented with such possibilities concretely, “in the flesh”,

and by this I mean that in a perception of space I’m aware how

I can act in the respective region of the world much more – in

49

fact, maximally – richly than when I’m merely told about the

possibilities for so acting. Roughly, being told this way is

as impoverished compared to actually perceiving space as is

being told about an object, even in the greatest detail,

compared to actually experiencing the object. I’m inclined to

say that common-sense itself has got some of the truth about

this, for it is prone to speak of space as “where I can put

this thing” or “where I can move through”; that is, I agree

with common-sense about the can-part though not about the

where-, i.e., I agree that space presents to me concretely

various possibilities for acting in a given region of the

world, but I act in this region, in the world, and not in

space.

Leibniz, as quoted in [Hartz], seems to have been getting

at an idea similarly relating space and possibilities:

But space and time taken together constitute the order of

possibilities of the one entire universe [p. 499]

[...]

But space, like time, is something not substantial, but ideal, and

consists in possibilities, or in an order of coexistents that is in

some way possible [p. 500].

50

Heidegger too speaks of space as “embracing possibilities” [p.

147, Heidegger] and explicitly links the problem of

understanding the being of space with that of understanding

the being of possibilities [pp. 147-148, Heidegger]. His

mentor, Husserl, also speaks similarly:

Der Raum ist eine unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit möglicher Lagen und

bietet damit ein Feld unendlich vieler Möglichkeiten von

Bewegungen [p. 121, Husserl].

Space is an infinite manifold of possible positions and presents

thereby a field of infinitely many possibilities for motion(s).

However, I advise we resist relating space and possibilities

in a vague and irresponsible manner, taking, without

ontological justification, space to “consist in”

possibilities, or to “embrace” possibilities, or to “be” an

infinite manifold of possible positions; such expressions are

ontologically pregnant and require ontological justification

(or refutation). True, this also applies to my own (and, it

seems, partly Husserl’s) specification of the relation between

space and possibilities, space as “presenting” possibilities,

but this expression seems to me the best first approximation,

so I’ll use it, with the proviso of course that a further

study is required to legitimize it.

51

Apart from urging on intuitive grounds that the function

of space be accepted as the concrete presentation of

possibilities, can I adduce some other ground? I mentioned (p.

25) that as a supervenient space shows the same causal

sensitivity to its material basis as the mind does; for

instance, any reconfiguring of the objects in the room leads

space to arise in a new way. But at the same time any such

reconfiguring also leads to the possibilities for acting in

the room to arise in a new way, something one can in fact say

independently from any discussion about space; a simple piece

of a priori ontological cognition verifies that, say, the room

with and without a table in its middle offers different

possibilities for acting. (For instance, one possibility

present in the second but the first instance is passing

between table and bed; on the other hand, a possibility

present in the first but not the second case is crossing the

room through its middle, something not possible when there is

a table in this middle, but possible when, as (common-sense)

people are apt to say, “there is only (empty) space there”.)

Thus placing a table in the room changes how space is

perceived in this room, and it also changes the possibilities

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for acting in the room. Now, which is more likely: that the

two changes are related, or that they run in parallel as a

matter of coincidence? This would be a striking coincidence

indeed, for it repeats itself any time the objects in any

region of the world are perceived as reconfiguring. If it is

not a coincidence, then one (not that I know of any other) way

to explain this is precisely on the assumption that the

magnitude of space I perceive in a given region of the world

reflects the possibilities for acting in this region, so that

any change in the latter is bound to go with any change in the

former.

This brings me to one crucial detail I need to settle

before I’m done with space. I am yet to show that the function

of space I propose fits my conception of space as a

supervenient, for even if I am right about this function it

might in fact go with any other idea about space. (Note,

however, that if I am right that space is a supervenient, and

if I am right that space has the function I claim, then the

fit cannot fail. Still, my theory will be stronger if I can

show that a supervenient, as opposed to, say, a container, is

particularly suited to serve this function of presenting

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possibilities.) And already in the previous paragraph one can

find the reason why a supervenient is specially adapted to

present the possibilities for acting in the external world: as

a supervenient, it is causally sensitive to its material

basis, objects, so as to match the causal sensitivity of the

possibilities to this same material basis. (I should say I

don’t think possibilities supervene on anything; on the

contrary, I think possibilities exist objectively and

independently, even though how they arise is sensitive to the

objects of the world. This is where my other project, on

possibilities, will become relevant sometime in the future.)

Perhaps one can somehow coax space otherwise conceived, say as

a container, to serve this function of presenting

possibilities, but this promises to be a desperate and

unsatisfying endeavour, yielding as a result a wholly unheard-

of kind of container, one that presents possibilities. If

nothing else, such an idea starts to smack of an ad hoc patched-

up philosophical bogey.

And what about time? In contrast with Leibniz I don’t

think time, like space, has to do with possibilities; this is

where the marvellous analogy between the two so far maintained

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finally breaks. A magnitude of time, i.e., a given event’s

duration, shows, as its name suggests, enduring (of the same),

i.e., shows the event as a unified whole (that persists),

rather than a mere set of discrete phases dispersed in

complete mutual independence; thus it is by means of its

duration that one can perceive intuitively the event as an

individual unity. For instance, if one observes for a couple

of seconds a car passing by one will of course be conscious of

the phases this car-passing consists in (now the car is near

me, now near the tree over there, now at the corner further

on, etc.), but over and above them – as supervening on them –

there is, with its distinctive and familiar phenomenology, the

duration of this event, which, as a perfect continuum arising

from this event overall, individuates the event and serves to show,

perhaps (sometimes) even makes, the event as a distinctive

simple and continuous unity.

I hope this discussion is a good beginning on the role of

space and time in human life. I don’t want to claim that the

functions I’ve discussed are the only, or even the primary,

that space and time serve, but these functions seem to me

important enough to justify the vital importance we associate

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pre-theoretically with space and time, however we might be

confused about their ontological nature. Any other function is

to be ascertained after the theory developed here has

addressed its fundamental task, namely the analysis of as many

kinds of spatial/temporal perceptions as representativeness

requires. (As a whole, how restricted this theory is depends

on how representative its basis of spatial/temporal

perceptions, namely the concrete examples I’ve used, is.)

5. Some notes on the philosophy of space and time informed

by physics

Finally, let me say a word on how I see the ideas

developed so far relate to the philosophy of space and time

informed by physics. It seems to me that currently any other

philosophy of space and time in the analytic tradition is

under the tacit obligation to relate itself thus, to space and

time as conceived in physics, given the eminent, dare I say

unquestionably prime, authority (the philosophy of) physics

claims on the question of space and time in this tradition, as

if, to put it bluntly, “our best theories” in physics were a

god-given scripture on space and time, with no risk for any

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mortal prejudice to have crawled in. (If challenged, I can

cite at length about this great faith analytic philosophers

have that (the philosophy of) physics is where the problem of

space and time is settled.)

A more scientifically minded philosopher, prone to look,

say, precisely in physics for clues as to the nature of space

and time, might have the sneaking and unsavoury suspicion that

I’ve gradually and slyly abducted space and time off to the

mind, thus ending up with some form of venerable idealism

about them. But this, it seems to me, is simply the right way

to grasp their nature; space and time are, I think, a

paradigmatic case of “esse est percipi”, something (supervenients,

in particular), whose being is being-perceived. I don’t know

how to get around this idea and ascribe to space/time the

independent being of objects, without then starting

(implicitly) to think of them as really some kind of objects

and spinning yarns of of containers, media, and rivers, trying

also to explain why these immaterial, invisible, and non-

concrete objects are so different from the rest.

As regards time, in particular, I realize that too often

time has been sought in what I rather consider its

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supervenience basis, events as these phase-extend and follow

one another; for instance, even in physics the so called

“arrow of time” (or direction of entropy increase) is

illustrated by, say, the following event: dropping a glass

with water, watching it fall down, break in pieces, these

flying away in all directions and the water spilling out

chaotically. But to my mind all this does not concern directly

time itself, for this is merely a sequence of events (or, more

properly, this is usually perceived – precisely on account of

its duration – as one single event extending in various

phases). I also recognize there is a real and very important

problem about why events happen (i.e., phase extend), and why

they do it in one order of phases rather than another (for

instance, we never see an event with phases like those above,

but in some other order, say, the reverse, or with the glass

first dropped, then seen to break, and then seen falling down

towards the ground). But this is a problem about the

supervenience basis of time, not about time itself. Though the

two problems might be related, conflating them can hardly be

the way to go about solving each. In the same spirit, I find

Special Relativity is basically a theory not about space and

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time, but about how, physically speaking, motion (or,

ontologically speaking, events) affect(s) the comparison of

objects with objects (the measuring rod on the stationary ship

with that on ship moving fast by it), and the comparison of

events with events (those associated with a watch10 on Earth

with those associated with one on a ship flying fast away from

Earth). Similarly, General Relativity is basically a theory

not about the “curvature” of space(and)time, but about how

matter affects motion (or, ontologically speaking, how objects

affect events): the sun affecting the meteorite moving near it

or the clock ticking, etc. For what could it possibly mean –

in literal terms – that space(and)time curves? Elastic things

curve sure enough, but what kind of stuff could spacetime be

so that it curves (assuming this suggestively termed entity,

spacetime, has something to do with space and time)? This, it

seems, is another metaphor, one to which we are moreover by no

means committed. In fact, this metaphorization begins already

in the mathematical part of the theory, and is perhaps

responsible for the subsequent metaphorization in the physical

10 Physically speaking, the watch is a mechanism thatgenerates motion, so Special Relativity shows that motion (theflying ship) affects motion (the mechanical workings of the watchon board).

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interpretation: what could it mean – literally – that the

mathematical entity modelling spacetime in General Relativity, the

Lorentzian manifold, curves? (The philosophy of mathematics is

similarly in need of purge from metaphorical adulterations and

of confronting its subject-matter, mathematics, as a sui generis

activity, but this is a topic for another paper.)

Physics in general is a science about matter and motion,

the supervenience basis of space and time, and not about space

and time themselves. This sweeping generalization will of

course require substantiation, but a little of it is already

done in this paper, I hope. Also, I’m not saying that the

phenomena physics studies have no bearing whatsoever on the

problem of space and time – on the contrary, they must be

expected to have such bearing, just as the brain sciences have

bearing on the mind-problem.

What might make one resistant to such re-interpretations

of established theories is a consideration like this, I guess,

“How could physics have been (and still be) so empirically

successful if its main concepts – space and time, in

particular – did not genuinely refer?” One way to question

such an assumption is to dispute, as I do, that space and time

60

are empirical entities; thus the empirical successes of a

natural science like physics might not really have any, or the

usually-supposed direct, bearing on the question of space and

time, however physics may speak of “space” and “time”. Another

way, or rather one complementary to the already discussed, is

to argue that the central concepts of successful scientific

theories need not genuinely refer, as [pp. 26-29, Laudan]

does; in particular, Laudan points out that the aether

theories of 1830s and 40s, though massively successful in

explaining various electromagnetic phenomena and properties,

had a central term, the infamous aether, which, to all

appearances, does not refer. Note also that I do not dispute

the success of Special and General relativity; I merely change

the terms for what they are successful theories about: matter

and motion, I say, and not such extra-empirical entities like

space and time. Thus I’m trying to keep Special and General

Relativity as purely physical theories, without ascribing to

them extra-physical pretensions.

Summary of the paper

61

In sum, then, space/time in any spatial/temporal

perception emerge as quantitatively determinate supervenients with

distinctive being of their own (although, as supervenients, we cannot

say they are independent existents, or as quantitatively

determinate they are measurable by physical devices). If my

reader prefers to relate to my theory from the reference point

of contemporary scholarship and topical or already established

ideas, then he can use the currently prevalent relationalist-

substantavalist debate and think, if he so chooses, of my

theory as a synthesis, in a way, of its two sides, insofar as

I take space/time to arise from objects/events, which brings

me near relationalism, while at the same time I also take

space/time each to have its own being, which is similar to the

substantavalist position that space/time is each a distinctive

substance in its own right.

I labour under no illusions that I’ve made my case beyond

all doubt, and I am aware myself of issues I have yet to raise

and of points throughout the essay that await elaboration, but

if I’m right this will mean we’ve found the long-sought

ontological category where space and time fall: this, namely,

is immaterial supervenients (where the mind falls too, and perhaps

62

also computer software as this manifests its doings on the

screen). It should be noted that none of the bases for these

supervenients – objects, events, body, and hardware – are in

this category, and that’s why, for instance, it makes as

little sense to say that time passes as it makes to say that

the mind weighs 1 kg (by contrast, events do pass, in the

sense of “phase-extend”, and the brain might weigh 1 kg).

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