Human Imprints of Real Time: from Semantics to Metaphysics
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Human Imprints of Real Time: from Semantics to Metaphysics K. M. Jaszczolt 1 Received: 3 October 2019 / Revised: 3 October 2019 / Accepted: 4 February 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Investigation into the reality of time can be pursued within the ontological domain or it can also span human thought and natural language. I propose to approach time by correlating three domains of inquiry: metaphysical time (M), the human concept of time (E), and temporal reference in natural language (L), entertaining the possibility of what I call a ‘horizontal reduction’ (L > E > M) and ‘vertical reduction’. I present a view of temporalityL/E as epistemic modality, drawing on evidence from the L domain and its correlates in the E and M domains. On this view, the human concept of time is a complex, ‘molecular’ concept and can be broken down into primitive concepts that are modal in nature, featuring as degrees of epistemic commitment to representations of states of affairs. I present evidence from tensed and tenseless languages (endorsing the L > E path) and point out its compatibility with the view of real time as metaphysical modality (endorsing the E > M path). Keywords Metaphysical time . Real time . Human concept of time . Time in language .
Temporal reference . Reductionism . Modal reduction . Default Semantics . Tenseless languages Abbreviations timeM Real time/metaphysical time timeE Human concept of time timeL Time in language
1 The Questions ‘Yes, I love life. Why?’ ‘But you’ve made up your mind to shoot yourself.’
* K. M. Jaszczolt [email protected]
1
Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, MMLL, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK
Philosophia
‘What about it? Why put the two together? Life’s one thing, and that’s another. Life exists, but death doesn’t exist at all.’ ‘Do you believe in a future everlasting life?’ No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.’ ‘You hope to reach such a moment?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘That’s hardly possible in our time,’ Stavrogin said, also without the slightest irony, slowly and as though pensively. ‘In the Revelation the angel swears that there will be no more time.’ ‘I know. That’s very true. Clear and precise. When all mankind achieves happiness, there will be no more time, for there won’t be any need for it. A very true thought.’ ‘Where will it be hidden?’ It will not be hidden anywhere. Time is not an object, but an idea. It will be extinguished in the mind.’ ‘Old philosophic clichés, the same from the beginning of time,’ Stavrogin muttered with an expression of mingled pity and contempt. ‘The same! The same from the beginning of time and never any others!’ Kirillov cried with glittering eyes, as though that idea contained a triumphant proof of all he stood for. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Devils, 1971, London: Penguin Books, pp. 242-243 Can we conceive of reality without time? The dialogue from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Devils gives an interesting ins
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