Introduction to an Imaginary Book

“What I shall have to say here is neither difficult nor contentious; the only merit I should like to claim for it is that of being true, at least in parts.”

By these words, J.L. Austin opened a book entitled How to do Things with Words. I am reminded of it as I open the present one, but only to increase the scope of the disclaimer: I cannot even say that parts of what I shall have to say are true, only that I have to say it, and have made reasonable efforts to avoid obvious falsities. That it is all conjecture should be appearant enough; that the ideas are not radically new can be inferred from the fact that the questions broached here are central to philosophical thought since the Vedas¹. So, rather than an original or academically relevant philosophical proposition, this essay could be construed as the description of a personal intellectual trajectory, were it not for the circumstances of its writing, which are as follows.

For this book, I would like to blame Ajuni Héloïse Bargel Rai, my 6-month-old² daughter, who in spite of her short time on Earth³ had already managed to effect major changes on its orbit, at least from where I sat. Consequent to the rise of an apparently unquenchable instinct to care for her, a serious lack of sleep had interrupted the more difficult (and contentious) enterprises of my ripening years, and, unable for a time to write poetry or fiction, I had resorted to turning to philosophy (hence already losing in stylistic grace, as this formulation shows) to feed that other starving baby which otherwise, if neglected, wails like the Sirens of Odysseus, and which sits in my skull. The original draft (available for sale, contact my agent) shows the inordinate hours of conception: first and last, against reason when rest was so vital a need, trains of thought loaded with distant memories, receding into foggy vales, reappearing sometimes over there, sometimes down here, and sometimes not.

Only towards the end did I realize that everyone has been talking about this, in one way or another, throughout the history of insomnia, and much before the advent of the functional MRI. After a small bout of discouragement, for I would never be able to address properly each and every one of these esteemed writers, my dismay turned to hope: that because it has been such a popular topic, it is likely an interesting one, and because it has not ceased to be a popular topic, although a lot is being repeated unwittingly, there must remain something to say, and in effect, to justify what is really a personal need to say it, just go ahead and say-ay it⁴, I am now able to conceive that just adding a small contribution, not as progress but as a reminder that it is still there, to a much broader enterprise which, actually, contains in itself many fields and courses of study, and tends to bypass them all, entirely falls within my purview as a man of letters.

Indeed, if we consider, as he did, Kant’s reversal of the subject-object relation as aptly compared to Copernicus’ substitution of Sun and Earth in their rotation around one another, maybe what I am doing here, insisting that if our knowledge stops at the limits of our rational and non-rational categories, there is still a reality beyond that pulls us in a certain direction, is aptly comparable to maintaining that for me, for all my perceptions and purposes (practical, ethical, and soteriological), the Sun does revolve around the Earth within a universe in the center of which I reside, and its revolutions produce many colors. That there is such a universe, and that it may actually contain the one which science describes, may be more a matter of faith than demonstration. But faith has always tolerated argumentative discourses, especially when they stop; and the kinds of words which I assemble, sometimes intending to “do things” with them, are perhaps best defined as that which remains of language when the urge to argue has subsided, when the orators take a rest, have a drink, and start making out with each other. Carpe Diem, motherfuckers!

I am here and soon, I won’t. So I would like to make some noise. From as high as I can atop the tree where I have been destined to live. In truth, then, quite far from an original or academically relevant philosophical proposition, not even close to the description of a personal intellectual trajectory, the pages that follow would be best defined as the ramblings of a monkey.

1. Or, if these are not as old as some say, “since the dawn of humankind”. ↩

2. At the time: she says she’s not a baby anymore. ↩

3. At the time… ↩

4. Just like Glenn Gould his fugue. ↩

Time as Imaginary Phenomenon

In today’s world, we are used to many ways of measuring and counting time on a linear scale, to the point that we imagine this measurable, linear time to be a dimension of the universe, similar to those of space; we believe this linear, measurable time to be a fact of nature, demonstrated by science. But this is not a notion of time derived from our experience: processes observed by humans in nature are often cyclical, at various scales, and their definitions are largely incompatible with the mathematical modes of measure inherent to linear time, as we shall see with more examples involving humans and bananas.

The abstraction called “linear time”, useful as it may be as a convention, does not derive from our experience of observing nature, but rather from our experience of measuring certain aspects of it. Like the observation of processes, this activity of measuring them also has practical purposes (more or less precisely predicting the return of cyclical phenomena, for instance, by projecting them on a linear plane¹), but adds, to the characteristics of the human observer mentioned above, the characteristics of the instrument of measure, in defining the objects and their states which can be thus described. This rather reduces the scope of linear time to certain activities where measuring is important; and does not offer, that I can see, good reason to extrapolate its modalities to constituting a factual dimension of the universe.

Instead, after further discussion, I would like to offer some thoughts about linear time being a fiction based on an instrument of measure, and that in analyzing the more general notion of time which arises from our experiences as humans in nature, we may discover that time does not exist outside of specific processes, the most important of which, to us humans, would be our own consciousness.

1. such as the physical ones of a globe on a flat map ↩

Existence of Time from a Banana

Exploring the idea that time is an abstraction derived from the observation of physical and physiological processes.

Processes are defined as the changes of an object from one state to one or more other states.

Defining “objects” and “states of objects” implies an observer with a set of characteristics that inform these definitions.

Say, a human being can observe a banana (object) and its change from being ripe (state 1) to rotten (state 2), and does so usually with a practical purpose in mind: eating the banana as is, making a banana cake if it is overripe and you have more than one, feeding it to a pig if you have one nearby, throwing it away and counting on garbage collection or biodegradation to replace you in attending to this banana until its final purpose, which is not to exist as a banana anymore. A certain interest in bananas, as well as commensurate scales of existence, a physical relatability, are supposed in the human observer.

The observation of processes implies the existence of observers with cognitive abilities: perception, definition, comparison.

Exploring the idea that from these observations, humans derive an abstraction (concept, notion) called “time”.

Existence of Time for a Banana

Process of the banana: growth and decay.

I don’t know that a banana has consciousness. I only know that there is a substance, a particular arrangement of molecules, which I recognize as yellow and phallic in shape, and call “banana” (in English, and some other languages).

This banana exists as a process of growth and decay. The object “banana” and the states which compose its existence in time are defined by a human observer; nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that unobserved bananas behave similarly in the wild: they grow, usually on a banana tree, ripen, are eaten and/or decay.

Without needing to assign consciousness to our banana, we can say that it exists as a process, a succession of ordered states, from which we may derive a notion of “banana time”, or “time for the banana”, bounded by its lifecycle and related to other bananas, to the longer cycle of the banana tree, and related natural cycles as we are able to observe.

This does not mean “time to the banana”: just for fun adopting a banana’s point of view, time may not appear in itself. There is a continuous process, ever present, of being something that changes. To conceive some sort of time, one needs memory, to compare one’s present state with a former one, and skills of comparison and calculation, to judge let’s say by the cycles of sunlight how one’s changes are proceeding. In my short time as a banana, I have not felt the need for such complicated matters, rather enjoying the sunlight from my elevated position on a tree, the tightness of my skin on my growing, fleshy bulge.

Interaction with human processes

A banana can enter the processes of one or more human beings, based on interactions that these intend to have with it. Humans cultivate bananas, grow them to sell them to be transported and eaten or transformed in banana-derived products that are then eaten or otherwise consumed. The banana becomes situated in a time defined by these processes, which are human activities, bounded by their own characteristics, external to the banana itself.

It so happens that human activities tend to exist at a scale which is compatible with the lifecycle of bananas: “human time” and “banana time” can easily be correlated, even giving the impression that they both exist within a larger time which is just “time”. We shall keep this question aside for now.

Interaction with bacteria

Typical bacteria have a lifespan of 12 minutes, which, among many possible fates, they very well may spend entirely on the peel of a banana. Imagining one such bacterium (singular), existing as its own process, its own succession of ordered states from which we derive a notion of “bacterium time”, it may not relate to the banana¹ as partaking in time. The “banana for the bacterium” entity is likely to seem eternal, fixed and unchanging, a monolithic background to all relevant activity.

Although it may be more relevant to consider bacteria at the scale of a “colony”, which is a visible mass of them grown from a single cell. The time scale of a colony would be more compatible with that of a banana, and its processes potentially more relevant.

Having quickly reached a limit in my ability to think about bacteria, let me reveal my hand: I meant to consider an object, existing in relation to a banana, whose time-defining process would be so short (in banana time) that it would make the banana seem “eternal”, a bit like the universe seemed to humans before we started finding ways to measure it.

For a process A (lifecycle of a banana) to be relevant to a process B (lifecycle of a bacterium), there would need to be a change of states in process A (from A1 to A2, or A23.5 to A23.6) that would somehow impact a change of states in process B. For instance: the young banana having ripened, a new nutrient becomes available to the bacterium (the definition of states depends on the observer: here, a change in the banana that is relevant to the bacterium).

If all of process B happens within a state of process A which cannot be distinguished by B from another state of process A, then with regard to process B, A is not a process but a constant. If for the bacterium, within its lifecycle, the banana does not change, then it does not exist in time: it is eternal in bacterium time.

Interaction with quasar

• For an entity situated 30 billion light-years from Earth, consisting as far as we can tell in a mass equivalent to billions of our Sun, and which, as it keeps increasing at a rate far surpassing the scale of our solar system (“swallowing” thousands of suns every second), emits a rather powerful electromagnetic radiation, our little banana may barely register as existing. Even if we consider the banana to be included, as the tiniest of minuscule fractions, in the mass and energy interactions of that entity with its surroundings, I am willing to hypothesize that the time processes relevant to the banana, any and all of them, are not relevant to the quasar. No change that happens in a time relevant to the banana (its own process or those others in which it is involved) seems likely to impact a change of states in the quasar.
  • Granted, a quasar is not directly observable by humans, and is “perceived” only through very specific measurements and calculations, which lay far beyond the scope of this train of thought (and of my own knowledge). A sun may have sufficed, as a projection of an object, existing as its own process, to which banana time would not be relevant.
    • Relevance similarly defined as a change of states in one process impacting a change of state in another process.
• A banana would seem eternal to the bacterium, inexistent in time to the quasar (a bit like a speck of dust is not a moment in time to us).
  • Derived from a daydream, this discourse on banana time intended to show, from the point of view of time as processes, how the process of one object (banana!) could be insignificant to the processes of other objects: unrelatable for reasons of scale, excessively small or large in comparison. This would mean that these objects do not, cannot exist in time together. What time is to each of them is not mutually compatible.
• This would restrict time to being an emergent phenomenon for internal observers, absent for (hypothetical) external observers.
  • Yet my argument is itself limited by the choice of “extremely small” and “extremely large” comparison points: in doing so, I adopted a [“time is space” metaphor] in order to visualize the incompatibility of internal notions of time based on processes. This may be helpful as a transitory, intellectual tool, but:
    • it also restricts drastically the types of incompatibility that may be imagined (besides scale, there could be many ways for two objects of being irrelevant to each other’s processes?),
    • and uses a visual, thereby implicitly linear, continuum in which these processes “exist”, and possess “scale” relative to each other. This presupposes (unsurprisingly, since I am a human with certain inherited thinking habits) the notion of a linear time as “a factual dimension of the universe” which I was precisely attempting to avoid by focusing on processes and how time “arises” from them.
      • (and introduces a distinction between “eternal” for “irrelevant by larger size” and “inexistent” for “irrelevant by smaller size” which may not matter: we could say that anything irrelevant to a process is “outside of time” for this process, regardless of how it is irrelevant; for instance if you ask what my time was at the last New York City marathon, which I didn’t run)
  • Nonetheless, parts of these speculative examples may begin to suggest — and my failure to escape traditional projections indicate continued difficulties — what is this idea of time as an abstraction of observed processes, and what it implies if we can consolidate it.
• You may now eat the banana.

1. in whichever way it relates to the banana, about which I don’t know much: bacteria, despite being made of only once cell, display an impressively vast range of behaviors ↩

Causality as Imaginary Phenomenon

Raindrops at the Airport

Waiting to be called for boarding, I looked out the window: it was raining quite heavily. Water shone on the tarmac, punctuated by a myriad impacts of raindrops, which were forming circles of different and varying diameters, based, presumably, on the size of each individual raindrop. As far as I am aware, these are overall distributed randomly. At first sight, in any case, I could not perceive any pattern or regularity in the rapid succession of raindrops hitting the existing layer of water on this particularly flat surface.

But I tend to spend time in abstract thought, or daydreaming, or imagination, and if my surroundings make no further demands on my attention, after a while my eyes tend to unfocus. It is a common phenomenon of decreased visual accommodation, maybe particularly frequent in people with ADHD or autism. Since it often happens to me, I have learnt to pay attention to it, that is, to observe what occurs in my visual field without refocusing my gaze. In this case, what was striking was: the raindrops seemed to form a pattern. Among all the impacts, which I continued to perceive, three of them seemed to draw a triangle, that is, to fall every time in the same places, not with the largest impact but a quantitatively significant one nonetheless, at regular intervals, in such a way that isolated the shape of a triangle within the continuing multiplicity.

Still assuming that raindrops fall in a random pattern, it was then my brain which was isolating a pattern within the chaos, probably twisting reality just enough for that purpose. Human brains are quite well trained to do this: simplify a chaotic reality into shapes that can be computationally processed for practical purposes. Here, when I was paying attention, the lack of practical purpose for me in there being or not a pattern in the falling raindrops, associated with my scientific knowledge or belief that this was not the case, kept that pattern-making process below the level of my consciousness, as being unuseful: I was not seeing a pattern. With my attention diverted, indirectly considering the visual field, my brain continued its low-level processing and, by a small interstice in the synthesis of consciouness, I was able to observe it: how a pattern had appeared. This suggested that some of what I consciously perceive as patterns may be complete constructions of my perceptual and perception-processing systems, and that I may not generally be able to distinguish those from actual patterns present in the physical world. Some patterns that I see are there, some are not there.

What was even more striking: of these three, two raindrops would often fall at a very short interval from each other, and that seemed to create a movement, from one to the other, as if instead of separate raindrops falling from above, it was the impact circle that moved, along one of the sides of the triangle, at a very fast speed. I have since read something similar in the “beta phenomenon”, first identified by Wertheimer in 1912: if shown two dots in two different places in very quick succession, we will “see” the dot moving from one place to the next, including seeing it in a middle position where no dot actually ever was. In a more humorous fashion, I have a very fast dog of the whippet breed, and once a lady, after commenting on his beautiful coat, exclaimed “oh, but you have two of them!”, because Odin had run so fast in a circle behind her and back on the other side, it made more sense that there be two dogs instead of just one that ran so, so fast (mind-blowingly fast!).

In these examples, someone’s brain either creates a relation of causality where there is none, or because the actual one is “unbelievable”, imagines two beings where there is only one. Why do I say “causality” instead of “movement”? Well, one can consider movement as the most basic form of causality (departure of object from point A causes arrival of object at point B); one can also consider causality as a concept constructed from the observed phenomenon of movement (object arrives at B after departing from A and traveling for a time t). If two things happen one after the other in time, it is probably because one caused the other, we think. (Cause and effect as an artificial subset of reality.)

Patterns that are not there are not much less there than those who are. Rain drops can be perceived as forming a triangle, by a brain in a certain state, because that brain has a tendency to create causal relations out of everything, which it processes (and we perceive as “happening”) in succession (to itself, succession as defined by its own sequential way of processing input).

Because our perception presents things to us one after the other, our brain postulates relationships of cause and effect. These may be confirmed or not in later processing, but those that are not exist almost as much as those that do.

Perception and Reality

Some patterns are there, some are not there. That some are not there doesn’t mean that none are there. Nonetheless, the reality of a pattern is still predicated on my mode of perception; that others agree, that it can be measured, only mean that we have this mode of perception in common, and a measuring instrument that we created for it, to condition our agreement to an external, conventional, criterion.

So this light on the construction crane that blinks once, then twice, then once, then twice, is really there, but saying that does not mean more or less than the fact that I am here, with a mind that has notions of numbers and succession, able to interpret a visual phenomenon under the form of this pattern. There are phenomena and I can count: so I will interpret this phenomenon by a count of it. Surely the phenomenon possesses a countable attribute for me to count; but that does not mean that I can believe thus to possess its definition. It may have, probably has, many other aspects that other perceptual agents find convenient to them. So when I say : “it blinks once, then twice, and so on”, I only mean : “I can count a visual stimulus from there once, then twice, and so on.” That is, unfortunately, all that I can perceive. Far from defining the object, this remark exhausts my ability to perceive it.

When I talk about the world, I am still talking about myself. When I describe the world, I describe its shadow (on the cave wall, have at it) through a very specifically shaped sieve: it tells me that there is a world, but the shape of what I see tells me about the sieve.

Love and Hormones

When I hold my baby in my arms, I feel pleasure within myself and tenderness toward her. The rate of the hormone oxytocin in my bloodstream is increased. Which of these two phenomena is the cause, which the effect?

Pleasure and tenderness are feelings, phenomena which I experience physically and emotionally, of which I am conscious, and which “make sense” to me in terms of definitions and relationships within a personal history. (She is “my” child, I “love” her, etc.)

Increased oxytocin is a physiological phenomenon, unconscious and yet measurable, which is commonly conceived of as “producing” an “effect” of pleasure and tenderness.

But what produces the producer? What raises my oxytocin? The fact that I am holding my baby, whom I love. Preceded by the fact that I decided to hold my baby, be it in response to her call or out of my own appetite for cuddle.

Moreover, even though the oxytocin “makes me” feel good, and incites me to continue holding my baby, I can put her down in her cot if I decide to, if I need or want to do something else. So I am not mechanically destined to continue responding uniformly to physiology. But if I decide to continue holding my baby, my body will produce more oxytocin.

It seems that behavioral (conscious decisions) and physiological (varying hormone levels) phenomena continuously feed off each other, infinitely being each other’s cause and consequence, which makes them ultimately a single phenomenon progressing in time, rather than two phenomena linked by a causal relation, a view which appears only by artificially stopping time and distinguishing scopes according to our mode of observation.

Therefore, we could say that pleasure and tenderness are “associated with”, rather than “caused by”, an increased level of oxytocin in the bloodstream.

Instead of trying to determine causal relations between our physiology and our behaviors, it seems more accurate to consider our condition as “incarnation”, a continuously bidimensional existence, the ultimate logic of which or direction (whether or not I will hold my baby or not, keep holding her longer or not) cannot be reduced to either of these two (artificially distinguished) dimensions.