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How big? How fast? Transcendental Reflections on Space, Time and World Models
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2009
Abstract
Of what does the size of spatially and temporally extended phenomena consist? The particular, non-conceptual magnitude of a spatial thing is a determinate, world-defining unit size. Correspondingly, natural objects have a definite size in relation to embodied human subjectivity as a global ‘measure of worlds’. As displayed by the occurrence of global models in human life, this relation has an irreducibly indexical character. The particular temporal extension of events is intrinsic to human experience as well – albeit in a different way. As displayed in local models only, it is a conceivable object of practical but not of propositional knowledge. In its role as a global spatial measure, somehow the human body is more than one among the many possible objects of descriptive knowledge. This role is supplied by rational agency – which is then a condition of the world.
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References
1 In talking about ‘human experience’ and ‘human beings’, what I have in mind is the transcendental view on space and time as forms of experience instantiated in the human species but not necessarily limited to us. A clearly formulated modern version of this view is found in the works of Koch, Anton Friedrich, cf. his Subjektivität in Raum und Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Wozu noch Erste Philosophie?’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 48 (1994), 497–517.
2 As far as I can see, this distinction between particular and conceptual size is taken for granted in theories of space and time as constituting the unique system of singular reference and individuation of empirical things and events, cf. Strawson, Peter F., Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tugendhat, Ernst, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976)Google Scholar. Evans, Gareth, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Without a notion of particular, non-conceptual size, no individuating localization can be based on the objective, particular distance between items of space and time.
3 In which case, strictly speaking, there is no ‘objective’ localization in space. This view is the exact opposite of Gareth Evans' opinion that localization in objective space is ‘from no point of view’ (Evans, ibid. 152).
4 Cf. Ellis, Brian, Basic Concepts of Measurement (Cambridge: University Press, 1966), 24ffGoogle Scholar.
5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophische Untersuchungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 152Google Scholar (§279).
6 So this is not about physical scale invariance. Normal cases of scale variance in contemporary physics are easily mirrored in relationally equivalent models of any size whatever. Therefore, the epistemic or transcendental importance of global models is neutral on the issue of physical scale invariance.
7 From her ‘view from nowhere’, the omniscient being knows everything about physics. But as embodied human beings, only we know distinctions of spatial size that do not supervene on perceptual distinctions of physics. Neither do they supervene on distinctions between parts of homogeneous, Newtonian space. Just like scale variance, any such distinction is mirrored in global models of the world – leaving the true correlation of one set of perceptions with one particular unit of space entirely open.
8 Nerlich, Graham, ‘Time as Spacetime’, in Poidevin, R. L. (ed.), Questions of Time and Tense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 130Google Scholar.
9 Cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, book 11, transl. Bourke, V. J., The Fathers of the Church vol. 21 (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic Church of America Press, 1953), 359fGoogle Scholar.
10 We certainly represent lots of phenomena – e.g. on the cosmological or subatomic level of the sciences – as slowed down in temporal models that are not perceived as abnormal. The reason for this I take to be that we have no normal perception of those phenomena either.
11 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The Blue and Brown Books (London: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 66fGoogle Scholar.
12 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London/New York, 1910), 184Google Scholar.
13 Cf. Searle, John R., Rationality in Action, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
14 Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘The First Person’, in Cassam, Q. (ed.), Self-Knowledge (Oxford: University Press, 1994), 155Google Scholar.
15 Admittedly, Anscombe denies that what I call ‘indexical identification’ is a ‘proposition of identity’. However, I do not believe this divergence makes any difference to the present issue of size determination.
16 On the other hand, stressing the necessary practical features of ‘I’ really is not that controversial. Or take the similar cases of ‘here’ and ‘now’. Many philosophers agree that my ‘knowledge’ of being ‘here now’ is of a practical nature. Only, for that very reason, they are keen on excluding such knowledge from the ontological realm of ‘objective’ facts. The transcendental approach to these matters I take to consist in regarding the non-propositional features of human subjectivity as a precondition of the same objectivity.
17 I am grateful to colleagues and students in Berlin, Bonn, Trondheim and Oslo for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank Nancy Bazilchuk for proofreading my English.