In The Unreality of Time John McTaggart Elis McTaggart tries to argue that time is unreal because essence of time relies on the distinction between past, present, and future. He calls a series of time of past, present, and future and A Series. McTaggart argues that if a moment in time is past, present, future all at once, then time is unreal because that violates the Law of Contradiction. McTaggart’s whole paper rest on the relativity of language. McTaggart’s mistake is he confuses the semantics of the English language with reality. He believes because he can play a word game and show that he can make it so he represents a moment in time as having characteristics of past, present, and future all at once, that time is unreal. The only thing McTaggart’s paper really proves is that langue, with all its ambiguity, is insufficient for portraying an exact definition of the reality of time.
McTaggart tries to show that time is unreal through the relativity of langue by writing, “Since our language has verb-forms for the past, present, and future, but no form that is common to all three” (McTaggart P57). McTaggart is trying to lay the foundation for his argument, but as anyone can see he is using the semantics of the English Language as the foundation for his argument. His whole concept is based on verb forms, and how no one verb form will be able to give someone all three aspects of past, present, and future at once.
McTaggart shows that there is no contradiction in the fact that in order to get an A series of time of past, present, and future, we have to assume time is real. McTaggart argues that in order to get time to be real we have to assume an A series. The problem he has is that it is a cycle of assumptions. He says that in order to get time we have to assume an A series, but in order to assume an A series we have to assume time, and he shows this through the verb forms.
Dr. Carlos Montemayor writes about language relativity and the how it impacts the perception we have of space and time in Early and Late Time Perception: on a Narrow Scope of the Whorfian Hypothesis. Montemayor explains how language relativity has an influence on our perception of time in late stages of cognition, and it is through the late stages of cognition that McTaggart tries to show the unreality of time, but all McTaggart is doing is fooling himself over semantics using late stages of cognition with linguistic relativity.
Montemayor writes about how Benjamin Lee Whorf came up with “Linguistic Relativity” through the discovery of the Hopi language, and how the Hopi people have no references to time in their language. Montemayor writes how this allows Whorf to come up with the hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity which speculates that language dictates how we think, and even how we perceive the nature of time. This goes even deep into the nature of spacetime according to Whorf. Montemayor writes how Whorf claimed how there is a strong relationship to language and how humanity perceives reality.
Montemayor argues that the influence of language on reality is only on long term cognition, such things as thinking back and describing aspects of our days through memory. The specious present wouldn’t be anything that would be affected by Linguistic Relativity according to Montemayor. It is the late stages of cognition which are affected. Montemayor writes how “Linguistic Relativity predicts language modulation at the levels of cognition and perception” (Montemayor P2). This is what is happening with McTaggart’s argument. Montemayor writes how it is through language that human thought is displayed, and the display of that thought is our reality. Montemayor explains how linguistic relativity is a widely held view in anthropology, psychology, and linguistics.
Montemayor goes onto explain how the claim of the Whorfian Hypothesis has a lot of support because of the way we use tenses of “past, present, and future” (Montemayor P4). So, even Montemayor goes onto use the exact terminology that McTaggart’s whole theory rests on. Montemayor is showing the language modulation and reality connection. The problem I have is the term reality when it comes to McTaggart, for all language is truly showing in the individual’s perception. What is truly happening with McTaggart is “Language modulates semantic content in time cognition, such as the categorization of events” (Montemayor P4). This is what McTaggart is doing when he tries to show the unreality of time. He uses verb tenses to show that every moment has the aspects of past, present, and future by showing how a moment is present, then it was future and will be past. If there is another moment that is past it was both present and future at other times. McTaggart is showing through language that every moment has aspects of all three, and to get an A series you have to both assume time and assume the A series itself; therefore, there is a contradiction; therefore unreal, but all that McTaggart is truly doing is using language modulation in a strong and absolute sense of linguistic relativity in order to give a different perception of reality! All McTaggart is doing is confusing semantics, and the perceptions that we get out of it, with reality.
There are lots of things that prove the existence of time. The fact that we do not completely understand time, or might not be able to completely explain time in language, does not mean that time is unreal. The only thing that truly means is that language is inefficient for giving an exact definition of reality, and the fact that the proof of time shows up in more living creatures than just humans. Montemayor explains in Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the psychology of Time, that “spatiotemporal coordinates are essential for the sensory-motor system to make sense of the features it registers” (Montemayor P6). All living creatures are dependent on a concept of time. Our motor and survival functions depend a necessary connection with the circadian clock. This is showing that time is an innate aspect of any living creatures’ reality. Time is part of the innate aspect of who we all are as living creatures. We need time, and some type of understanding of it, if not a limited one, for survival.
Montemayor goes onto explain how the circadian clock is something that is innate within all living creatures. The circadian clock is something that is necessary for the survival of all living animals and we have been able to detect that animals have the capacity of registering time of occurrences, so they can get food to survive and even perform other tasks. It is an anticipatory behavior which has been shown to us in rats, birds and bees (Montemayor P42).
Montemayor goes onto explain how the way animals do this comes down to two different theories both based on the circadian clock. The first one has to do with repetition and anticipatory behavior. The insects and animals have phases that they would depend on which would be directly related to rhythm of the circadian clock. They have memories, and the circadian clock would be innately linked to those memories. The one thing animals do not have though is linguistic memories, yet time still exists in both them and us. The more frequent the occurrence of these events, the stronger the association of the timing will be (Montemayor P42).
The other theory which Montemayor gives is a “semi-hybrid clock.” (Montemayor P43). With the semi-hybrid clock, which is dependent on an “episodic like memory” (Montemayor P43). This is different than the phased based memory because with the episodic like memory living creature stores all kinds of memory in with the timing, and they have access to that memory at any time. This allows them to do things like get their food, so they can survive.
The innate connection to these clock systems is something which shows that time exists and is an intrinsic feature within all of us. If we cannot explain it in words without a language that has a proper tense to represent all three phases of time, it does not mean time is unreal, it just means our understanding, and the use of language in itself, is inadequate for an exact understanding.
What the animals would be using is when it comes to time modulation would be what Montemayor calls the early stages of processing. In these early stages Montemayor argues that language has no influence in time perception. This goes to the most basic and fundamental aspects of survival, and Montemayor is arguing that the Whorfian Hypothesis does not affect these early stages. The fact that we can find them in animals, shows that they exist, and that human reality, and the reality of linguistic relativity, is nothing but a perception, and perception is about probability and speculation, not necessarily reality, but a perception of reality.
In Chapter 3 of Montemayor’s book on Minding Time, Montemayor shows the representations that nonlinguistic animals take. In this chapter Montemayor shows that “belief-like representations that ground beliefs about duration in humans need not depend on linguistic capacities” (Montemayor P57). Montemayor is showing how “minimalist approach,” proposed by J.L. Bermudez, states that there are concepts of time representation which are not dependent on language, so animals that do not have the capacity of language, still have a perception of time. They do not have the propositional thought. Their thinking is context bound (Montemayor P57). The animals take the representational outputs, which are tied to their sensory-motor system, and are able to emulate the system. They use this innate talent of time within them to calculate when things will happen. This is about feeding behavior, sun-compass navigation, and other aspects which are necessary for survival. It is an innate feature they have, and they do not have a language capacity.
Montemayor goes onto explain how the circadian clock is found in mammals. This shows again that time is an aspect of nature which truly exists. Montemayor explains how one of the greatest achievements of biology was the finding of the suprachiasmatic nucleus. In the suprachiasmatic nucleus Carl Richter showed that the “hypothalamus of rats emulate rhythmic behaviors” (Montemayor P40). The hypothalamus is a part of the brain which is necessary for survival, and in this the suprachiasmatic nucleus is in sync with the circadian clock, so the circadian clock is an innate aspect of the biology of living organisms with a nervous system. This “regulates neurological functions” (Montemayor P40) in all animals, so time, and the circadian clock, are built within all life that has a nervous system. Montemayor goes onto explain how the circadian clock is even found in bacteria and fungi which have no nervous system. These are living creatures which do not even have thought, let alone linguistic thought!
Montemayor goes onto explain in Minding Time that there are other forms of clocks besides the circadian clock that is innate with life as well. The interval clock is a clock that is a “one-time” process. There are no rhythms or repetitious cycles to it. This is like a sand clock (Montemayor P19). It is a one-time measurement that tells when the task is up. This measurement is something which functions off of dopamine according to Montemayor. The interval clock is an accumulation process.
The stopwatch is a type of interval clock, and with the stopwatch, “it is a biological interval clock, neurologically instantiated in the brain” (Montemayor P46). The stopwatch is used on the short scale of timing from second to minutes. Montemayor writes how there still is not exact agreement on where the stopwatch is located in the brain. Montemayor tells how it could be located in a dense form of neurons, instead of just one area like the hypothalamus. Montemayor argues how the stopwatch has a deep significances and relation to attention. This is why it is about dopamine. It requires that the organism has a focus on a specific task. The stopwatch is required for attention to detail, which Montemayor points out would have evolved later than the circadian clock. The stopwatch requires a dense nervous system and is an aspect of living organism with it. Timing and attention to detail is something that even McTaggart would rely on when writing his thesis.
It is the linguistic of thought that time perception is influenced. Montemayor is arguing for a limited influence of language on time perception to the late stages of processing. These late stages of processing are what McTaggart was doing when he wrote The Unreality of Time. McTaggart was thinking and writing an essay to prove time was unreal all through late stages of processing in linguistics. This is why he was able to come up with a theory that completely denies the reality of time, yet he was relying on attention to detail and his ability to focus, which is heavily related to the nature of time itself.
McTaggart takes his perception, based on linguistic relativity, and applies it to everything! This shows nothing but an error of judgement because all he is pointing out is verb tenses, and it is the verb tenses that his whole theory rest on, which is not that strong of a foundation.
The problem with language is the ambiguity which is the fundamental part of each one of them. Especially English! The same word can have different meanings depending on which sentence it is used in. This is only a matter of semantics. What people say, and what other people interpret can always be different things as well. A good communicator will be able to give the best description of reality in a way that gets others to believe and see things the way they do. But when it comes down to language, it has uncertainty within it because we are all trying to give our best description of that which is truly beyond words: The Empirical World! Someone’s own language that they use is nothing but their own understanding of reality which is limited in its scope no matter who they are. We are all subjective beings, and we use language in a subjective way to give the best description of the universals, but the exact definitions of the universals are beyond the capacity of language.
To take the Whorfian Hypothesis and say that the mind is based in language has a lot of truth, but to say that those discerptions that we give of reality from language are not true because we can put them in the right syntax and semantical structure is erroneous. The mind in its very essence is nothing but a hermeneutic. It is a principle of interpretation, to confuse the conclusion that the mind comes through syntax and semantics with reality is giving too much power to the power of language. Montemayor writes how “Language is, by definition, a non-encapsulated system in the sense that it manipulates highly integrated information, susceptible to all forms of conceptual influences” (Montemayor P12). This is exactly what McTaggart is doing. He is manipulating information through language to come up with his own reality. In his reality time is unreal. This is nothing but a manipulation of information in late stages of cognition. There are no early forms of cognition in McTaggart’s paper. It is all about thinking backwards and coming up with a linguistic interpretation of reality.
Montemayor argues how the encapsulation of time becomes less accurate through complex cognition at later stages (Montemayor P29), and it is in complex cognition and linguistic relativity that McTaggart is tricking himself with. It is language which sets humans apart from other species I agree, but those other species share other characteristics with us that Montemayor points out all life has which is necessary for the survival of everything. Montemayor shows how the circadian clock is build into all life, and that an understanding of time is necessary for survival of all living creatures in order to preform tasks and stay alive. The circadian clock is built into all life, from complex to simple forms: bacteria to humans. Living creatures with dense nervous systems are able to perform tasks with high levels of detail that are based on the stopwatch and the dopamine in the brain. Montemayor shows how an innate relation to time is a necessary aspect of survival for all life. If time was unreal there should not be that much of a dependency on it. To say time is unreal because we can use language only reaffirms our limits, and the limits of language. If the circadian clock and the interval clock is something we can find in both humans and animals, and if the only thing which sets us apart is language, then how are we to deny time based on verb tenses alone? This is why I find McTaggart’s theory to be based in error. McTaggart is fooling himself on syntax and semantics using a strong sense of linguistic relativity.
Work Cited
Carlos Montemayor, Early and Late Time Perception, On a Narrow Scope of the Whorfian Hypothesis, @2013
Carlos Montemayor, Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the Psychology of Time, Leiden Boston @2013
John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, The Unreality of Time
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