Shading Inc.

No, I can't define time. Not in a way that makes sense, that is. But can you? If you can imagine a universe where truly nothing happens, you could still also imagine a clock sitting 'next to' (that is, not within) this sad universe obediently ticking away time. Nothing is happening within the frozen universe, but thanks to the clock that's not a part of it, you still know that time is passing within it. What does time mean in this context? It means what it always does: The universe passing from time-state to time-state. There's just no way of knowing that this is happening, but that doesn't mean there is no time. You can still imagine that if there were a working clock in this frozen universe, you would be able to know that time was passing in it. Stopping all movement isn't going to stop time, it merely stops our being able to know that time passes. And consider this: If you imagine a universe, this universe should include you yourself as well. The universe is everything that is, after all. If every movement in the imagined universe is stopped, you could still know that time was passing in it. Just think "one, two" and you'll know. Thoughts take time. Then perhaps we should stop all thought as well? In that case you're not going to be able to know what a timeless universe is like, or whether it exists in the first place. Knowing takes time as well. At this point we're at the esse est percipi again, but I actually darenot flatout deny it at this point. In this context I can see where people advocating it are coming from.

I'm glad you put 'two' between quotation marks. You're supposing there're two worlds - now stick to it: They're not the same thing. And besides, I think there's a difference between a world with time and one without: The latter would not exist. My intuition is that time and being presuppose each other. You'll have to agree with me that for example height and lenght are quite interchangable. If height becomes lenght and vice versa, you'll just have to tilt your head to get the old picture. I'd say there's no really fundamental difference between the three directions - but there is between spatiality and temporality. To me these really seem to be (two of?) the most fundamental 'axes' of our thinking, and I don't see how one of them might be reduced to the other, or how both of them might be reduced to something even more fundamental.

I'm not into Smith, nor into Tiedeman or Bastiat. Nietzsche, Spinoza, Aristotle, Bacon, Locke and Aquinas I can tell you however, are fundamentally incompatible with objectivism.

Not denying, merely saying that when it really comes down to it, we may me somehow be justified to believe that something is a choice - but that we can never really know for sure that this is a true belief. As such, if you want to be able to speak or think about anything at all, you're going to have to make concessions and identify propositions and the like you're going to take for granted, without being able to completely validate them.

You 're juggling with concepts. It's not very helpful. It really makes no difference. Either time is a measurement of motion, or motion is a measurement of time. Which is more basic? Motion, or time? Whatever be the case, it still leaves us with at least one incomprehensible factor. I've said this before: Things moving presuppose time.

I think that this is how any sane person would access the concept mentally, when giving the matter some serious thought, but still - it explains nothing. Knowing what time looks like (as in, somehow having perceptions of it) isn't the same as knowing what it is.

Quoting philosophers is very flashy of course. Gives a book an intellectual touch - to laymen, that is. You should treat these quotations not as actual content, but as mere figures of speech; empty rhetorics. What do writers of 'public speech course books' think they know of philosophy anyway? And even if they know about it, what business do they have displaying it in non-philosophical works?

Of course, but I was talking about philosophical skepticism, not about feeling skeptical, or having a skeptical sense of life.

Compairing time with lenght might not be a good idea, length being spatial, time not. There's a huge difference there. I have access to all the six basic directions of the universe: I can climb up, or jump down, and take steps forward, backward, to the right and to the left. I can turn my senses to any of these directions as well. But I can't move around in time, nor can I turn my senses towards the future or the past. (Yes, I have memories and I have expectations about what's going to happen next, but this is not something I do by turning my eyes or any other of my senses towards this or that direction.) In contrast to my freedom within the three spatial dimensions, I seem to be locked up within some sort of eternal now. As such, time isn't much of a dimension, taking dimension to mean a being (= verb) extended in two opposite directions. As I said, compairing time with length may be kind of confusing.

Alright then. So "exposure to thinking for oneself can inspire a person to think". What on Earth does that mean?

Who needs the Earth rotating on its axis or revolving around the sun nowadays? We got watches right? But I get your point, time is measured by reference to a (preferably) stable and continuous motion: Time depends on motion. But then again, the exact opposite holds as well: Motion depends on time. "Things happening" presupposes time. I think it'd be more correct to say that time keeps things from not happening at all. Are you saying that esse est percipi? Because I won't buy into that. And what's the intensional object of something that doesn't exist, by my reckoning couldn't even exist, in the first place? But that's not what I was thinking. If I imagine a universe and then delete time from it, my first intuition would be to say that everything in this universe freezes, but does this really mean that in this universe there's no time anymore? I don't think so. It is merely the case that because everything has frozen still, it has become impossible to measure time - but if something can't be measured, does that necessarily mean it doesn't exist? You'll have to agree with me on grounds of simple logic that that's not a sound inference. Change is the only evidence we have of this thing we refer to as time, but I think we shouldn't mistake our perceptions with the thing these perceptions are about.

That's not a very constructive question. How do you know anything is ever a choice?

While this may be a fine description of your own bouts of scepticism and those of a lot of other people, it doesn't hold for philosophical scepticism: It's not as easy as you make it seem. In that case the people who don't hold objectivist points of view don't exactly choose not to do so: You're blaming their 'flawed thinking' on their environment.

Still, theoretically speaking, James Bond could be, while practically everything in the fantasy genre could never be. What's the use of dreaming about the absolutely unreachable?

If this is the gist of it, they're not denying existence is self-evident. Rather, they're (or at least the person you quote is) denying that reality is what we (that is, most people) think it is: In quoting Berkeley, St. Augustine and Descartes this person is not saying that existence isn't self-evident, but that material reality isn't. Which for all I know it actually really isn't. Denying the self-evidence of existence would be to say that Descartes' cogito-argument is false. If anything Descartes (and St. Augustine too I believe) explicitly confirm that existence (of oneself) is self-evident, and I don't doubt Berkeley held similar ideas.

Natural wonders don't have to be either. Someone might have decided to cover them with man-made wonders you know.

Cool, I'd like to be a dragon! Can you teach me? I think there're plenty of people to be admired in this world. I don't think a lack of heroes (or at least a lack of admirable people) is a sufficient explanation for the abundance and popularity of heroes in literature (and comics, etc.).

The hero may somehow be unique in his powers, and therefore more interesting than any common man would be in his stead. It's not like hero's in popular culture are a very modern phenomenon. People have liked to have something to dream about for ages. Btw, it's not all about having something to dream about. As Nietzsche put it: Um den Helden herum wird Alles zur Tragödie... As in, who doesn't like a good story?

Kindly point out that the continued existence of silly comments isn't self-evident either.

I'd like to know what you take 'magic' to mean. In my book, 'magic' may be taken to mean either 'some kind of miracle', or 'some trait of a (fantasy-) world that our universe doesn't have'. My definition of 'miracle' is something that can't be causally explained. In our world, Jezus walking on water and multiplying a couple of fishes to feed thousands are miracles; but in other worlds, where other natural laws hold sway, they may not be miracles, but just natural occurances like any other. However, I'd still call these events magical, because they are governed by laws that don't exist in our universe. But this is all rather stuffy of course. Writers may take 'magic' to mean whatever suits them.

Well take a look at like this: 'Being' and 'existing' are verbs. Verbs are words that describe what the thing they predicate of does. When there's no time, there's nothing one can do, really. Not even just being or existing, I'd say. I think this is of fundamental importance. I am not at all being controversial when I claim that to say what something is, is to describe its function and to describe how it functions - that is, to describe what it does, and how it works. It's important that I'm talking about functions and functions here, because that stresses that teleology is at work here. Fits the Aristotelian picture, and the objectivistic one too, I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

One's imagining takes time as well, so any imagination of existence without time would not really be an image of existence without time. The only correct image of timeless existence then, would be to imagine 'nothing', but imagining is always about 'something'. My conclusion'd be that time is just as basic a given as is existence. But wait, I'm not here to say what I think: I wanted to know some objectivistic points of view. I'll not hold it against you if you don't try to refute me. Not even mentioning that I don't want to bore you.

How about a threat from the inside: Tectonic uproar, climatic catastrophes, a pandemic of some kind of really nasty disease, Matrix-become-real... As if nowadays there's a way out of civilization. Hardly. However, one can always hide one's head in the sand. Internet, and computer games are excellent contemporary ways of doing so I think, especially in combination. And we're still only seeing the beginning of this new era of digitalization...

Basically, you're saying that time presupposes existence, right? But how about the other way around? Can you imagine Existence without time? I'll try to look that up some time.

Well of course people always choose one thing or another. In my mind it is impossible for something to do nothing. That is, nothing is not something that can be done - or to put it differently, we (things that are) always do something. Now, I can imagine myself doing a lot of things tomorrow; there're truly more paths of action for me to take than I can conceive of, yet I am not God and will end up taking only one such path. And this is how it goes with everything that is something: We can imagine a great lot of things to happen to any given entity, but in the end it will end up taking but a single course of action (for as far as I know, at least). One could say that thus everyone (or even everything) chooses its course of action, but then you're missing a fundamental issue. Choosing (being volitional) means that the origin of starting or ceasing movement in a certain direction (towards a certain goal) lies solely within the choosing entity. That is, the choosing entity is forced to take a certain action by nothing but itself - and in order to be worthy of the predicate volitional, this entity should also have been able to choose not to take the action. To get down to earth: How many people do know who, when deciding on what course of action next to take, are influenced by nothing but their own rationality and volition? Mind you, drugs, other people's opinions and environmental conditioning, although they do reside in your body somewhere (I think), are not part of of your rationality or your volition.