True.

Has anyone pointed out that such "events" are atemporal, at least as not being themselves tied to time? The accidental changes leading to substantial change are motions and hence temporal. Likewise, the words of the priest involve motion. But substantial change (and, I suppose, the transubstantial change in the Eucharist) are not motions and hence not measure nor constitutive of time.

They are "perfect acts". Likewise, angels can do things, they might be called events, but it is not measure by time.


As I have read more of Spitzer, I have grown more and more to dislike him. His dissertation is full of false dichotomies. He is very tied in with Lonergan, and I suspect via that Kantianism.

pax is presenting some of the same dichotomy, and may I add begging the question. If you assume time is some existent thing, then you get into questions of there being separation of events, etc. But if it isn't existent in that way, if rather it exists as the measure of motion according to before and after, then time is not like an old film, it is continious. It is founded upon motion

Time is not made up of contiguous moments that need some separator (if time were composed that way, well we would have major problems). Rather, reality includes change, and changes that are motion make for time. The past does not exist, nor the future, but only the now and that has no "extension" It is "ever vanishing" Time is not some fabric of the universe presupposed by motion, time rather presupposes motion.

I see nothing in modern physics that goes against that account.

Then what is this space-time continuum that physicists generally refer to? It has always seemed to me that they were speaking of time as something with actual existence. Also, Father Spitzer made a point of defining time as "non-distensive", which I understood to mean "without extension". Help me out here. Explain why these concepts are wrong.

pax, this gets back to the original argument, no? I said that the reification of time was not justified. It shows up like a 4th dimension in mathematical formulas, but that itself does not give support for reifying it.

Your argument in response was that history would be a contradiction. But that is why I have said it seems that your argument that history would be a contradiction is begging the question, since it assumes a reification.

Perhaps I have misunderstood or you misunderstood what point the other was making? I don't so much have a refutation in mind, but only the claim right now that such a move is not justified.


As a side note, I would with non-distensive would mean something that is not distended, or not susceptible to distention. I generally see that term in biology or medicine. Like a distended stomoch. That would make it sound like Spitzer is saying that time cannot be stretched, enlarged, bent.

It's also a shot in the direction of St. Augustine, who decided that time is a distension of the mind. (That's not dogmatic, of course, but one argues with St. Augustine with caution.)

A tool to make predictions about the natural universe.

FTFY

Augustine also says that time began with creation. He implies that time is something created. How does that square with his other description of time?

He says both things in the same book (what we'd call chapter) of the Confessions.

That time is a distension of mind does not mean it has no fundation outside the mind. Kantianism would hold time is the inner form of our apprehension of things, and not founded on things external. But Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine aren't saying that. They are, however, realizing that time as such involves a measure and there a mind. More fundamentally, all of them realize that the past doesn't exist nor the future, but only the now, but the now has no part, and yet time seems like some that is extended.

Time had a definite beginning, and that before man was created. Also, we are fond of saying that all events, past present and future, do indeed exist before God in eternity. I am curious as to how we describe their existence if it is not material.

I have also wondered this myself. This part of philosophy (and science) is beyond my concentration. I know I took courses that covered this sort of thing, but it was a passing thing rather than a focus. I know for a fact that I reject B-Theory. But, as I identify with A-Theory I still sort of find myself not being to completely identify with them either in some regard. One of those concerns is due to the eternal action of God upon all of time. I think this is a valid point to raise.

FJ