The Nature Of Time

junio 21, 2007 at 9:02 pm (akurion3, Blogroll, la nave de los locos 2, representa)

Author: Humberto Maturana R.
Date: November 27, 1995.

17 comentarios

  1. akurion said,

    junio 26, 2007 a 7:49 pm

    LIVING
    Living takes place in the now, in the moment in which it is taking place. Living is a dynamics that disappears as it takes place. Living takes place in no time, without past or future. Past, present and future are notions that we human beings, we observers, invent as we explain our ocurrence in the now. We invent past as a source of the now or present, and we invent future as a dimension that arises as an extrapolation of the features of our living now, in the present. As past, present and future, are invented to explain our living now, time is invented as a background in which past, present and future can take place. But life, living, takes place as now, as a flow of changing processes.

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  2. akurion said,

    junio 26, 2007 a 7:56 pm

    we are, as living systems, structure determined systems

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  3. akurion said,

    junio 26, 2007 a 8:04 pm

    a). Languaging as a manner of flowing in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior, is a manner of living in coordinations of doings, not a manner of symbolizing the features of an independent reality. That is, languaging is a manner of living in doing things together in the particular domain of consensual doings in which the languaging is taking place through the flow of the interactions of the participants. We human beings exist in language, and as we language we can say nothing outside language.
    b). The way that we participate in the flow of languaging at any instant arises as a result of our interactions at that instant according to our structure at that instant. So, what we do in language at any moment is determined by our structure at that moment regardless of how we became with that structure at that moment.
    c). The main result of our recursive interactions in language is that our structure changes in manner contingent to the course of our languaging in the flow of those inteeractions. That is, we become in our structure moment after moment according to the course of our languaging, and we language moment after moment according to our structure at that moment.
    d). We human beings exist in language; that is we are the kind of beings that we are as we operate in language and we arise in our languaging in the flow of our recursive consensual coordiantions of consensual coordinations of behaviors. Or, in other words, we exist in a close dynamics of languaging and everything that we do as humans takes place in our languaging as a flow of consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behavior. So, all that we say or may say, all that we may distinguish as we do what we do as observers (as human languaging beings), takes place as an operation in consensual coordinations of behaviors without making any reference to any thing outside our languaging. Whether we act as ordinary humans, philosophers, biologists, psysicists, artists, or what ever, in the same.
    e). Objects arise with language as consensual coordinations of behaviors that coordinate behaviors. As consensual coordinations of behaviors the coordinations of behaviors that constitute the objects operate as tokens for coordinations of behaviors, and as such obscure the behaviors that they coordinate. Furthermore, in the recursive consensual coordination of consensual coordinations of behavior of the flow of languaging, many domains of objects arise as different kinds of operations in coordinations of behavior become tokens for coordinations of doings in different domains of consensual coordinations of doings.
    f). Ideas, concepts, notions, … constitute domains of objects that arise as abstractions from other domains of objects, and give rise to domains of coordinations of doings that they define or are defined through them. As the different kinds of objects correspond to different operations of coordinations of behaviors, abstract objects (ideas, concepts, notions) constitute the fundament for theoretical systems that bring forth coordinations of behaviors in the domains of consensual coordinations of behaviors from which they are abstractions.
    In our culture we live our existing in language as if language were a symbolic system for referring to entities of different kinds that exist independently from what we do, and we treat even ourselves as if we existed outside language as independent entities that use language. Time, matter, energy, … would be some of those entities. Such attitude leads us to act as if we could characterize those entities in terms of their instrinsic independent nature, which I claim cannot be done because as soon as we say anything, what we bring about takes place in a domain of languaging as an operation in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior.

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  4. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 1:43 am

    c). The main result of our recursive interactions in language is that our structure changes in manner contingent to the course of our languaging in the flow of those inteeractions. That is, we become in our structure moment after moment according to the course of our languaging, and we language moment after moment according to our structure at that moment.

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  5. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 1:46 am

    e). Objects arise with language as consensual coordinations of behaviors that coordinate behaviors(…)

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  6. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 1:48 am

    (…) In our culture we live our existing in language as if language were a symbolic system for referring to entities of different kinds that exist independently from what we do, and we treat even ourselves as if we existed outside language as independent entities that use language. Time, matter, energy, … would be some of those entities. Such attitude leads us to act as if we could characterize those entities in terms of their instrinsic independent nature, which I claim cannot be done because as soon as we say anything, what we bring about takes place in a domain of languaging as an operation in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior (…)

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  7. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 1:50 am

    (…) The main consequence of our existing in language is that we cannot speak about what is outside it, not even imagine something outside language in a way that would make any sense outside it (…)

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  8. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 1:58 am

    (…) Or, in other words, knowledge is something that we atribute to ourselves or to some other when we see what we consider adequate behavior in a particular domain in ourselves or in the other, and we frequently use the attribution of knowledge for doing something together in some domain of coordinations of behaviors. If we are not aware of this situation, we act treating knowledge as a manner of referring to entities that are assumed to exist in reality, that is, in a domain of entities that exist with independence of what we human beings do. In these circumstances the search for knowledge becomes a never ending quest of the thing in itself.
    That knowledge is not, and cannot be a manner of referring to a domain of entities that exist with independence of what we humans do as languaging beings, is not a limitation or insufficiency in the domain of knowledge, it is a constitutive feature of the phenomenon of knowledge. In fact, that knowledge should be a manner of living together in consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors, is the condition that makes knowledge a domain always open to transformation, and human life open to continuous transformation through knowledge as experiences arise in human life from nothing (chaos) (…)

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  9. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:03 am

    (…) Therefore, that which we connote with the word time cannot be a thing in itself.
    In our culture the notion of time is used as an explanatory notion or principle in the same way that the notion of reality is used. But if we are aware of this situation, and we are aware that the word time cannot refer to an entity that exists independently of what we do, we must ask our questions differently as we ask about to that which we connote in daily and thecnical life when we use the word time. What features of the coherences of our experiences do we connote or abstract as we use the word time (…)

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  10. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:04 am

    b). I maintain that the word time connotes an abstraction of the ocurrence of processes in sequences as we distinguish them in the coherences of our experiences. As we distinguish sequences of processes, we also distinguish simultaneity of procesees as a feature of our experiential coherences that we connotes with the expression «at the same time». Such an abstraction is made possible in the first place, because in the operation of our nervous system sequences of activities are distinguished as configuration of relations of activities on the surface of the nerve cells in the generation of the nerve impulses. As a result that which from the perspective of an observer is an operation in time, in the distinction of time as an abstraction of a process appear as an operation in the present.

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  11. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:05 am

    c). At the moment of the abstraction of the relation of sequence in the distinction that we call time, time arises in the experience of the observer with directionality and irreversibility. Even in the case in which we distinguish cyclical reversible processes, we make such a distinction in the context of the directional irreversibility of time that permits the distinction of the sequence process and its reverse as a process configuration that we call reversible time. So, reversible time is an abstraction of a particular irreversible and directional experience.

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  12. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:06 am

    d). Once time arises as a distinction in the domain of the experiences of the observer it becomes an operational entity that in our culture appears as having independence from what the observer does. An this is so because once time has arisen it can be used by the observer (any one of us as a languaging being) in his or her reflections on the regularities of his or her experiences precisely because it arises as an abstraction of the regularities of his or her experiences. With the notion of time, therefore, happens the same as with the notion of structural determinism that is also an abstraction from the regularities of the experiences of the observer, which can be use to deal with the regularities of the coherencees of the observer precisely because it arises as an abstraction from them.

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  13. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:07 am

    e). I consider that what I have said is valid in any domain, including, of course, physics. The domain of physics arises as a domain of explanations of certain kinds of experiential coherences of the observer through the use of certain kinds of experiential coherences of the observer. So, physics is not a primary domain of existence, it is a particular domain of explanations of a particular domain of experiential coherences of the observer. Theoretical notions are abstractions of the experiential coherences of the observer in some domain, or at least are intended to be so. Due to that condition, theories are operationally effective only in the domain where they apply as such abstractions.

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  14. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:09 am

    f). Unidirectional time and reversible time arise as theoretical notions in physics as abstractions that the observer makes of his or her experiential coherences and that he or she denotes with the words time and reversibility. As theoretical notions unidirectional time and reversible time can be handled as entities that have operational effectiveness in the experiential domain from which they are abstractions. That seems obvious. What is not so obvious, however, is that we frequently forget that unidirectional time and reversible time are indeed abstractions of the experiential coherences of the observer as I have indicated above. When the latter happens, we treat unidirectional time and reversible time as if they were entities that exist independently from what we do as observer, or as if they were reflections or representations of such independent entities, and we generate conceptual and operational conflicts. When the latter happens we do not even see that mathematical formulations in theoretical propositions arise only as effective in their coherences as the abstraction of the coherences of the experiences that they represent.
    As the notion of time has been generated as an abstraction of our experiences of sequences of processes in the many dimensions and forms of our human existence, it has been generated in relation to the multiplicity of forms in which we live. As a result there are as many forms of time as forms of abstracting the regularities of the experiences of processes and sequences of processes. Thus we speak of fast and slow time, passing time, letting time pass, having or not having time, time coincidence, networks of time, simultaneity, … in many different fields of experiences, and in all cases we refer to the same kind of abstraction in the domain of sequences of processes. Indeed, each domain has its own time dynamics as it has its own process dynamics. The awarenes that the notion of time arises as an abstraction from the coherences of the experiences of the observer that he or she uses as an explanatory notion is not a problem. What becomes a problem in the long run, is the unaware adoption of the notion of time as an explanatory principle that is accepted as a matter of course giving to it a trascendental ontological status.

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  15. akurion said,

    julio 4, 2007 a 2:14 am

    (…) Experience arises spontaneously literally out of nothing, or, if we wish, from chaos, from a domain about which we can say nothing which does not arise from the coherences of our experiences. This that I say is valid for any domain of experiences, be this life, physics, quantum physics, human relations, … All these different domains of experiences are experiential domains lived as domains of explanations of our experiences with our experiences. But our experiences are not disordered, they arise coherent as the arise in us from nothingness. So, we exist in this wonderful experiential situation in which we as observers that exist in the present, are the source of everything, even of that which we may treat in the coherences of our experiences as observers as entities that through their operation give rise to the operation of observing and the explainig of their occurrence in a closed domain of explanations. The great temptation is to transform the abstractions of the coherences of our experiences that we distinguish with notions such as reality, existence, reason, space consciousness … or time, into explanatory principles.

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  16. The Nature Of Time. Humberto Maturana R. | fichero akurion said,

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