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Duration and the Specious Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

The problem I shall discuss is specific, even minute. Yet, being philosophical, it arises and can be profitably discussed only in a context anything but minute, namely, that of a conception of philosophy and its proper method. I could not possibly unfold my conception once more for the sake of a minute problem. Nor do I believe that as things now stand this is necessary. I shall merely recall two propositions which are crucial in the context, and, in stating them, shall freely use its vocabulary. The undefined descriptive terms of the ideal language all refer to phenomenal things wholly presented. These things all are either individuals or characters, and, if characters, either relational or nonrelational. These are the two propositions. It may throw light on another crucial point not always well understood if I imagine someone to ask: Wholly presented to whom ? The answer is: To the person to whose world the philosopher, who, himself always speaks commonsensically, fits the ideal language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 1960 , pp. 39 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 by Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

∗∗

This paper is the result of a five-cornered discussion. Herbert Hochberg proposed the puzzle. Edwin B. Allaire, May Brodbeck, and Reinhardt Grossmann contributed with him to the solution. But it seemed pretentious to put five names to a short paper. So the four agreed to my writing it up. The responsibility, therefore, is mine alone.

References

1 “Some Reflections on Time,” in Il Tempo (Archivio di Filosofia, 1958), 49-82; reprinted in Meaning and Existence (University of Wisconsin Press, 1959); hereafter cited as SRT.

2 The limitation to relational things amounts to the rejection of absolute time. For details see SRT.

3 For details, see SRT.

4 See Meaning and Existence, specially the essay “Intentionality,” but also SRT.

5 See Philosophy of Science (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957).

6 See the last section of SRT.