St. Augustine
Augustine’s treatment of time occurs in the eleventh book of the Confessions,
and is connected to his investigation of the opening words of Genesis.
1. There's no sense in asking what God did before creation because
time itself is a creature. God, as for Boethius, is in eternal present.
Hence, God precedes all things, including time, ontologically but not
temporally.
2. Time seems something we all know well; however, upon further
analysis it turns out to be something we barely understand.
Some say its the motion of the heavens. But this cannot be right because:
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if motion of heavens stops but a potter's wheel spins, could it not turn
faster or slower? Moreover, scripture tells us that the sun stopped and
yet time went on
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by time we measure the motion of bodies, and so that of the heavens.
3. The issue is so complicated that If no one asks me what
time is, I know; if one asks me, I do not know. And yet, we can say a
few things:
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if nothing passed away, no past; if nothing were coming, no future; if
nothing were, no present.
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the past doesn't exist anymore; the future doesn't exist yet; the present
must be transient, from future to past (otherwise it would be eternity),
and it cannot be extended, otherwise it would overlap with past and future.
NOTES:
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time, then, involves a flux from future through present to past.
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temporal existence is taken to be equivalent to “being in the present.”
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The treatment of the lack of extension of the present is identical to
Aristotle's
4. The non-existence of past and future and the restriction of existence
to an extensionless present are seemingly incompatible with two
activities we engage in every time: relating the past (and foretelling
the future), and measuring time.
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Relating the past and foretelling the future are not possible because what
is not (past and future) cannot be related or foretold
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Measuring time is not possible because:
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We cannot measure past and future since they do not exist (what is not,
cannot be measured). How, then, can we say “a long time past” or “ a long
time to come”?.
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We cannot measure the present because it has no extension.
NOTE:
a similar problem in involved in the attempt to explain how we can
measure the duration of anything, e.g. a sound. It cannot be measured
before or after it exists, and we cannot measure while its present, otherwise
we don't measure the whole of it.
In short, we cannot measure past and future because they don't exist;
we cannot measure the present because it's unextended; we cannot measure
passing time because it's not complete.
5. Augustine’s solution:
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When we relate the past or foretell the future, we behold our present
memories of things past (effects of past causes) and consider present
“signs” of future things (causes of future events).
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When I temporally measure things, I don't measure things themselves, but
my representations of them: I measure the “protraction” of the impressions
of things in the mind. For example, a “long future is a long expectation
of the future;” a “long past a long memory of the past.”
NOTES:
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Hence, time is a protraction of the mind: the future is expectation, the
present enduring consideration, and the past memory.
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But why is measuring representations (instead of the things represented)
a solution? Cannot all the arguments about things be reproposed about
representations of things? The answer is that a long past is not a
“long memory of the past” in the sense that it's a memory which lasts
a long time, but an (instantaneous?) memory of a long past (that is,
temporal length is not a formal feature of the memory, but an intentional
feature of it).