Article The consciousness of time distinguishes mind from matter

[C C]

As has been pointed out on countless occasions, an interval of conscious experience or the brain's perception of change (measured in milliseconds) is too extended for the insanely rapid rate that an objective world would be replacing itself in order for the latter to accommodate its subatomic events (i.e, discrete "nows" that would be measured by a Planck unit of time at maximum). A human is practicing temporal solipsism when he/she projects their absurdly lethargic standard for change onto a non-represented, realist's version of the universe (when the latter is conforming to the folk-theory of presentism).
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Consciousness breaks from the physical world by keeping the past alive
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-br..._auid=2020

INTRO: Conscious experiences of change, from seeing a bird take flight to listening to a melody, cannot be broken down into ever smaller units of experience. They must inhabit what William James called the “specious present,” a sliding window of time where the immediate past and present overlap. Philosopher Lyu Zhou argues that this exposes a deep rift between mind and matter. When the physical world undergoes change, it does so through succession – one physical state replaces another, and the past is gone – whereas consciousness requires the active retention of the past inside the present, revealing its fundamentally non-physical nature.

EXCERPT: You seem to have a stream of consciousness in which various states come and pass away in time. These states appear before, after, or at the same time as one another along a temporal dimension that is very much like a continuous extended line. It is not without reason that it is often spoken of as a timeline. However, the sum of any number of zeros must remain zero. Likewise, the addition of any number of durationless instants -- snapshot experiences -- cannot give you any continuous extended timeline.

The issue is that it is difficult to put together anything like a continuous stream of consciousness if what you have is nothing but a sum of snapshot experiences. It is indeed true that if you look at photo snapshots of a moving object in quick succession, you will experience a continuous change rather than a jumpy series of discrete static states. This is a famous optical illusion ... phenomenon, which movies utilize. However, your experience in this case is no longer a snapshot, even though it is the photo snapshots perceived in quick succession that give rise to the illusion. Rather, the illusory experience of yours has a temporal span in which the perceived object appears in different states and hence appears as changing continuously.

Therefore, your immediate present consciousness is an extended whole: it is not like a snapshot, but like a short movie...

[...] There is indeed a sense in which this temporal field of yours has shorter durations as its parts. But these parts are mere conceptual abstractions and are therefore derivative from the whole. You can conceive of one of them only if you start with the basic unit, divide it further in thought, and then abstract the part you want from the whole. Strictly speaking, you never experience this part by itself...

[...] Hence your immediate present consciousness is in an important sense holistic. Its parts cannot be conceived to exist except derivatively by abstracting from the whole...

[...] No physical system is holistic in this way. What is physical does not have this special property of the whole coming before the parts or the parts depending on the whole for their existence. ... Unlike the parts of your immediate present consciousness, these physical parts are not mere abstractions but can exist on their own even when the whole ceases to exist. This is true of any physical system. You can likewise break down a stone, a tree, a car, or a brain into smaller chunks of matter or even fundamental particles. The wholes will cease to exist, but the parts into which they are broken can still continue to exist on their own. Therefore, no physical system is holistic in the way your immediate present consciousness is. Because of this structural discrepancy, your immediate present consciousness cannot be a physical system.

[...] If consciousness is not physical, what is it? On my view there are two possibilities. Unfortunately I do not know which one is true. One possibility is that it is fundamental. At the bottom level of reality, there is consciousness. There is no further explanation for it in terms of other even more fundamental entities. It itself is already fundamental. If you want to know what it is, turn inside yourself and feel it. It is your oldest acquaintance, since you are ever conscious.

The other possibility is that consciousness is not fundamental but is grounded in something more fundamental. I must confess that I have no idea what this more fundamental entity could be. But whatever it is, it cannot be physical. Can anyone ever know what it is -- and not just what it is not? I am skeptical. We cannot empirically observe it. We only have access to its effects -- our consciousness. Perhaps here lies the ultimate limit of human knowledge. Perhaps here we should be silent out of intellectual humility... (MORE - missing details)

[Syne]

As has been pointed out on countless occasions, an interval of conscious experience or the brain's perception of change (measured in milliseconds) is too extended for the insanely rapid rate that an objective world would be replacing itself in order for the latter to accommodate its subatomic events (i.e, discrete "nows" that would be measured by a Planck unit of time at maximum). A human is practicing temporal solipsism when he/she projects their absurdly lethargic standard for change onto a non-represented, realist's version of the universe (when the latter is conforming to the folk-theory of presentism). 

I guess you don't see the contradiction in believing in eternalism and quipping about the difference between the physical and perceived rate of change. Both are equally illusory, right? If so, it makes no difference how wide the illusory slice of the spacetime block.

OTHO, why would presentism correspond to a Planck time "now"? Wouldn't that presuppose that change in the entire universe "beats" in sync? If not, wouldn't different frames of reference also time Planck-level events differently? Wouldn't Lorentz dilation alone require a universal extended "now," where different frames of reference observe the same spacetime events in different orders?

So how is your quibble justified by eternalism, and how is presentism incompatible with a realist's view?

[C C]

I guess you don't see the contradiction in believing in eternalism and quipping about the difference between the physical and perceived rate of change. Both are equally illusory, right? If so, it makes no difference how wide the illusory slice of the spacetime block. [...]

Where is eternalism mentioned? It's wholly within the context of presentism. The latter essentially asserts that only a universal now fleetingly exists, which would have to accommodate subatomic changes, not the "elephant-sized" duration of an interval of human consciousness that extends over a vast quantity of whatever micro-units of time (whether attosecond to quectosecond to Planck time unit as a contender for the global rate of presentism's "passage" of time). Thereby nuking the view's underlying contention that multiple nows, changes, or different states cannot or do not co-exist.

It's a matter of overall coherence, or can people who posit _X_ address the consequences that fall out of it, or do they just ignore such? The latter is what the advocates do with respect to presentism (they usually, naively reify their own subjective or brain-based perception of change as the pace that the world replaces itself), and accordingly there's no incentive for a critical observer to adopt their special status or preference for that belief.

[Syne]

Calling presentism a "folk-theory" certainly seems to imply that eternalism is favored.

As I explained, assuming the universe has one, singular Planck time "now" doesn't follow, from presentism nor relativity. The only theory in which you could slice a "now" so arbitrarily finely would be eternalism, where the future is already set. Trying to do so in presentism would not be possible, as one reference frame's "now" would have simultaneous events that another frame's "now" would not, which would be a contradiction in "what exists."

But since we know how to do transformations between reference frames, we can construct the "now" shared by any two reference frames. This means that presentism is a collection of local "nows" rather than a shared, universal moment.

[Magical Realist]

If consciousness is not physical, what is it? On my view there are two possibilities. Unfortunately I do not know which one is true. One possibility is that it is fundamental. At the bottom level of reality, there is consciousness. There is no further explanation for it in terms of other even more fundamental entities. It itself is already fundamental. If you want to know what it is, turn inside yourself and feel it. It is your oldest acquaintance, since you are ever conscious.

Deep down inside, in the center-most recesses of our very being, everyone has a ringside seat to the whole mysterious she-bang--kissing cousin to the Big Bang--where consciousness itself gives birth to everything we can see and experience in one instant. We have been unraveling the full contents of this one instant for all our lives like a one dimensional movie reel, and will continue doing so long after we exhale our last dying gasp.

[C C]

Calling presentism a "folk-theory" certainly seems to imply that eternalism is favored.

Presentism was around before philosophers formalized it (it corresponds to the everyday or non-critical orientation about time that even primitive peoples had -- ergo the "folk" classification). Whereas eternalism at best (in some crude precursor form) only goes back to Parmenides perhaps. Barring some faction of Eastern thought having ventured there earlier, but that's still the late period when humans became thinkers or reasoners.

Granted though, since the different states of things co-exist in eternalism, that allows the lengthier nature of mental experience or a conscious snapshot to extend over as long a stretch of interactions at the molecular, atomic, and subatomic level that it needs to. Eternalism becomes a solution for that, but it means departing presentism rather than fixing it (or seeking an ontology that it conforms better to).

Since presentism already entails the universe falling out of a regulated procedure outputting successive short-lived states, process philosophy like scenarios are what it actually seems well adapted to. Maybe specifically simulation or Berkeleian immaterialism -- rather than a "physical universe" of multiple levels (from micro to macrocosmic) that exists in its entirety completely independent of observers.

In a simulation or Berkeleian immaterialism context, the world could be economically maintained to revolve around the observers, to only satisfy coherence in that context. Both the stratum of atoms/particles and that of the macrocosmic level could be demoted to perceptual appearances that are generated when necessary, rather than having independent, sustained existence. With merely the rate of brain experience or the mind's cognitive increments being needed as a distinct unit for changes or the duration of a Now.

Neuroscientists might object that even a particular individual's cognitive "snapshots" vary irregularly, but still... Just by slowing down the rate of change or the value of a universal Now up to a level of over 200 milliseconds, it's at least allowing those "temporally huge" snapshots of consciousness a slot to fit in, whereas they are vastly too extended for the narrow duration of a Planck time (or whatever proposed objective temporal unit) to fully accommodate the range of subatomic interactions or changes.

Christof Koch: These clinical observations demonstrate that under normal circumstances, temporal splitting of sensations is barely, if ever, noticeable to us. Our perception seems to be the result of a sequence of individual snapshots, a sequence of moments, like individual, discrete movie frames that, when quickly scrolling past us, we experience as continuous motion.

[...] Depending on the study, the duration of such snapshots is between 20 and 200 milliseconds. We do not know yet whether this discrepancy reflects the crudeness of our instruments or some fundamental quality of neurons. Still, such discrete perceptual snapshots may explain the common observation that time sometimes seems to pass more slowly or quickly. --The Movie in Your Head

As I explained, assuming the universe has one, singular Planck time "now" doesn't follow, from presentism nor relativity. The only theory in which you could slice a "now" so arbitrarily finely would be eternalism, where the future is already set. Trying to do so in presentism would not be possible, as one reference frame's "now" would have simultaneous events that another frame's "now" would not, which would be a contradiction in "what exists."

But since we know how to do transformations between reference frames, we can construct the "now" shared by any two reference frames. This means that presentism is a collection of local "nows" rather than a shared, universal moment.

Planck time purely chosen as a standard over everything from the attosecond to the quectosecond because it's supposedly "temporally small" enough to house any real particle event that the rapidly changing subatomic stratum could potentially offer.

Julian Barbour's conception of a "Now" (below) could ironically be adapted to presentism and enable it to accommodate relativity. Objects or clusters of entities that are traveling slower or faster in relation to others would respectively change slower or faster in the course of a sequence of Nows replacing each other.

Akin to the distinct frames of a video that illustrate such by splitting the screen in half, and showing a person back on Earth aging faster than another individual in a rocketship traveling closer to the speed of light. Both of the completely different rates of change are components of each Now that follows in sequence (distinct frames of the video). In GR, the effects of gravity and warped space on the "passage" of time could be similarly mimicked.

But the Now would again actually have to be of a higher duration or temporal length that could harbor the extended character of a snapshot of consciousness, rather than ultra-thin, rapid interactions at the atomic and subatomic stratum. The territory again that simulation, Berkeleian immaterialism, etc could arguably accommodate (by demoting the rank in importance of levels below and beyond the immediate attention of the observers, while still maintaining an appearance of overall coherence).

https://www.edge.org/conversation/julian...nd-of-time

JB: Didn't Einstein abolish Nows?

BARBOUR: In fact no. He only showed that they do not follow one another in a unique sequence. There is no absolute simultaneity in the universe, or at least not in the classical universe. But relative simultaneity remains...

[...] BARBOUR: My basic idea is that time as such does not exist. There is no invisible river of time. But there are things that you could call instants of time, or 'Nows'. As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows, and the question is, what are they? They are arrangements of everything in the universe relative to each other in any moment, for example, now.

[...] The interconnected totality becomes my basic thing, a Now. There are many such Nows, all different from each other. That's my ontology of the universe — there are Nows, nothing more, nothing less.

[Syne]

I fail to see why the minimal time for quantum events must be the standard by which a "now" is measured. It's just reductionist for the sake of reductionism.