Abstract
The empirical inaccessibility of instants is incompatible with the idea that motion can be reduced to being at different places at different times and rest be reduced to being at the same place at different times. If instants are empirically inaccessible, and rest and motion are nothing but a sequence of instantaneous states, rest or motion could not ever be seen or measured. Processes could not be observed any more because they would be nothing but states which could each only be exposed to us or our measuring device at a single instant. But it cannot be doubted that we can observe rest and motion. So if instants are empiricallly inaccessible, which they are, there must be more to motion and rest than the reductionist allows.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
In a different terminology one calls what I have called a definition a criterion; this is a question of terminological convention which has no impact on the content of my approach.
Cf. I, 2.2.1. (b).
Phys. 239b5–9 and 239b30–33.
Cf.ch. I, 2.2.1. (d).
There is abundant literature on the flying arrow paradox. I recommend: Milos Arsenijevic: Eine Aristotelische Logik der Intervalle, die Cantorsche Logik der Punkte und die physikalischen und kinematischen Prädikate, Philosophia Naturalis 29, 1992, Heft 2, pp.161210. Wesley Salmon: Space, Time and Motion, Encino/Calif. 1975 ch.1.
G.E.L. Owen: Zeno and the Mathematicians, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LVIII (1957/58), pp.199–223;
Adolf Grünbaum: Zeno’s Metrical Paradoxes of Extension, in: Wesley Salmon (Hrsg.): Zeno’s Paradoxes, Indianapolis 1970.
Gregory Vlastos: A Note on Zeno’s Arrow, in: Phronesis 11 (1966), pp.3–18.
Jonathan Lear: Aristotle — The Desire to Understand, Cambridge 1988, ch. 3.5. ‘Change’.
This is also the only explanation of why the flying arrow has ever worried anyone after Aristotle. We know it from Physics VI, 9 together with Aristotle’s attempted refutation. If this refutation had been a convincing refutation reaching the crux, the flying arrow would have been an outdated problem from about 400BC on. It has proved not to be so. This does, however, not mean that Aristotle had nothing better to say against Zeno: in my view, Aristotle’s idea that a motion could not consist of results of motion undermines Zeno more significantly than the ‘official’ refutation in Physics VI, 9. Unfortunately, Aristotle does not make explicit how to use this opinion as an objection to Zeno. Something like this is done at the end of section2.
Cf. e.g. Conf. XI, 15 1.23.
Conf. XI, ch. 19 and 20. St. Augustine relies on the empirical accessibility of the present to such an extent that in a famous phrase of ch.20 he suggests replacing all talk of past, present and future with talk of a present of past things, of present things and of future things. This does not quite fit the view that times are measured only as they pass by (XI, 16 1.28) and that the present always tends towards non-being (XI, 14). I take these metaphors to describe a view of time that I am much more sympathetic with.
Thomas Reid: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Glasgow 1785, III, v. “...though in common language we speak with perfect propriety and truth, when we say that we see a body move, and that motion is an object of sense, yet when as philosophers we distinguish accurately the province of sense from that of memory, we can no more see what is past, though but a moment ago, than we can remember what is present: so that speaking philosophically, it is only by the aid of memory that we discern motion, or any succession whatsoever. We see the present place of the body; we remember the successive advance it made to that place. The first can then only give us a conception of motion, when joined to the last.” I have taken the reference to this passage from
Michael Inwood: Aristotle on the Reality of Time, in: Lindsay Judson (ed): Aristotle’s Physics — A Collection of Essays, Oxford 1991, pp.151–178.
Henri Bergson: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. In: Œuvres [1 vol.], Paris 1959, pp.72ff.:”En dehors de moi, dans l’espace, il n’y a jamais qu’une position unique... [d’un objet mouvant], car des positions passées il ne reste rien. Au dedans de moi un processus d’organisation ou de pénétration mutuelle des faits de conscience se poursuit, qui constitue la durée vraie... [L]a succession existe seulement pour un spectateur conscient qui se remémore le passé... le mouvement, en tant que passage d’un point à un autre, est une synthèse mentale, un processus psychique et par suite inétendu. ...[E]n quelque point de l’espace que l’on considère le mobile, on n’obtiendra qu’une position. Si la conscience perçoit autre chose que des positions, c’est qu’elle se remémore les positions successives et en fait la synthèse.”
PM § 447: There is no transition from place to place, no consecutive moment or consecutive position, no such thing as velocity except in the sense of a real number which is the limit of a certain set of quotients [i.e. not a “property belonging at each instant to a moving point”].
Russell: Principles... §447. The reference of the expression’Russell’ here is the person called Bertrand Russell in 1903. This should be noted since it is well known that Russell often changed his opinion on important philosophical matters. A good survey on Russell’s changing ideas on instants is found in M. Capek: The Fiction of Instants, The New Aspects of Time, Dordrecht 1991, pp.43–56. It is mainly about the question in how far one might assume some minimal empirical accessibility of instants. As far as I am aware, Russell held on to the reductionist theory of motion for a lifetime.
Priest: Inconsistencies..., p.340. It is interesting to note how close Priest’s “aggregate of going nowheres” is to Aristotle’s “nothing but results of motion”. Cf. above. Of course, Priest tries to use this as an argument against any comparative definition of motion (as we have seen in ch.II, 3, in his ‘paraconsistent logic’ motion is an instrinsic, self-contradictory, property of an object at an instant). This is not convincing, as the independence of comparative definition and reductionism in Aristotle shows.
Those readers who are addicted to some sort of ‘subject of experience’ may substitute all talk of opening the light stop of a camera in the following by talk of opening an eye and substitute ‘exposure time’ by ‘time of experience’ . They will probably notice after a while that the problems are, in our context, just the same with and without substitution. The fact that it does not matter here if we assume a subject of experience, which performs some sort of spontaneous synthesis, might already cause some mistrust of the snapshot myth: actually, the snapshot myth cannot do without such a subject; for an adherent of it must explain, if there is no flux, how and where the illusion of the flux comes about (cf. the quotation from Bergson above for an example how to do this). Of course, there are subjects of experience. But their existence should be mentioned in an argument only when this is really necessary.
Thls is, of course, not so in reality: even if the light stop could be opened for as short a time as we desired, there are limits to the sensitivity of films.
Unconsciously and in a different context (actually while arguing the opposite) Hamblin expresses this objection by saying that an instant may not be observed “separated from its fellows”. Cf. Hamblin: Starting and Stopping, p.412 and ch.II, 4.
If one absolutely had to give this form of argument a name, it should, alluding to Kant, be called a negative transcendental argument.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strobach, N. (1998). The Snapshot Myth. In: The Moment of Change. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9127-0_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9127-0_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5044-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9127-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive