Descartes' Temporal Dualism

by Lloyd Waller, Rebecca;

  By positing a higher/static time as participated in by the lower/flowing time, Iamblichus gained a solution to the enduring puzzles about the reality of time and provided an explanation for how time could serve as a measure. Lower time is the time of things that endure successively. The time of these flowing, changing entities is a time that would suffer the same tendencies towards non-being that have already been considered; namely, in virtue of the flowing, the lesser time is always merely in a state of becoming rather than in a state of being. Iamblichus’s solution to this problem was to argue that this lower time has its being in virtue of its participating in the static being of the now of the higher time.

  …there is a difference between the now in which things participate in nature, and which is inseparable from things which come to be, and the [now] which is separate and by itself. One of these stands still in the same form consistently; the other is seen in continuous motion.[47]

  By arguing that there are two “nows” in time—the now of lower time and the now of higher time—Iamblichus can ground the being of time in the higher now, while conceding the flowing nature of lower time. In positing these two kinds of time, one can see how Iamblichus’s temporal dualism has links to both absolutist and reductive accounts of time. Whereas “higher time” has characteristics in common within an independent, absolutist account, “lower time” accords with the dependent, reductivist accounts.

  A significant advantage to Iamblichus’s dualist picture is that it allows him to account for how time can serve as a measure. Sorabji notes that Iamblichus’s dualist distinction in time was upheld by Neoplatonists following Iamblichus because his account explained how time could provide a measure for those entities enduring through the flowing stages of lower time. Since time could not serve as a measure of such flowing if it simply “kept pace” with the flowing, there needed to be an external, static time to enable this measurement. As Sorabji explains, “if moving time is to be measured, there will have to be something stationary to measure it.”[48] Iamblicus’s temporal dualism possesses this stationary character in virtue of the higher time which grounds it.

  Though Iamblichus’s account of time indicates him to be one sort of temporal dualist, his account does not seem to commit him to the view that one of these types is an idea dependent on minds (though it is not perfectly clear what type of being his higher time might have possessed).[49] As I earlier indicated, however, there were certain temporal dualists who did maintain that the “measuring time” was a mind-dependent idea. In the Disputationes Metaphysicae, for example, Suarez presented a dualist theory of time, but he divided these two types according to their kinds of dependence. Whereas one kind depended on the existence of enduring substances, the other was a mind-dependent idea. Suarez’s account is a particularly important account in the present context because the Disputationes were so widely used during the seventeenth century.[50] Likewise, the fact that Descartes makes explicit reference to the Disputationes makes it very likely that this text was part of the background knowledge that Descartes employed and presumed.[51]

  Suarez’s account of time develops between the fortieth and fiftieth disputations.[52] Within these disputations, Suarez indicates that there are two types of time which (similar to Iamblichus’s account) differ in their ontological standing. Unlike Iamblichus, Suarez reverses the order of priority between the two types. Whereas Iamblichus had argued that the static, complete time was more ontologically basic than the flowing time found in the enduring of created substances, Suarez maintains that the fundamental nature of time is found in these successive endurings. Though Suarez locates time within this succession, he does not claim that time is some sort of empty timeline in a constant state of becoming. Rather, time is fundamentally tied to being, since time just is the successive enduring of beings in motion.

  […] there is no distinction in a thing between [its] duration […] and that existence of which it is the duration […] For in the same motion, for example in one circulation of heaven, there is the same real duration, because it is the same real existence of such a motion […].[53]

  By defining time as the successive enduring of beings in motion, Suarez has motion play an important role in his definition of time; namely, motion actualizes the potencies of beings to be described numerically. As Suarez claims, “[Time] is not simply the number of a continuum, but the number of the parts of the same continuum, which in the thing is only number in potency, actualized through the operation and numeration of the mind.”[54] As this passage indicates, motion is necessary for bringing the temporal count of a thing from existing in potency to actuality. Motion seems to serve this role in a similar way for Suarez as it did for Aristotle. Motion allows a mind to recognize when a thing has transitioned from before to after, and in recognizing this difference the mind is able to apply a number to the enduring of the thing.

  Though apprehending motions allows a mind to count a thing’s enduring, it is important to remember that the count is not time itself. This counting may require an external cause (i.e., a mind), but the thing counted (i.e., the thing’s enduring) is not an external or accidental feature of a thing. Rather, time is something contained within the very nature of a thing. Indeed, since Suarez locates time within a thing’s very enduring, he frequently refers to time as “intrinsic duration.” Given that Suarez’s position locates time within the enduring of substances, his account has much in common with the reductive accounts; however, it diverges in virtue of its unusual, dualistic character.[55]

  Given that Suarez maintains that the real temporality of enduring substances is found within the successiveness of their natures, this inherent succession could not offer a means of comparing various durations.

  […] in all continuous motion there is intrinsic and real successive duration, and consequently, if the name of time signifies this kind of duration alone, it follows that there is not one and the same time for all motion, but [that time is] multiplied according to the number and multitude of motions, and is various according to the diversity of motions.[56]

  As each substance possesses its own intrinsic duration, such succession only tells us about the number of different stages through which a substance has endured. In counting these stages, one can determine a multiplicity of durations, but this would not provide a means of comparing various durations. In “Seventeenth-Century Scholastic Accounts of Time,” Stephen Daniel explains, “the duration of a particular movement is its own time, measurable by itself alone, and completely encompassing the entire extent of its movement.”[57] Thus, in order to explain how various durations can be compared, Suarez admits an additional, “extrinsic time” as distinct from this “intrinsic” durational.

  The dualistic character of Suarez’s account of time thus arises from his need to identify an objective means of measuring the various intrinsic durations. To gain this objective measure, Suarez posits “imaginary time” or “extrinsic time.” Imaginary/extrinsic time possesses the successive character of intrinsic durations but lacks their inherence (i.e., it is not found within the duration of any specific substance).[58] Suarez conceived imaginary time as offering an external, objective standard within which real, intrinsic durations coexist in their enduring.[59] This coexistent time provides a second means counting the enduring of a thing. There is the count of the thing’s real, intrinsic duration (determined by its own motions), and there is the count of this external measure that can be applied to a thing to get a (possibly) different count. Suarez makes it clear that this count is distinct from the count found in intrinsic duration.

  The duration of a movement can be considered by comparison with, and as coexistent with, an imaginary succession which we apprehend as infinite; and in this sense, the duration which is in a swift movement through an equal space is smaller, and in a slow movement it is longer because it coexists and in a way fills up (as I call it) a greater or lesser part of that imaginary time. But it is not the same thing, for the duration of a movement has anoth
er extent or succession apart from the movement itself.[60]

  Insofar as the imaginary succession is distinct from a thing’s intrinsic duration, the imaginary succession does not tell us about the intrinsic nature of the thing itself. To understand the fundamental nature of a thing one would consider its intrinsic duration. To compare the duration of one thing to another, however, one would look to this second, coexisting succession.

  Like intrinsic time, Suarez’s imaginary/extrinsic time is tied up with motion. Suarez claims, “the imaginary flowing period is conceived as totally necessary and immutable in its flux.”[61] In such phrases, one sees that extrinsic time is characterized by movement (e.g., by a “flowing” or “flux”). This is not surprising, since Suarez is committed to movement being the ground that actualizes the numerical character of any succession; however, this requirement is somewhat problematic. As motion characterizes specific bodies and his imaginary time is supposed to be an external succession applicable to all bodies, Suarez’s account of imaginary time must be drawn (in part) from some specific motions, but cannot be confined to these motions. It is here that Suarez appeals to the celestial motions (for much the same reason as the celestial reductionists did). Suarez argues that

  We conclude that time is unique in the universe because it has its own meaning of extrinsic measurement, viz., in the movement of the heavens… Understood as an extrinsic measurement and as common to other movements, it is taken partly from nature as it fundamentally exists, or inchoative (as I call it), and partly from a division through reason and an accommodation of it as a means of measurement; and in this way there is only one time, and it is the movement of the heavens. . . From its very usage it is very well enough known, for however often we want to determine the duration of some action or inferior movement, we compare it with the movement of the heavens so that we might understand it.[62]

  Extrinsic time relies on the celestial motions as offering a standard duration that can serve as a common measure for all other intrinsic durations. Like all motions, the motions of the celestial bodies possess an intrinsic duration, and like all other motions, their duration is particular to themselves. However, the numerical ordering of these particular motions can serve as an external measure for all other motions once an enumeration of the motions is abstracted as an idea (e.g., “from nature as it fundamentally exists”) and then modified (e.g., partly from a division through reason and an accommodation of it as a means of measurement”). The mind must modify the original idea by adding, for example, that the celestial motions are non-repetitive, necessary, and immutable.[63] By imaginary time existing as a rationally modified idea, Suarez’s imaginary time avoids certain limits of celestial reductionism; namely, the succession can be rationally stipulated to be perfectly regular and eternal and thereby avoids questions about when it began, or what if it stopped, slowed, and so forth.

  An analysis of Suarez’s intrinsic and extrinsic accounts of time makes it evident that the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic duration turns on the distinction between the measure and the thing measured. In his article on Suarez’s concept of time, Constantino Esposito highlights this relationship.

  It is true that the measurement of a thing is a cognitive operation extrinsic to the thing itself, nevertheless the measurability of a thing in time coincides with the certainly not extrinsic fact that this thing has a duration of such a nature that it can be temporally measured.[64]

  In other words, for Suarez, the measure of a thing is always extrinsic to a thing since it requires a mind to determine the measure. The thing measured, however, is not extrinsic to a thing because what is measured is part of a thing’s very nature. A similar divide is evident if one looks back at the higher/lower time theory of Iamblichus. Iamblichus’s distinction between the measure and the thing measured posited that the measure (higher time) possesses its measuring capacity in virtue of its stable and complete existence, whereas the thing measured (lower time) required an external measure in virtue of its being in the fragile state of becoming. Though the distinction between the measure and thing measured was one discussed by many of Descartes’ predecessors, the temporal dualists were unique in positing that time was not merely one or the other. Rather, the temporal dualists posited that time was found both in the measure and in the thing measured.

  Is time an independent or dependent entity? Temporal dualists give different answers to this question. Iamblichus offers one independent kind of time—higher time, and one dependent kind—lower (dependent on higher). Suarez offers two dependent types: intrinsic time which is dependent on the existence of an enduring body (as it is identical to this enduring), and extrinsic time which is dependent on minds to formulate the idea of it.

  What is the relation between time and motion? According to Suarez, both types are dependent on motion to some extent. Intrinsic time depends on motion to actualize the potential of a duration to be conceived numerically; whereas extrinsic time depends on the particular motions of the celestial bodies to give rise to the idea that reason then modifies. According to Iamblichus, neither type is dependent on motion.

  What is the relation between time and minds? According to Suarez, one of the two types is independent (intrinsic time) and the other is dependent (extrinsic time). For Iamblichus, it seems that both are independent of minds.

  Conclusion

  Having briefly outlined four of the major approaches to time offered by Descartes’ predecessors and contemporaries, several important points have been made. First, it seems that all of the four traditions were prevalent in the intellectual culture surrounding Descartes to a degree sufficient for them to have influenced Descartes’ views. Second, it is clear that all of the various traditions formulated their accounts according to a similar framework of ideas, that is, as ways to address a similar set of questions and problems. Third, three central questions suggest themselves as being particularly relevant to understanding temporal accounts of this time period; namely: (1) Is time an independent or dependent entity? (2) What is the relation between time and motion? And, (3) What is the relation between time and minds? As answers to these questions structured the various accounts of Descartes’ predecessors, it seems appropriate to analyze Descartes’ account via a similar structure.

  Notes

  1. Julia Annas, “Aristotle, Number and Time,” The Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1975): 102.

  2. I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctine’s Vol. II: Plato on Knowledge of Reality (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).

  3. Annas, “Aristotle, Number and Time,” 102.

  4. See Piero Ariotti, “Toward Absolute Time: The Understanding and Refutation of the Aristotelian Conception of Time in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Annals of Science 30 (1973): 145; Piero Ariotti, “Celestial Reductionism of Time: On the Scholastic Conception of Time from Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to the End of the 16th Century,” Studio Internazionale di Filosofia 5 (1972): 531–532; Richard Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 82; Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 10–12; Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959).

  5. Sambursky, Physical World, 11.

  6. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, 100–101.

  7. Including perhaps Boethius, Damascius, Galen, Plotinus, and Bernardino Telesio. See discussions in Ariotti, “Toward Absolute Time,” Sambursky, “Physical World,” and Sorabji, Time Creation and the Continuum.

  8. Quoted in Ariotti, “Towards Absolute Time,” 160.

  9. Pierre Gassendi, The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, ed. and trans. Craig B. Brush (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1972), 395.

  10. Gassendi, Selected Works, 384.

  11. Gassendi, Selected Works, 394ff.

  12. Physics IV.11; 219b1, in Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton:
Bollingen Series, 1995), 372.

  13. See, for example, Ariotti, “Celestial Reductionism,” 91–120.

  14. Ariotti, “Celestial Reductionism,” 93.

  15. When considering the nature of time, Aristotle determines that it must be continuous, uniform, eternal, and universal. Accordingly, Aristotle claims, “regular circular motion is above all else the measure, because the number of this is the best known…This is also why time is thought to be the movement of the sphere, viz. because the other movements are measured by this, and time by this movement.”(Physics IV.14 ; 223b18–2) However, given that Aristotle only here contends that time is “thought to be” this movement, while he previously claimed that time is “simply number of continuous movement, not of any particular kind of it,” (Physics IV.14; 223a35) it is certainly not obvious that Aristotle himself thought that time was a feature of particular celestial motions.

  16. Summa Theologica 1.10.6, in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, ed. Anton C. Pegis (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1945): 82; see also Commentary on the Physics at 4.17.