Real Time

A Brief Explanation of Real Time

It is perhaps best to begin our ontological analysis of time without making recourse to locomotion (which combines space and time). This may be done by looking at a non-spatial change such as death. Let us suppose a cat dies. One of the most apparent ontological truths about this occurrence is that “the state before” and “the state after” cannot be coincident. If they were, it would be an obvious contradiction (the cat simultaneously alive and dead). This, of course, is the problem with all history. Changed existential states in any specific entity cannot be coincident without contradiction. Therefore, wherever there is change, indeed, wherever there is changeability, there must also be some existential non-coincidence which allows differing states to occur within a single entity (e.g., a cat). Let us sum up this initial definition of time as “the existential non-coincidence necessary for the possibility of changed states within a single entity.” If this existential non-coincidence were not objectively real, changeable beings and changeable states within the same being would have to be simultaneous, and therefore intrinsically contradictory, and therefore impossible. In view of this, time may also be defined as, “that without which all history is a contradiction.”

At this point, one will want to ask, “What is ‘existential non-coincidence?’” or “How does it manifest itself?” The temptation here is to spatialize it, by, for example, inserting a spatial continuum between “the cat alive” and “the cat dead.” Though this may be very satisfying from the vantage point of human imagination, it leads to a host of problems. To begin with, our cat both alive and dead is in the same place, and the separation of its existential states is not describable by an extensive – spatial – separation. Yet, the cat’s change does require a non-extensive separation (frequently termed “a distensive separation”). One must be careful here not to visualize distensive separation as a three-dimensional continuum, otherwise one will be imposing a quasi-spatial continuum between events.

Henri Bergson wrestled with this problem, and finally made recourse to a kind of “protomentalist unified separation of existential states” which he termed “elementary memory.” He supposed that this elementary memory existed in the universe as a whole, as a kind of very “elementary cosmic consciousness.” In a famous passage in Duration and Simultaneity, he noted:

What we wish to establish is that we cannot speak of a reality which endures without inserting consciousness into it.^[2]

In order to show this, he constructs a thought experiment in which he assumes the above existential non-coincidence of incompatible states:

We shall have to consider a moment in the unfolding of the universe, that is, a snapshot that exists independently of any consciousness, then we shall try conjointly to summon another moment brought as close as possible to the first, and thus have a minimum amount of time enter into the world without allowing the faintest glimmer of memory to go with it. We shall see that this is impossible. Without an elementary memory that connects the two moments, there will be only one or the other, consequently a single instant, no before and after, no succession, no time.^[3]

I do not wish here to either affirm or deny Bergson’s protomentalist conclusions, but I do want to acknowledge the ontological conditions of change and time which Bergson recognized in concluding to them, namely,

1) a real existential non-coincidence between changed states,

2) a fundamental unity within this separation which unifies the non-coincidence of earlier and later, and

3) the non-spatial (and hence, for Bergson, the “elementary memory” or “elementary consciousness”) character of this “unity of existential non-coincidence.”

These three ontological conditions now give a further refinement of our ontological explanation of time, namely, “a non-spatial unity intrinsic to existential non-coincidence necessary for changeability.” Inasmuch as this unity is divisible into “earlier” and “later” (as Bergson correctly surmises) it is a non-contemporaneous manifold. This non-contemporaneous manifold is distinct from a spatial unity which is a contemporaneous manifold. Since the transition from earlier to later is akin to a “stretching from within,” I will refer to it as “distension” instead of “extension” which more properly applies to a contemporaneous (spatial) manifold. Hence, “real time” may now be defined as a “non-contemporaneous” distensive manifold intrinsic to changeable realities (or groups of changeable realities).”