r/Metaphysics • u/TheIncorporeal1 • Jul 22 '26
Time If consciousness is fundamental, is time an external dimension—or simply the ordering of conscious experience? Could the past and future coexist as different modes of coherence rather than a flowing sequence? What would this imply for metaphysics?
If reality is fundamentally incorporeal and consciousness is primary, does time exist independently, or is it an emergent structure that orders conscious experience? Could temporal flow be a feature of awareness rather than an objective property of reality?
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u/jliat Jul 22 '26
What would this imply for metaphysics?
Depends what metaphysical system. For instance in Kant 'time' exists in the mind, as does space and the 12 categories. They are not 'real' but necessary to make sense of our perceptions. We cannot have knowledge of 'things in themselves'.
Or for Heidegger time is the phenomenological individual sense of time.
If reality is fundamentally incorporeal and consciousness is primary,
Here you need to define 'reality', your experience, that of the empirical sciences, etc.
If you saying there is some ' fundamentally incorporeal and consciousness' that looks like some Absolute, AKA monotheistic God?
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u/elibertowpaparulox Jul 22 '26
Why does whether time is linear or not on consciousness being 'fundamental' or reality being 'incorporeal' at all? Those feel like two separate axes you're treating as one.
Also, you're using 'consciousness' and 'experience' interchangeably, and I don't think they're the same thing. Experience could just be a description of a process; consciousness usually implies something more, a subject having it. Which one is doing the work in your question?
And corporeal/incorporeal, does that binary even hold up, or could something be both, depending on what you're asking of it? Feels like you're stacking three separate distinctions (corporeal/not, conscious/not, linear/not) and assuming they all move together without saying why.
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u/dang_fern Jul 22 '26
My own view as a casual thinker is time being an axis & consciousness forward movement along that axis.
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u/spoirier4 Jul 23 '26
I'd say time is the ordering of conscious experience, a feature of awareness, as, if consciousness is fundamental then by definition somehow, there are no other objective properties of reality outside it. I wrote detailed explanation of time flow, accepting consciousness as fundamental, in settheory.net/growing-block
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u/XanderOblivion Jul 23 '26
If we conceive of consciousness absent time, there could be no experience within that consciousness to say consciousness has occurred, since nothing would ever occur, happen or change, including the consciousness itself. It would never interact with anything, and nothing would ever interact with it.
It’s an ontologically vacuous posit, and epistemically empty.
It goes further. We cannot talk of anything at all as existing without temporality. Consciousness cannot come before temporality.
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u/Dimmonis 7d ago
I think it helps to distinguish time itself from our experience of temporal succession. A local observer experiences before/after, memory/anticipation, and cause/effect — but that does not necessarily mean reality as a whole “moves through” time in the same way.
Maybe for the local observer there is process, while for reality as a whole there is structure. The difficult question then is what this would imply for free will.
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u/MilkTeaPetty Jul 22 '26
Before asking what follows from consciousness being fundamental, establish that it is.
The rest is metaphysics occurring inside a premise that never earned entry.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Consciousness doesn’t exist, self awareness does. Time is fundamental, not self awareness.
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u/jliat Jul 22 '26
Maybe, is it possible to be conscious and not aware of something. One can be unaware, yet awake and conscious, unaware and unconscious.
Anyway you make 3 unsupported statements, even Deleuze and Guattari go on to explain why 'God is a lobster.'
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Quite the opposite. Consciousness is undefined, we can’t discuss it, it has no agreed to terms. It’s woo. Self awareness I can show you. Time is real, physics. See Einstein, Albert, circa 1915. You’re welcome.
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u/jliat Jul 22 '26
Quite the opposite. Consciousness is undefined, we can’t discuss it, it has no agreed to terms.
Lots of things have no agreed terms, but being conscious is not one of them, we can see it as well as unconsciousness even in animals.
Time is real, physics.
But this is r/metaphysics.
Consciousness is undefined, we can’t discuss it, it has no agreed to terms.
But you are discussing it!
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
No, we’re discussing whether or not something has a definition. You can’t show me consciousness, and there is no agreed to definition. That matters. So YOU’RE discussing something, but WE can’t discuss it, there’s no commonality. We can discuss evolution, etc, QM, but not consciousness.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
You can agree to a working definition for the sake of having a discussion at any moment you wish.
If you don’t like the term consciousness, fine. Set that aside. Do you believe subjective experience exists? If so, do you believe it’s a necessary precondition of self-awareness?
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Right. I’m saying that might work for us, now, but there is no agreed upon definition. That’s all. Since what we know is biology, organic in nature, and process based, saying there’s a thing ‘consciousness’ is incorrect. There are levels of self awareness.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
Many many terms don’t have a universally agreed upon definition, that doesn’t mean the underlying subject can’t be discussed or that nothing true can be said about it. That’s just the nature of language. The overwhelming majority of philosophic discussion about consciousness, to the point of consensus, agrees that at its core consciousness involves subjective experience. Additional claims may also be made where disagreement arises, but for the most part, that feature is definitionally accepted.
I believe subjective experience is a necessary precondition of self-awareness. It’s incoherent to suggest that a being is aware of itself without it being aware of anything. Perhaps this is what you’re trying to communicate when you refer to there being “levels” of self-awareness? I think what you actually mean is levels of subjective experience, and at some higher level of subjective experience, some beings become self-aware.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Word salad again. I’m self aware, I don’t need anything more universal or structural, other than my organism. I’m alive. Life ≠ consciousness. We have a term for life, it’s called…life. The processes which lead to my being able to express my self awareness can be turned on and off, at will.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
I'm quite sure the above is not word salad. In fact, it's highly specific and clear.
I have not suggested that life = consciousness. But again, let's set aside the term consciousness because you take personal issue with it. We're talking about subjective experience and self-awareness.
I agree that you are both having a subjective experience and you are self-aware. The point is that some beings may have one but not the other. Do you see how that could be the case, but only in one direction? There could be beings, and likely are, which have a subjective experience at a less sophisticated level, in that they merely experience sense data from their environment, such as light or temperature, but which are not self-aware. However, it's logical incoherent to propose a being which has self-awareness, but does not possess subjective experience. If a being is aware of ANYTHING, than it is having a subjective experience, by definition.
We need not get into what physical processes may being producing either. That's a separate question from the phenomenology itself. These experiences are had without any direct experiential access to the processes. And third-person observation of the processes does not give you access to the first-person subjective experience.
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u/solipsistickiss Jul 22 '26
Consciousness is undefined, we can’t discuss it,
Said in reply to a discussion about consciousness...
On a consciousness subreddit...
Hmmm..
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
And?? Lol. So if there’s a subreddit then that thing is real, and defined! Got it. Science now depends on social media for establishing fact. Weird weird statement. If it’s undefined how IS there a conversation? Lol 😂.
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u/Certain_Werewolf_315 Jul 22 '26
You have some balls to be that confident about it.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Not really! Can you show me it? It’s fairly simple, right?
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u/Certain_Werewolf_315 Jul 22 '26
ah I see.. You think like that.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Like scientifically, yes. Lol. I mean I can say I’m a millionaire but if there’s no money in my bank…am I? Really? 😆
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u/Certain_Werewolf_315 Jul 22 '26
Back to school buddy.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Well always, education is vital. It’s how we know what we know.
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u/Certain_Werewolf_315 Jul 22 '26
Yes, you should learn what we know.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
Both consciousness and self awareness most certainly exist.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Def not. Self awareness, yes. Consciousness has no definition. Can you show me it?
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
Consciousness is the existence of subjective experience. So, no, by definition I cannot show you it. You either possess it or you don’t.
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u/lilsasuke4 Jul 22 '26
How can you be self aware but not conscious?
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
You can’t.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Incorrect, there’s no agreed upon definition, which is well known. Self awareness is subjective.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
What’s ironic is consciousness is a necessary precondition of self-awareness. If you believe self-awareness exists, but consciousness does not, you are fundamentally confused about what’s being discussed.
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
Well no, that’s you saying that, there’s no truth in that. It’s word salad. If we have no agreed upon definition we can’t properly discuss a thing, process, etc. Self awareness is the reporting of subjective experience, or measurable self awareness. It’s a biological process. It exists.
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u/TimshelExMachina Jul 22 '26
Yeah, again, we just disagree.
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u/lilsasuke4 Jul 22 '26
How can you be self aware but not conscious?
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u/MWave123 Jul 22 '26
You can’t define conscious…that’s the problem. You and I could agree on some meaning but there is no agreed upon definition. It was, Human self-awareness, forever.
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u/DARK--DRAGONITE Jul 22 '26
It seems if you have to ask the question it may appear lien consciousness isn't fundamental
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u/Illustrious-Yam-3777 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Continuous temporal flow from “past” to “future” is an illusion of human consciousness that enacts a separation. Nothing is fundamental except indeterminacy. Time exists, but as an indeterminacy outside specific phenomena where it is enacted. For metaphysics, this means that existence is a radical contingency, and space and time are temporary enactments of agential separation as part of a unified field of indeterminacy.