2012-03-12
Space and Time in Different Senses
Another point that I brought up and then discussed later with Mohan had to do with the multiple senses of space and time that might be relevant to the discussion. It is normally thought that space and time serve as a sort of matrix for experience, but it would not be true to say that this matrix serves as the glue to all experience since we sometimes have experiences outside of a space-time matrix. That is, experiences may be "here" and "now" without being experienced as at a particular time or at a particular spatial location. They have extension in space and time but not location. If we are talking about this second sense of space and time then I might agree that experience is held together by such extension. However, I did not get the sense that this difference was appreciated by the discussants. I suspect that the "here-ness" and "now-ness" of experience will be best defined with respect to the experiencer, or subject of experience, rather than to space and time as we normally understand it. In that case, the unity of experience would be provided by the subject of experience and not the matrix that enables the subject to organize his or her experiences (this view of unity is what I argue for in my dissertation work).