The Theory of Time-Reality

”Topos”

1. To term the starting point of cognition we can use the word time-reality (TR). TR is a continuous happening which unites the reality and the possible. The possible is a complex of possibilities and at the same time the very possibility which becomes reality. Thus TR unites what has become reality and what – with certain probability (probabilities) – can become reality. TR is not One-identity but relations in ”reality” and in ”time”.
2. The mediating element which makes reality change into the possible is direction. Direction is a unity of the past and the future state, of continuity and discontinuity, it is the forming of identity in the non-identical. Direction is substantial in happening – the effect of one on the other and on oneself.
3. The substance, sense and way, the ”result” of how TR exists, can be termed continuance. Asking whether the World or Me exist, is senseless. All and every cognition is about the way of our existence. But not only the way the world around us exists is covered by continuance. It is also the way TR exists in what exceeds our world and what is unknowable for us. There is no use in seeing another meaning of the word ”continuance” when speaking about the theory of TR.
4. Cognition is an instrument which enables us to direct actively. It is the modelling of relatively definite and limited systems and the direction of reality on their basis. The models of systems include in an explicit way or by means of the modelling one – the directing one or the directed one which is contained in them, the relations between the real and the possible. The purview of such a model (its capacity for directing) is identified as its truthfulness (validity). The model is not specifically human, it can be anything that has happened.
5. Regarding the existence of possibilities, TR cannot be understood as a limited and definite ”entirety”. From this there follows the fact that in direction we are given freedom as the choice of possibilities and the possibility of choice coming into effect in the clash of the ”entirety” and the systems.
6. The existence of systems shows up in two ways. On the one hand as the repetition of the given, and on the other as its exceeding. The exceeding within one system can be a mere repetition within another system. The repetition is the ”minimalization” of non-identity, the exceeding is the ”multiplication” of non-identity. They include life and death, progress as well as degeneration.
7. Continuance materializes in repeating and exceeding the given. In ethics, repeating is the prefiguration of the consciousness of Me-identity in the past and the future. Exceeding is the prefiguration of the consciousness of You-non-identity in the past and the future, too. Continuance is then the image of consciousness divided twice into two halves. It is the consciousness of Us – compounding Me and You from the past to the present, and at the same time the consciousness of Them – compounding the future Me and You. We can fill all these terms in a positive as well as in a negative way. At better, the term Me would be love, You tolerance, and Us-Them justice for mankind – the goddess whose task is harder here because there are four scales of hers, not two. The imbalance of the scales may mean the end of mankind but not the end of justice.

A TRACT ON TIME-REALITY

From the definition of the term ”continuance” it is clear that this term is only partially based on knowable facts. It breaks the bounds of cognition and gets to the field called faith.

Faith and cognition have a different quality. If we break the known laws, the failure comes at once, but breaking the laws of faith can, on the contrary, bring immediate profit. To justify the breaking of the laws of faith, people often build up a kind of ”higher purpose” within their faith, for which black suddenly turns white.

This, however, does not prove the untruthfulness of faith because its laws extend far beyond the horizon of our life.

Faith gives us satisfaction and the feeling of appurtenance with the world. It, however, often becomes an object of appropriation and reflection with the feeling of ”the only right” hold of the world. This feeling then leads to intolerance.

On the other hand, in cognition our model of a certain section of TR enables us to direct this section, even only in the sense of our behaviour in this system or of understanding its working. By directing we get the answer to the question to what extent our model of a certain system is true or under what conditions it is valid, as the case may be. We answer the question how the directing of a certain system has been passing off and this answer substitutes the answer to the question whether this system exists.

The theory of TR is open in what exceeds the world around us and here it refers to faith. At the same time this theory in no way negates the real existence of the world and our ability to work upon it. It only states that our cognition is always partial and the result is not true duplicates – ”practical reckoning” but the description of how ”ideal” systems could work in ”ideal ” conditions.

If we reached the cognition of the world as a whole we would lose our freedom entirely and our acting would be fatal. In the unlimited and uncertain TR we have the possibility of choice, of deciding.

From our ability to choose there follows the ability to negate the choice itself, too, e.g. when killing ourselves or when not fighting death back. The uncertainty of the world opens the possibility to choose between the good and the bad within the given system, while from a view-point of another system we can evaluate the same alternatives completely contrary-wise. The antagonism of the good and evil is a painful toll of human freedom.

A stone, a flower or an animal do not seek for the sense of their existence. Why has the man come out of his cave, why does he keep cultivating but at the same time liquidating his planet? This must have a sense. We cannot see it anywhere else but in continuance – the repeating and exceeding of the given. Man with his universality is obviously predetermined for accentuating the exceeding. At the same time the human exceeding could be the repeating of the given without essential interruption of continuity. This would differentiate the extent of the human exceeding from other processes in TR.

The technical progress seems to be suicidal behaviour of mankind. Acceptable life conditions on our planet would, however, cease one day even without the contribution of the man. Mankind has the possibility to fill the term continuance for themselves by not self-destructing and not deceasing with the end of conditions of life on the Earth. Thus all human exceeding will lead into the repeating of human life on another planet (in another dimension?). Only in this perspective the technical progress with its incidental phenomena is justified. This surely does not mean ”a fast liquidation” of what remains here for living and then flying away somewhere – why, most people will never leave the Earth and will live here as long as it is possible. A cruel question is, whether the world to which the man will make his way in the furthest future is not doomed to destruction, either.

In theory, the alternative of our life outside the Earth is, for the present, as real as an premature ending of our lives in the war or devastation of the environment. It, however, seems that the development of the world after 1982 has started turning away from the greatest danger – global war using the most modern military devices. The outlasting and newly arising military-political and ecological problems, in spite of their limits, do not let us succumb to self-satisfaction because we cannot be sure that they will not spread into dimensions which can destroy us. We therefore live in an unceasing state of insecurity which has its roots in our disability to control the world as a whole.

In concrete partial systems we are able to decide, thanks to the fact that we reveal long series of conditions under which specific phenomena set in, but also because we involve our creativity into deciding, we are given the ability to discover the rules of the repeating phenomena, but also to foresee in the given what has not happened yet. Our acting is conditioned by unconsciousness in cognition due to which we both behave like animals and show creative activity exceeding the given. Therefore it is, in a way, easier to act than to judge our and other people’s acting.

Our life is tragic in its substance because besides the insecurity of direct danger of our life, which can be turned off, we link the sense of our personal existence to the continuance of mankind as such. As individuals we can fill our life, as members of mankind we never stop being anxious about its fate, if we are not put up with its end.

But every continuing of the existence of mankind – a birth of a new descendant, a revolutionary invention or a simple glass of water for those who are thirsty – gives us joy and justifies our belief that the fate of mankind will not be definitive but it will follow the way of continuance.

Thanks to this belief, even though we cannot stand for the final result, we make decisions as if the ”final sum ” was known, because we are convinced that our partial sums confirm it. But perhaps the final sum has already been given and only the partial sums are missing. Faith, continuance, God – these are answers to this kind of questions.

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In cognition, the theory of TR does not use the terms inspiring confidence such as ”absolute” or ”relative” truth. The theory of TR speaks about truthfulness or validity of a model. It is because the truth is only a theoretically possible correspondence of the model with the given section of TR. Considering that every model is a certain simplification, abstraction and idealization or metaphor of reality, we cannot treat it as equal to reality. At the same time, every model is constructed in a specific language without which it could not figure and transmit what it is supposed to express. This language can have the form of a soliloquy or outward speech and its range of expression is boundlessly wide. Essential in a language is the fact that it connects the directing with the directed.

The language conceives things as absolutely valid, abstracts and with the help of metaphors it expresses limits and relations of directing and subordination. Thus it creates some fragments of TR from which the modelling-directing one builds models of systems with defined elements and relations, which serve as an instrument of directing aiming at reaching the projected possibility. It may seem that ”language” and ”model” are the same, but they are two sides of one coin. Models as if divide TR and languages put it together again.

In a way, a model can be more truthful than what has happened because through its mediation we ”raise” the possibility which has not been realized yet (if we omit the model itself), i.e. by means of the model we exceed the given. This exceeding, however, will not give us chance to realize a modelled impossibility. The term truth in the theory of TR does not lose its sense if we use it to indicate the correspondence of two models, or to indicate the inner consistence of a certain model (logic). The identity of a model with reality is a kind of fiction, as well as the identity of elements of TR, figured by the model, with themselves. If we did not come around to this fiction we would become ethereal beings, quite unable to work upon the world. The only consideration we would be capable of would be ”everything has a relation to everything”.

The outer similarity to projected reality is an omittable quality of a model. The most important quality of a model is its ability to function as an instrument of directing. For a model its motion in time is important. At first something has happened, and what has become reality, works upon the possible by means of directing. A model then is anything that has happened and that works upon what will happen. It is not important if it is an instrument for directing an animal or a man, or it is a mere impress of lifeless nature. What is important is the fact that something that has happened works upon things which are to happen. It is quite usual that the modelling ones and the directing ones are not identical and the result of repeating directing can be – thanks to this and thanks to many other outer changes – very different when using one model.

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The character of the world as a whole is uncertain and boundless. On the other hand, our cognition forces final and definite models on us which give us semblance of certitude and conviction of justice of our acting, although others have completely different models.

At the same time there is a field of very material values, which some of us possess in a degree that can be called abundance. Others, whose needs are met, struggle for this abundance. Many are satisfied with what they have. On the other hand, there are many people who live on the limit of subsistence minimum or they die under this limit.

The mentioned differences find their common and most dangerous expression in questions of race and nationality, or in fights for power for power itself.

Both in spiritual and material spheres an idea of militant non-identity has dominated so far in the world. But there have always functioned (in a higher or lower degree) the principles of tolerance, which, especially in the material sphere, can have the form of a charitable gift, but then in fact it becomes love which is very often accompanied by a lot of conditions. A true tolerance limits its opposite pole – rivalry. Non-identity cannot be ”prohibited”, it can only be regulated.

If we seek for justice for the world, we certainly do not refuse charitable gifts for the most needy, but the main thing for us is to find and put the rules of rivalry through in all spheres of life which will ensure dignified existence for all of us and at the same time it will forestall barbarous method of solution where interests and values would clash.

Love (consciousness of identity) is a priority for a man living on the level of a pack. For a civilized society tolerance is the most important. Perhaps because we have proclaimed love so much, we live in such an uncivilized way now. Only when we learn to live in a civilized way, love delivered of its companion – aversion to everything different from us – will come back to us. Let us believe that we will be successful at least partly – at moments when decisions on our further fate will be being made.

HYPOTHESES AND PARADOXES OF TIME-REALITY

1. Non-identity in the same time creates space – system. If we imagine a moment when there was no time, the real would be identical with the possible. Thanks to the jump of time from point ”zero” to ”point ”one”, TR has begun to move. Within the framework of this account we can see TR as a half-line which in an uncertain and unlimited medium can get back to its beginning. But in case there was no time, the real was in fact empty. Yet such ”real” exists in our models.
2. Modelling is the ability to play motion in time. A play is a possible reality. Really real and really possible is only what ”is” and is ”happening” at the same time. Therefore it would be the most precise to speak about ”happen-is-ing”. Modelling is a mirroring in which as if ”happen-” and ”-ing” were changing places.
3. ”Happen-is-ing” is not in time and space, it itself creates time-space, it is essential in time-space with its relativity. What was in the beginning before ”happen-is-ing” can be figured as what ”is”. Our imperceptible ”is” can help us to depict the ”is” which may have been at the beginning of everything. The absolute can be defined as both of these ”is”. But while our continuous ”is” passes for absolute within a certain system, the ”is” which was at the beginning is beyond any systems. Rather there has never been any ”beginning of everything” and ”end of ends” and there will never be one, at least not in the form of entire identity of such a state with itself. (Very interesting is the question of ”black holes” which have a quite specific form of existence.)
4. If we wanted to express the substance of how ”happen-is-ing” exists, we could consider ”speed – time of realization” a substantial sign. To define this speed, we would have to know the boundaries between the real and the possible. At zero speed the real would be identical with the possible and the probability of realization of a possibility would equal one. By contrast, with growing speed the real and the possible could move away from each other, the number of possibilities could rise and the realization of any possibility would depend on the speed of its motion and on the distance from reality.