Psychological articles on time.

So, if anyone is interested in the psychological viewpoints on the perception of time, I found two articles that are quite enlightening.

This article focuses on the experience of time in everyday life. It discusses how our perception of time could be changed, and has fascinating examples of how time can be altered, for example, experiencing an earth quake while waiting for a pot to boil.

While this one focuses on how our perception of time get changed through drug and alcohol use. It is really interesting to see how time can be altered through such uses and how it changes depending on the drug.

Fantastically off topic!

So, guys, just to let you know, I have a new blog called Fantastical Philosophy! I have a couple blog posts up already and I will hopefully be updating things roughly once a week! The blog's emphasis is on philosophy done from a mythological or fantastical viewpoint, like as philosophy done from a perspective like a wizard's, elve's, or dragon's. Right now the current post up is a Dryad and a Maenad conversing on freedom and slavery so check it out!

Post reading: On time

Wow. Just, wow. I had no clue what just hit me. The article we had to read was a doozy. Anyways, That article actually reinforced my beliefs of what I hold time to be, but what I have realized is how little ground my definition actually covers. Physical and Psychological time, which are discussed in the article, seem to be what I had meant by perceived and physical time in my previous post. However, my concept of recorded time seems to be unique, for nothing in the article seemed to have mentioned it, or through recorded time under physical or psychological time. In my opinion it is something completely different than the two. Just as how a tree (Physical), a perception of a tree (Perceptive), and the organ that is used to perceive it of a tree (Recorded) are all different, so are my three ideas. Recorded time is a mental construct, while perceived time is a state of being. It is a subtle difference and they can play off of one another, but they are not the same.

So, if we were to start off with my previous theory on time then, then the only one that we could call external and objective is my physical time, or what physicists called spacetime, and would correspond with what was called absolutism in the philosophy of time. So, with this theory, in order to make it adequate, I would need to answer questions such as is time travel possible? Is time eternal? Is there such a thing as the past, present, and future? and so on. Right now, I view that it is impossible for me to answer all of these in one blog post, so I will try to spread them out over a few posts coming on up.

My definition of time (Pre Reading)

So, I have always been curious about the concept of time, and therefore, am super excited that we have an opportunity to discuss this subject in class. Now, before I read the article posted that we need to read, I am going to post how I currently define time before I do any research on this subject. Then when I am done reading, I will post my new definition of time if it has changed at all and compare the two.
My current definition is broken into three subconcepts. Perceived time, recorded time, and Physical time.

Perceived time: The construct in the human mind that allows the person to experience and sense of physical time. This is a subjective sense that can be just as easily fooled as any other sensory system in the human body, is subject to moods, states of consciousness, and the altering of chemical balances in the body (example: Drug and alcohol use). This is basically how the human mind perceives and experiences time.

Physical time: An objective part or possible force of reality that allows for the movement of energy and particles throughout space. Without such a thing as time, objects would be unable to move through space, for movement needs to occur over a duration.

Recorded Time: Recorded time is an odd blend between objective and subjective time. This is the time we measure with clocks, stopwatches, sundials, and similar devices. The reason that this is a blend between physical and perceived time is because recorded time is an attempt by humans to measure physical time through a humanly constructed unit of measurement. Just as the metric system is constructed based off of an arbitrary unit of ten, recorded time is based off of the second. When humans think in how much time has passed between objective events, they think in terms of recorded time.

In conclusion, Humans think in Recorded time, feel in perceived time, and operate in Physical time.

On Boredom

Is boredom an emotion or a way we view the world? This has been a question that I was thinking about while on a particularly boring weekend in order to try to entertain myself (I do philosophy when bored.). Opposed to other emotions, boredom alters the way  one perceives the world more drastically than I would say others do. Other emotions tend to focus on the self (ex: I feel good because I am happy, I feel bad because I am sad), boredom seems to focus on external objects. When bored, one perceives the external world without any interest. One is indifferent, and it seems more like there is an absence of emotions or fascination with one's world. However, it still provokes a response in the mind. Boredom can be the cause of much mental anguish, and some might say that this pain implies that boredom is an emotion. However pain is not an emotion. It can make one sad or angry, but pain in itself is not an emotion, so why should boredom be defined in that manner?

Constructing Realities.

So, I have stumbled upon a book labeled "Constructing Realities: Meaning Making Perspectives in Psychotherapies." It is a book on constructivistic approaches to psychotherapy, and so needless to say I bought it for 5 dollars on Amazon. Thinking about the role constructivism would have in a psychotherapy confuses me a bit, so I am looking forward to learning about it. Many concepts in psychoanalysis can be claimed to be constructed after all, such as normalcy, deviancy, and some even argue mental illness. To see an approach that accepts that reality is constructed by the individual holds many interesting ideas to the psychotherapist, whose function is to try and understand the person and how they function in their reality. I am really excited to see what this book discusses.

Popper and Constructivism

"Logically, that gives us no clue as to how the "objective" world might be; it merely means that we know one viable way to a goal that we have chosen under specific circumstances in our experiential world. It tells us nothing -- and cannot tell us anything -- about how many other ways there might be, or how that experience which we consider the goal might be connected to a world beyond our experience. The only aspect of that "real" world that actually enters into the realm of experience, are its constraints; or, as Warren McCulloch, one of the first cyberneticists, so dramatically said: "To have proved a hypothesis false is, indeed, the peak of knowledge""-Ernst von Glaserfeld

   A philosopher of science known as Karl popper argues that the true process of science is to challenge the existing theories about the world and establish new ones which will in turn be discredited. In otherwords, all science is, is a process of discrediting other ideas and finding new ones that explain the world in a better way, until they themselves fail to work, or there is a flaw. Glaserfeld, in his article actually discusses popper, and claims that Popper's arguments actually support radical constructivism because we can only see what ideas line up with our own personal reality, and what ones do not. Science is then the study of what lines up with our experience of reality and what does not.

 However, Popper argues that we base our observations on external reality. He claims that even if we can never get a true theory without massive amounts of work, these theories are making statements about the external world, while Glaserfeld argues that they come from internal experiences. Glaserfeld is then misapplying Poppers theories about science in a way that suits his own purposes and is yet another flaw in Glaserfeld's argument.