space and time

Imagine you just now started to look at the world.

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One of the first things you notice is space. There is you and an outside world you can see, and you can see more than one thing. What separates you and what you can see, and what separates the different things you see, is space in its most immediate definition.

Then you also quickly notice that some things move and others do not. This is time, again in its most immediate definition, as motion or being at rest.

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Things can rest or move outside and inside the mind. Thus there would a priori be 4 different kinds of things: What moves outside, what rests outside, what moves inside, and what rests inside. Let me call them elements and give them the following names: emo, ero, emi and eri.

Where “emo“ is an acronym for “element that moves outside”, and accordingly for the other three.

leads

• A priori there is just one experience of being, which encompasses all that is. In that sense, space and time or the elements as tentatively defined above, may already be all that is. A conscious mind or self separate of the elements may a priori not be necessary, nor would it have to be limited to only part of the elements (like inside).
  But still some considerations related to an observing self further below. Plus, most likely related, the definition of a fifth element e5 in the next section.
• Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason. 1787.
  In the early chapters, Kant discloses that some observable things cannot be isolated from the self, but instead appear to be themselves a priori necessary for thinking and observation. These a priori concepts include space and time in their immediate sense—the structure in which things appear in the mind and seem to exist outside of it.
• “By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. Herein alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other determined or determinable. […] Space is not a conception which has been derived from outward experiences. For, in order that certain sensations may relate to something without me (that is, to something which occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as without, of, and near to each other, but also in separate places, the representation of space must already exist as a foundation. […] We never can imagine or make a representation to ourselves of the non-existence of space, though we may easily enough think that no objects are found in it.” (translated by J. Meiklejohn)
• “Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori. […] With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena.”
• Arthur Schopenhauer. The World As Will And Idea. 1819.
  “[…] that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it; and each of these, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable.” (translated by R. Haldane and J. Kemp)
  The word “Vorstellung” (for “idea” in the original German) means literally something “put in front of or before you”, spatially or chronologically.
• If I can imagine something, is it then really inside of me ? Isn’t there already a separation (space) between me and what I imagine ? Such an extreme definition of self or inside would mean that the self cannot have any (consciously accessible) attributes, no memory etc., because any such attribute of the self would be something that can be considered by the self and would thus, by definition, not be part of the self…
• This definition of self reminds of the Tao (“way”) in Taoism. Lao Tzu starts the Tao Te Ching with “The Tao that can be Tao’ed (trodden/spoken), is not the real (unchanging) Tao”.
• In today’s science, organs of perception wire back what is outside to the brain, where also mind and self would be. Maybe the self would even be considered “more inside than inside”, looking out first at what else is inside and then even further out at what is outside. But how much of that might be paradigm, and could thus change again over centuries ?
• How would rest/move be defined for other senses than vision ? How could eri and emi be measured inside ? Would the only “objective” way be to measure brain activity outside ? Would that be fundamental enough in this context ? Could the self (observer) be measured ?
• Would a female observer also consider what is seen as not being part of herself or would she rather tend to identify with what she sees ? (Is the own body part of the self ? And lovers, family, friends, house, garden, etc. ?) In other words, is the distinction between in and out hard or soft (gradual) ?
• What about sleep, dreaming, trance, drunkenness ? Why only have a fully conscious observer ?
• Is there already in/out for a newborn ? I have a memory from the age of 3 to 4 when I started to have a consciousness with then a memory from birth (hence a memory of a memory), which was apparently the white ceiling with lights on it in the hospital.