When we get to the concept of space, what are the facts and possibility questions that are open to us ? Here are some I find intriguing and confusing, hence promising.
“How is it possible to sense things outside of us ?”, that is, “How is it possible to see blueness of sky in the sky, the pain in our finger, the sound of ball dropping on the floor at the place it has fallen on the floor, and so on… ?”
From scientific model it follows that we are affected by the real world through our senses. We believe there is correspondence between what is presented to us through our senses and that “real” world. For example even we know the object we are seeing doesn’t carry any property of red the way we sense red, through the physics and physiology we know that it corresponds to what we call wavelength of light which is reflected from that object. So, it is not problematic to say that “the world isn’t exactly like what we perceive it to be through our senses, but that what we are presented with by our senses is corresponding with facts in that world”.
But a logical consequence from there is easily missed: that the Space as in our direct experience is also part of our perception, same as sensed colors are, and more then that it *is* the condition for the perception. One can’t have such conclusions divided because of the very fact that the senses we experience are IN what we call space (here I’m just using common-sense concept of space. Even this concept of space will be analyzed in details further I think that the argument can be understood using the common-sense concept even we can’t still explain what it is its meaning). Because the Space as perceptual form is in us, that’s why we can see the blue color of the sky outside of us, or we can sense the white color in place where the cloud is, we can hear the sound where the ball falls on the floor, we can sense the pain in our finger – we experience all those things NOT as just in our brain, not as just in our body, but also in what we use to call the “outside” space. Our body, our brain, what we usually identify by “I” is just one part of what we experience through that perceptual form of Space.
I see this as only possible “solution”. The other option would be that senses were our brains products, but space wasn’t - how would we explain that? Would it mean that our being is somehow magically expanding outside of itself and “painting” the colors on everything we see?
I hope it is now clear that what we (in everyday life) call “space”, is form of how we perceive, and that even we divide that space to “Me”, and “Not me” (or “outside”), both are part of one perception. Whatever is “real” *it is not* space as we perceive it. The space of our perception has property of hosting senses and feelings; we don’t expect that from some property of space belonging to real world.
“How is it possible to perceive change?” It is a fact that we can perceive change, we can perceive swinging chair, a rock flying through the air or any kind of movement; we can listen to a musical piece or speech etc… We are aware of changes.
“How is it possible that I know what was?” We apodictically know that what we remember was. In order for those facts to be possible, our Mind must contain what we call changes, the changes as perceived in time, so Mind must contain time.
It is really simple and inevitable consequence, but which probably needs some time to be clearly seen in its necessity, that if I am aware of a change, I must contain the change, and that If I remembers the past as something that was, then “I” must contain the time.
One other “engineering” model of memory would be where “stored” perceptions, would be retrieved somehow through some process. But such solution, will not explain the possibility for memory as in our experience, as we experience memory not as something that is “retrieved” and comes from outside of the consciousness and which could have been different, but comes with its necessity and clear meaning of something that *was* (vs. for example something that is imagined). That is, there is no way that “reconstructed” memory could be necessary seen as something that was, because there is no thing to be compared with in the first place – the sole data can’t carry the fact that it “was”, this fact must come from outside of it, and in this model it comes from the fact that this “part of perception” never left the spatiotemporal perceptual whole, the difference between the facts of “is” and “was” are just a differences which belong to the differentiation of context of “Me” as Now, similar to differences of “here” and “there” when it comes to space perceptions.
Though, the sheer fact that we experience changes is enough to become aware that there is time which falls within our experience, the same way the space does.
The other argument for the time as part of our perception will be using the problem with concepts as sets mentioned earlier… As I hope was shown clearly before concepts can’t be seen as sets, and it was proposed that they are concepts by the way they are abstracted from the whole (by differentiations). But there are concepts which are referring to things changing in time, as for example “swinging”, “moving”, “circling” etc… We can recognize such behaviors in time, no matter the span of the time, the moving, swinging and so on, might be slow or fast, they can be different by the amplitude of their movement etc…, yet we see them falling under one concept. This possibility, it is argued here, comes from the fact that same differentiations (same power of abstractions) can be applied over a span of time, the experience is not momentarily, but is always through or in time. So if we can apply the differentiation over experience which is in time, it is necessary that time as perceptual form is in the “I” which applies those differentiations.
Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason points to one other thing regarding space and time as they relate experience. He says that space and time are needed for any experience, hence must be present before any experience - can’t be abstractions of experience. Maybe it is best to call the space and time mediums for the experience, because the best analogy might be with the television set and the data we perceive through it. Namely the TV set has to be present in order some program to be presented through it… TV set can’t come as consequence of television program.
Here someone might object that nobody can talk about concept of space or time on the start of its existence, as they as concepts (and later words which point to them) can be just product of abstraction through experience. That objection is valid, and will be addressed in details later when we talk about the origin of the concepts. Here it is enough to say that the root of those concepts which *are* abstraction, is in differentiations which are innate or apriori present in the whole, specifically there are set of possible differentiations or their variations of the context which corresponds to what we call space and to what we call time.