Is this an earlier version of “if a tree falls into the woods without anyone to hear it, does it make a sound” dilema ?
It does seem to me that Aristotle links counting to time, so someone to count it woudl be required. So in that sense it looks like the answer is no.
But how does that fit with motion ? Can motion still exist without time ?
You’re asking the right questions. If number requires a counter and time is a kind of number, then time looks subjective. But in the end, he seems willing to say that there is still a before and after independently of the existence of any counter. Whether that actually solves the problem for him is another question.
So, the tree does make a sound then, but to actually hear it, it needs an ear to listen?
I’m sure I’m butchering the metaphor, but I see that Aristotle is clear that the motion does exist without a counter, so it’s independent.
I’m curious to see how this ties in with the cosmological argument.
I thought for a moment you had asked a fairly simple question, but the more I read over the text and reflect on past readings, the more complex it becomes. He lays out in some detail the case for believing it would not exist without a soul to count it, but then he seems to back off and suggest that isn’t necessarily true. He states that time could exist without a soul if it were possible for motion to exist without a soul. I remember him earlier describing natural motions such as heavy things sinking and light things rising, and I first thought that meant he was arguing time could exist without souls. As I thought about those types of motion, though, I realized those are all things that should reach a state of equilibrium over time. If time extends backwards indefinitely, all such motion should have ceased by now. So now I suspect he does believe that time requires souls that cause motion in order to exist.
I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this. This might be the basis for a longer comment.
I was mostly speculating about how this might play out in Aristotle’s prime mover argument. I could be wrong, but I dismissed the idea that Aristotle was discussing simply whether time required an observer to exist because I think that would require some equivocation on the meanings of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’. Consider this obvious fallacy:
1. If King Charles has a finite number of socks, it would be possible for me to count them.
2. It is not possible for me to count the King’s socks because I would be gunned down by men with big furry hats and SA-80s long before I could find his sock drawer.
3. Therefore, King Charles has infinite socks.
My error is that I’m shifting the meaning of ‘possible’ between my two premises. 1 is true if I mean possible in a hypothetical sense; 2 is true if I mean it in a practical sense. I don’t think Aristotle is arguing it would necessarily be impossible for time to exist if there just didn’t happen to be any souls capable of counting it, but that it would be impossible for time to exist if it were impossible, even in theory, for such souls to exist. Time, in his thinking, requires movement, so the only way it could exist without souls would be if movement could exist without souls.
I remembered he discussed in an earlier chapter that inanimate objects could move in spite of not having souls themselves, but this was caused either by directly being moved by something with a soul or by the object returning to its natural place after being so moved. It would certainly be anachronistic for me to ascribe to him an idea of entropy as developed as Lord Kelvin’s, but he must have at least worked out that in a universe of only such natural motions, everything would eventually settle in its place after a finite period of time and further motion (and thus time) would then be impossible. If, as he believed, the universe had no beginning, it would necessarily have already reached that permanent state of timeless rest. That motion and time continue to exist throughout the cosmos therefore implies that something is continuously ‘stirring the pot’.
Reply to “Physics IV.14: For Aristotle, would time exist if there were no soul to count (see 223a15–28)?”