Article: Solving the mystery of time.
Website: iai (Institude of Art and Ideas)
Author(s): Bernardo Kastrup

Bernardo Kastrup explores the mystery of time and its relationship to the dissociation of a ‘self’ from a ‘mind at large’.

Excerpt:

Analytic idealism concurs with Kant, Schopenhauer, and these recent developments in science: time and space aren’t really out there. The ‘physical’ world on the screen of perception is akin to an internal dashboard representation of the real external world. We create this internal representation upon observing the real world, just as an airplane’s dashboard represents the measurements made by the airplane’s sensors. Time and space are merely the scales of the dials on our internal dashboard.

It is precisely for this reason that time seems so paradoxical: as a subjective cognitive scale in the mind of an observer, it is liable to unravelling if scrutinized, just as some of our kneejerk ideas dissolve or transform upon critical examination. When the latter happens it raises no eyebrows, and hence neither should the strangeness of time. For time isn’t out there but ‘in here,’ being therefore susceptible to the twists and turns of human cognition.

Bernardo Kastrup