Probability Gradients

November 1st, 2006 Fred McVittie

The threefold aspect of individual perceptions, as identified by Husserl, indicate that ‘now’ also contains the ‘not-now’, and the ‘not-yet-now’. Moments of perception have a janus-face quality in which the past and the future are, in some way contained in time present (c.f. T.S. Elliot). A consequence of this structure of the present is that, inevitably, that these corpuscles of ‘now’ have a direction or polarity, in which the not-now is singular and fixed, we can be absolutely certain what happened, while the not-yet-now is something of a blinding mirage, in which we cannot be certain which of the multitude of possible futures will actually materialise. This polarity suggests that ‘now’ contains what might be called a ‘probability gradient’ ranging from the singular and fixed past to the infinite and variable future. We live at a particular place (or within a range of points) on this gradient, and our consciousness is formed at the breaking point of the wave of probability.

Posted in Consciousness, Eliot, T.S., Husserl, Edmund, Perception, Time | No Comments »