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Process Time

and
Metric Time

We should distinguish between "process time" and "metric time".

Metric time is only in the natural, where it allows the numerical measurement of duration in time. Swedenborg always emphasizes this measure (metric) aspect of time in nature: DP 49, DLW 73, 161. It can well be regarded as the 4th dimension in space-time, along with 3D space dimensions. That dimension is ‘settled and constant’.

Process time is the sequences of changes of substance or state where-ever they may be. There is an order in process time, but only a counting order 1,2,3,.. , not an exact measurement (e.g 1.545867899). In fact, between any pair of events in process time, there is no limit to how many spiritual state changes can be inserted between them. So process time is not ‘settled and constant’.

Spiritual activities use process time, but no metric time. Whenever the desire or thought of an angel or mind changes, that is another step in process time.  One of Swedenborg’s main achievements was to describe process time in the spiritual world to eternity. Many people thought (and still think) that there is no time in heaven, and no living there. His ‘Memorable Relations’ help a lot to dispel that mistake.

Physical activities use metric time in classical Newtonian physics.   But there is some process time in quantum physics as well, where it counts the actualization of propensities – changes of state even there.  

It appears that is not succession-time as such which inhibits spiritual thinking, but the ‘constant and settled’ aspect of metric time. (As well as metric time being essential to the dead things of nature.)

Dec 21, 2019

Time in the Philosophy of Nature

  - extracts from Ch 8 of  Philosophy of Nature and Quantum Reality by Ian Thompson, Eagle Pearl Press, 2010 (slightly edited).
    At Amazon. Online text.

Metric Time and Extensiveness

Extensiveness is therefore defined, in the present philosophy of nature, as a fundamental real relation between places. It is a relation between places that holds independently of whether or not the related places are filled. We could think of it specifying absolutely the metric distance between any two points in space-time. By means of extensiveness we intend to create a `dimensional order' for all places in space and time. Furthermore, since places are kinds of possibilities, and since  possibilities can form a continuum, we have that extensiveness can naturally give rise to a continuous order of places. I am not arguing that extensiveness is necessarily continuous, only that continuity is not incompatible with the basic notions we have put together. We will discuss later how all places can be ordered according to their mutual extensive relations.  When this is done, they then form what Whitehead has termed an `extensive continuum'. This continuum is the manifold of all places apparent when they are juxtaposed with respect to their relations of extensiveness. The extensive continuum is the most general form of order in the world, as it is prior to the contingent things which actually happen. It is not however to be conceived as actuality, or as any kind of definite `container'. As the full definition of the extensive continuum is that it is an `ordered manifold of places', it is therefore the `continuous order of possibilities for actuality'. It would only be if we erroneously conflate the concepts of possibilities a we would mistake the extensive continuum for an actual entity. Such conflation may be permissible within mathematics, but has disastrous consequences elsewhere.

In understanding the extensive continuum in terms of our usual space and time, we should remember the places, as possibilities for actuality, are 'wheres' and `whens'. This means, as pointed out at the start of the chapter, that the extensive continuum has more of a spatiotemporal nature, than of a purely spatial or purely temporal nature. We can refer to the extensive continuum as `spacetime', but only provided we remember that such a spacetime is not the actual existent of many interpretations of Einstein's relativity theories. Rather, it is the extensive manifold of all possibilities for actuality. On this basis we can admit the `objective' nature of the four-dimensional spacetime of relativity theory, but not as an actual or fully-determinate thing.

I see no way of deriving these a priori. The 3+1 dimensional nature of spacetime, for example, seems to be a `brute fact'. Both the Newtonian and Einsteinian accounts of spacetime should however be permitted by our general philosophical arguments. In the following, I will hence be discussing a plausible formulation of extensiveness which can accommodate both Newtonian and relativistic metrics.

Time as Becoming

To say that the future `does not exist at all' means that we have neither the A series nor the B series. We do not have the A series, because there are no such things as `future events' to have the property of being `future'. The future is not formed yet, so in 1960 say we could not have talked about `the moon landing'. We could only have talked of `possibilities for moon landings' that we might hope to bring about. Before 1969 there was no such thing as `the moon landing event', so there was no particular event appearing out of the `future' to become `present'. This passage of events from the future to the past via the present, we agreed earlier, was the essence of the A series approach. Thus Whitehead and Mellor both agree with McTaggart that the A series is ultimately inconsistent.

Whitehead and Mellor differ, however, on the question of whether we have just the B series. According to Whitehead, we do not have only the B series, as there are no future events yet existing that could be at any particular dates and times, and ordered by `before' and `after' etc. At best, `the future' is a set of possibilities, some of which may actually happen. Process philosophy does however allow the B series to be applied to past events, as all these have definitely happened, and so have perfectly definite dates and times that hold unchangeably. In fact, it allows only the B series to be real for the past, and does not allow the A series properties of `future', `present' and `past' to be real properties for any events. For even in the past, the 1969 moon landing is itself no different for being 10 minutes ago or 10 years ago, once it has definitely happened. This means that the A-series-like properties of `10 minutes in the past' and `10 years in the past' would not be real properties of the event concerned.

I have sketched two philosophical approaches which appear to avoid McTaggart's vicious circle. They both appear to be consistent within themselves, but they are not compatible with each other. The second account, whereby `the future' is at best a set of possibilities, is more in line with my ideas in this book.   It has that such possibilities are objective possibilities, and not merely epistemological or to do with laws of causation. Epistemological possibilities might arise merely from our partial knowledge of what is actually going to happen.   Possibilities might also arise from indeterministic laws of causation if past states do not rigorously determine states to their future, but leave some slack, so to speak. The `real possibilities' I am proposing are not necessitated by these other two kinds of possibilities. Rather, the necessitation is in the other direction, as real possibilities will of course give rise to these other kinds.

The real possibilities that concern us here are the strongest, objective possibilities. They are in the physical situation whether or not we are aware of them, and they describe a real openness of the futures which are possible for natural processes. Strictly speaking, they are not counterfactuals, because to consider future possibilities, `might be's, does not require going counter to any facts. Thus they must be contrasted with those `past possibilities', or `might have been's, which, because they definitely did not happen, require going against what is actual and factual. According to the present theory, `real possibilities' do not strictly apply to the past. We may of course still consider counterfactual possibilities concerning what may have happened if the past had gone differently, but these are only abstractly related to the present world, and hence should not be called real possibilities.

Some philosophers, most recently Grünbaum [1973], argue that there are no real possibilities in the future either, and hence that all of time is determinate in some sense. They could argue, for example, that given an event which has not happened yet, since some possibility must be realised, that one is the only possibility which needs to be considered. All the other alleged possibilities are hence not `real' alternatives. They only appear so from our ignorance of what exactly which possibility will be fulfilled (i.e. which place will be filled). William James describes this position as:

there is nothing inchoate about this universe of ours, all that was or is or shall be actual in it having been from eternity virtually there. The cloud of alternatives our minds escort this mass of actuality withal is a cloud of sheer deception, to which ``impossibilities'' is the only name which rightfully belonged.

But we do not need to agree with Grünbaum. We can have the past as determinate and actual, the future as indeterminate and potential, and the present as where actualizing occurs. It is where the future becomes past.  To describe the stages of actualization, therefore, we need another measure, that of process time.

Process Time

Now that the extensive continuum has a relation of extensiveness defined on it, it is feasible to investigate to what extent the extensive order of places affects the order of events that occur at those places. Now that the extensive continuum can be divided up in relation to any given place by the relations of precedes, succeeds and alternates with, we want to know how this subdivision is related to the temporal order of  the actualisings in the different regions. That is the order of process time.  The `extensive continuum' defined above, it should first be noted, although called `spacetime', has really in itself a temporal component. It is by itself purely extensive, and totally independent of any changes. It is just the collection of all places, including the places of all present and past events and the places possible for all future events. All these places are gathered together into one vast four-dimensional continuum. We did not construct it as a union of space and time, where space is extensive and three-dimensional, and time is one-dimensional and uniformly flowing. Rather, it is the extensive all-at-once aggregate of all places possible. Extensiveness is `all-at-once' or `under the aspect of eternity' because, although events occur each on its own occasion, all places can be given before there are any changes (events) that occur at those places. Although, on the view of time given in the previous section, not all events (especially not future events) can be given `eternally', this need not restrict our consideration of their places. The relations of precedes e between places, and are only between actualities insofar as what is actual is at least possible. These relations therefore can be given and discussed before any time or changes, and hence need to be supplemented by further conditions in order to find any order of events in the places that are related.

What has been done so far is to completely separate in our minds the order of places in the extensive continuum (metric time) from any order of events at those places (process time). But this cannot be the whole story, for if events were to be completely independent of where they occur in the four-dimensional continuum, then all events (whether past, present or future) would occur asynchronously. They would have no temporal relations, let alone causal relations, between them. Each would just `happen', with no relation at all to the `happening' of the other events. This may between events which are in fact causally unrelated, but in general some kind of natural constraints are necessary to restrain such a free-for-all.

A variety of constraints may be imagined. One suggestion is to order all events according to some uniform serial time. Each event would then occur at one and only one time. This uniform serial order could be identified with some direction of the fourth dimension in the extensive continuum, or it could be distinct from any such dimension. If it were distinct, however, we would be effectively constructing a fifth dimension. This would be a kind of uniformly flowing `hypertime' to order changes in the four-dimensional spacetime. I don't believe this `ontologically extravagant' hypothesis should be accepted without well-founded arguments.

Newtonian time has all events ordered in a uniform serial order which is identical to the time dimension of the extensive continuum. If the metric of this continuum is Newtonian in the manner of the previous section, then the `time direction' is unique. However, as there is considerable evidence in favour of the theory of special relativity, it is unlikely that space and time in fact follow the Newtonian pattern.

Growing Block Universe

Putting these two times together results in the 'growing block universe' view of time, from C.D. Broad in 1923.
See the Wikipedia entry on this, which summaries some of the related philosophical debates.

See also the discussion section in Time in the IEP:

Advocates of a growing-past agree with the presentists that the present is special ontologically, but they argue that, in addition to the present, the past is also real and is growing bigger all the time. C.D. Broad, George Ellis, Richard Jeffrey, and Michael Tooley have defended the growing-past theory. William James famously remarked that the future is so unreal that even God cannot anticipate it. It is not clear whether Aristotle accepted the growing-past theory or accepted a form of presentism; see Hilary Putnam (1967, p. 244) for commentary on this issue. The growing-past theory is also called "now-and-then-ism, the "becoming theory" and "possibilism." Member of McTaggart's A-camp prefer are divided on whether to accept presentism or the growing-past theory, but they agree in rejecting eternalism.