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Article 6701 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Sense of time (was Re: Consiousness)
Message-ID: <1992Aug26.000119.10596@unocal.com>
Date: 26 Aug 92 00:01:19 GMT
References: <1992Aug24.095016.3313@otago.ac.nz> <1992Aug25.122721.20724@bony1.bony.com>
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In article <1992Aug25.122721.20724@bony1.bony.com> richieb@bony1.bony.com (Richard Bielak) writes:
>I would say that sense of time is more of a cultural/language feature.
>We have a sense of time because we wear watches :-).

No. The sense of time is the ability to retain images in the mind of
past events or future plans and reflect on them.  Animals probably don't
have the ability of reflection.  They do have memories and can make simple
plans, but these are more sensation-reactive than reflection.
We have culture and history.  They don't.

>There are some languages (eg. Navajo) which do not have the word for
>"time".

This is myth perpretrated by the philosopher Benjamen Whorf.  Most languages
can express most ideas in other languages, given enough verbiage.
Each language does it in a slightly different way that gives that language
its unqiue poetic flavor.
A related myth is that because Chinese doesn't have verb tenses (they actually
do have a few) they cant express time.  I can think in Chinese and the sense
of time is as clear as English.
Another Whorf myth was that Eskimos have thirty-some terms for snow and we
just have one.  When someone examined this a few years, it was found that
English had almost all these terms in single words or short phrases- sleet,
slush, powder, etc.

>On your next vacation don't use clocks for few days and see how you
>perceive the passage of time.

The sense of time means "reflection on past and future", not the ability to
count time units.


