St. Augustine's Confessions: Book 11 (Time and Creation) [Part 1]

In the eleventh book of the Confessions, Augustine offers what appear to be a series of arguments designed to show that time (or present time) must be regarded as an indivisible instant or "slice," or so that is the conclusion I will assume for this post. Augustine also regards present time as the only time that exists. In contemporary philosophical  parlance, in other words, Augustine is a presentist.

However, Christopher Kirwan has challenged the cogency of the assumption that Augustine's present can be divided to a single point or instant. Kirwan's representation of Augustine's argument is as follows:[1]

(10) When a time is not present, it does not exist;

(11) when a time does not exist, it is not long;

(12) when a time is present, every part of it is present;

(13) when a time is divisible, not every part of it is present;

(14) No indivisible time is long;

(15) Therefore, no time is long.

The argument, according to Kirwan, is logically valid. But he further contends that its premises (10) and (12) are false. The basis behind (10) is Augustine's reasoning that if the past does not in some sense exist, it would not be possible for someone to refer to the past on the grounds that the times in question no longer exist. Kirwan challenges Augustine's reasoning by arguing that the object of reference Augustine has in mind are not times but events, which, he claims, are much more plausible to exclude from present existence.[2] One can challenge this claim, however, on the simple grounds that even though events do not wholly exist at a time (or so one might possibly hold), it seems indisputable that they exist from one time to another time. And if one is unable to refer to times because they do not exist (and Kirwan does not dispute this claim), it is unclear why non-present events should be excluded from this same requirement. One might also point out that even if events do not wholly exist at any one time, they still exist at a time, as long as one part of the event exists at that time. For example, the Battle of Waterloo existed at the seventy-third minute at which it was being fought.

            Kirwan's second objection is that Augustine's premise (12) relies on a supplementary argument that rests on an equivocation. The supplementary argument Kirwan refers to is Augustine's attempt to demonstrate the non-existence of a year on the grounds that not all of the twelve months in the year are present all at once. Kirwan argues that 'twelve months' must be taken collectively in one sense and distributively in a second sense.[3]

            One might, however, try to defend premise (12) by another route, using premises that Augustine seems to affirm, if but implicitly, in other parts of his Confessions treatment of time to construct another argument. One such argument might go as follows:  

 

(A1) Either a duration of time d is present or it is not.

(A2) If it is not, then d is not present.

(A3) If it is, then d can be divided.

(A4) Either d can be infinitely divided or it cannot.

(A5) If it cannot, then one must arrive eventually at a unit of time that is indivisible.

(A6) If It can, then d must contain an infinite number of countable points.

(A7) But it is impossible that there is an infinite number of countable points in a finite duration.

(A8) Every duration of time can be finitely divided to a single indivisible point.

 

The argument, at least so it seems to me, is logically valid. So, the question comes down to the truth of its premises. The two disputable premises, I think, are (A6) and (A7). (A7) raises the question of whether Aristotle's distinction between an infinitely divisible line or duration and an infinitely divided one is a correct one to make, and this would involve a pretty serious digression from Augustine. So, for the sake of continuing my investigation, I will merely stipulate that (A7) is correct; in any case, it does not seem obviously incorrect. As for (A6), I believe one can support it on the following grounds. By definition (at least as Augustine sees it), no point of time has any duration. Moreover, any duration necessarily has or is bounded by at least two points. Now, borrowing from the assumed premise (A7), it seems obvious that a finite duration cannot contain infinitely many points. But if one divides a duration into two smaller durations, each duration must itself contain at least two points. But, then, if a duration is infinitely divided it will contain infinitely many points. Hence, because it cannot, an infinitely divided finite duration is impossible. 

In my next post, I will consider whether Augustine's concept of time as an indivisible instant is a cogent one. In this connection, I will judge whether his attempt to preserve the reality of time in light of some of its more perplexing elements, i.e., its fleetingness, through what I will call his "psychological" understanding of time makes sense.