Two Kinds of Time
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant characterizes experience as accumulated empirically from “the raw material of our sensations.” Although he believes that “knowledge begins with experience,” he singles out time and space as given prior to experience, a priori. In the physiological substrate I am proposing, it is not a coincidence that time and space are established prior to experience, pre-empirically, by the innate, peripheral vestibular system. Time and space are incorporated into our physical core of experience before we differentiate the world and empirically learn to recognize entities and events at the verbal-symbolic tier of consciousness.
Henri Bergson described the subjective experience we have of time and space associated with the movement sequences we initiate. He believed that the personal experience of time reflects the immediate flow of conscious awareness. He called this personal time “duration” to distinguish it from the empirically measured time of science.
In the present paradigm, the first tier of consciousness is established by four pre-empirical sources of guidance: sensory inputs, visceral processes, mirroring and movement signals from the peripheral vestibular system. The vestibular system provides continuous guidance associated with movement through acceleration signals it generates in three dimensions. Since acceleration reflects changes in the speed of movement over time, these signals provide grounding in both time and space for everything we do. They represent a physiological substrate for Kant’s assignment of a priori status to time and space, and they explain Bergson’s subjective experience of personal time given directly by the movements themselves.
It would not be possible for sensory, visceral and mirroring processes to establish a physical core of experience if their guidance was not anchored in time and space. Every move we make throughout our lives has this basic grounding. Our movements define time and space through acceleration signals generated by the continuous flow of fluid within the semicircular canals of the peripheral vestibular system. The movement of fluid within the three canals in the inner ear strikes the endplate at the base of each canal to generate independent signals that define three dimensions in space. These acceleration signals guide our movements through space in three dimensions and define a personal dimension of time.
Pre-empirically generated vestibular signals define a personal sense of time and space. We also learn to measure time and space through empirical observations using clocks set to a universal standard and the three dimensions of height, width and depth. Only our personal movements in time and space, however, identify our presence in the world. The personal, movement-based time that Bergson called duration takes place in movement defined space, and both time and space are given a priori as Kant indicated. The physicality we experience at the first tier of consciousness, our presence in movement defined space, establishes the grounding for what we later recognize as the self.
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