The questions in Visions of Knowledge are not given as much attention as they deserve (by me or by others studying the TSK vision). But let’s at least look at the briefly.
In the post I just filed on DTS Ch. 10, I quoted Shakespeare’s Macbeth about “the last syllable of recorded time.” I didn’t intend it, but that becomes a nice lead in to this question. The exercise to come out of it, it seems to me, is to explore how time unfolds as we speak and listen (and think, but that is a more complex issue).
Here are a couple of examples. When we speak, we usually don’t plan ahead what we are going to say. We may have a rough idea, but usually the words just pop out. So can we really say that time proceeds syllable by syllable?
Again, suppose I say something, along the lines of “Tomorrow I’ll be meeting a friend for lunch.” Does knowledge unfold word by word? Pretty clearly not. That is, before I start speaking, I have in mind the point I want to make. And more than making a point, I have in mind the meeting with my friend: some vague sense of what it will be like, some anticipation and feeling about it, etc. All this is present before I start. So the future guides each moment of what I say, and is present in the past before I start to speak.
Well, those are just a couple of thoughts to get things going. Feel free to stay with previous practices if you like, but I do think that investigating time as we speak and listen is fruitful