Time and the Philosophers 2: From Arthur Prior to Blade Runner

Sean Young playing Rachael in Blade Runner, a wistful android thrown in with teeming humanity (1982).  Image © Warner Bros.

Postmodernists claim that all of our knowledge, and our entire mindset, ensues from language.  Trapped inside the language game, we cannot think without linguistic structures.  This philosophical theory condemns us to moral relativism and deprives us of agency outside of the systems that Postmodernists identify.  Is this so?  Or does language, with its foundations buried in our understanding of time, provide us with a secret trap door?  Does time allow us to think outside of language?

Time and the Philosophers 1: Death, Language, Time Travel

Comedian Harold Lloyd in the 1923 classic, Safety Last!

From spiritual gurus and pop culture icons to geneticists and physicists, I turn to how philosophers approach time and space.  A good overview of the theories of time is here at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  First up of course is our awareness of death, from which come the principles of Fatalism, that is, a faith in predetermined destinies.  From that awareness of death comes our whole awareness of reality and past, present and future - and from that comes the syntax of human languages, the structure of consciousness - the whole framework of our thought.  Since Postmodernists argue that we cannot conceive of anything outside the game system of language, it's worth penetrating to the foundation of that system to see if we are, as they claim, well and truly trapped.  Or does time grant us agency?