Time & Patience

The Bright and the Good, ed. Audrey Anton, 2018

Simone Weil wrote that, “We do not have to understand new things, but by dint of patience, effort and method to come to understand with our whole self the truths which are evident.” This is reminiscent of the suggestion in Plato’s Meno that knowledge is recollection. Although most of us would not take Plato at his word, we might charitably read him and Weil as suggesting that the solution to some problems depends not upon learning something new, but rather in understanding how to apply what we have already learned, in knowing how to look at the problem in the right way, or how to ask the right question, so that the solution—the answer, the right course of action—becomes clear. Knowing how to apply ourselves, our skills, and our experiences, is what it means to have practical wisdom. It is traditionally assumed that the virtuous person is also the practically wise person, that there is no human virtue without such wisdom. Although this view that practical wisdom is internal to the virtues has been challenged on various grounds, here I will travel close to the traditional conception while also convinced that what I offer here identifies an important relationship between patience and practical wisdom regardless of whether we construe virtues in an Aristotelian fashion or otherwise.

2008

What is patience? Humans and other animals often make decisions that trade off present and future benefits. Should a monkey eat an unripe fruit or wait for it to ripen? Should I purchase the iPhone at its debut or wait for the price to drop in a few months? In these dilemmas, large gains often require long waits, so decision makers must choose between a smaller, sooner reward and a larger, later reward.

Mind, it has recently been argued 1 , is a thoroughly temporal phenomenon: so temporal, indeed, as to defy description and analysis using the traditional computational tools of cognitive scientific understanding. The proper explanatory tools, so the suggestion goes, are instead the geometric constructs and differential equations of Dynamical Systems Theory. I consider various aspects of the putative temporal challenge to computational understanding, and show that the root problem turns on the presence of a certain kind of causal web: a web that involves multiple components (both inner and outer) linked by chains of continuous and reciprocal causal influence. There is, however, no compelling route from such facts about causal and temporal complexity to the radical anticomputationalist conclusion. This is because, interactive complexities notwithstanding, the computational approach provides a kind of explanatory understanding that cannot (I suggest) be recreated using the alternative resources of pure Dynamical Systems Theory. In particular, it provides a means of mapping information flow onto causal structure --a mapping that is crucial to understanding the distinctive kinds of flexibility and control characteristic of truly mindful engagements with the world. Where we confront especially complex interactive causal webs, however, it does indeed become harder to isolate the syntactic vehicles required by the computational approach. Dynamical Systems Theory, I conclude, may play a vital role in recovering such vehicles from the burgeoning mass of real-time interactive complexity.

Psychological Science, 2012

Results of four experiments reveal a counterintuitive solution to the common problem of feeling that one does not have enough time: Give some of it away. Although the objective amount of time people have cannot be increased (there are only 24 hours in a day), this research demonstrates that people's subjective sense of time affluence can be increased. We compared spending time on other people with wasting time, spending time on oneself, and even gaining a windfall of "free" time, and we found that spending time on others increases one's feeling of time affluence. The impact of giving time on feelings of time affluence is driven by a boosted sense of self-efficacy. Consequently, giving time makes people more willing to commit to future engagements despite their busy schedules.

Talk given at the 28th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, 2005.

Psychotherapy and Personal Change: Two Minds in a Mirror, 2020

Time and money are structural parameters of the psychotherapeutic relationship. If the basic working relationship cannot successfully take these elements into account, it will not succeed. A patient’s issues around time and money in general implicate his or her relationship with the therapist. Thus, being late for sessions or failing to pay on time has meaning in both therapy and beyond. By examining the meaning of those elements within the relationship, a patient becomes aware of how they influence other life choices. Dr. Friedberg’s practice deals with patients’ relationship to earning a living – in some cases, losing the means to earn a living and trying to rebuild. The effort takes a toll on patients’ self-esteem and distorts their personal relationships. Lack of a job, and hence of security, confidence, and “respectability,” raises long-suppressed feelings of guilt, inadequacy, or impending peril. It implicates relationships with parents, siblings, and peers and it causes jealousy and resentment. In other words, for many patients the ability to earn a living is basic to identity, independence, and a feeling of self-worth. This chapter will describe how patients dealt with this profound loss and how, in many instances, they recovered and moved forward in their lives.

Understand yourself first, and then to know the world. People can't control others, but they must lean to control themselves.

Qualitative Sociology Review, 2020

Abstract: Shaffir (1998:63) writes, “We must learn to reclaim the virtue of patience. When we enhance the pace of doing research, it is often at the expense of acquiring a deep appreciation of the research problem.” This paper engages Shaffir’s claim by examining the importance of undertaking a patient sociology. What is the virtue to be found in prolonged and sustained work? How does this speak to the relationships found in field research and in the identities that inform our work as researchers and theorists? In contrast to recent trends towards various versions of instant or shortterm ethnography (e.g., Pink and Morgan 2013) this paper argues for the merits of “slow” ethnography by examining the advantages of relational patience, perspectival patience, and the patience required to fully appreciate omissions, rarities, and secrets of the group.

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2010

The terms 'endurance' and 'perdurance' are commonly thought to denote distinct ways for an object to persist, but it is surprisingly hard to say what these are. The common approach, defining them in terms of temporal parts, is mistaken, because it does not lead to two coherent philosophical alternatives: endurance so understood becomes conceptually incoherent, while perdurance becomes not just true but a conceptual truth. Instead, we propose a different way to articulate the distinction, in terms of identity rather than temporal parts: an object endures if its identity is determined at every moment at which it exists. We make precise what it means for the identity of an object to be determined at a moment. We also discuss what role the endurance/perdurance distinction, so understood, should play in the debates about time, material objects and personal identity.