What is time?

[Michael Mooney]

AnnsiH:

I guess it is fair to say, that you are interested of arguing the reasons why relativistic time relationships are valid, i.e. what does their validity imply about ontological reality. Now, that is interesting question, but here it seems to come down to arguments about each personal fantasy very quickly, and I feel people are just to busy explaining their perspective, and too convinced that no one else can understand the issue quite like they do, that they never come to think about the explicit, epistemological reasons behind the validity of relativistic description. (it is most certainly not a trivial issue that could be explained in any brief manner)

 

No moderators here are interested in the ontological question, "What is time?"

Examples:

 

755 (concluding): "

Just a few questions to contemplate. A few answers would be really nice for a change."

They never came. Moderators, when challenged as in these posts just ignore and stand pat on their previous textbook answers.

 

See my challenge to CraigD above (post 742)... along the same lines as my challenge to you... with no reply to the ontological question or the philosophical question as to how subjective idealism can even investigate the "real world." (Are there real bodies/brains supporting the "minds" which are the only reality?)

 

And you are the champ at beating around the ontological bush on the question. Seems that burying that issue in extreme verbosity is your answer.

(Is a rock really an existing entity or just a perceived pattern we call a rock?... for god sake!)

 

Or my challenges in post 743... no reply...

 

Or my 747 above on the reification issue... "What bends or dilates?" in the world beyond metrics and math is never even addressed.

 

...Or Tormod on "spacetime"... same unanswered issue ( see cut-n-paste and my comments in post 761.)

 

Until some answers to the above questions/challenges happen, I am just wasting my time and breath here.

 

Michael

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Michael: "Is a rock really an existing entity or just a perceived pattern we call a rock?... "

Why can't it be both?

I can reach out and touch a rock. I can pick it up and toss it up and when it comes down it might hit me on the head. I can feel it and if it is a road apple, I can smell it and if so inclined, I can taste it. We can agree that such things have ontological reality. If it is an ice cube, however, held in my hand long enough, it will cease to have ontological reality because it will melt. But it did for as long as it existed or, in the sense of its being a pattern, persisted.

And, we understand the referents used above because they are patterns that we work with and it is the attributes of the specific pattern, 'road apple' that makes anyone contemplating tasting one go, 'eeeuuuwwww!' or being under one tossed - think about getting out of the way of its descent. Those actions or contemplations are the results of dealing with the patterns implied in our mutual understandings of those ontological things.

I read AnsiH's response, as you did, but not from the same perspective: I'm trying to understand the nature of the argument you two seem to have. Since there seems definitely to be some sort of disagreement, there must be at least two world views in play here or, if there is just one, at least one of you is not being internally consistent.

When we deal with flat surfaces that are used to hold objects, we call those surfaces, 'tables'. A table, when viewed along with other objects in our homes used for such tasks, becomes 'furniture'. It is a level of abstraction above a table. Things (yes, ontologically real things) that fall into those categories fall in there because they are patterns that match. A chess table is still a table. So is a workbench with a vice on it. But they are tables only because we give them the pattern characteristics of 'flat level surface used to hold objects'. To a life form that lived in space without having to deal with the effects of gravity, table would have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

 

I have been trying very hard to understand the issues here and it seems that sometimes you do not want to see AnsiH's point of view because you are so busy trying to protect something or get agreement on the phrase - excuse me while I find it - 'subjective idealism'.

The only thing I know about subjective idealism for sure is that it is an abstraction far above the concept of 'table' or 'furniture', so far above that it might not even have a solid pattern that can actually be applied to anything. If ontological reality refers to anything, it refers to those things at the other end of the conceptual spectrum from 'subjective idealism' and would come as close to 'that which is physically perceived' as anything could.

Terms like 'subjective idealism' are so far removed from direct perception that in my mind they have no actual referents. One would think that direct perception is required to prove ontological reality, but, only if we think we perceive the actual workings of existence (whatever it is). And that might be a very foolish idea. What if, instead, we actually perceive the derivative of the actual workings of reality? What if our perceptive equipment was incapable of directly perceiving ontological reality? Whether you like it or not, that really might be an issue here.

AnsiH is abstracting out the things which are in common with all worldviews, if I understand this stuff correctly. He's working with and trying to identify the tools we use when forming a worldview and these things, I think, he refers to as epistemological functions.

He and DD want to automate those functions.

You seem to want to prove that a certain worldview constitutes 'subjective idealism'. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And, consequently, the two of you are not talking about the same things or patterns of things.

[Little Bang]

Micheal, you ask valid ontological questions, none of which can be fully explained. Let me ask you a question. Go to here, http://hypography.com/forums/physics-and-mathematics/20793-relativity-discussion-from-what-time-thread.html#post279488, Post number 32, example two and explain with your ontological view why B sees the light it receives as blue shifted.

[AnssiH]

Anss, could it be said that there is a possibility the standard model fits in with your post above?

 

 

Of course you could say that. That is not to say that Standard Model is the only model that fits with the post above :hihi: But there is certainly a point to be made about the necessity to break reality into discreet parts and make that perspective work for us, and the success of the Standard Model in doing so. (I view it as a success in modeling something, not as a success in telling how something is in itself)

 

And you are the champ at beating around the ontological bush on the question. Seems that burying that issue in extreme verbosity is your answer.

(Is a rock really an existing entity or just a perceived pattern we call a rock?... for god sake!)

 

I thought you understood Kant since you brought it up. I guess not. Remember just couple posts back when I said "...whenever I refer to relationships that we have defined in our minds as part of our model of reality, you take that as idealism"

 

You commented "I get that you do not dismiss "the world" as 'all in our minds'" to that post, but now you already went back to complaining how there is "no reply to the ontological question or the philosophical question as to how subjective idealism can even investigate the "real world." (Are there real bodies/brains supporting the "minds" which are the only reality?)

 

Try to understand that it is one thing to take the ontological position that only minds exist (which of course one can take but not defend), and another thing entirely to say that "brain" is a defined thing, based on fundamentally unknown reality. (constructivism, or not taking any definite ontological position at all)

 

I think you just very much want to see people agree with your particular ontological fantasy, which is commonly know as "naive realism". Not a strong form of naive realism, but clearly there are aspects of reality that you very much want to be exactly how you view them. And there are some things that you think are "things in themselves" exactly the way you say they are. I think that is very thoughtless as it shouldn't be overly hard to understand how many different perspectives one can take over any defined thing. Do you think consciousness is somehow "known" phenomenon?

 

When people start talking about the issues behind your assert that you have clearly overlook, so to point out that your question is very much unanswerable, you take that as avoiding the question.

 

I guess I should still mention that I really don't think it's time well spent trying to explaining this to you, and I hope you don't take that as elitism, it's just that I have limited time and I've been here before. So just take this for whatever it's worth, and try to understand that this has got absolutely nothing to do with idealism, even if it is not exactly in line with your view.

 

-Anssi

[Michael Mooney]

.... steve,

Re:

The only thing I know about subjective idealism for sure is that it is an abstraction far above the concept of 'table' or 'furniture', so far above that it might not even have a solid pattern that can actually be applied to anything.

 

Please study up on subjective idealism and get back to me.* It applies to the context of my challenges to CraigD (who seems to endorse it) and AnnsiH, who does not, but embraces a version of idealism set forth by Immanuel Kant, called "transcentental idealism", distinguishing the empirical experience of phenomena from the "unknowable" reality Kant called "noumena ."

 

AnssiH mistook my criticism of CraigD's philosophy for criticism of his (hers?), tho I clearly distinguished the two in my posts to each. Both assume a superior air above and beyond discussion of the ontology of time, since they think it is beyond the reach of subjective experience through the senses in either philosophical case, it seems.

 

A rock, AnnsiH believes, has no knowable objective existence as an "object" given his/her subjective philosophy that the objective existence of "things" is fundamentally unknowable. (Also see "constructionism", AnssiH's avowed philosophy... with a bow to kant's noumena as in transcendental idealism.)

 

These are relevant philosophical considerations for a "philosophy of science" forum, but the staff here will not touch the subject with a ten foot pole. Empiricism, you see, defines reality... or all that we can know about it!

 

(*My masters degrees are in both philosophy and psychology, so the above debate, tho avoided by staff here, seems central to this forum section title from my background experience.)

 

Yes, I do enjoy whacking the hornet's nest here!

Michael

 

Michael

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Michael: "Please study up on subjective idealism and get back to me.* " I have a better idea: you give me your definition of subjective and objective. I have a hard time contemplating those two terms because I can say, "the subject is that object" and "that object is the subject".

 

I think about an object. That means it becomes a subject of interest which means I look for similarities and differences with other objects of my experience. So, Objects are things that I have experienced. Subjects are things that I have consciously contemplated.

Objects are what come out of my perception engines (sight, hearing, touch, etc.) and are the result of those processes over which I have little conscious control.

The ideal is the pure, the snow white.

So, let's say that subjective idealism is subjective purity. I take that to mean that it is the attempt to treat the procedures of contemplation as a sort of scrubbing mechanism. I take that to mean internally consistent.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Just one more thing on that, Michael. I don't actually think about an object. I think about the rendering of my perception engines, not the actual object itself. And the rendering, in the case of my sight engine, is the light that reflected off of the object. And that description provides a glimpse into my own worldview: light reflects off of objects and strikes my sight machine.

[modest]

Ok folks, the topic is "What is time?". Please be kind enough to start new threads for these tangents.

 

~modest

[Michael Mooney]

AnssiH:

Do you think consciousness is somehow "known" phenomenon?

 

so to point out that your question is very much unanswerable, you take that as avoiding the question.

 

The first question will be considered "off topic." My (locked) Transpersonal Psychology thread covered this topic in depth, if you are really interested in an answer.

Short answer: Consciousness is awareness, regardless of what one is aware of.)

 

To your second point:

So when "textbook science" says that space bends and time dilates, we are not to question what either of them is or (or both "woven together" into "the fabric of spacetime"... because the question is ontologically unanswerable?

 

I guess the conferences on The Ontology of Spacetime are only attended by deluded dummies who are not up to speed on the accepted doctrines of space, time, and spacetime!

 

Michael

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Hmmm. So, if we had a convention and conference dedicated to the discussion of time travel, that would prove we can do it? Michael, you are arguing for the concept of space-time using two logical fallacies to support your claim.

Specifically, you're using the Appeal To Authority, a very specific and formal logical fallacy with a tainting of Appeal To Consensus as well.

I would like to be able to tag your post with these fallacies (Modest, are you listening? This is precisely the reason I asked for this capability long ago. If you want Hypography to step into the next century, lobby for this.)

Imagine if we could do that, folks. How many arguments made in these discussions have those two fallacies at their base? Neither shows, in any substantial way, the voracity of your claim that space-time exists. If space-time exists, prove it by other means.

[Michael Mooney]

....steve:

Neither shows, in any substantial way, the voracity of your claim that space-time exists. If space-time exists, prove it by other means.

You have totally missed my point and in fact have it reversed.

If you look at everything I have said about space, time, and spacetime... including the locked thread "What is Spacetime, Really?" you will find that that I have always challenged the the common assertion that either or both are existing entities.

 

My reference to the conferences on The Ontology of Spacetime was an example of the fact that the debate challenging said existence is still in progress, i.e., that all the pat answers I get here assuming that "space bends" and "time dilates" are totally ignoring the fundamental ontological inquiry into what they are in the first place.

I have debunked the reification of space, time, and spacetime until everyone here is sick of hearing it, yet you think I take the opposite stance.

How is it that after all this you assume the opposite of what I have always said?

Michael

[modest]

Maddog came to the same conclusion some time ago, Michael. You are making time into something physical—you reify it.

 

Whoever posits that space is something reifies "it." Whoever says that it is simply the empty volume *in which actual things exist* does not "treat it as a concrete* thing" and therefore does not reifiy it.

(*Concrete in the sense that "it" has the properties of shape (including curvature), expand/contract abilityy, etc as discussed to death in this thread.)

This is your "Concept" so YOU are the Only Entity in this thread which is Reifying this

"Something" (Whatever). :)

Re: What is "spacetime" really?

 

I, likewise, have previously told you that you reify time so that you can object to its reification.

 

What this essentially comes down to is the following: Your definition (i.e. your concept) of time is indistinguishable from the one I've given. I will provide quotes so that you may see the truth of this assertion:

 

Time is essentially duration (which we might think of as being measured with a clock or any regularly repeating phenomenon)

 

source

Time is the *concept/measure* of event duration, like... one rotation of earth... one earth orbit around sun... the great cycle of the precession of the equinox...

 

source

You, Einstein, and I all agree that time is a measure (i.e. the measured duration of some process or phenomenon). We are not insisting that time be an ontological element nor are we trying to explain the ontological nature of that which is measured.

 

It is at this point that you *purposefully* reify time, as for example in the theory of special relativity. You claim quite incorrectly that because time "dilates" in the theory, it is assumed to be a physical, or tangible, or reified thing. As many, many people have now pointed out, this is a strawman and a misconception.

 

Given the way we have defined time, it does indeed decrease with velocity. This is an inescapable consequence... a fact. Any measurement made on an observable process with relative velocity will have a lesser value of time as we have defined it.

 

If you object so strongly to the reification of space and time then stop reifying their variables in relativity.

 

~modest

[Michael Mooney]

Modest:

You claim quite incorrectly that because time "dilates" in the theory, it is assumed to be a physical, or tangible, or reified thing.

 

"You are making time into something physical—you reify it."

 

For the last time, What is "it" that is said to dilate?

 

Quite the opposite. Relativity theory reifies "it" by giving "it" the property of a thing that dilates. None of the "time dilation" references in the texts or in net references speak of "physical processes" slowing down or speeding up. They all treat "time" as what is doing that.

 

Same with "space" as *something* that bends, etc. That is the reification. If space is empty volume, as I have argued forever, "it" doesn't *do* anything but contain the things that we can observe "doing their thing." The latter is not reification. Space is nothing but volume... infinite volume. There can be no "end of space," and "it" has no "shape." The things in space have shape.

 

(Get it yet? Of course not. We have argued this 'til we were both bored to death. Why would that change now?)

 

Then there is "frame dragging" in which spinning masses are said to "drag spacetime" around them. (Earth, black holes, etc.) So they are "dragging" what?? That is making spacetime into an entity with properties of "its own." How is it that you can not see this?

 

Einstein said that gravity bends spacetime, and then he said... (paraphrazing, of course)... oh, BTW "it" really isn't anything by itself and will not exist without mass. What the hell was "it" then that did the bending. Oh... just our little map with lines on paper which illustrates bent spacetime when we bent the flat paper into a curve or a sphere or a parabolic saddle. It is ridiculous to say that gravity bends spacetime. That is reification, if you actually know the meaning of the word.

 

Michael

[freeztar]

"The thought slipped my mind"

 

Does this mean that thoughts can slip? How do thoughts slip? What is it about their ontology that allows slippage? Should we raise pitchforks at any idiomatic phrase that comes from colloquialism or an attempt at conferring an idea that is not easily understood without metaphor?

 

Michael, this thread is about Time, not shoehorning "reification of spacetime" into any thread remotely related because the original thread got closed. Let's not rehash the reasons for this. (if you'd like to discuss it, PM me or another staff member)

 

An idiom is generally a colloquial metaphor — a term requiring some foundational knowledge, information, or experience, to use only within a culture, where conversational parties must possess common cultural references. Therefor, idioms are not considered part of the language, but part of the culture. As culture typically is localized, idioms often are useless beyond their local context; nevertheless, some idioms can be more universal than others, can be easily translated, and the metaphoric meaning can be deduced.

 

Many idiomatic expressions are based upon conceptual metaphors such as "time as a substance", "time as a path", "love as war", and "up is more"; the metaphor is essential, not the idioms. For example, "spend time", "battle of the sexes", and "back in the day" are idiomatic and based upon essential metaphors.

[Little Bang]

"The thought slipped my mind"

 

Bravo, amen, jolly good freez.

[modest]

For the last time, What is "it" that is said to dilate?

That's not the last time you'll ask. My answer has consistently been the same. That which dilates (in your words this time) is:

Time is the *concept/measure* of event duration, like... one rotation of earth... one earth orbit around sun... the great cycle of the precession of the equinox...

 

source

The time (or duration if you prefer) of one earth orbit is dilated more and more the greater and greater the velocity from which it is considered, or the stronger the gravitational field from which it is considered. The duration of one earth rotation is shorter in the Dead Sea than on Mt. Everest.

 

Where it seems you are either having trouble or purposefully giving trouble is the concept of a definition. When someone says a word, that word has meaning. The word's definition denotes the word and the word's conceptual meaning is illustrated with the definition. For example, if I said "a bachelor is an unmarried man" then we could set up an equality:

bachelor = unmarried man

If I now said that the number of bachelors at a party increased by 20, it would not make sense for you to say: "the number of bachelors increases, but the number of unmarried men does not increase". Likewise,

 

If I said "time is duration" (as you have said). Then I can set up an equality:

time = duration

It would then make no sense to say "duration changes with velocity, but time does not", or "time is a reification but duration is not" By the transitive property of equality, that would be illogical.

 

None of the "time dilation" references in the texts or in net references speak of "physical processes" slowing down or speeding up. They all treat "time" as what is doing that.

 

Consider: There is a harmonic oscillator (a "physical process") with local amplitude 1 meter, period 0.5 seconds, and rate 2 cycle/second. You are some distance above this contraption in a gravitational field such that its proper time is given by [math]\tau[/math] = .5t where t is measured by a Rolex you're wearing. How many oscillations are there when your Rolex hits forty seconds? As measured with your Rolex, what is the oscillator's rate in cycles per second?

 

It makes sense to me to use the word "slows" with rate or frequency, and to use "lengthens" or "dilates" with time or duration. Flow rate, for example, would slow while flow time would lengthen.

 

~modest

[Rade]

"The thought slipped my mind". Does this mean that thoughts can slip? How do thoughts slip?

I think that a 'thought' can slip a mind over time, of course this requires definitions. So, let us define a thought = a computational event with identity, stored within the spatial boundaries of the brain as a memory of the past, that arises from execution of a DNA (computer like) code. Let us define slip = to move unmarked. Thus, when we say a thought has slipped a mind, we mean "a past conscious event, stored as memory, has moved, over time, out of consciousness (into the unconscious) unmarked".

 

It is also said that "time slips by". How ? If time is defined = that which is intermediate between moments, and 'thoughts are events within moments', then "time slips by" when that which is intermediate between moments of "thoughts" is unmarked (not measured) within the conscious mind.

 

Oh well, I have strange ideas--fire away.