What is time?

[Kriminal99]

Both dasraiser's and Bio-Hazard's responses hint to what CraigD and I were saying. It's not as simple as "time existing only in our minds". Bio-Hazard's cool link to the USNO reminds me that atomic clocks count the oscillations of atoms, which we the observers are made of. And dasraiser noted that the world had to exist before s/he could exist.

 

This is why I say that logic defeats itself here. Because the observer has to first exist physically in order to observe time, or anything else. Any hypotheses disregarding external time should realistically provide an alternative mechanism for (non-physical) consciousness.

 

Have you ever heard the "brain in a vat" argument, or read descartes (or other philosophers), or seen the matrix, or had a dream for that matter? Its kinda funny, because you have to use things we have experienced in the existence we are doubting as a metaphor for what might be happening outside of our sense perceptions, but the idea is that everything you experience could just be an illusion caused by your subconsious mind (if you are dreaming right now) or some vr program hooked up with wires to a disembodied brain in a vat or by anything really.

 

You could wake up to find that the "real" universe really has physics completely different than what existed in the "VR world" that we are currently experiencing. Apply any of your arguments to this situation. Do any of them still address the concern? No.

 

As for "realistically provide an alternative", the problem here is that what is a "realistic alternative" is not something that you or anyone else is really capable of judging due to a similar argument as I am using regarding the "time is a function of perception issue". Why? Well lets single out the Virtual Reality version and try your reasoning on it. Is that realistic? You might say "No thats not realistic, because noone knows how to interact with the mind that way etc". But then oh yeah... Thats in the world we are experiencing now... In fact ALL of your reasoning and intuition is based on the world you are experiencing now. Therefore it is impossible for you to determine if any alternative explanation is "realistic" or not. How can you tell what is "realistic" if you don't know what is "real"?

 

Eventually philosophers just realized it doesn't do anything bad to accept that we don't know if everything we experience is "real" (although not all of them were comfortable of wording it that way)... We still can do nothing but accept what we are experiencing until we are given any reason (and option) to do otherwise. In fact since our concept of real is dependent on everything we experience, we might as well define real to mean what we experience regardless of if it is just a VR program or not. We might as well define everything we believe as being dependent on our sense experience. Think of it as recognizing assumptions.

 

Recognizing that time is dependent on perception follows the same type of reasoning. If something were to alter the order in which we percieve events, it would alter our conception of time.

 

I recognize this fundamental disagreement, one which I believe is generally termed “materialism vs. phenomenalism”, a disagreement that has resisted resolution for at least 300, probably more like 3000, years. Even the wikipedia article I link to is under dispute by adherents on either side of the disagreement.

 

My materialistic worldview is not the result of having personally resolved the phenomenalism conundrum, but the conclusion that it’s simply impractical to apply mathematical formalism, a thing that gives me great pleasure, to the outside world – in other words, to do Science – without such a worldview. Please don’t think me disparaging of other worldviews.

 

:) I think writer/director John Carpenter put it eloquently this bit of script from his low-budget 1974 movie “Dark Star”. The full script has several more delightful philosophy nuggets from this (IMHO) much overlooked and forgotten film. :)

 

I don't know if I could be classified as either side on this argument. My problem with phenomenalism is pretty much outlined above your quote in this post... if nothing is real that we experience then what would we do hide in a pitch black closet and bob our head up and down saying "iTs... nOt.... rEaL!!! heh.. HA ... hahHAHAHA"? Instead why not just recognize everything as dependent on our sense experience being "real" or not...

 

But recognizing that dependence is still important IMO. Is time dependent on our perception of events? Well YEAH because every idea we ever have is dependent on our perception. But is this signifigant in any situation other than one where we are being decieved about everything we percieve? Yes.. Lets say you want to just define time as the order in which events occur, No perception involved. Well what if something alters the order in which you percieve events? Your perception of time is all messed up. Everything about the world might be real, but this is still the case.

[goku]

time is a flow of energy, a journey from beginning to end :)

[Southtown]

You could wake up to find that the "real" universe really has physics completely different than what existed in the "VR world" that we are currently experiencing. Apply any of your arguments to this situation. Do any of them still address the concern? No.

 

As for "realistically provide an alternative", the problem here is that what is a "realistic alternative" is not something that you or anyone else is really capable of judging due to a similar argument as I am using regarding the "time is a function of perception issue". Why? Well lets single out the Virtual Reality version and try your reasoning on it. Is that realistic? You might say "No thats not realistic, because noone knows how to interact with the mind that way etc". But then oh yeah... Thats in the world we are experiencing now... In fact ALL of your reasoning and intuition is based on the world you are experiencing now. Therefore it is impossible for you to determine if any alternative explanation is "realistic" or not. How can you tell what is "realistic" if you don't know what is "real"?

I admit reasoning is relative to context, again. So what? To what purpose is the assumption recognition? Where does it alter any interpretations of anything? In my view it would not only limit my interactions with other people objects and food as imaginative, but would beg the question: what other reality is there that produces my consciousness? Without answering that question, speculation of such extra-realism is pointless.

[dasraiser]

hi folk:)

 

i just have to except

reality=perceived reality, unless otherwise realized

 

if life and these questions are ever realized, i guess the human race will create a VR far removed from this which allows for new conjecture and discussions to develop.

 

regards

[Southtown]

Very plainly put. HAHA

[Doctordick]

Time is no more than a mental mechanism we use to delineate changes in what we know! :confused:

The Past is what we know; the future is what we don't know and the present is a change from not knowing some particular to knowing that particular. :confused:

 

Have fun -- Dick

 

Knowledge is Power

and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

[lindagarrette]

I understand, mainly from studying theoretical physics and quantum theory, that time is not a perception, it is a measure of sequences of events in the universe. It has existed ever since the BB (and possibly before if you believe SS theory). What doesn't exist, is the present. There is no moment in time. And, in QM, time doesn't enter the equations. Right?

[Kriminal99]

I understand, mainly from studying theoretical physics and quantum theory, that time is not a perception, it is a measure of sequences of events in the universe. It has existed ever since the BB (and possibly before if you believe SS theory). What doesn't exist, is the present. There is no moment in time. And, in QM, time doesn't enter the equations. Right?

 

I agree with the no present part as far as time is concerned, but the idea we are discussing is that since a person is always percieving the sequence of events in the universe it is a perception weather we try and define it to be or not. Practically it simply IS a percieved sequence of events.

 

And to simplify the arguments we have been having, an example of why this matters as opposed to say how global skepticism seems to be of little consequence, is because if something were to alter the order in which we percieved events our idea of time would not model the sequence of events taking place in the universe. But most importantly, we might never know the difference because as previously stated our idea of time practically is dependent on the order we percieve events. This has nothing to do with the world not being real, the example of the world not being real is just to prove that we don't have any 1st person connection to external systems on which time can be based on.

 

If you want to have a belief set where you define time is dependent on external sequences of events, you can of course. However you have absolutely no evidence to work with in that case as to what this time would be. You could try and rig some system which gives a signal to you when something occurs in some other system. But you are still percieving the signal, and your organization of this system is still dependent on your perception of how events are typically ordered.

[infamous]

I understand, mainly from studying theoretical physics and quantum theory, that time isnot a perception, it is a measure of sequences of events in the universe. It has existed ever since the BB (and possibly before if you believe SS theory). What doesn't exist, is the present. There is no moment in time. And, in QM, time doesn't enter the equations. Right?

I totally agree Linda, the instant you try and define the present, it has already become the past. And because the past seems to be such a difficult thing return to, the future is, in reality, all that we have. This direction which time is traveling can be closely associated with the character of Entropy. I therefore surmise that time is evidence that chance has occured and is closley related to the character of Entropy because they are both unidirectional.

[lindagarrette]

I agree with the no present part as far as time is concerned, but the idea we are discussing is that since a person is always percieving the sequence of events in the universe it is a perception weather we try and define it to be or not. Practically it simply IS a percieved sequence of events.

 

And to simplify the arguments we have been having, an example of why this matters as opposed to say how global skepticism seems to be of little consequence, is because if something were to alter the order in which we percieved events our idea of time would not model the sequence of events taking place in the universe.

Events occur in natural sequence whether we are there to perceive them or not. What could possibly alter the order? a god?

[Jay-qu]

well actually... In the book 'About time' by Paul Davies, he says that the simple act of getting up and walking across your room (if your room lines up so that when you walk you walk away from andromeda) then the time dilation that you cause your body to experience will be magnified over long distances - ie the order of events can be different when considering two objects in seperate galaxies... very interesting read

[Southtown]

well actually... In the book 'About time' by Paul Davies, he says that the simple act of getting up and walking across your room (if your room lines up so that when you walk you walk away from andromeda) then the time dilation that you cause your body to experience will be magnified over long distances - ie the order of events can be different when considering two objects in seperate galaxies... very interesting read

... sounds like it. I got told to google him once. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

[Kriminal99]

Events occur in natural sequence whether we are there to perceive them or not. What could possibly alter the order? a god?

 

Again let me bring up the global skepticism argument and work from there.

 

A) If something other than physical objects outside of us we think we percieve was manipulating all that you percieve, you could never have any indication of it because all of your reasoning about whether or not this is the case is based on all that you percieve. Therefore you have no indication as to the probability that objects external to you actually exist. You also have no idea what the natural sequence of events occur in is, (if there even are events occuring)

 

:hihi: More importantly, you have no way of knowing what order events are actually occuring in. Meaning for example they could be occuring in a different order than we have always thought, because some aspect of how this order is communicated to us or how we percieve it.

[CraigD]

Events occur in natural sequence whether we are there to perceive them or not. What could possibly alter the order?

While it’s true that the order of events detected by a particular, unaccelerating observer, is well defined, there are many ways to alter that order, such as

• Change your location relative to the objects (A & :hihi: for which the events are to be detected. If you are now closer to A than before, events that once appears simultaneous at A and B now appear to happen first at A, then at B.
  
• Change your velocity relative to the objects. For a classic example, see ”the barn & pole paradox”
  

For observers objects with non-zero relative positions and velocities, simultaneity is alterable.

 

Because we can account for these order-altering effects, it’s still meaningful to speak of an “absolute” order of event, but we must acknowledge that the choice of a particular order of events to be “absolute” is in a sense arbitrary, and depends on our choice of the inertial frame of observation.

[dasraiser]

hi peeps :hihi:

 

i quite agree with your posts that events can be observed at a differing rates, this holds true for all physical events that transmit/recieve information at varying velocities.

 

back on to the main topic,

 

If i take an observation of a clock, look away for some period of time then look back at it, it'll always show its advanced in time, whether this has been manipulated by my mind (by means of expecting the result) or by physical mechanical advancement will always remain impossible to answer.

 

If I take the point of view of a phenomenalist i have to believe the clock was set by my mind, moreover i would also have to presume I hold the sum knowledge of the universe, and at some point in the past decided to spread this knowledge among created 'sense data' called people (purely to stop myself going insane) and then play games with myself to try and reconstruct my understanding of this universe, basically numbing time away. This i don't like, but can neither disprove, and just look at the pickle i get myself in with these forums :doh: . (my bad :eek: :friday: :friday: :friday: ).

 

It is allot easier for me to believe that all things beat with there own rhythm whether i'm there to observe them or not; understand them or not, purely because any other explanations will eventually lead me to self destruction (well in the case of phenomenalism). I also believe that the universe holds such infinite resolution that we could never hope to fully understand it, and this i like.

 

anyway chew this over, rip it apart and give us your opinion.

 

regards

[Southtown]

If I take the point of view of a phenomenalist i have to believe the clock was set by my mind, moreover i would also have to presume I hold the sum knowledge of the universe, and at some point in the past decided to spread this knowledge among created 'sense data' called people (purely to stop myself going insane) and then play games with myself to try and reconstruct my understanding of this universe, basically numbing time away.

Haha! Good call.

[Boerseun]

What is time? Time is 10:32 AM.