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A few reflections on "does time exist?"

Dedbeet

Dedbeet

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Recent discoveries in physics have hinted lately that time may not exist.

One can say time exists, or time doesn't exist... but what is it actually?
Time is a "fixed speed-variable" against which other (non-fixed) variables are coordinated and compared, IMO.

For example, the second hand of a clock moves faster than a slug, but slower than an airplane -- so we can coordinate things by that, e.g. a public transit schedule. But the clock hand is really nothing but a flowing movement, nyet? And how is it fundamentally different than the movement of the slug or airplane? I say it is not. People only think it is because "the way thought works" suggests so, but reality is not based on human thought/memory.

And fwiw, it does seem here that it's largely unnecessary in the realm of physics, and has been forced in as some sort of an absolute "existing thing", when it's really just a handy comparator of speeds that should be discarded where it doesn't apply.

Matter, energy, time, speed (distance)... thought-based separations that are not separable in actuality, but only seem so because thought has picked them apart based on the way it works. The notion that any of it is "objectively existing" apart from human thought is utterly nonsensical, IMO.

We're always back to square one again... consciousness, awareness, the observer. Why? Because that is the fundamental reality.
 
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I agree that time does not exist, time is merely an illusion, but it proved and still proves to be a very useful tool for human civilization.
 
Time gives space for things to change.

Without time, nothing would change.

Time exists.. but i don't think it's fixed..

Gravity / speed warp time.
 
1ll0gic said:
I agree that time does not exist, time is merely an illusion, but it proved and still proves to be a very useful tool for human civilization.
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Indeed... a quote that nicely describes this phenomenon:

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this Particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born--the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
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rickolasnice said:
Time isn't just an illusion -_-
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Yes it is-- an illusion the same as everything else man has invented.

If we did away with "time" and its cohorts, life would be much more organic and enjoyable. Time exists because man has an overriding desire to control everything-- by putting a linguistic label on something, we can pigeon-hole it and attempt to master it.

From the concept of time, we are further burdened with the idea of work, money, aging, etc... With no schedule, man would simply Be (or, should I say, with no schedule, man simply Is).
 
No we have given portions of time a set measurement.. it doesn't mean we created it.. are you saying time doesn't exist where man cannot see? bullshit..

Just as we didn't create distance, by giving metre a meaning, heat, by giving celcius meaning or weight, by giving gramme meaning..
 
Changed said:
From the concept of time, we are further burdened with the idea of work, money, aging, etc... With no schedule, man would simply Be (or, should I say, with no schedule, man simply Is).
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No.. it simply makes things easier (for a capitalist society).. How would you know when to meet someone? When to get somewhere? Time exists wether it has a label (such as time, second or hour).. The sun will still rise and still set at the same time.. It will be colder and warmer at certain times.. the flowers will start to blossom at certain times of the year..
 
Time is real, and is an essential part of the space-time continuum.
Can time exist devoid of sapce - possible. Can space exist without time - probably not.
Instead of thinking time, think space-time.:)
 
time is a process firstly.

to conceive of it in essence, is to preconceive of universal relativity.

it is our way of describing cosmic changes that affect us in a tangible, track-able, recordable, and now expandable sense.


maybe our original concept of mathematics?
(worth asking for myself, because idk)
 
Here's a little ditty for the conceptual mind: Time *can't* exist.

(A) If time exists, the past and future exist.
(B) But existence necessarily implies presence, being.
(C) And the past, by definition, can never be present -- if it could, it would not be past.
(D) Thus, the past *cannot* exist, and by extension -- the future, either. The instant it existed, it would be the present, not the past/future.

Peace...
 
Problem with premise #2:

If I die tomorrow, did I exist today? If so, existence does not imply presence. If not, who is typing this sentence?
 
Raw Evil said:
Problem with premise #2:

If I die tomorrow, did I exist today? If so, existence does not imply presence. If not, who is typing this sentence?
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If you look a little deeper, the answer is there: If time doesn't exist, it must be imaginary (i.e. possible to imagine it). And thinking is imagining.

In what actual sense does *thought itself* 'exist'? As a linear, timeless 'stream of consciousness' that has no past/future.

Even remembering having had a previous thought: That was just a new, present thought that came up, that instant.

Time is conceptual... and conceptual thought itself moves in the same pastless/futureless/ceaseless flow of change as does everything else.

This is also why "there's no self/ego/controller"... there's no time for any. Thoughts arise spontaneously and situationally, not under the control of a self (the thought "me" just comes up spontaneously and automatically, no one made it come up or prevented it from coming up -- because there's no one there to do so).
 
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I agree with Dedbeet... the past does not exist for the past is only a mere recollection of our memories. That's not to be confused with the past to never have happened though. The past and the future are illusions just like time is; the concept of past and future would never have existed if humanity had never created the concept of time.
 
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The day, too, is a conceptualized "continuous object" -- requiring a beginning back in the past, and an end sometime in the future.

Nothing there to seize, but perhaps plenty of illusions to let go.

There's only here and now.

PiP, who posted above, is here, now (my perceiving of his words, my thought or mental picture of him) and is myself/awareness -- in every conceivable way that's actually occurring.

If we were together in person, he's here, now (my perceiving of his body, my hearing of his words, my own thoughts arising as they come from his mouth, my feeling of him as I give him a hug) -- and is myself/awareness -- in every conceivable way actually occurring.

Look beyond the mind for the answers... the mind is nothing but a big question mark.

Beyond it, there are no questions, and none needed.

Peace...
 
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How could time not exist? It's the duration of existence itself. It constantly flows and its flow is not fixed, it is dependent on the surrounding space and matter. It has been proven that time moves more slowly
The future and past both exist, what is an illusion is our perception of the present. It's completely arbitrary and subjective the way we experience time. An astronaut flying in a spaceship to the next nearest star going near the speed of light can travel for only 5 years to Alpha Proxima, but the passage of time on earth causes 50 years or so to pass, leaving the majority of those atronauts' contemporaries far far more aged than the astronauts themselves.
The thing is the difference between the people that say time exists and the people who say it doesn't isn't really much of a difference at all. There exists just one actual set of facts regarding the phenomenon of time, but several different interpretations. Some people think that time is merely a wayu people compare and represent things, others think that it's an integral component to the fabric of the universe.
I think the fact that time expands and contracts in a predictable way along with space in the presence of gravity/mass is clear support for its inherent existence, then again some hold that space itself is merely another human construct.
So basically you either believe that something happens in space and time, or that something appears to happen in space and time.
That's really the only difference.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
How could time not exist? It's the duration of existence itself.
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Note that we're involved in deconstructing the mind here, using the mind, and sometimes that gets a little weird.

So -- does existence exist? Only if nonexistence exists (every concept has its opposite... the mind == duality, the pairs of opposites).

Dualities are co-dependent. Existence requires nonexistence, and nonexistence requires existence.

If you look closely, the mind is a self-contained system of co-dependent opposites. Self/other, existence/nonexistence, etc.

The whole kit 'n caboodle constitutes imagination, not actuality -- thought is totally incapable of thinking about the actual, because it's merely an aspect of the actual (the flow of event-ing, change).
It constantly flows and its flow is not fixed, it is dependent on the surrounding space and matter. It has been proven that time moves more slowly
The future and past both exist, what is an illusion is our perception of the present.
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You mean if you look around the room right now, you're seeing an illusion?

So what do you see when the illusion isn't there, and you get to re-visit actuality? That's downright silly.
It's completely arbitrary and subjective the way we experience time.
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Exactly, because we create it on-the-fly as an aspect of thought.
An astronaut flying in a spaceship to the next nearest star going near the speed of light can travel for only 5 years to Alpha Proxima, but the passage of time on earth causes 50 years or so to pass, leaving the majority of those atronauts' contemporaries far far more aged than the astronauts themselves.
The thing is the difference between the people that say time exists and the people who say it doesn't isn't really much of a difference at all.
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If as you said earlier, existence == time, then time and existence are one and the same thing.

I would just toss in the observer of time:

existence == time = thought

No one is ever going to successfully separate the observer from the observed.

Because the observer (awareness) *IS* the observed.

Nothing stands between them but imagination.

Peace...
 
I'm on my shitty work computers and it won't load the "quote" or "edit" buttons so that's retarded, but anyway I was saying that it has been proven that time moves more slowly in the presence of higher gravity or higher acceleration.
Oh another thing in favor of time as being real, the fact that gravity is real (right?). All gravity is is the acceleration of space through time, resulting in the curvature of spacetime.
This is implicit evidence of the reality and interconnectedness of space and time, hence spacetime.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
I'm on my shitty work computers and it won't load the "quote" or "edit" buttons so that's retarded, but anyway I was saying that it has been proven that time moves more slowly in the presence of higher gravity or higher acceleration.
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The notion that time "moves" separately/apart from an observer of that movement makes no sense, from here.

Time moves more slowly when I'm waiting for an egg to boil. It moves much more quickly when I'm deeply involved in a good movie.

What do you mean, it moves more slowly in the presence of higher gravity/acceleration? Moves more slowly for who/what that's noting the movement?
 
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