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A few reflections on "does time exist?"

To people that think time doesn't exist..

How to you explain change? Without time nothing would change.. it couldn't. But things do.. constantly..
 
rickolasnice said:
To people that think time doesn't exist..

How to you explain change? Without time nothing would change.. it couldn't. But things do.. constantly..
Click to expand...

Things have the appearance of change, that doesn't mean they do anymore than a conjuror appears to saw a woman in half, but does not.

For a more scholarly approach to your question look up Parmenides and Heraclitus, and their respective philosophies.
 
I have a question.
What's anyone got against time anyway?

I have an answer, it gives petty people a reason to stay shut out from you if you fail to meet their self-imposed deadlines for one thing or another. (AkA showing up to work 2 minutes late and all the managers acting like you just murdered jesus, [too afraid to talk to you because it's badass if you can actually murder jesus, but also pissed beacuse...it's jesus you dick! So they just ignore you all day])
 
Time has acted for humans as a 'cement' for causality.

We understand causality as A>B>C etc. The concept of time allows us to grasp the concept of causality (or the other way round, I'm no baby neuroscientist).

If we are at 'B' we know that its 'cause' was 'A', a unique causative action in time that is both unique, and strictly remains in what we term the past. In most cases (though not all), it would seem very strange for us to perceive 'B>A', just as it would seem strange for us to find 'C>B'.

It is this causative normativity that grounds our perception and understanding of the world around us, and underpins science, as much as any other subject.

All this, however does not mean that our causative understanding of the 'flow of time' is in any way real. It may just be an illusion that we maintain cognitively to make sense of the world.

One might be on firmer ground if one maintained that 'causality exists', rather than 'time exists', but to my mind both are very closely linked.

It is of interest that MacTaggart, as an idealist was continuing in the millennial battle between the Eleatics (particularly in his use of Zeno's philosophical method), and the Heraclitians over whether all is stasis, no change, no time; or whether all is eternal flux, ever flowing, ever-changing.

Just as Zeno sought to prove that motion and time could not exist (to further his wider philosophy), McTaggart sought to prove the irreality of time (to further his).

I still feel that Zeno deserves some special award for posing a set of paradoxes that took 2000 years to solve (and even then not to the satisfaction of all philosophers):)
 
Great link ebola. even if imagining a big bang in my pocket is hard to fathom :-/
 
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I wonder if mathematical isomorphism actually impels experimental results to mirror traditional investigations in physics...

ebola
 
^this is our most tangible medium to finding our "thee", our 'creator, or at least a view of what part of such creation is, and what to do from there. ?

(-;-only sharing some thought here-;-)

in an ever expansive 'morphing' sense - an apex of timeless nothing seems needed to be triggered/ignited by A "Key"(anti-matter-squared?!;-) to maybe set-forth a wave or ring creating a -tsunami Ebbing effect - which could create then from nothing a separation of something - a birth of the concept of -1- then -2- as we naturally perceive it as an observer and a subject -- in an instant a cosmic flood and crash. in an infinite moment we are created; attempting to conceive of this flash.

which might already be extinguished and we are only falling-still into-&-along this expanding Fractal existence. which does carry many infinite branching routes of a 'Determined(i believe)' existence from a chaotic system.
________________________________________
a fractal seems to always move-back-into its self, it also seems all numbers will eventually lead to Zero again.
this reminds me of two quotes;
ALPHAVILLE:
" Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus. "

on the thought of returning to Zero again; "back to square one".
i am reminded of a line from a book i read, and forget the title and author of, but:
" we can always return home, as long as it is a place we have never been "
 
rickolasnice said:
To people that think time doesn't exist..

How to you explain change? Without time nothing would change.. it couldn't. But things do.. constantly..
Click to expand...
Change only requires time if you think about it. What isn't usually noticed is that one's thought process is constantly changing along with everything else. Including your own thoughts into the field of events answers the question, wordlessly. This is why there's so much talk in Buddhism and such about 'mindfulness', watching the thoughts dispassionately.

Perhaps the closest one could come to pointing out "no time" thought-wise is what happens while you're listening to music. You listen to it as a flow, and you never notice either a past to the music, or a future to the music -- because you aren't thinking temporally. Yet the music changes, timelessly.
 
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I think the connection between
  • Causality
  • The direction of time
  • And Entropy

    answer many of the questions beeing posted here.
 
What the mind thinks (i.e. about time, about space, about causation, etc) is all tangled up with the way the mind itself works. How do you separate supposedly external, objective states, laws and objects from the thoughts you have about them? You can't.

Thought is relational, comparative, governed by fixed laws. Because of this, we assume the universe we think about is as well.

Thought is a closed system, referring only to itself. One's thoughts refer only to other thoughts. Words are co-defining. Light needs the concept of darkness, existence needs nonexistence, etc. It's a dualistic paradigm based on the assumption that polarity is how everything works, that everything has an opposite.

And ignores the fact that opposites are complementaries -- that without darkness there is no light, and without light there is no darkness.

And, it seems to me anyway, assumes that the opposite of the universe is the observer of it, which is absurd.

It's all good in the realm of philosophy, which is a game of speculation. Spirituality, too, is a speculative venture.

No one is interested in the always already available, the direct and immediate, the ever-present, the non-speculative. Welcome to the desert of the real. You won't find others there, which is why no one ever ventures there. You won't find them because the actuality of life is unity.
 
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^^

All very interesting. Who would you say are your greatest influences, or favorite philosophers?
 
Pythagoras said:
^^

All very interesting. Who would you say are your greatest influences, or favorite philosophers?
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I honestly don't feel as though I have any influences, and no preferred philosophers. These are my own insights, and they just come up for whatever reason and I enjoy putting them down in writing.

If they mean something to someone, great... if not, I enjoyed watching them as they arose and were put down in writing.
 
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so youre basically saying were limited to our host.

if its a contridictory world, then you need the other to justify yourself.
you can say you are happy and fufilled, but how can you if someone says you arent.

thats the missing link of unity, the fallen thought.
 
sssssssssss said:
so youre basically saying were limited to our host.

if its a contridictory world, then you need the other to justify yourself.
you can say you are happy and fufilled, but how can you if someone says you arent.

thats the missing link of unity, the fallen thought.
Click to expand...
One can say whatever one likes; the only barrier is "what will the other think of me?" If that barrier isn't there, one says what one likes. And quite honestly, tends to like what one says, too ;).
 
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