Does time really exist?

@xris,

Time is the illusion that something has taken place or will take place. When one waits for something time exists. When one remembers something from the past, time exists. Since we are creatures motivated by desire, time always exists for us in our conscious awareness.

2 Replies

@Dr Seuss,

Dr. Seuss;174228 wrote:

Time is the illusion that something has taken place or will take place. When one waits for something time exists. When one remembers something from the past, time exists. Since we are creatures motivated by desire, time always exists for us in our conscious awareness.

Thats our experience of time, a memory of the past or an expectation. The NOW is an illusion. We observe time by the changes we see but changes are dependant on events, if we can see a non event what does that tell us about time? If we are told we come from a singularity where time never existed, can we be sure there is not another place where events are not recorded by time. Our relationship to time is clear, our bodies decay through the events we cant delay but at the same time we grow beyond our decaying body and express this with an almost ethereal ability.

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@xris,

xris;174184 wrote:

A matter of our existence is not relative to what might be. My tree still falls and makes an awful sound without me hearing it. We are not essential, all we do is try and make sense of our ignorance.

I think you should begin by making sense of your ignorance, and then you can show us how it is done...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido;174304 wrote:

I think you should begin by making sense of your ignorance, and then you can show us how it is done...

Is this a personal jibe or are you inquisitive? If its a personal jibe then your ignorance is the first obstacle, if its inquisitive, then are you endowed with the universal truth or are you just as ignorant as me?

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@xris,

Fido;174180 wrote:

... Can anything exist without us making note of its existence, saying it exists, knowing it exists... We are the essential element to all existence not because we make everything happen, or be; but because we make everything matter... We find meaning in existence... We find meaning in time... We find meaning in space... When we die all will die with us... Matter without us matters not...
xris;174184 wrote:
A matter of our existence is not relative to what might be. My tree still falls and makes an awful sound without me hearing it. We are not essential...

Maybe these arguments aren't really all that far apart from each other. Fido points out that although something can exist independent of observation, nothing can be said of it without any abstract perception of it.(?) Relativity of perception however has nothing to do with existence/non-existence, which brings us to xiris's tree. You could argue all you like about whether or not it made a sound, what it sounded like or even when you heard it; but can you argue whether or not the tree made a vibration?

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@xris,

xris;174311 wrote:

Is this a personal jibe or are you inquisitive? If its a personal jibe then your ignorance is the first obstacle, if its inquisitive, then are you endowed with the universal truth or are you just as ignorant as me?

You do not seem to understand my point or you would not come back with some non sense like a tree making a sound... The fact is that a single tree falling does not make a sound, so people keep cutting and cutting until nature cries for mercy and then they cut more to hear her scream... People powerless to demand justice in their own lives can hardly protect the environment upon which all life depends, and it is all life that I am talking about...

I am not talking about universal truth, but I am not some mall shooter who thinks meaning will continue on after life... Things might exist, but their essential element, their meaning -is what we provide with our lives...

---------- Post added 06-07-2010 at 10:45 PM ----------

thack45;174350 wrote:

Maybe these arguments aren't really all that far apart from each other. Fido points out that although something can exist independent of observation, nothing can be said of it without any abstract perception of it.(?) Relativity of perception however has nothing to do with existence/non-existence, which brings us to xiris's tree. You could argue all you like about whether or not it made a sound, what it sounded like or even when you heard it; but can you argue whether or not the tree made a vibration?

It is not about the tree... We know that falling trees make sounds... We know that falling forests make sounds... The point is not one of being in the physical sense, but meaning in the moral sense... Time, the subject at issue here does not exist, and yet it has meaning while we have being... Time is life... All moral realities have the meaning we give them, and we give them meaning because they ultimately effect our lives, but after we are dead and gone all our moral forms will die with us...Their existence is our existence...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Sorry but that appears a very subjective view of time and our relationship to life. The universal truth will still exist without mans knowing it and our ignorance will still exist after we have gone.

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@Diogenes phil,

We do not have a relationship to life.. Life is our relationship to all things.

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido;174570 wrote:

We do not have a relationship to life.. Life is our relationship to all things.

But time is not dependant on our life only our relationship to it.

1 Reply

@Diogenes phil,

Until we conceive of a thing it is not "real" and reality is a form of meaning... Before the heliocentric universe, such a thing may have existed, but it was inconceivable, and so, unreal... Our imaginations allow us to animate all sorts of notions as though they are real; but does that make them real??? Is God real??? Is virtue, justice, equality, or liberty real??? They have a certain, or perhaps, uncertain meaning because they are not real -as opposed to the forms we see as real...

Our lives are of a fixed duration, as is the life of humanity; so time -naturally marked by the movement of astral bodies, and changes in the season- is a natural sort of meaning, but the meaning does not make the subject real, but what is real has a meaning of being real...When people first began to make mechanical clocks they as soon conceived of the universe as a vast clock... Okay, clock and universe are real, but time as a meaning is what helps us to make sense of the universe, and even of clocks, but they do not help us to make sense of time because time would be inconceivable without changes in the universe, without clocks, and without life being of a fixed duraton... Time is inconceivable by itself, as a thing in itself, as a thing at all...If we say: time changes everything, it is not the same as saying everything changes in time, which is more correct, and, more the truth, that we can conceive of time as a meaning because of changes...

Because of life, because of the needs of life we can attach a meaning to qualities we see as essential to us without their being real in any sense of being, with meaning... When we conceive of anything, we give it meaning, a specific sort of meaning distinct from all others...We also have the ability to give meaning to moral forms which have no being by conceiving of them as spiritual qualities essential or antagonistic to our well being, and to talk of them as though real, when they are in no sense -real... But, we can talk of them and coneive of them all we want, and it is not ever going to make them real, which is a certain class of meaning reserved for the material...

1 Reply

@Fido,

What you are actually saying is, that same old tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, does not make a sound. You have just wrapped it up in better clothes. If every one in the world dropped dead now, the sunset tonight would just be as serene and my roses would still smell as sweet. The clock will still keep on clicking. You cant make god out of man, man is an animal, we are relative to our time but nothing more. We ponder on the ethics our lives have constructed and examine the atoms beyond our comprehension but these are trifles of mans invention not the ultimate truth we will never conceive of. We are beasts struggling with our ignorance.

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@xris,

xris;174579 wrote:

But time is not dependant on our life only our relationship to it.

Would you like to buy a coma...
Then play the terrible word game of: If everyone were dead... How real would time be without people to conceive of it??? What if all the clocks kept ticking away, and the seasons came and went, but we were not there to make note of them??? What if, because we had no life we had no relationship to anything, even things we conceive of as having the meaning of real??? Your problem xris, is common enough, that you find reality without life inconceivable because your mind rebels at the thought of nothingness which while we live is inconceivable... It is not time that people cannot conceive of as nothing, but themselves because they have always been real, and it is our reality that we share when we find a certain meaning in the unrealities like time...

If you can conceive of the inconceivable then you can see how it is through life that we conceive of everything as real, and even give to unreal qualities their reality by a quasi conception of them... Every conception is a certain set of meanings, with reality being only one of those sets of meanings; but what would they mean to us without us to mean to ourselves???

---------- Post added 06-08-2010 at 07:14 AM ----------

xris;174588 wrote:

What you are actually saying is, that same old tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, does not make a sound. You have just wrapped it up in better clothes. If every one in the world dropped dead now, the sunset tonight would just be as serene and my roses would still smell as sweet. The clock will still keep on clicking. You cant make god out of man, man is an animal, we are relative to our time but nothing more. We ponder on the ethics our lives have constructed and examine the atoms beyond our comprehension but these are trifles of mans invention not the ultimate truth we will never conceive of. We are beasts struggling with our ignorance.

No... what if there were no humanity to give meaning to the concept of: Sound, or Tree, or forest, or falling... It is not one concept I am talking about but all concepts, and what they are ultimately based upon which is our lives which are -all meaning- to us...

Serene sunsets and sweet smelling roses are judgements people make that you want to hold on like the chesire after people are gone... If you are not crazy you are simple...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido;174601 wrote:

Would you like to buy a coma...
Then play the terrible word game of: If everyone were dead... How real would time be without people to conceive of it??? What if all the clocks kept ticking away, and the seasons came and went, but we were not there to make note of them??? What if, because we had no life we had no relationship to anything, even things we conceive of as having the meaning of real??? Your problem xris, is common enough, that you find reality without life inconceivable because your mind rebels at the thought of nothingness which while we live is inconceivable... It is not time that people cannot conceive of as nothing, but themselves because they have always been real, and it is our reality that we share when we find a certain meaning in the unrealities like time...

If you can conceive of the inconceivable then you can see how it is through life that we conceive of everything as real, and even give to unreal qualities their reality by a quasi conception of them... Every conception is a certain set of meanings, with reality being only one of those sets of meanings; but what would they mean to us without us to mean to ourselves???

---------- Post added 06-08-2010 at 07:14 AM ----------

No... what if there were no humanity to give meaning to the concept of: Sound, or Tree, or forest, or falling... It is not one concept I am talking about but all concepts, and what they are ultimately based upon which is our lives which are -all meaning- to us...

I think you need to decide if Im worried about this occassion, that will surely come when man does not exist, or its you. I have been telling you that reality exists without mans experience of it, why should I not be able to conceive of reality without life, with this opinion?:perplexed: I can believe a tree makes a sound even if im not there but its you that cant conceive of reality without a human experiencing it. Take your man , a man with base desires does he see the beauty in my rose? will he bend down to see if it smells, or is he more concerned about the water he requires to sustain life? You grade us humans too highly. A concept, is for us to discover, not to invent, we travel, we dont build the roads.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;174618 wrote:

I think you need to decide if Im worried about this occassion, that will surely come when man does not exist, or its you. I have been telling you that reality exists without mans experience of it, why should I not be able to conceive of reality without life, with this opinion?:perplexed: I can believe a tree makes a sound even if im not there but its you that cant conceive of reality without a human experiencing it. Take your man , a man with base desires does he see the beauty in my rose? will he bend down to see if it smells, or is he more concerned about the water he requires to sustain life? You grade us humans too highly. A concept, is for us to discover, not to invent, we travel, we dont build the roads.

Your problem is that you cannot get to the root of conception in the first place because you cannot conceive of the inconceivable, which is your own non existence... People have heaven and hell; but hell is much better for most than a death without out either heaven or hell, and death which totally blots out all existence, all meaning, and makes nothing of everything...

You are correct that I cannot conceive of reality without humans to experience it, and if I were to do so it would mean that the most basic element of time had escaped me, that we are all on the clock, and if you find meaning, act upon it... That you can imagine reality without you in it only means your imagination is working, but not to show you the possible, but to lure you into fantasy... So knowledge escapes you... You cannot conceive of anything properly or express your flawed conceptions well enough so they can be corrected...Not all that we imagine is real...Even reality is only a special form of meaning that would be impossible were we not ourselves real... Our reality is the ultimate question, and having the answer to that we can see time waits on us to mark it, and make it real...

You tell me about your beliefs... Theology is the proper place to discuss beliefs....I have reason to say I know that a tree falling makes a sound...Without the testimony of a person on the spot we cannot have certainty that every single tree in falling makes a sound, but even testimony is flawed... So what are we left with??? We can know those events for which we can prove a cause and show an effect, elements in which the quasi concept of time play a part... Nothing makes sense unless we can place it in time, before and after, but that does not make time itself real, for real is a class of meaning reserved for things...

2 Replies

@Fido,

Fido;174625 wrote:

Your problem is that you cannot get to the root of conception in the first place because you cannot conceive of the inconceivable, which is your own non existence... People have heaven and hell; but hell is much better for most than a death without out either heaven or hell, and death which totally blots out all existence, all meaning, and makes nothing of everything...

You are correct that I cannot conceive of reality without humans to experience it, and if I were to do so it would mean that the most basic element of time had escaped me, that we are all on the clock, and if you find meaning, act upon it... That you can imagine reality without you in it only means your imagination is working, but not to show you the possible, but to lure you into fantasy... So knowledge escapes you... You cannot conceive of anything properly or express your flawed conceptions well enough so they can be corrected...Not all that we imagine is real...Even reality is only a special form of meaning that would be impossible were we not ourselves real... Our reality is the ultimate question, and having the answer to that we can see time waits on us to mark it, and make it real...

You tell me about your beliefs... Theology is the proper place to discuss beliefs....I have reason to say I know that a tree falling makes a sound...Without the testimony of a person on the spot we cannot have certainty that every single tree in falling makes a sound, but even testimony is flawed... So what are we left with??? We can know those events for which we can prove a cause and show an effect, elements in which the quasi concept of time play a part... Nothing makes sense unless we can place it in time, before and after, but that does not make time itself real, for real is a class of meaning reserved for things...

What your problem is, you don't read an others post, you make too many assumptions without any reasoning. Your contradictory in your opinions and you cant even see it. You ramble on about inconsequential matters as if they are relevant. Take your question...tell me about your beliefs..you ask and then inform me , theology is the correct place to discuss beliefs..wot are you on? Why should you need testimony for a tree falling..whose counting?... nothing makes sense unless we place it in time....:perplexed: what does this mean?.. a class of meanings..I need more than a comma to make sense of this..

1 Reply

@Fido,

This is a rather long thread, has there been any mention of quantum philosophy here? I find it can be interpreted to explain things rather nicely.

Using my own VERY basic interpretations, wave-particle duality explains the 'defined past' and the 'uncertainty of the future'. Where the defined past and the uncertain future meet, this is the present, the point of waveform-collapse. When wave interactions become defined as particle interactions - when uncertainty becomes certain.

Now, when you look in to the quantum observer effect, this suddenly shows parallels with many of the discussions in this thread, 'does a falling tree make a sound if no one is there to hear it' etc.

Add in 1 more factor, the quantum nature of the universe before the big bang. The total energy of the universe is zero, the big bang was started by a quantum fluctuation in pure nothingness.
Let's say this happens often, there are many quantum explosions of potential that can result in possible universes. Potential universes that can't sustain themselves collapse back in to zero again instantly.

But when our universe exploded in to existence, it didn't disappear away instantly, possibly because of 1 of these 2 reasons:
- the universe contained an observer, us.
- the universe is open in the traditional sense, it will never collapse in on itself and end.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the first point was true?
It could also mean that the universe has already begun and ended. It could also mean that time (the waveform-collapse) flows in the opposite direction to what we think. (similar to our early concept of electricity?)

(again, these are my own very basic interpretations of time, the possible universe and quantum philosophy, feel free to prove me entirely wrong! should be very easy to do so)

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@xris,

xris;174630 wrote:

What your problem is, you don't read an others post, you make too many assumptions without any reasoning. Your contradictory in your opinions and you cant even see it. You ramble on about inconsequential matters as if they are relevant. Take your question...tell me about your beliefs..you ask and then inform me , theology is the correct place to discuss beliefs..wot are you on? Why should you need testimony for a tree falling..whose counting?... nothing makes sense unless we place it in time....:perplexed: what does this mean?.. a class of meanings..I need more than a comma to make sense of this..

My drug is philosophy, and it is addictive... It teaches one how to think, structures thought, even channels insight if you have any... Ultimately, my concern is what you know, what I know and what we can all know... If we are talking of science then belief should not enter into the discussion even if we accept that we all take certain beliefs for granted...

And I know it is sort of the second intention, but how do you conceive of what you conceive??? I conceive of what I conceive as a set of meanings, or values, and those meanings and values are judgements and the extent of my knowledge... Those judgements, meanings, and values only exist so long as I exist, and since they are all I know of reality, so reality dies with me... Could matter possibly exist after me when my conception of it is all my knowledge of matter??? We do not know the thing... We know our conception of the thing, which is hardly accurate holds all our knowledge, and is fluid in that it changes as we add to our knowledge... But if we do not know something, perhaps some insect in your distant forest, then we have no conception of it, nor do we need one because for us it does not exist... If existence is a certain meaning being has in our brains then how can anything exist without our brains... What ever the condition of the cosmos whe we all die, it will have no meaning because we hold meaning, all meaning by virtue of our lives... No life = No meaning= no existence...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

north;164355 wrote:
who ?

times purpose is to help us understand the movement of things , the whys , hows , and whats

your right time does not exist at all , in the sense that it matters how objects behave

time influences nothing , no bonds , no attractions , no space , no creation of anything physical

time is NOT space under any circumstances

time is not a reflection of space at all

time has nothing to do with space

time is the consequence of movement by objects within a said space

space is NOT a metaphore for nothing

space provides the room needed for light and matter to exist and expand

I hate to give up on a cardinal direction; but I am about to... No words of mine will ever be a substitute for you using your own bean...What is a light year if time is not space??? What is a year???They all equal a certain distance, space...

to light , measuring its speed is irrelevent , to the energy of light its self

light does what it does

sure light needs space but space does not need light

space is the product of energy and matter

every atom needs its space

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@Dr Seuss,

Dr Seuss wrote:

Time is the illusion that something has taken place or will take place. When one waits for something time exists. When one remembers something from the past, time exists. Since we are creatures motivated by desire, time always exists for us in our conscious awareness.

I hope it doesn't because I missed my appointment with my dentist, and he get mad when I do. So if I can just persuade him that time doesn't really exist I am out of trouble. But, I know him. He won't care whether or not time really exists. All he'll care about is whether time exists.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Dr Seuss wrote:

Time is the illusion that something has taken place or will take place. When one waits for something time exists. When one remembers something from the past, time exists. Since we are creatures motivated by desire, time always exists for us in our conscious awareness.

I hope it doesn't because I missed my appointment with my dentist, and he get mad when I do. So if I can just persuade him that time doesn't really exist I am out of trouble. But, I know him. He won't care whether or not time really exists. All he'll care about is whether time exists.

kennethamy

you don't get it

time is the way we order this planet , trains , appointments , air-travel

now ask time to actually influence any movement between things , in and of its self , time can't do it

because time is not , in and of its self a physical entity

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Does time really exist?

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