@north,
Quote:what I'm getting at , does this 4 yrs backward or forward affect the whole of the Universe ?
No, I'd suppose it's a sphere with a radius of 4 light years
Sheer speculation, not sure what it means, exactly
@Cyracuz,
Our conscious is actually living slightly in the past. Your brain keeps you on a short delay
.
Time is a relation point. When we stare at the clock, the ticks are per second, so we see all the world per second. When we stare at a fast moving car, for a moment as it passes, our mind is travelling along with the speed of that car. But frankly, humans cannot see a car in this angle:
[ ) - - - - - - - - - -[ ) - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -[ )
O
|
For that long, so the speed's relation point lasts as long as your eyes are met with the car when it's adjacent to your point of view; as soon as it passes your body and you can see its rear end, you lose a lot of the speed because as the car travels up the road, it's much longer and slower than passing by in that line of relation.
Time is embedded into our perception.
Have you ever wondered why being lost in thought all day causes the entire day to go by in what appears to be seconds? The mind is on a very amazing speed compared to anything else in this world that serves as a relation point regarding our perception - it can reach a frequency called "Gamma", if you train it properly. The human brain can place your experience on a speed much faster than any game - in fact, discovering this speed makes every activity slow compared to it, including sex.
@One Eyed Mind,
Could we infer from what you've said that the concept of time is perceptible in the sense that we can see the various facets of an object in order to build a mental picture of the object as a whole? To use your example of the travelling car, if I stood at the same point as the car went past me I would see the front at one point, the side or the driver or the lights or whatever at another and then finally the back. Once the car had gone into the distance and I could no longer see it, I would still be able to recall it as a whole concept by making a mental picture that I could 'turn around' in my mind which would be different from what my eyes picked up at any given point as the car went past me. Therefore, could we infer that the existence of time is proved within our minds by the fact that we make mental pictures out of different empirical snippets which cannot have been gathered all in one instant? Apologies if I have misinterpreted you at all (it's something I'm prone to doing in these forums unfortunately, although I'm aiming to get better!)
@Cyracuz,
On the other hand, could we justify your claim, Cyracuz, if instead of saying 'past' or 'future' we said 'present-just-gone' and 'present-to-be'? In that case we'd have to call time as a continuous process 'the present' rather than something split into 3 sections based on how we experience each section.
@PhilipOSopher,
Phil (or anybody), could you refresh the basic q, restating it in terms using simple words in customary order, suitable to your Average Clod (me)
@PhilipOSopher,
Yes, Philip. That's a very well written first question!
Very well written assessment of my assessment. You understand well our minds are connected to relation points; relation points have individual speeds which our minds mirror so our minds can capture the object within the speed.
It's like when our eyes adjust to light and darkness - our minds adjust to objects and speed.
My philosophy is "I am, therefore I think".
With this base foundation, I know that before any idea crossing in my mind, that without the current existence of the universe I'm nothing.
So, time is an idea.
Time is an idea invented by our ancestors to help us for doing things around, like setting seasons for agriculture, creating an ordered sequence of things to be registered or recorded, etc.
We obtain this measure of time just by finding a regular motion to be compared with the motion of other things.
But, about our existence, this is to say, to what is physically real, only what we define as the "present" is what does exist at the moment of the perception of things.
One can call it infinite present to the continued perception of the existing universe, or one just can call it reality, because both terms agree at the end.
We can think of time as if it were analagous to a river with an upstream and a downstream or a lake always here (the present) but with changing ripples or waves. I prefer the latter model but at various times use both. Philosophically, however, I see everything as fundamentally impermanent or changing. A zen master (Dogen) thought of time as essential to the existence of everything. Accordingly, he used the term, "being-time," together as a unity.
@JLNobody,
That is how I think, friend.
<<A zen master (Dogen) thought of time as essential to the existence of everything. Accordingly, he used the term, "being-time," together as a unity. >>
Were did I hear that kind of philosophy?...
Oh, yes, the movie "Lucy" [*] (currently in movie theaters).
Unfortunately illusions have made tricks to many, including thinkers and philosophers. The good think is that motivates the imagination of the people, but the bad side is that this kind of philosophy corrupts other branches of our intellect like it is the pursue of knowledge or science.
I like the idea of believing in a mysterious presence of something that is essential for our existence, someone called it "God", others called it "time", but such concepts can't go further when reality is present.
[*The most funniest part of this movie is when the brain of Lucy started to increase her hallucinations, and she called her mother by phone to tell her how much she remember from the past, and she said that she remembers when her mother took her to the dentists for her braces... but, right when she is telling these words you can notice that she has twisted teeth at the front top and bottom, so this woman actually never received such a dental treatment... no doubt that the drug that hit her brain caused her to say babblings. And the spectacle becomes worst, when a known and respectful man of science believes her when time is focused as the whole or unity. I wasted my money with this dumb movie. sigh*]
@carloslebaron,
The thing is what can " time " actually DO ? In and of its self ? Is my question
@north,
Time can actually do what volume can actually do as well... what weight can actually do as well... what length can actually do as well... no other thing but measurement of something.
@JLNobody,
I do appreciate the analogies of water to illustrate time. But I think that they aim to describe our psychological experience of time. But this experience happens in it's entirety in the present, which is why I would suggest that time is analogous to a star. From our perspective a star is practically an eternal thing. But from another perspective the life of a start might seem like a spark.
And in a very real way, to us, the sun is time. All other stars we see too, of course, but primarily our sun. It is by it's light everything is measured. Day and night divide, seasons and years are measured in relation to the sun.
...and the sky is blue in the day time n dark at night...
@Fil Albuquerque,
Yes. Do you disagree that this particular situation has a great deal to do with how humans relate to the concept of time?