Does time exist?

It's all a fig newton of your imagination, you can go back to sleep now . . .

St. Augustine wondered what time is and said "If no one asks me, I know. But if I wanted to explain it to one who asks me...I plainly do not know."

Race exists. No doubt. The only thing that is wrong about that notion is the way it is applied. While it is true that a white and a black man are of the same race, it is not true of a boxer and a foxhound, though they are both dogs.

Similarly, the concept of time is greatly misapplied. Time is merely one half of the dualistic illution of everything.

I have compared it to music in another thread. Music is sound and silence intermingled, same as our experience/perception is space and time intermingled. Sound without silence is just a suspended note, and we can call it 'everything' since it is everywhere, filling every space with it's omniprecence. Silence then is nothing. But when you mix these two magic happens. Then everything is interrupted by nothing, and both suddenly have mutual existence.
It is the silence that creates the beats, and the beats that create the silence. So we see how a piece of music is a unity created by dualistic interaction. We see the dualism, but also how it is an illution, since we hear the unity of the musical piece.

Similarly, time and space is a dualistic illution, an interaction that makes the sum of our total experience.

I think human racial differences exist. Individual differences exist, obviously, but you also can't deny that you are physically much more similar to some peopel than others. A black man will tend to have darker skin, thicker lips, blacker and curlier hair, and of course a much better sense of rhythm (sorry, I can't resist the urge to slip a little racist joke in here... , I apologise if anyone's offended). Certainly it might be arbirtrary to draw the line between races - nowadays we've all got a mix of different blood in us. But the same would go for dogs, really. It seems odd to deny that there are racial differences among humans when there are such obvious trends in physical characteristics of people from certain parts of the world.

Anyway, back on topic. Maybe time is the same. The way we measure time, calanders and clocks, might be fairly arbitrary, jsut as it can be quite arbitrary to call someone half chinese and half Scottish or soemthing. But nevertheless, the passage of time might be a very real thing, just as race is, I think, a real thing.

Agrote, the differences are remnants. A white man today has more "black" and "red" genes than "white genes". It might be something like this: White person has 40% white genes, thirty black and thirty red. The majority determines the superficial differences. Similarly, a black person has 40% black, 30 white and thirty red.

Of course, these numbers are not accurate. The exact procentages vary, but it is always more of whatever skincolor you are, and aside from that it's more or less equal measure.

Sorry for that digression.

Okay. But the very fact that you've distinguished between "white" genes, "red" genes and "black" genes implies that race is a very real thing, yes?

Well yeah, race technically do exist, but really, why don't we just group short people with other short people and call them the shorty race or tall people with tall people and call them the tally race?
lol ok enough of that. My point is that genetic differences vary within people; it's just that it's more physically obvious and more general between some people.

Time does exist in that it is the rate of change. say I run to the door slower than you can, that would mean that it takes you less time to get to the door. Anyways, our very existence depends on spacetime, and thus we do see things in spacetime.

Good point agrote.

It does imply that. For the record, I was quoting an article I read once.

I do not think it is so bad to call us different races. The trouble comes when one starts thinking about who's the better race....

Aye.

if you don't think that time exists then you wouldn't agree that you are any older now than you were one year ago, since time wouldn't exist and this time would be the same as that time. you would also agree that you never did anything in your entire life since time doens't exist and that past time never existed. you also wouldn't admit that you do exist now either since you know you don't have a past or a future or even a present. fyi.

Xgunner, all of these things are relative. "older" is a relative expression, defined by you, not whatever you apply it to. So is "one year" and "never". When is never?

To say that time doesn't exist is a bit harsh. It exists. But from there it is a long way to the assumption that time is linear, and that past and future are anything more than memories and anticipation.

Exactly where is the past? The past of the tree before me is in it's body. It is the tale of the growth of this tree, it's unfolding. It's future I find on the tips of it's branches, and in the flowers that will fall to the ground. But it is only ever real here and now, in the present.

So, in my view, time exists, and the present exists. Past and future do not exist. The unfolding of the moment is the only infinity.

Time does exist.

Its direction (arrow of time) allows me to write these lines. From the moment nobody knows what time is exactly so we could enter into a tautological considerations.

We can say time is movement; or there is movement because time exists. What it is clear time modifies the three dimensions which we are made of. We can alter time wether the velocity changes (as Einstein´s theory) but the irreversibilty doesn´t leave us to go back in time.

Past, at this case, would belong to our psicological concept of time; but in any case wouldn´t affect anything so that arrow of time keeps its way.

While we can move everything will be all rigth.

Thanks.

If only present exists, then time doesn't exist. Time means movement and changes. In the present there are no changes.
I believe that time is one of our human conditions of perceiving reality. Like space.
We cannot experience time itself, but we can only experience things in time.

We are time travelers, always moving to the futur. As I wright this I am moving to the next word, the next idea, the nex movement of my hand.

You say that only present exists, Cyracuz, because you are frozen by your norwegian winter.

You got it precicely backwards val.

Besides, when you're looking at an object you are seeing it not just now, but you see it's past there, and if you look extra hard, it's future as well.

Past and future exist within the present. Time does not mean movement and change. Movement and change is perceptible because of time, wich they in turn have made perceptible.



Dang, I hadn't though of that. But I was at the dentist today, and he pulled out my last "wisdom" tooth. It's what we call the teeth farthest back in the mouth. So now I'm sedated and stupid to boot.

Well, who has said "present" has no time? In order to organize our life we have invented terms as past, present and future; time is a flowing state.

Everthing moves; you cannot stop changes and movement because you would need to stop time and that it´s imposible. The term present accounts for a psicological meanig; in fact if time doesn´t stop, we are living a state with neither present nor future.

Regards.

Yes, it's the present all the time, and even though it feels as though you have memories of yesterday, you don't. You have memories of the present, but these memories are really the extension of what you experience as yesterday. When you think about it, yesterday is still in your head.

Look at yourself in the mirror. There's the past for you right there. Look anywhere, and you'll see the past. But you can only see it because the present leaves nothing behind.

Yes, but the fact is, where are the limits where you can say so far is present and now is past? There is no one because I said we would need to stop time and it´s imposible.

Of course the things I see "don´t exist such as they were at first" so we see the light which is reflected from them. When we see light from stars we say they are stars but it is the light reflected millions years ego. We are watching a primitive universe.

Really, we can not measure time or better said we can measure time depending on our interests.

Regards.

What constitutes "existence" ?

Let us conjecture that "time" like any other concept such as "rock" or "nation" owes its existence to its significance in our world view and our interactions with that world. All concepts are essentially co-ordinators of thought and action, no more and no less.

Rigth.

But we need these concepts and evolution requieres to change them as our knowledge goes forward owing to new experiencies.

"Existence" would constitute something I can say it exists; how and why would depend on our own concept and reality.