Philosophy Now Forum

Hi Arising,

Please see my addition to my reply to you on the bottom of the previous page. This post just caused the pages to wrap and I didn't want you to miss it.

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Hi Nikolai,

You wrote:The notion of things like daughter's 'coming from somewhere' - that is having a history - is already presupposing that there is such a things as Time as well as things that endure through it. We are then forced to explain Time only because we have assumed it to exist in the first place.

I'm no philosopher, just a bus passenger, but it seems no more valid to me to say 'I think time exists so prove it doesn't' than to say 'I think time doesn't exist so prove it does' and that is what this is starting to look like. The fact that time is a tricky blighter is nothing new and finding new ways so say old things isn't progress.

My request for an explanation for the daughter was because there is an apparent causal link which is intrinsic to the perception of the now, in that now. I was not suggesting that there was a history but was asking you explain why/how, in the now, you perceive something that suggests causality when there is none.

I am asking: what is your explanation of the perception of now? Without that, you appear to be simply restating that we cannot know whether time exists or not, which is old news.

You wrote:If we reject time we see that there is nothing in experience that necessarily suggests historicity whatsoever.

Please would you restate this, such that it doesn't simply reduce to the truism 0 = 0.

You wrote:The irony is, of course, that even when we do assume time we end up with the same problem eventually. Always asking 'where things come from' leads to an infinite regress that halts only with the insertion of a quite arbitrary fiat.

Because you say this, and the rest of the post, I think you are trapped inside your own perception of the world. I thought you saw otherwise, which is why I jumped in here. I think you will simply struggle with the apparent paradox that:-
1) Everything seems to cancel out to zero or infinity so nothing should exist.
2) You undeniably think that you do exist.
A kind of nihilistic angst.

Your post seemed to drift towards the mystical vs. a Newtonian view of time. I do not see the solution to the problem of what time is being found in either a navel or billiard balls. There are cracks in this world which hint at things being extraordinarily complex and stupidly simple. I do not see any way to avoid getting my hands dirty and mess with the nuts and bolts of this world and also defining my own set of philosophical rules in the absence of any absolute truth.

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Hi Metazoan,

My request for an explanation for the daughter was because there is an apparent causal link which is intrinsic to the perception of the now, in that now.

No, all we are presented with are two females. if one says: 'I am her mother' it doesn't mean that the relationship appears in time anymore than me calling you my brother does. As for the causal link, and this is a key point, there are no causal links in the 'perception of the now'. Causality is a abstract concept that presupposed time, and as every good Humean knows, cannot be perceived. When we think we perceive causality casuality we are actually interpreting reality through the concept of causality - and there is a huge difference between these.

Please would you restate this, such that it doesn't simply reduce to the truism 0 = 0

Yes, it was a 0 = 0 statement - but I won't be able to restate it without making the same 'error'. This is what it boils down to. If you assume time exists in this life then everything will be understood temporally (this is the common view - which is also 0=0). If you don't assume time then everything will appear atemporally - that is under the aspect of eternity.

But this is misleading becuase it makes it sound like the intellectual assumption and the sensual perception are separate processes or events. They aren't. Its simply the case that the majority's mode of being is in a world structured by time, but there a few who exist in an atemporal world.

The possibility that one can live in eternity is not one that is widely recognised as possible. Furthermore, and despite what you say, there are few people who understand time in anything other than the Newtonian sense. It is therefore of interest that time can be understood as a relative, psychological phenomenon like goodness or beauty. There was once a time when people generally held that that beauty was a objective property of reality - and most still think the same about time. The fact that people consider time, and the understanding of time, to be the preserve of the physicist objectivley modelling this 'commodity' with his mathematical equations shows how widely misunderstood time still is - even in our post-Einsteinian age.

The testimony of the mystic who has transcended time must be taken very seriously because it is so eminently plausable. We can all recognise that each moment, in its gestalt, is entirely unique. And yet we are accustomed to dividing up each novel canvas into bits and parts that we then understand as having some kind of history. And it is the objects of the gestalt that we focus on rather than the unified view and so from this tendency time emerges.

But if we didn't divide everything up into familar objects then each moment would be seen as entirely without precedent. By not dividing up we are free to perceive everything, not with a shock or recognition, but with a shock of utter novelty. And when everything is novel then there is nothing with a history and so time is nowhere at all.

Even though this is a rare way of viewing things - and the experience of it is ineffable - how it could come about makes perfect sense. Look before you now, look around your room, and aspects of it will hit you with a shock of novelty. Its not too much of a leap to zoom out, stop dividing the computer from the space next to it but view them all as a piece as one would a canvas, and you will recognise that the scene as a whole is completely novel.

I think you will simply struggle with the apparent paradox that:-
1) Everything seems to cancel out to zero or infinity so nothing should exist.
2) You undeniably think that you do exist.
A kind of nihilistic angst.

Only a rationalist would struggle with this paradox, as only a rationlist would get themselves caught up in it. To say that 'everythign seems to cancel to infinity is a meaningless' statement based on the illusion that there are 'discrete things' to be cancelled out in the first place. From my perspective everything is competely continuous and undifferentiated - zero and infinity are the same, and there is no ones, two or threes in between!

I do not mistake our conceptualisation of the world as being the world itself - I therefore am hardly wedded to notions like 'I' or 'existence' as I am fully apprised of their paradoxical nature.

When confronted with a paradox I reject the concepts that comprise it; reality, and the experience of reality I enjoy very much as a given that transcends our attempts to understand it.

Best, Nikolai

Hi Nikolai,

I wrote:My request for an explanation for the daughter was because there is an apparent causal link which is intrinsic to the perception of the now, in that now.

You wrote:No, all we are presented with are two females. if one says: 'I am her mother' it doesn't mean that the relationship appears in time anymore than me calling you my brother does.

There is no talk in the now, only the apparent memory of it which establishes the belief of a relationship in the now. The perceiver experiences the now as if all the preliminaries happened in the apparent past. You are apparently avoiding the question, if there is no cause, how do you explain the perception of the now as having an apparent coherence. This is not a trick question. I am asking how you think it works. How does it appear that there is a coherent temporal world around us when there isn't?

As for the causal link, and this is a key point, there are no causal links in the 'perception of the now'. Causality is a abstract concept that presupposed time, and as every good Humean knows, cannot be perceived. When we think we perceive causality casuality we are actually interpreting reality through the concept of causality - and there is a huge difference between these.

Why do you think I said 'apparent causal link' if it was not to highlight that I do not believe that there is a causal link? Why would I talk about actual causality when I have stated that I have had to discard causality? Or was this bit not aimed at me?

If you assume time exists in this life then everything will be understood temporally (this is the common view - which is also 0=0). If you don't assume time then everything will appear atemporally - that is under the aspect of eternity.

I would put it slightly differently. You experience life temporally, but you live eternally.

The possibility that one can live in eternity is not one that is widely recognised as possible.

I'm not surprised, I don't think one can live 'in' eternity. One lives temporally, but eternally.

'that one can'? don't you mean 'that one does'?

Furthermore, and despite what you say, there are few people who understand time in anything other than the Newtonian sense.

I was not intending to imply anything about people in general; I was specifically suggesting that your arguments were restricted to a specific classical viewpoint and the conclusions extrapolated to include everything else.

It is therefore of interest that time can be understood as a relative, psychological phenomenon like goodness or beauty. There was once a time when people generally held that that beauty was a objective property of reality - and most still think the same about time. The fact that people consider time, and the understanding of time, to be the preserve of the physicist objectivley modelling this 'commodity' with his mathematical equations shows how widely misunderstood time still is - even in our post-Einsteinian age.

What has what most people think got to do with the nature of time? This is a philosophy forum and I hope the folks here can deal with the idea that the speed of light is fixed, the universe has a less than infinite volume, has nothing on the outside, and is getting bigger. It's the hand we have been dealt, play it, don't try and talk around it. Play the ball, not the man. There are harder things going on in here, like trying to keep up with Richard and Arising when they get going on logic.

But if we didn't divide everything up into familar objects then each moment would be seen as entirely without precedent. By not dividing up we are free to perceive everything, not with a shock or recognition, but with a shock of utter novelty. And when everything is novel then there is nothing with a history and so time is nowhere at all.

How do you dispose of time and still have the ability to: 'if we didn't' or 'By not dividing up we are free to'?

Even though this is a rare way of viewing things - and the experience of it is ineffable - how it could come about makes perfect sense. Look before you now, look around your room, and aspects of it will hit you with a shock of novelty. Its not too much of a leap to zoom out, stop dividing the computer from the space next to it but view them all as a piece as one would a canvas, and you will recognise that the scene as a whole is completely novel.

Nope, you are still seeing the room, still seeing things, still being 'there', still being 'you'.

The above sentence is deliberately ambiguous, how did you interpret it viv-a-vis the point you think I am making?

I do not mistake our conceptualisation of the world as being the world itself - I therefore am hardly wedded to notions like 'I' or 'existence' as I am fully apprised of their paradoxical nature.

But they are not actually paradoxical, they only appear to be.

You say the right words but it is as if you are reading them from a book, if you see it, why do you appear to me to be avoiding my questions?

When confronted with a paradox I reject the concepts that comprise it; reality, and the experience of reality I enjoy very much as a given that transcends our attempts to understand it.

Denial?

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Hi metazoan

There is no talk in the now, only the apparent memory of it which establishes the belief of a relationship in the now. The perceiver experiences the now as if all the preliminaries happened in the apparent past. You are apparently avoiding the question, if there is no cause, how do you explain the perception of the now as having an apparent coherence. This is not a trick question. I am asking how you think it works.

I really don't want to avoid questions - if i am then you may need to restate them to make absolutely sure that I'm seeing them.

How does it appear that there is a coherent temporal world around us when there isn't?

I'm not saying that there isn't a temporal world, I am saying that there is an atemporal world as well and people experience it and live in it. Furthermore, I am saying that it is very easy to demonstrate logically that it is possible, and have offered examples from personal experience of how the atemporal world feels to live in - namely that of experiencing seemingly everyday things as being novel, unprecedented and without historicity.

Now any thinker who is of a logical bent is likely to reject this. 'Surely time exists or it doesn't,' they will say. 'They can't both exist as that would be contradiction.'

Well, if there is a contradiction then I blame the way we conceptualise time - my personal experience of an atemporal being has soverignty above all logic. The pure authority of experience.

Why do you think I said 'apparent causal link' if it was not to highlight that I do not believe that there is a causal link? Why would I talk about actual causality when I have stated that I have had to discard causality? Or was this bit not aimed at me?

Sorry, careless reading on my part.

I would put it slightly differently. You experience life temporally, but you live eternally.

I find this statement intriguing - would you elaborate a bit?

You say the right words but it is as if you are reading them from a book, if you see it, why do you appear to me to be avoiding my questions?

Again, I really don't wish to avoid questions - you write nicely, you have a pithy turn of phrase, but some things may need to be stated more clearly. For the record, I am trying to base philosophical arguments on some fleeting experiences, usually in meditation. I have a certain amount of conviction, but I'm aware that I'm struggling to communicate well what I mean!

Best, Nikolai

Nikolai wrote:But this is misleading becuase it makes it sound like the intellectual assumption and the sensual perception are separate processes or events. They aren't.

But they are, aren't they? The Body does the transforming and "intellectual assumption" can appear(depending upon what you mean by this?).

Its simply the case that the majority's mode of being is in a world structured by time, but there a few who exist in an atemporal world.

Everyone is a Body that lives and dies in a 'temporal' world. That it gives us a 'structured' time and that there are those who claim they can experience the structure may be the case. But they appear to not be able to explain how others could do it as well? And this appears to me to be a serious problem, philosophically and pedagogically that is.

The possibility that one can live in eternity is not one that is widely recognised as possible.

Can you explain how we can get this expereince of 'living in eternity"?

Furthermore, and despite what you say, there are few people who understand time in anything other than the Newtonian sense.

This always makes me smile with you Nikolai, you decry science and then use its terms to explain those you decry. Most people take no interest in 'understanding' time because they know they have a limited amount of it.

What do you mean by a "Newtonian" sense? Past/Present/Future? Big Clock?

It is therefore of interest that time can be understood as a relative, psychological phenomenon like goodness or beauty. There was once a time when people generally held that that beauty was a objective property of reality - and most still think the same about time. The fact that people consider time, and the understanding of time, to be the preserve of the physicist objectivley modelling this 'commodity' with his mathematical equations shows how widely misunderstood time still is - even in our post-Einsteinian age.

What does "post-Einsteinian age" mean? The 'best' and most widely confirmed theory in Physics is QED and that says its all discrete particles. Two in fact and three axioms(I think) and a shedload of Maths. Either way I'm more interested in what you mean by "understanding" in "time can be understood as a relative, psychological phenomenon like goodness or beauty"? What would this involve?

The testimony of the mystic who has transcended time must be taken very seriously because it is so eminently plausable.

Depends what you mean? Do we have any immortal mystics?

We can all recognise that each moment, in its gestalt, is entirely unique.

Say I can't. Can you tell me how I can go about having this 'recognition'?

And yet we are accustomed to dividing up each novel canvas into bits and parts that we then understand as having some kind of history.

I wish I knew what it was you were experiencing here as I understand it as saying the world is not explicable as objects persisting through time?

And it is the objects of the gestalt that we focus on rather than the unified view and so from this tendency time emerges.

I thought the 'gestalt' was the 'unified view' as its the whole thats different from its parts?

But if we didn't divide everything up into familar objects then each moment would be seen as entirely without precedent.

What do you mean by "familar objects"? Would it not be more like Hume in that casaulity would disappear? As 'precedent' would occur, just you are not paying 'memory' or 'attention' to it?

By not dividing up we are free to perceive everything, not with a shock or recognition, but with a shock of utter novelty.

I believe you. Can you tell me how to do this as well?

And when everything is novel then there is nothing with a history and so time is nowhere at all.

Well 'nowhere' where your bothering to attend to it that is? If everything was "novel" then how could you tell it was?

Even though this is a rare way of viewing things - and the experience of it is ineffable - how it could come about makes perfect sense.

If its "ineffable" how can it come about or make perfect sense?

Look before you now, look around your room, and aspects of it will hit you with a shock of novelty.

Not really. Looks much like it was the moment before.

Its not too much of a leap to zoom out, stop dividing the computer from the space next to it but view them all as a piece as one would a canvas, and you will recognise that the scene as a whole is completely novel.

Got any techniques?

Only a rationalist would struggle with this paradox, as only a rationlist would get themselves caught up in it. To say that 'everythign seems to cancel to infinity is a meaningless' statement based on the illusion that there are 'discrete things' to be cancelled out in the first place. From my perspective everything is competely continuous and undifferentiated - zero and infinity are the same, and there is no ones, two or threes in between!

I do not mistake our conceptualisation of the world as being the world itself - I therefore am hardly wedded to notions like 'I' or 'existence' as I am fully apprised of their paradoxical nature.

What do you recognise our "conceptualisation of the world " to be then? If you are not "wedded to notions like 'I' or 'existence'" then what "paradoxical nature" is there to be apprised about?

When confronted with a paradox I reject the concepts that comprise it; reality, and the experience of reality I enjoy very much as a given that transcends our attempts to understand it.

What do you mean by "understand" here? As you appear to imply that you do have an 'understanding' that others do not. Or at least that appears to be what you argue?

Thanks Met I think I understand what you were saying a bit better now.

Metazoan wrote:I see that there is great scope for confusion. I get very frustrated by the English language's attempts to be green and recycle words, using the same ones to mean contradictory things and its ability to allow sentences to be constructed that can mean many things. Even if you can get a sentence to be unambiguous you only have to change the context in which it is used to get tripped up.

Personally I think it is the strength of English as the language that it is, i.e. a language that at root is a combination of two, so there are pretty much two ways to actually say a thing differently and still mean one thing. Plus, its more than happy with importing words and meanings from other languages and can cope with a wide range of accents and grammatical errors.
I don't think there may be any way to stop a sentence from being unambiguous because it has to be interpreted. What it can be is congruent to the thought it expresses, I guess. So more interesting to me is which predicates people use to express how they understand and the 'confusion' that can happen when we have different preferred predicates. So you say "I see..." and another may prefer to see "I hear..." or "I feel..." which can make your sentence 'confusing' to them. So "I understand...", "I think..." would reduce the scope for confusion. As the interpreter can put their preference in place and understand what was meant(or something like this).

In my perceived reality, time is smooth, flows at one second per second and there are undeniably events.

So not sure what you mean here? In mine time is 'measured' by awake and asleep, night and day, and bodily decay and death of myself and others. That in the awake bits I can have a 'measure' that 'keeps time' for me at the settled upon 'per second' based upon the 'night and day' bit I understand. But 'smooth' appears to describe measurement time too me?
You say "there are undeniably events" and I agree but they are many in Philosophy who claim, with quite reasonable grounds, that there may be not. Or at least in the sense of mind-independent ones. But its all metaphysics to me and I prefer meatphysics as I think the 'Germans' and especially Phenomenology offer a different way for Analytical Philosophy to progress. i.e. the analysis(description) and production of techniques that describe the being of being a subjective thing with language in a way that any such being upon the experience agrees. Or something like that.

From a classical viewpoint the only thing to worry about is that if time is smooth it gets a little difficult to see how it can actually pass. Also there is a little difficulty about how it got started or will end. In that context, time exists and the stated difficulties are either too big or too small to worry about as time obviously exists to me.

It is only when time is taken in the context of the two extremes does it seem to become questionable, but that is no different for space or matter.

This 'sounds' like Physics too me? But logically I understand the problem.

The thing I find unconvincing about the current argument about time is the transfer of arguments valid in one context and using their conclusions in another context. To my mind it is akin to trying to explain the double slit experiment in the context of billiard balls or proposing measuring the size of the universe with a tape measure. The scales are too different and this universe is anything but Euclidian.

From my perspective there is no "current argument" about time. Unless of course you do not understand or believe that you are a finite thing in a scarce resources Universe and time is measured by longevity of existence. That we are a being who also conceptualises existence into 'time' is a given, that animals can do it is also true, so to me that means its Body not some 'transcendental mind'. That the 'mind' produced by this Body can pay attention to the process of how we conceptualise is what I think part of Phenomenology offers.

And so on to what I did post....

And I find it most interesting. Are these professional observations?

In the context of my view from my perceived reality, experiments show I cannot distinguish events much shorter than 20mS (0.02 Seconds)

What were the experiments? Visual or all senses? How did you test? Timed emittor of the 'event'? How did you time arrival?

Further to this the experiments show I appear to also have a built in latency corrector and event correlator working out to just less than 200mS which I presume evolved to compensate for processing lag between the various sense organs and actuators.

Whilst I think I understand what I am reading could you explain what you mean by a "built in latency corrector and event correlator"?

I mention this because the above would seem to mean I have devices that smooth out my perception of time. I am not surprised that I struggle to see past, present and future for what they are.

What I am saying in the above is that events to us are about 20mS long. Things pass from the future into the present and then into the past over about 20mS or so, that is 370,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times longer than it takes things to happen. It is unlikely that our perception of time will be a good guide to understanding the nature of time.

So I think that your 'smooth' may be what you are inferring from the above facts about the physical world as viewed from measurement time. And I thank you as metaphysically its fun and fascinating to me. Whats your best guess as to what type of 'reality' can support such a 'reality'? Discrete particles supporting 'moments' that produce a persistent 'flow' of 'events' and hence Time? Is that about right? But we cannot 'see' the discrete particles because the shortest measurement we've got is the Planck Second? If so then I'd like to go the "what can we guess then?" route, and my guess goes that the 'bits', i.e. Planck lengths, will be some multiple of however we got this Planck Second, I bet its four planck-bits to each Planck Second(or particle) and its all 'running' on a Cellular Automata of some kind

i was thinking about this the day before Nik posted it because i became enamoured with the following pictures i found in an old magazine & that made me think about time: sorry about the poor quality, i might try to enlarge them a bit. also the picture was extended across two pages so had to split them

Hi Arising,

The Body does the transforming and "intellectual assumption" can appear(depending upon what you mean by this?).

Even though you must be aware that this is one of the biggest imponderables in philosophy, you are still assuming that mind, perceptions, 'intellectual assumptions' are all emergent properties of the Body - and that the Body isn't a construction of the mind. I can't really say anything about this - I'm certainly not in a position to disagree with you - but to assert what you do seems premature, foreclosed somehow.

Everyone is a Body that lives and dies in a 'temporal' world.

You can state it, but you can't justify it - and you must realise that it is controvertible.

Can you explain how we can get this expereince of 'living in eternity"?

No, but it is increasingly characteristic of my experience. In the last couple of years I've frequently been surprised by the fact that I have been around for 33 years. This is not some intellectual wondering, but a felt sense that everything I see is novel - and it comes as a surprise that I might have experienced such things before. Sometimes I look at nature, and it feels like I am looking at it for the first time - even though, if I exist in time, I must have seen snowdrops and daffodils many times before. Basically, the familiarity is gone. I'm like a person with amnesia - my belief in time makes me feel that I should remember daffodils from last spring round, but somehow I don't. But its like a good amnesia, because it makes things appear very striking - the shock of novelty is a phrase I like.

I don't think there is a technique of living this way, and there is no real reason why people should want to anyway. But I do view my felt experience as a concomitant of my intellectual worldview - where formerly solid seeming concepts like time, goodbness, free will are dissolving into meaninglessness.

Either way I'm more interested in what you mean by "understanding" in "time can be understood as a relative, psychological phenomenon like goodness or beauty"? What would this involve?

Simply that the age of a thing is not intrinsic to the object, but depends on the perceiver. You might view a fossil as old, I might view it as brand spanking new. You might fancy Jordan, I might think she's a minger. Ultimately there is no way of knowing which of us is right unless we posit Time and Beauty as being transcendent ideas.

Because my experience of eternity, and that of the the mystics is rare and infrequent - it can often be dismissed as wrong. Most people would not think that time is subjective in the same way that they might allow beauty to be. But my experience of eternity has such authority over me that I am happy to argue that it is a feasible mode of being. You might call it illusion, but your only justification for this would be that the majority would agree with you - but that is really scant justification.

Depends what you mean? Do we have any immortal mystics?

I don't know how to answer this, because as I said before, my sense of eternity has been fleeting at best. But there are many mystics who have considered themselves immortal - through the realisation that there is a part of them, Mind, Atman whatever, that is not associated with their body and so not subject to clinical death. But I don't know what to make of all this myself, sorry.

Say I can't. Can you tell me how I can go about having this 'recognition'?

I would have thought you could answer that. I've always assumed that what I'm talking about is akin to Husserlian bracketing. But to be honest I always thought Husserl was on a hiding to nothing in thinking that this could be manualised, and so don't often attempt it myself...

But... if you see a computer and a desk before you, try not to see a computer and a desk as objects in a field - but rather try and see all that you perceive as either all object or all field. Manage this and the computer and the desk will disappear in the conceptual sense, but shall still be there phenomenologically. If it is viewed phenomenogically then the scene will be recognised as being entirely unique - because there is no components of the view that can be considered to have a historicity. Time is therefore nowhere - all that you perceive is here-and-now (although you won't be thuinking that to yourself) Is this a good description?

Best, Nikolai

Hi Nikolai,

Ah... reading your post makes me realise that I have been misunderstanding where you are coming from, I thought you were reinterpreting my questions to avoid my position rather than to more clearly represent yours. Apologies.

You wrote:I'm not saying that there isn't a temporal world, I am saying that there is an atemporal world as well and people experience it and live in it.

We are talking about different worlds, I do not think that the atemporal world I envisage can be experienced directly, but only by inference.

Now any thinker who is of a logical bent is likely to reject this. 'Surely time exists or it doesn't,' they will say. 'They can't both exist as that would be contradiction.'

I think I'm logically bent; I have no trouble with time both existing and not existing. You simply have to get the context and meaning clear.

The pure authority of experience.

I know a man who may warn you about being convinced by 'authority'.

I wrote:You experience life temporally, but you live eternally.

You wrote:I find this statement intriguing - would you elaborate a bit?

It was a worm to catch people who are thinking along the same lines as I am. As I think we are talking from fundamentally different viewpoints I think it best to let this come up in a separate thread.

Again, apologies for missing your point and messing up your thread.

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Metazoan,

Don't worry about messing up the thread - all comments on time, and on archaeology welcome!

We are talking about different worlds, I do not think that the atemporal world I envisage can be experienced directly, but only by inference.

What is the atemporal world you envisage? Why can't it be experienced directly?

I think I'm logically bent; I have no trouble with time both existing and not existing. You simply have to get the context and meaning clear.

I am genuinely interested in how you see time both exisiting and not existing - come on, give me some clear contexts and meanings!

Best wishes,

Nikolai

Hi Arising,

My point about English was meant to be tongue in cheek, as an interloper here I could hardly express the true nature of my frustration.

I wrote:In my perceived reality, time is smooth, flows at one second per second and there are undeniably events.

'My perceived reality' refers to what I think I perceive, that is, through the five senses.
Through those senses time appears smooth, I do not sense jumps, reversals or pauses. All clocks I watch run smoothly at the same rate. Through direct observation I think I see time passing and so events happening.
Events are undeniable in the context of my perceived reality simply due to them being the signposts by which I measure time passing.

In no way do I think that this is any sort of proof that time exists, simply that in the context of my unaided perception I find it difficult to refute.

In my cosy classical Newtonian neighbourhood all is well with time.

You wrote:You say "there are undeniably events" and I agree but they are many in Philosophy who claim, with quite reasonable grounds, that there may be not. Or at least in the sense of mind-independent ones. But its all metaphysics to me and I prefer meatphysics as I think the 'Germans' and especially Phenomenology offer a different way for Analytical Philosophy to progress. i.e. the analysis(description) and production of techniques that describe the being of being a subjective thing with language in a way that any such being upon the experience agrees. Or something like that.

OK OK I'll tell you anything you want to know, just stop hitting me with paragraphs like that.

From my perspective there is no "current argument" about time.

I thought there was, hence my misunderstanding with Nikolai.

Unless of course you do not understand or believe that you are a finite thing in a scarce resources Universe and time is measured by longevity of existence.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

And so on to what I did post....

And I find it most interesting. Are these professional observations?

'professional' can mean several things; like: was the experiment scrupulously designed and conducted under laboratory conditions by suitably qualified individuals with the results peer reviewed, independently verified and published in a renowned journal; or are you asking if I was paid?

Err no. Purely an amateurish garden shed type experiment.

Whilst I think I understand what I am reading could you explain what you mean by a "built in latency corrector and event correlator"?

Similar things, latency correction shifts your perception of when something happens to a time more consistent with your expectations, event correlation makes sure you perceive events as being consistent. As an example, imagine watching yourself p**** your finger with a pin. All three events tie up, you feel yourself moving the pin towards your finger, you see it happening and you feel it touch. There is no perceptible mismatch.(Don't try this at home, it's not how I did it.)
The actual incident that precipitated the experiment was where there was a sudden breakdown of this type of correlation where I was expecting a simple degradation.
Rigorous science? Not at all, but something I am going to explore further when I get the time. The most interesting bit was that it appears that perception of when specific events occur can be shifted further than the time between perceptible events. This sounds goofy to me as if I have to hang around to wait for my perception to catch up then I'm in danger of doing things before I think about them. Somewhere I maybe be wrong, but then I only do this for fun so what does it matter?

If you are going to actually think about what I write rather than just read it, I'll have be more rigorous and maybe even stop making it up as I go along.

So I think that your 'smooth' may be what you are inferring from the above facts about the physical world as viewed from measurement time. And I thank you as metaphysically its fun and fascinating to me.

What I am trying to say is that with an uncritical and unaided eye this world looks like a cosy classical Newtonian neighbourhood. Aided by instruments that improve our ability to measure our perceived world, we see we are mistaken. Things to not make sense the way they used to.

Whats your best guess as to what type of 'reality' can support such a 'reality'?

Ah, a direct question. It is stupidly big but not in a xyzt sense, it is not physical in any sense, and it is static. Unhelpful I know but I'm trying.

In a previous post to Nikolai you wrote:What does "post-Einsteinian age" mean? The 'best' and most widely confirmed theory in Physics is QED and that says its all discrete particles. Two in fact and three axioms(I think) and a shedload of Maths.

My, admittedly fuzzy, understanding was that QED didn't say that it was particles but that it could be interpreted physically as particles in one view and waves in another. This is what causes so much grief in the double slit experiment. In some other sense I was getting the impression that particles were being thought of as little knots in the fabric of space time. So I'm not convinced of the 'particle' bit.
My memory has it that it was either you or Richard who was saying that there were five axioms. I never did get around to asking what they were. For sure you are not wrong about the maths. I hate maths almost as much as I hate the search engine on this forum.

Discrete particles supporting 'moments' that produce a persistent 'flow' of 'events' and hence Time? Is that about right?

Not sure how to say this, I don't think the universe exists, so, err, no.

But we cannot 'see' the discrete particles because the shortest measurement we've got is the Planck Second? If so then I'd like to go the "what can we guess then?" route, and my guess goes that the 'bits', i.e. Planck lengths, will be some multiple of however we got this Planck Second, I bet its four planck-bits to each Planck Second(or particle)

Sadly not, the Planck second is simply the time it takes light to travel the Planck length. I cannot comment on anything that is going on at less than the Planck length. To me, talking about something smaller is just inserting more turtles into the soup.

I get the feeling that this would be better placed in the other 'Nothing exists outside the mind' thread as basically my position on time would generally cover space and matter as well.

and its all 'running' on a Cellular Automata of some kind

Arising's law: Any thread that mentions Quantum Mechanics or a computer will eventually precipitate the notion that the universe is a simulation.

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Hi Nikolai,

You wrote:What is the atemporal world you envisage? Why can't it be experienced directly?

In hindsight, calling it a 'world' was a mistake, it evokes the wrong pictures. Perhaps an analogy; a little like trying to experience the number three directly without the aid of apples or more like trying to experience the square root of minus one with the aid of apples. Sorry about the maths; hate it, or really hate it, we are stuck with it.

I am genuinely interested in how you see time both exisiting and not existing - come on, give me some clear contexts and meanings!

Nothing at all profound here:-

Context: My perceived reality.
Meaning (of exist): Time is consistent with my perceived reality as I think I experience events.

Context: My thoughts as to why I have a perceived reality.
Meaning (of not exist): The model is static and so doesn't require time.

Resolution of apparent paradox:-

Time is an emergent phenomenon.

Put another way, at the atomic scale, whether it's a live mouse or a dead mouse becomes a tough call. Life is an emergent phenomenon, it is meaningless at the atomic scale.

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Hi metazoan,

Perhaps an analogy; a little like trying to experience the number three directly without the aid of apples

I suppose I consider myself to have experienced eternity directly. All that I perceived was ageless. But I relaise that this is unlikely to get acccepted intellectually - you need to experience it.

Time is an emergent phenomenon.

Put another way, at the atomic scale, whether it's a live mouse or a dead mouse becomes a tough call. Life is an emergent phenomenon, it is meaningless at the atomic scale.

Is it the vitality itself that emerges, or just the meaning of the word life (like the meaning of a plume of smoke emerges only when carbon molecules are close together)?

Hi Nikolai,

You wrote:I suppose I consider myself to have experienced eternity directly. All that I perceived was ageless. But I relaise that this is unlikely to get acccepted intellectually - you need to experience it.

The picture you evoke in my mind is to take a photo' of 'now' and spend some time exploring it. I do not see this as experiencing that 'now'.

Is it the vitality itself that emerges, or just the meaning of the word life

Some sort of property called 'vitality' may emerge, but only in the way that a square emerges from 4 dots.

I don't think the word 'life' has a single meaning so: 'the meaning of the word life' does not appear useful here.

If you are asking if I think there is some 'vital spark' required in addition, then the tenets that I am following would require me to reject that option unless I could demonstrate that it was specifically required. I have no requirement to introduce such a concept at this time.

(like the meaning of a plume of smoke emerges only when carbon molecules are close together)?

The meaning of 'smoke' does not rely on the presence of 'smoke' any more than the meaning of 'unicorn' requires the presence of a 'unicorn'.

If you meant to say that smoke is only smoke when it fulfils the criterion of being smoke, I'll not argue with that. I will agree even more if there was an unambiguous criterion for 'smoke' and an objective method of evaluating the sample against that criterion.

If you were asking: when does bread become toast? then I'll fall asleep. I'm bored with the word games.

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Hi Nikolai,

Even though you must be aware that this is one of the biggest imponderables in philosophy, you are still assuming that mind, perceptions, 'intellectual assumptions' are all emergent properties of the Body - and that the Body isn't a construction of the mind.

Its not an imponderable that the mind is an 'emergent' property of the Body, personally I think this smacks too much of hopeful reductionism but hey! That Idealists still exist is an imponderable. I can only assume you have not had contact with the dead? Or not watched foreign news? It may be all 'mind' but our 'minds' do not make our bodies, but this is still too dualist for me.

I can't really say anything about this - I'm certainly not in a position to disagree with you - but to assert what you do seems premature, foreclosed somehow.

Depends upon how you wish to understand it?

You can state it, but you can't justify it - and you must realise that it is controvertible.

Who controverts that 'time passes' and we die?

No, but it is increasingly characteristic of my experience. In the last couple of years I've frequently been surprised by the fact that I have been around for 33 years.

What is it that surprised you?

This is not some intellectual wondering, but a felt sense that everything I see is novel - and it comes as a surprise that I might have experienced such things before. Sometimes I look at nature, and it feels like I am looking at it for the first time - even though, if I exist in time, I must have seen snowdrops and daffodils many times before. Basically, the familiarity is gone.

Or you are re-experiencing what you felt when you first saw things?

Can you choose this state you talk about?

I'm like a person with amnesia - my belief in time makes me feel that I should remember daffodils from last spring round, but somehow I don't.

If you had a way of remembering last years daffs what would it do for you? Or, in what way don't you somehow not do it?

But its like a good amnesia, because it makes things appear very striking - the shock of novelty is a phrase I like.

Sounds fun, can you turn it on and off?

I don't think there is a technique of living this way, and there is no real reason why people should want to anyway. But I do view my felt experience as a concomitant of my intellectual worldview - where formerly solid seeming concepts like time, goodbness, free will are dissolving into meaninglessness.

I agree that feelings are important when integrated. What do you mean by "meaninglessness"?

Simply that the age of a thing is not intrinsic to the object, but depends on the perceiver. You might view a fossil as old, I might view it as brand spanking new.

You could choose to do this but then we'd not both be talking about a "fossil".

You might fancy Jordan, I might think she's a minger. Ultimately there is no way of knowing which of us is right unless we posit Time and Beauty as being transcendent ideas.

Why is it even an issue of "right"?

Because my experience of eternity, and that of the the mystics is rare and infrequent - it can often be dismissed as wrong.

From my point of view there are hundreds of millions in India alone who make these claims, so not so "rare and infrequent". Again with the "wrong"?

Most people would not think that time is subjective in the same way that they might allow beauty to be. But my experience of eternity has such authority over me that I am happy to argue that it is a feasible mode of being. You might call it illusion, but your only justification for this would be that the majority would agree with you - but that is really scant justification.

not sure who you're talking too here? As I have nowhere said "illusion", nor that I disbelieve that you are having these experiences. But my take is that its an error to allow experiences to have authority over oneself. So my question is, can you turn this feeling on and off?

I don't know how to answer this, because as I said before, my sense of eternity has been fleeting at best. But there are many mystics who have considered themselves immortal - through the realisation that there is a part of them, Mind, Atman whatever, that is not associated with their body and so not subject to clinical death. But I don't know what to make of all this myself, sorry.

No need to apologise. As in my late 20's I took Nietzsche too heart and read Dawkins then Darwin, so much as I'd love to have faith in having a 'soul' that thinks its me when I die, I find I can't, and somehow that seems right.

I would have thought you could answer that. I've always assumed that what I'm talking about is akin to Husserlian bracketing. But to be honest I always thought Husserl was on a hiding to nothing in thinking that this could be manualised, and so don't often attempt it myself...

Ah! A common 'language'. Its that you sound like Husserl too me, that I'm asking you my questions. As he too could not give any practical techniques about his [bracketing], something I stuck on the end of paper in a fit of exam-madness by comparing him with the buddhists and saying at least they had some practical techniques
So I still think the idea of 'manualising' things is good, not least because I like technology and especially computers. What techniques did you use upon the 'body-state' to get to the 'mind-state' that you are describing? Zen meditation I assume is part of it? Yoga? Diet?

But... if you see a computer and a desk before you, try not to see a computer and a desk as objects in a field - but rather try and see all that you perceive as either all object or all field. Manage this and the computer and the desk will disappear in the conceptual sense, but shall still be there phenomenologically. If it is viewed phenomenogically then the scene will be recognised as being entirely unique - because there is no components of the view that can be considered to have a historicity. Time is therefore nowhere - all that you perceive is here-and-now (although you won't be thuinking that to yourself) Is this a good description?

I don't know as its yours explained with philosophical terms that can mean much. Can you tell me what position your body is in at the time? What posture was it in? What was the breathing pattern? Where were the eyes? Wheres the gaze? What were the muscles in the face doing? Whats happening with the 'internal' representations? What 'mind' state should be attained?