How our brains create time (Humans)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 07, 2019, 15:22 (1965 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DAVID: Your answer avoids the question which is, why does space-time as a concept work, as if time is built into the workings of the universe, requiring an underlying mind?

dhw: Please note the subject of this thread. Your comment avoids the question of how you define time. Totally mindless energy and matter constantly forming and reforming entails a before and after, and a cause and effect. That to me is time. What do you mean by something working? Billions of stars, suns and galaxies come and go. What is “working”? I would agree with you 100% if you wished to argue that life requires fine tuning, and so you can certainly make out a case that in our galaxy something is working. But that does not change the concept of time. There was a before and after, and a cause and effect, long before life arrived.

DAVID: I agree with you, but if time is simply before and after, what is space-time?

dhw: Do tell me.

TONY: In order for time to be a concept, someing must be able to conceptualize it. From quantum physics to time, science is showing over and over that consciousness is a prerequisite requirement for the state of existence we inhabit to even exist. It doesn't just depend on your definition or time, but also of life. There is nothing that points to their being no apriori intelligence except our arrogant claim to being the most complex beings in the universe.

dhw: Part of that arrogance is the idea that if we were not here, nothing else would be here either. Of course concepts are impossible without someone/something to do the conceiving. That does not mean the thing being conceptualized does not have an independent existence of its own! “Concept” can mean how something should be done, or how something is done, and “time” is our concept of how things are done, namely in a sequence of before and after, cause and effect. I truly believe that our planet and our solar system and billions of solar systems and galaxies existed long before we did. If you wish to argue that they could not have existed without some “a priori intelligence” (i.e. your God), I shan’t argue with you, just as I shan’t argue with the atheist who says that intelligence could not have existed without some a priori combination of materials to engender it. Neither of these arguments, in my opinion, alters the fact that everything we know about reality indicates that there is a sequence of before and after, cause and effect, and that constitutes time whether there is anyone to observe it or not.

DAVID [referring to Tony’s post above]: I agree. Time, as we view it is a sequence of experiences. Animals who are conscious are aware of a series of events, but they cannot recognize it as 'time' which is a concept of the series. Hawking stated years ago there is no physical 'before' before the big Bang. Time started with the Bang. Guth et al. confirmed it in a mathematical paper at Hawking's 60th birthday celebration. But that doesn't mean the BB came from nothing. Einstein uses space-time as the basis of his theories about the mechanics of the universe. If time is a mental concept, it suggest strongly a mind made the universe.

dhw: I do not accept that time is a mental concept. I see “time” as the word we have invented to describe something which has an objective reality of its own. See above.

Tony: Quantum physics shows us that matter exists in a state of superposition until observed. So, no, matter does not exist in a defined state without consciousness, and now it appears that time does not either. I suspect that what will be found in the final analysis is that information and energy will also follow this trend, all needing something to process their meaning prior to being made real and locked into our reality

I see this comment as being correct for whole organisms and for the universe, while single cells can use information they are given by processes they are given,.