Further Treatises on Time... (Humans)

by dhw, Saturday, March 12, 2011, 12:34 (4801 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: David, can you change the past? If not, why not? What I'm talking about isn't 'philosophy' it is a practical observation. Time only exists to us BECAUSE we have memories. It isn't part of the fabric of reality, we only perceive it as such. -MATT: [...] we measure time by rotations on a clock. Our days are measured by the earth's rotation, our years by the sun, etc. If you took all these things away--such as what you would see in deep interstellar space; you would not even have a concept of time--it would be meaningless. For humans, time is a natural consequence of rotation.-How do you know "the fabric of reality"? How do you know that our perceptions do not coincide with it?
 
I agree that our human concept of time depends on memory and earth's rotation. Our concept of walking depends on legs. So does that mean walking is not "real"? Are memory, rotation and legs figments of our imagination? As I tried to emphasize early on in our epistemological discussion***, you have to decide WHAT LEVEL you're debating on. None of our man-made realities (language, money, war, education) would have any meaning in deep interstellar space, so on that level, the whole of human life is unreal. By what criteria do you judge the reality of interstellar space to be more "real" than your passage from birth through life to death?-But even on your philosophical level you have a problem, because when you ask David if he can change the past, you're acknowledging the distinction between past and present. This ties in perfectly with my favourite dictionary definition of time: "the continuous passage of existence in which events pass from a state of potentiality in the future, through the present, to a state of finality in the past." (Chambers) Rotation also entails a distinction ... the position of the earth in relation to the sun is different now from what it was an hour ago. So if we break your argument down into its component parts, what we have is this: 1) the past and future do not exist in the present (agreed); 2) our divisions of time are man-made (agreed); 3) there is a sequence which we call past, present and future ... just as there is a sequence which we call cause and effect, in which effects become causes and so on ad infinitum. This SEQUENCE is the concept of time which I would argue is real, and it would be so even in outer space, where stars live and die. It seems to me that the only way you can deny the SEQUENCE of time (i.e. a before, a now, and an after) is to deny the reality of changing matter. That way madness lies.
 
*** You have said that you need to give me a lengthy response on the epistemological thread. I appreciate your concern, but of course the pre-spring tests take precedence. I'm actually relieved to hear that you give priority to human realities over philosophical! Good luck!