Further Treatises on Time... (Humans)

by dhw, Sunday, March 13, 2011, 11:37 (5003 days ago) @ xeno6696

For Matt-You have argued that only the present exists, and the future and past do not. I agree and have never disagreed.-You have argued that the division*** of time into minutes, years, centuries etc. is man-made. I agree and have never disagreed.-Please can we leave these arguments behind, and focus solely on what follows.-MATT (to David): Time only exists to us BECAUSE we have memories. It isn't part of the fabric of reality, we only perceive it as such.-dhw: How do you know "the fabric of reality"? How do you know that our perceptions do not coincide with it?-MATT: Because both physicists since Einstein and religious leaders of all kinds have actually agreed on exactly THIS thing. [...] Modern physics starts out with the qualifier "Everything you think you know about the nature of reality is either wrong or backwards."-I admit to being stubborn and ignorant, and I fear I shall now be called arrogant, but here goes. If Einstein, your Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim mystics, Plato, and my friend xeno tell me that my future death will precede my present old age which has preceded my middle age which preceded my having children which preceded my getting married which preceded my youth which preceded my childhood which preceded my birth, I will not only disbelieve you all, but I will recommend you get treatment as soon as possible. The sequential concept of time is as real as anything I know, and it conforms to the definition of time as: "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." You have told me to throw this definition away because it is "vernacular" (though it is not dissimilar to your own earlier image of time as a "river"). But it does not endow past and future with present reality, it makes no mention of man-made divisions into units, and it corresponds to experiences, perceptions and observations that permeate every area of life.-I asked by what criteria you judged the reality of interstellar space to be more "real" than your passage from birth through life to death. You responded: "I don't see where I made the claim that one was 'more real' than the other. They are equally real." Then why do you not accept that time as defined above IS "part of the fabric of reality"?-*** On a lighter (darker?) note, I lived and worked in Ghana for four years, and my wife is African. I can confirm that in general the African attitude towards man-made/woman-made divisions of time is not the same as the European or American!