Further Treatises on Time... (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, March 14, 2011, 13:02 (4799 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: I'm out of ideas on how to convey this to you; in my own life I reject the feeling of continuity of time as false. It is a feeling, that has no basis in reality. Our brains fill in the gaps, give us the impression of time. The notion of time is further reinforced by the fact that our existence isn't eternal. (Which I'm sure will suffer you some more heartburn...)-Unless someone else can step in to provide a new slant, we may well have to call it a day ... which is the period of something or the other (does physics have a word for this?) that it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis, though apparently if we weren't here to observe it, there wouldn't be a period of something or the other, although the Earth would presumably continue to rotate on its axis. (I hope that at least you can understand why I find all this so confusing!)
 
I agree that the notion of time is reinforced by our awareness of death (don't worry about my heartburn), but that doesn't make it any the less real. I view births and deaths (like the rotating Earth) as evidence of causes and effects, and befores-nows-afters, which confirm 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." In the material world I know ... which I and many others believe to be real ... most everyday experiences appear to contradict what you call the "qualifier" issued by modern physics: "Everything you think you know about the nature of reality is either wrong or backwards." If you genuinely believe that the laws of physics, not to mention biology, are wrong or backwards, step in front of that bus (but do please give yourself enough something or the other to step away again).
 
MATT: I've discussed both Einsteinian relativity and time at the quantum level; time is rejected by both disjoint studies in physics. -I like the word "disjoint" in this context! Of course I accept the relativity of time, and I must confess I have no understanding of anything at quantum level, but I think I understand time at Planet Earth level, and I need only look in the mirror to confirm that I am not the man/youth/child I used to be.-MATT: [...] As David is troubled by a Prime cause, I think it is valuable to discuss time, since it underpins all notions of cause and effect.-It most certainly does. Forget the prime cause. If it exists, it is inaccessible, but that doesn't mean that the sequence of cause and effect is not real!
 
MATT: What I'm contesting is the notion that time is a part of objective reality. That time is only understood via an observer, and that the universe does not function by or use time, we gain from physics. Time--purely--is a man made construct that feels real. Like a book; a movie, or a play. Time as a continuity only exists because we remember parts of events and our brains fill in the gaps. That book references this study.-Your references here are to eye-witness accounts. The fact that human perception and human memory work by establishing patterns is now a commonplace, as is the fact that both are notoriously unreliable, but our unreliable interpretation of things does not mean that the things in themselves are not real. "That time is only understood via an observer" applies to all understanding. Billions of stars (not to mention billions of organisms) were born and died long before we were around, but the fact that no-one was there to observe them doesn't mean the sequence of birth and death was not real. When you say the universe doesn't function by or use time, do you mean it doesn't divide things up into minutes/hours/ centuries? If so, of course I'm with you. But if you mean the universe doesn't function and change by causes and effects, by the interactions of physical forces, by the influence of one piece of matter on another, by befores-nows-afters, then count me out.
 
Let me sum up our points of agreement: The word "time" is a human invention, our divisions of it are human inventions, it is relative to space and velocity, only the present is real, past and future are non-existent, and if we were not there to observe/name/ describe it, it could not be observed/named/described (ditto everything else you can think of). Our point of disagreement: the sequence of cause-effect-cause, and the movement from before to now to after, are integral to the functioning of the Earth and of the universe just as they are to the course of life. This sequence/movement is what I and many others call "time", and as such it is part of the fabric of reality.
 
SOS! Matt and I are sinking...can anyone rescue us before our something or the other runs out?