Time as beyond a concept.
Greetings. I Had been thinking about this and I'd like viewpoints on it. So then when we think of time, The typical understanding of it is primarily Psychic and unconscious. It is popular to describe time as a concept but it seems to me that when I hear that statement from the regular crowd, they do not portray signs of contemplation of what they mean by that.
How would one define such subject? Would it be clear to say that time is the experience of synthesis between man and the Exterior world. Motion lets say is one of the greatest foundations on which time can stand on. Since the calculation of time needs motion to be its surrounding nature. For to count is to accumulate movement in any matter. Time is experienced subjectively but the laws that govern physical objects which are not conscious "play-out" as they were, in an almost linear or non-lined motion. A stone falling off a cliff lets say, Would that be experienced if it were not for a mind to experience it. Is time merely a concept or the interpreted signals of what the world may be like to the senses? and by the world I mean experiences of physics in motion.
Then again with my own word. The concept of time, how would one best describe it?
If I do no not speak clear sense I am sorry. I am entering a loophole of words while stoned as stone.
How would one define such subject? Would it be clear to say that time is the experience of synthesis between man and the Exterior world. Motion lets say is one of the greatest foundations on which time can stand on. Since the calculation of time needs motion to be its surrounding nature. For to count is to accumulate movement in any matter. Time is experienced subjectively but the laws that govern physical objects which are not conscious "play-out" as they were, in an almost linear or non-lined motion. A stone falling off a cliff lets say, Would that be experienced if it were not for a mind to experience it. Is time merely a concept or the interpreted signals of what the world may be like to the senses? and by the world I mean experiences of physics in motion.
Then again with my own word. The concept of time, how would one best describe it?
If I do no not speak clear sense I am sorry. I am entering a loophole of words while stoned as stone.
Comments (33)
"So then the student asked the buddha what time is"
My experience of life doesn't apply beyond my life.
Objects in motion take place within time, as it were. It's a very strange concept if you examine it from our perspective. Like the typical situation: two people may be at a party, one of them has fun and time goes by very quickly, the other one is bored beyond words and is amazed time isn't "flowing". And many more such examples.
More problematic is what you seem to hint at, which is how to think about such matters such as a stone falling off a cliff before we existed.
> Would it be clear to say that time is the experience of synthesis between man and the Exterior world.
I would say no because time would then be a personal thing based on personal perception.
However time is constant regardless of observer.
For example a car might pass by you very fast, but if I watch the car from helicopter 2km above it then our perception of time may not be the same.
Likewise if one of us is drunk, then our perception may also not be the same.
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If we don't take into account the past, present and future then I would say time has no meaning such that it is present only (there is no future time or past time)
So, a particle of time has speed, which is defined by the particle of time?
Time, like space, simply is. How we perceive time can vary dramatically, however. And what of time dilation in special relativity? That goes beyond perception and is registered by clocks or machinery.
The greatest minds have pondered this question.
Too fast or too soon could be instantaneous. Like something being over here and over there at the same time. It's all over my head but I like to pretend I'm smart. Like maybe the past is dark matter and the future is dark energy and, where energy and matter can morph into each other, so too time can morph into energy or matter, depending upon perspective from the front or back or side. Or maybe, like a wave, they are all the same thing.
Quoting Banno
I think it’s time
Two points - it's not clear what it means to claim time exists, or does not exist. Could you mean that it doesn't exist in the way unicorns don't exist? Or square circles don't exist?
And secondly, why shouldn't time be finite? IS there some logicla contradiction here that prevents it?
Time passes, to be sure; so there's that.
Like the time that passed between your reading this and my first post on this thread.
You already understand what time is. Does that make it "beyond a concept"? Depends what a concept is. If a concept must be definable in words, then perhaps.
A what now?
Quoting unintelligiblekai
To say that time is a concept would imply a definable structure that universally applies. But the relativity of time disputes this. Common language use stretches the term ‘concept’ to apply to indeterminate structures such as time, emotion, beauty, etc, yet on closer inspection (eg. Kant’s aesthetics) they are ideas that form concepts under localised conditions of experience.
What is consistent, however, is an underlying quality with a logical composition. Or, perhaps, an underlying logic with a qualitative structure - like a mathematical equation. These two structures - one quality-based, one logic-based - are interchangeable in this form, in the same way that every fundamental equation of physics is essentially reversible. Except for time, which must include a directional flow of energy/entropy in a localised relation.
Incidentally, most ‘Western’ philosophy struggles to allow for this relativity of time, but I have found that the Chinese or Laozi model can be aligned perfectly with a triadic relation between logic, quality and the directional flow of energy (chi), all potentially inclusive of a temporally-located observer (rather like QM).
Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’ is a useful exploration of time in relation to the quality of our experience and the quantification of time in physics.
:up:
Quoting Banno
Never mind.
More to do with heat:
I think most people understand time in different ways at different times. Mostly, I think, consciously in practical terms. A time to sleep, a time to dream, time to eat and so on.
Some rely entirely on watches as to when any activity is undertaken. Midday lunch. Others rely on their feelings - rightly or wrongly assuming they are 'hungry' and need food when it might be thirst and the need is for water.
Time to contemplate on time. Not everyone has time for this - in either quantitative or qualitative terms.
Quoting unintelligiblekai
Time is not merely a concept to be discussed at length by philosophers or represented in the arts.
Time is something we experience as passing. Is that the same as your interpreting signals of experiencing 'physics in motion' ?
We talk about 'time management'...how best to make use of time.
Quoting Banno
I think our common understanding and use of 'time' is different from, if not beyond, any philosophical concept and discussion of. The study of what a concept is - well, is it worth the time ?
I guess so, for some.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept
Recently, I've been looking outwith texts for inspiration - in music or art.
Looking at paths not usually taken...by me, at least...
For example:
https://www.dalipaintings.com/
See 'Cartoon of the Day'...right now :cool:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/527606
I think it's both, much like the notion that time is eternity, eternity is time. Time has a paradoxical element(s) to it. Consider simple time travel from east coast to west. When one loses 4-hours, they don't get it back. It is lost in time.
Also, consider the common definition of time; past, present, future. What slice or sliver of time does the present actually represent, atomic/planck time? The present only seems to suggest a separation between past and future. Also remember, it takes time to cognize a something. Being and becoming are not in unison.
If time were finite, it would have to have a beginning and an ending. Since time is only a measurement taken from now, to as far back or forward as one likes, there is no end to how far back or forward one may go.
Time is what we have to discover, experiment, create, and learn. It is not long or short. It is the memories were have, what we are having, and what may be, or might have been. We are time, and it never ends.
Could you describe what you mean by being and becoming?
A non sequitur.
In the context of the metaphysics of time, eternity etc , thinking is a process but being is a state. When I think my mental state changes with time but the me to which the mental state refers remains the same (paradox 1)
When we look at logic, particularly a priori mathematical structures, we know that the regressive nature of physical existence (neurons protons sub atomic particles etc) can ultimately be described mathematically, in an unchanging abstract form (math). That a priori truth does not change with the passage of time, but the world and the things in it are constantly changing.
The only thing constant is change itself (paradox 2).
(In philosophy, abstract mathematics is directly associated with a platonic reality, and mathematics itself has incredible effectiveness in describing our reality, hence we find ourselves facing the paradox of an unchanging truth --math/a priori/eternal truths-- and a temporal/changing world in which we live.)
Here is a model of time that I find quite convincing, by the German philosopher Gerold Prauss from his paper The Problem of Time in Kant. In: Kant’s Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. Edited by Predrag Cicovacki. I hope the loose arrangement of the quotation snippets is understandable:
*Drawing as the sketching of a line is in fact nothing other than a certain extension of pigment. For the geometrician it is, nonetheless, the depiction of an ideal geometrical object in the sense that a line as an ideal geometrical object is different from extended pigment in the same way that an ideal geometrical point is different from a dot.*
*I assume this in order to construct or generate an ideal geometrical object that is an intermediate between point and line. If the dynamic generation or construction of an ideal geometrical line can, indeed, be depicted as an extension of an ideal geometrical point, then I pose the question: When I carry out this operation on a blackboard by means of a piece of chalk and a sponge, what does it lead to? With a piece of chalk in one hand, in one motion I undertake to do what I do when I draw an ideal geometrical line; with the sponge in the other hand I immediately follow behind the piece of chalk, so that all that remains is the drawing of an ideal geometrical point and that it never becomes a drawing of an ideal geometrical line.*
*The answer must come out to the following: what I thereby draw and depict is an ideal object, just as it is an ideal geometrical point or an ideal geometrical line that I generate or construct. But this ideal object is neither an ideal geometrical point nor an ideal geometrical line in the abovementioned sense. For this ideal object is neither a point in contradistinction to a line, nor a line in contradistinction to a point. As an intermediate between the two, it is in a sense both of them. As the process of its construction shows, this ideal object is nevertheless a possible object; as such, it is like an ideal point and an ideal line existent in the geometrical sense.*
*For a spatial onedimensional line cannot at all arise by these means. Furthermore, from this process no other possibility can arise but to pay attention to the drawing itself. And for this reason no other ability is required which one person has and others may not. This operationalization leads furthermore to an objectivization of precisely that which we actually gain as an ideal object when we only pay attention to the drawing itself, namely that ideal intermediate between point and line.*
*He for whom obtaining this model of time by means of a piece of chalk, a sponge, and a blackboard is not sufficiently precise, can generate it for himself in an absolute and exact way by means of a simple postulate. It involves no contradiction to posit the following: let us assume the dynamic generation of an ideal geometrical line in one motion by means of the dynamic extension of an ideal geometrical point. Such an extension would fix a direction of this extension as well as the direction opposite to it. Since such an extension is contingent, we can also allow the following assumption: let such an extension take place in one motion, so that—at the same time—precisely as much extension arises in one direction as vanishes in the opposite direction. This postulate leads absolutely and exactly to the same result of an ideal geometrical intermediate between point and line, as does the time-model discussed in the text.*
*The ideal object that has the structure of time exists only while I set the piece of chalk and the sponge in motion in the above-mentioned way and continuously keep them in motion; that is, it exists only while there is this sort of motion. If there is no such motion, there is also no ideal object as a model for time.*
*Only the chalk that is being continuously rubbed off belongs to the drawing of my model of time, and not the piece of chalk, or the sponge, or the blackboard. They are only the means for the depiction of this model of time. It can now even be imagined that we have a transparent blackboard, so that I can manage to depict this model of time from the opposite side. It can also be imagined that this blackboard is transparent only in the sense that the chalk being rubbed off is visible, and not the piece of chalk or the sponge. In that case, everyone who is not aware how this motion is produced, must take it for the relative external motion of a chalk-point; everyone must take it as something identical that is in motion across the blackboard and, with reference to this blackboard, as something moving, and vice versa.*
*Yet everyone who is properly informed can take this motion only for what it is: for the constant coming into existence and ceasing to exist of a continually new chalk-point. This point, however, is precisely not something identical in motion across the board and thereby also not something moving against that board. Nor is it the other way around: the blackboard is not moving against the point. It is exactly through this, however, that this motion continuously becomes a sign of the very peculiar motion of that ideal intermediate of point and line, or point and extension. If this very peculiar motion cannot be a relative external motion, this can in a positive sense only mean that it must be an absolute internal motion. It is that point which possesses extension only inside itself, and therewith this complete dynamism of something as motion.*
*What appears in this process is, again and again, just one single point and never a still further point, and thus also never yet another point. And nothing is changed by the fact that this point constantly has extension in itself, through that absolute inner motion of its auto-extension.*
Here is a short summary of Prauss' theory of time:
Inspired by Gerold Prauss, Cord Friebe speaks of time as “extended in a point”, however. I find this an intriguing notion, worthy of closer attention. On the one hand, it seems to capture an important truth. Take my drawing a line on the blackboard. The result is a line of chalk extended in space but with no visible temporality. Only during my action of drawing it is there a perceived time sequence, instantly becoming lost at each and every moment of its proceeding. (Truls Wyller - Kant On Temporal Extension: Embodied, Indexical Idealism)
A pleasure to participate in your thread. The OP stimulated a host of fascinating responses. Appreciate the time and care :sparkle: