What's the big mystery about time?
From Plato to Einstein, time has been thought of by many. Everyone knows what time is. That's why I wonder what the big mystery is.
Time can be quantified by a clock. That's a periodic process, like a pendulum, with a device attached on which you can see how many periods have past. Like an odometer for spatial distance.
Einstein made the clock an objectively existing feature of reality. He associated a time axis with the clock. On different points on the axis the clock of an observer in the associated frame shows different values at different points on the axis. Dependendent on his state of motion, the clock of an observer tic-tacs at different rates. Not for the observer but according to someone who sees him moving. For the moving observer, the clock around his hip-hop neck tic-tacs always at the maximum rate. He hip-hops through time only and for an observer moving with the speed of light relative to him, he hip-hops through space only, without hipping through time. Put differently, an observer always moves through spacetime at the speed of light. Which is kind of misleading as he doesn't move through time at all. Einstein though objectified it as something through which you can move, which is obvious nonsense. It's the clock around your neck ticking and not you moving through it. The famous gamma factor is introduced in the Lorenz transformations which allow you to calculate the rate of the clock and distances in a moving frame, seen from a rest frame. The Galilean transformations are retrieved if the speed of light would be infinite (which, by the way, would result in all things happening at once and the non-existence of mass).
The different tic-tac rates are a consequence of the speed of light being the same for all observers. In gravity fields, if you stay at rest at a "point", the clocks tic-tac at different points at different rates. A clock on the surface of the Earth tic-tacs slower than in free space, and on the event horizon of a black hole (quantum entangled with the infalling stuff) the clock has stopped, as seen by a faraway observer (not at the clock itself). If you fall into a hole, you are almost at the same time radiated into space by Hawking radiation.
Time can't go backwards. If all motion were reversed quantum wave functions will decollapse and there would be no begin conditions of matter, only end conditions to which was aimed for with unreal precision. Entropic time, next to which the clock is placed to quantify it, is unidirectional, the clock can tick in both directions.
That being said, the perfect clock is an illusion. It's a fact of nature that there is no perfectly periodic process. Even the atomic clock has no constant period. Only the clock present at the pre-inflationary Planck era was perfectly periodic, comparable with Aristotle's perfect circular motion, and this clock had no direction in time yet, as entropic time didn't take off yet. Because particles are not pointlike, space and time can't reduce to a point.
So, the pre-inflationary Planck cell can be compared with Aristotle's objective unmoved mover and the perfect circular motion. Our friend was ahead of his "time"!
Leaves the question: Is there any mystery left, when we analyze time? Isn't it perfectly clear? Critique welcome!
Time can be quantified by a clock. That's a periodic process, like a pendulum, with a device attached on which you can see how many periods have past. Like an odometer for spatial distance.
Einstein made the clock an objectively existing feature of reality. He associated a time axis with the clock. On different points on the axis the clock of an observer in the associated frame shows different values at different points on the axis. Dependendent on his state of motion, the clock of an observer tic-tacs at different rates. Not for the observer but according to someone who sees him moving. For the moving observer, the clock around his hip-hop neck tic-tacs always at the maximum rate. He hip-hops through time only and for an observer moving with the speed of light relative to him, he hip-hops through space only, without hipping through time. Put differently, an observer always moves through spacetime at the speed of light. Which is kind of misleading as he doesn't move through time at all. Einstein though objectified it as something through which you can move, which is obvious nonsense. It's the clock around your neck ticking and not you moving through it. The famous gamma factor is introduced in the Lorenz transformations which allow you to calculate the rate of the clock and distances in a moving frame, seen from a rest frame. The Galilean transformations are retrieved if the speed of light would be infinite (which, by the way, would result in all things happening at once and the non-existence of mass).
The different tic-tac rates are a consequence of the speed of light being the same for all observers. In gravity fields, if you stay at rest at a "point", the clocks tic-tac at different points at different rates. A clock on the surface of the Earth tic-tacs slower than in free space, and on the event horizon of a black hole (quantum entangled with the infalling stuff) the clock has stopped, as seen by a faraway observer (not at the clock itself). If you fall into a hole, you are almost at the same time radiated into space by Hawking radiation.
Time can't go backwards. If all motion were reversed quantum wave functions will decollapse and there would be no begin conditions of matter, only end conditions to which was aimed for with unreal precision. Entropic time, next to which the clock is placed to quantify it, is unidirectional, the clock can tick in both directions.
That being said, the perfect clock is an illusion. It's a fact of nature that there is no perfectly periodic process. Even the atomic clock has no constant period. Only the clock present at the pre-inflationary Planck era was perfectly periodic, comparable with Aristotle's perfect circular motion, and this clock had no direction in time yet, as entropic time didn't take off yet. Because particles are not pointlike, space and time can't reduce to a point.
So, the pre-inflationary Planck cell can be compared with Aristotle's objective unmoved mover and the perfect circular motion. Our friend was ahead of his "time"!
Leaves the question: Is there any mystery left, when we analyze time? Isn't it perfectly clear? Critique welcome!
Comments (329)
Actually, "Time" is like Energy. Intuitively,everybody knows what it does, but the mystery arises when you ask what it is. For scientific purposes, a thing is its substance (material). But for philosophical inquiries a process is what it causes. Like Energy, Time causes Change. But then you'll have to define that term. In the 20th century, Time was defined as the fourth dimension : a way to measure Change. But that still didn't answer what it is. So, to avoid further debate, they agreed on a metaphorical definition : Block Time. Which is equivalent to the ancient philosophical notion of unchanging Eternity. But that is not an answer to what Time consists of. So the mystery remains. Since there are so many partial definitions of Time, perhaps the best policy is : "don't worry about it, it is what it is". :joke:
BTW, what do you think it is?
PS___In my thesis, there's one tantalizing hint to what Time is : Difference. "The difference that makes a difference" is what we know as Meaning.
I answered that question.
How can time cause change?
I think there are two kinds of times, mutually exclusive. Entropic time and perfect clock time. The PCT constitutes the Planck sized pre-inflationary 3D space. This time has no direction. Only fluctuating. There were not yet irreversible processes to measure, quantify, with this clock. When the volume banged into real particles (the 3D structure inflated into 4D, which got enough negative curvature by a preceding bang that had accelerated far away enough) the perfect clock turned into entropic time.
Question - An observer is mentioned in all of the hypothetical examples. Outside the mind of an observer who interprets the movement of the dials on the clock, what is it that relates one period with another period, or orders the sequence of periods into a longer period? Put another way, can time be said to exist in the absence of its measurement?
A yes. The observer. That ugly remnant of bygone physics. Simply meaning people who look, but giving an air of objectivity. The clock is invented. A truly periodic process does not exist. As I wrote, such a thing is only present before the inflationary phase of the big bang. Nevertheless we try to construct. The caesium clock being most close. A truly periodic pendulum does not exist, nor any other physical process. We compare irreversible processes with this imaginary clock clock and say that the process moves through time, which is nonsense. We actually put such clock beside the processes, look where the clock points to ("43.75 periods, seconds) and say the process has moved. This procedure is mentally objectified by creating an "objective" time axis. We can project this (ideal) clock beside all processes. All processes are irreversible (you can't reverse all motions in the process). You can even project this clock way back to the beginning. You can't say by looking at that clock which direction in time it goes. It can run forward or backward. That's why it's a perfect, imaginary clock with a constant period. Why shouldn't it exist if we project it back mentally. Well, the process you put it next to was really there. Before inflation the state of the universe constituted a perfect clock. If you would put mentally a clock beside that state it has no direction in time, as it is just like that clock, a perfectly periodic process (corresponding to the vacuum bubbles of the two basic massless fields and photon and gluon fields, all represented by closed propagator loops). It are people who compare different stages of an irreversible process with a clock, by means of our memory.
To add to what you already said, time (also) helps us to keep track of and compare change.
The Greeks, 2k years back, had a very sophisticated view of time:
1. Chronos: Time in the usual sense - that which the clock measures (operationally defined).
2. Kairos: The right moment (to act). Missed opportunities and all the pain that comes with it fall under this notion of time. Time is painful, huh?
Time in Hinduism (The Trimurti)
1. Creator (Brahma): Past (beginning)
2. Preserver (Vishnu): Present (middle, existence)
3. Destroyer (Shiva): Future (end, apocalypse, end times)
Deep questions. I can’t say I understand @Raymond’s response, I don’t have the physics background.
Quoting Raymond
So everyone knows what time is but nobody understands your account of it.
Quoting Raymond
It was clear, if (as you say) everyone knows what time is. But it is no longer clear, because nobody understands it, when it is explained.
So one mystery is: why does explaining something seem to make it less rather than more clear? This is an ancient problem in philosophy. "What is justice?" asked Socrates. Of course we know what justice is and we recognise injustice from our earliest years. But when we try to explain it we can get in a dreadful muddle. Time is similar. Stephen Hawking wrote a whole book about the nature of time. He was not writing it for people who cannot tell the time or who do not know whether they had a shower before or after breakfast.
Exactly! How can something so obvious give that much fuzz? Is it inherent to science? To give the preachers an air of profoundness? While the "laymen", the "ignorant", just stumbles in the dark? To further establish the grip it already has?
Then who did he write it for? He didn't succeed though. He had to introduce "imaginary time". I introduce "the imaginary clock". The only real clock was the state of the universe before inflation.
I think the evolution of quantum mechanical systems pose no problem for the nature of time. They contribute to its irreversibility, as collapse is irreversible in time. The CP asymmetry is a direct consequence of two universes being produced at the singularity, that blissful central fountain of the spatially 4D eternal Erect from which two pristine and Holy 3D Ejaculates are spawn: an matter Ejaculate and an antimatter Ejaculate. Both contain the same amounts of massless matter and antimatter particles (quantum fields of them). They combine to what we see as quarks and leptons on our side, while on the other side they combine to anti quarks and anti leptons. Because they are massless and they interact as mad by a more basic force than the weak force (which becomes a residual force, like the old strong force mediated by massive pions, which have a counterpart in the massive W and Z bosons in the weak force/ interaction).
Why can't time go backward? Isn't this a mystery?
Quoting Raymond
How can there be two "mutually exclusive" types of time? Doesn't this really mean that there are two incompatible conceptions of time? And, doesn't that mean that the real nature of time is a mystery?
Quoting Raymond
Obviously, you see two mutually exclusive types of time, so you really do not see what time is.
In your everyday life, do you recognize a difference between past and future? Can you explain the reason for such a difference?
Time needs initial conditions. Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. There is the clock time and entropic time. I understand both. The clock time truly existed before inflation. The state of the universe back then constituted a perfect clock. A perfect periodic state, which has no temporal direction yet. You can't tell if a perfect pendulum (or Aristotle's eternal circular motion) goes forward or backwards in time. It just fluctuates. Then, when the conditions on the 4D substrate were right, the closed 3D Planck volume, containing virtual particles only (represented by Feynman diagrams of closed propagators, circles with an arrow, so the virtualcparticle rotates in space and time), "bangs" into real existence and the perfect clock is gone, replaced by the irreversible process of entropic time. These processes can be quantified by introducing a clock, which can never be realized, as there are no perfectly periodic reversible processes. Only in the mind, and before inflation (caused by the negative curvature of the 4D substrate from which two 3D universes came into being) they exist. Non-inversible processes don't evolve in time, but constitute time. The notion of a time axis on which one can move is a chimaera. What is done (by Einstein) is to put an ideal, imaginary reversible clock (a constant periodic motion not found anywhere, except in the mind) besides of these irreversible processes (constituting entropic time), objectify it by constructing a time axis, and then retroactively state that processes move in it.
Yes. Yes.
Can you put quantitative parameters on the initial conditions of time? If you can do this in an acceptable way, you might be successful at demystifying time.
Quoting Raymond
This "state" prior to your claimed "inflation" would be the state which you need to put such parameters to. Obviously it cannot be a "periodic state", because "period" is a word which refers to directional time. Can you explain what it would mean to have time passing, with no direction to that passing of time? It really doesn't make sense to me, Is time supposed to be passing in all directions at once, prior to inflation?
Quoting Raymond
A fluctuation, just like a period, is a directional thing. You cannot have a fluctuation without a direction.
Quoting Raymond
What does "'bangs' into real existence" mean here? Is it your image, that virtual particles are floating around in all directions at once, and suddenly one crashes into "real existence", and "bang", time changes from going in all directions at once, to going in one direction only?
Quoting Raymond
Is that yes to both questions? If so then start providing your explanation as to why the past is different from the future. Perhaps we can demystify time through this procedure.
Dunno. What should be parametrized? A closed loop, a quantum bubble in a Feynman diagram, is a superposition of truly periodic functions, positive and negative energy solution of the matter and gauge fields in question. There existed only virtual particles before inflation. The "single circle Feynman diagrams," with closed propagator loops only (no external legs, as there were no "real" external particles yet) are mathematical superpositions of various e-functions, e(exp)iEt, with constant E, positive (matter) or negative (antimatter). So perfectly periodic.There are rotations in the plane of complex numbers. In t (in the e function). But rotations go in both directions, and these rotations constitute the fluctuation. There is no direction in (entropic) time yet. There is a symmetry between forward time and backward time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It has a limited spatial extension and a limited temporal extension. A perfect periodic motion has no direction in time. You can put a clock next to it, to see its progress in time, but how do you know which direction in time the clock goes? The direction has only meaning wrt entropic time, irreversible processes which weren't present yet before inflation.
I try to articulate. I withdraw for reflection and contemplation.
Keep following the thread. The mystery of time will be revealed. The question is, if we know, then what? I think I know the nature of time. Does it make me happy? Well, I'm writing down my musings in a book. Would be nice if it sells. Then I can finally say goodbye to that damned neighbor of us! Just for the sake of annoying him (and his wife) I'd buy a Lamborghini and take of with roaring engine and blowing claxon!
Metaphorically. :joke:
Quoting Raymond
What you’re talking about isn’t time in its fundament essence , it’s a mathematical abstraction based on the model of reality as objects in motion. Other models have been put forth that take apart the idea of objectivity that ‘clock-time’ is based on.
Yes. There are various ways of measuring the passage or static-state of Time. Entropy measures the dissipation of Potential Time from the beginning of the downhill stream. Clock time measures Time as a metaphorical flow, like a river. Block Time measures Time's dimensions as-if the fluid is frozen into a block of ice. And Space-Time imagines emptiness as-if it's a solid object. But all of those "measurements" are attempts to reify an abstraction via metaphorical pointers to physical things. We don't know Time via our physical senses, but only with our sixth sense of Reason, which relates one thing or state to another. Time is not Real, but Ideal, a metaphor in the mind, not a flowing river or immobile ice-cube out there. There's probably no "perfect" way to measure a shape-shifting ghost. :nerd:
How does this relate to Kant’s model of time?
Quoting 180 Proof
Shaun Gallagher(2011) elaborates:
“A number of theorists have proposed to capture the subpersonal processes that would instantiate this Husserlian model [of time] by using a dynamical systems approach (Thompson 2007; van Gelder 1996; Varela 1999). On this view, action and our consciousness of action arise through the concurrent participation of distributed regions of the brain and their sensorimotor embodiment (Varela et al. 2001).”
Thompson(2007) says:
“The present moment manifests as a zone or span of actuality, instead of as an instantaneous flash, thanks to the way our consciousness is structured. As we will see later, the present moment also manifests this way because of the nonlinear dynamics of brain activity. Weaving together these two types of analysis, the phenomenological and neuro biological, in order to bridge the gap between subjective experience and biology, defines the aim of neuro-phenomenology (Varela 1996), ` an offshoot of the enactive approach.”
Varela's attempt to ‘phenomenologize' empirical accounts of time consciousness involves rejecting time as a fixed linear sequence of nows (what Husserl calls clock time)
“In fact, we have inherited from classical physics a notion of time as an arrow of infinitesimal moments, which flows in a constant stream. It is based on sequences of finite or infinitesimal elements, which are even reversible for a large part of physics. This view of time is entirely homologous to that developed by the modern theory of computation. […] This strict adherence to a computational scheme will be, in fact, one of the research frameworks that needs to be abandoned as a result of the neuro-phenomenological examination proposed here”
“The traditional sequentialistic idea is anchored in a framework in which the computer metaphor is central, with its associated idea that information flows up-stream . Here, in contrast, I emphasize a strong dominance of dynamical network properties where sequentiality is replaced by reciprocal determination and relaxation time.” ( Varela 1997)
Varela(1997) offers a concept of duration that is independent of linear time:
“…time in experience is quite a different story from a clock in linear time. Thus, we have neuronal-level constitutive events that have a duration on the 1/10-scale, forming aggregates that manifest as incompressible but complete cognitive acts on the 1-scale . This completion time is dynamically dependent on a number of dispersed assemblies and not a fixed integration period, in other words it is the basis of the origin of duration without an external or internally ticking clock.”. “the fact that an assembly of coupled oscillators attains a transient synchrony and that it takes a certain time for doing so is the explicit correlate of the origin of nowness.”
Change occurs from place to place as well as from time to time.
Francisco Varela's homepage: F. Varela's Homepage
A bit confusing for me. The math is pretty vague with the first appearance making no sense. A little later on his discussion of dynamical systems is a tad more palatable. Overall, what he writes (in great length) could be brilliant or a satire on science. I assume the former since Stanford is behind the publication.
Peter Lynds writings make more sense to me, although he is an amateur physicist. Initially, he agreed with Bergson that time had no "instants", but rather interludes, an approach to the nature of time that drew considerable criticisms from the physics community.
Regarding the "mystery" of Time, here's a link to an article with a unique concept of "why time flies". Apparently Time is Relative, not just to Space, and personal experience, but to our empathic connection to other time voyagers. :smile:
Empathy Is a Clock That Ticks in the Consciousness of Another :
. . . Kierkegaard’s assertion that “the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity.” Time is a social phenomenon. This property is not incidental to time; it is its essence.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/09/04/alan-burdick-why-time-flies-empathy/
Yes. As in so many other philosophical quandaries, Aristotle tried to dispel mysteries -- such as Plato's "Forms" -- with practical applications. For example, a designing engineer envisions the "structure" of a future building, not as concrete beams & columns, but as abstract relationships, represented by vectors (arrows & values)
By defining Time as our perception of the sequential structure of evolving reality (order),he focused on what we are measuring : non-spatial relationships that evolve in an orderly mathematical manner. Those relationships are what I call "Information", a mental geometry, by which we measure the differences (or ratios) between Instants or Instances in terms of Meaning or Value to Self. We perceive those non-spatial ratios by Reason (rational thinking). :nerd:
Aristotle claims that time is not a kind of change, but that it is something dependent on change. . . . this means that time is a kind of order (not, as is commonly supposed, that it is a kind of measure)
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199247900.001.0001/acprof-9780199247905
Note -- we don't perceive Change itself, but the difference between point A and point B in a sequence --- like frames in a movie.
Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
BothAnd Blog Glossary
MENTAL GEOMETRY OF ABSTRACT VECTORS
I wasn't familiar with Kant's opinion of Time. But a quick Google indicates that his Critique of Pure Reason ("which is a combination of rationalism and empiricism") treats Time & Change, not as objectively Real, but as subjectively Ideal. We imagine time by Intuition or infer it by Reason, because we can't see it with our objective empirical senses. So, we impute Time to Reality. And that's essentially what I was saying. :smile:
Kant believes that time, for us, is intuitive
https://decodedpast.com/immanuel-kant-on-time-a-theory-from-the-heart/
Impute : to represent something as being done, caused, or possessed by someone; to attribute.
Two places might be different at a point in time, but nothing changes at a point in time.
Time is required to get "from place to place" or to perceive (and compare) one place and then another.
Indeed that's a very important point. This also is very much the point Kant was making in the
Second Analogy of Experience (in the Critique of Pure Reason). Let me quote from this course handout.
"In the Second Analogy, Kant compares our perceptions of a concrete particular, a house, and an event, the floating of a ship down a river. In the former case, the order of the perceptions is not determined; in the latter case, the order is. In other words, in looking at a house, I can look at the chimney first, then the shingles, then the windows; or I can look at the windows first, then the chimney, etc. Nevertheless, I suppose that these perceptions refer to the same permanent object. When the boat is moving down the river, I must perceive a certain order."
Kant's Second Analogy is discussed quite enlighteningly in Sebastian Rödl's book Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect.
My floor changes from wood to bamboo, from one room to another, at the one time.
This very text you see before you, you can only see in virtue of the change from one colour to another across space - in most cases the text being dark, the background white.
is the :fire: in which we burn
They are two different floors, or two separate parts of one floor. So the analogy with temporal change only really holds if we assume something like a perdurantist conception of persistence and identity whereby things that appear to be changing in time don't really change at all but rather merely have dissimilar temporal parts. This meshes well with a block-universe view or time but that is also, just like perdurantism, debatable.
The house has a floor that changes from room to room.
You seem to be just looking for a particular phrasing to save a broken theory.
According to your own theory of change, would you say that natural numbers change from being even to being uneven, and back to being even again, alternatively, from one number to the next? What is it that is changing then? Or is it just pure change without any underlying substrate that persists (or endures) through change?
How does the floor change? One room has a wood floor, the other room has a bamboo floor.
No, it's the same floor.
I've no idea what the remainder of your post says. Can you clarify?
I think folk are trying to defend a broken notion - that change can only occur over time. Observation shows this to be false. The replies here indicate the rather than adjust their thinking about change, they would rather redefine change as that which occurs over time...
Edit: By way of example...
As if there were never one room with two types of floor. The carpet changes from thick pile to thin, from red to blue, from right to left. The wall changes from light green to duck-egg blue, with height, not with time.
Quoting Banno
I suggest that the notion that change only occurs over time is the result of considering selective, and too few, examples
And we conclude that time is not essential for change.
The only change here is your implicit assumption of a change in perception as you look "from right to left", from room to room, or "from place to place". But as I said earlier, a change in perception requires time.
It's not an assumption. It is there before you. Use your eyes. Rethink you account.
Of course it is, but a change in perception requires time. As I said.
:up:
Even if it's the same floor, then it still has different parts. Would you say of a banana that it is a thing that changes from being thin to being thick and then ends up being thin again? In you floor example, you seem to be taking as the underlying substrate of the change the vantage point of a local observer who surveys it from a moving perspective. In that case, the change that is being referred to is being premised on a temporal change in the location or vantage point of the observer.
Here is another example. You want to skate on a lake and inquire if the ice is thick enough. Other skaters tell you that the ice becomes thinner towards the center of the lake. What this means is that the part of the frozen surface of the lake that is in the immediate vicinity of whoever is skating on it (and hence affords support to that person) is thinner when the skater is nearer to the center of the lake. It's not the thickness of the ice itself that changes but rather, the spatial movement of the skater brings about that, as they move towards the center of the lake, that thicker areas get replaced by (different) thinner areas. It is the tacit embedding in a determinate pragmatic context that give meaning to the phrase "the ice is becoming thinner..." since this context tells us in what order and for what purpose the different parts of the unchanging ice sheet are being surveyed.
When you used the nominal phrase "the following image", did you mean to refer to a picture that is square shaped or you did you mean to refer to a thin vertical segment of the whole square area ? I ask because if you meant the former, then your statement is false. And if you meant the latter, then there are very many such images and none of them change at all.
What?
I referred to, and showed, the image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/5chm6.png
I know. You asserted that this image "changes from one colour to another, from left to right". But it's not the image that changes. The image is made up, at any given time, of all of its parts and this totality doesn't change just by dint of the fact that its parts are distinguishable from one another.
Just like the flooring in Banno's house.
So, if someone wanted to state it more precisely, they might say that the ice thickness changes with the distance from the center. In ordinary speech we rarely have to resort to such precisifications, because the meaning can be inferred from the context, but in scientific writing it is more common. For example (from a random paper): "a screening that changes both with charge carrier doping level Q and temperature T."
This argument that you are having over the ordinary meaning of the word change is bizarre. What it clearly shows though is that change as a definition of time is of no use. The specific meaning of change in this context is change-over-time, which of course cannot be understood without already understanding what time is.
Quoting On the physical basis of cosmic time
(See the chapter "The meaning of time" in the paper for a good discussion.)
We were not attempting to define time or change. We were instead criticising Banno's bizarre assertion that "Time and change have no special relation", and his attempt to argue that there can be change-over-space without change-over-time.
You're squirming.
Pretending not to understand doesn't become you.
Non-sequitur. The pixels on the left of "the image" are not the same pixels as the pixels on the right of "the image". But there's not just a difference here... there is a gradual change in degree of difference as you move from left to right that approaches the color on the right (and change is the right word to use here)... except for that one odd place where the transition leaves a much whiter color than should be there (the fact that I can talk about that place at all kind of tends to prove the point).
Incidentally, I have "the image" here in quotes because this entire forum is a fictional place and "the image" is a fictional object with a fictional location in this fictional place. The sense in which it's the same image as yesterday is non-trivial.
How can you “move from left to right” irrespective of time?
Not to mention you are saying that it is “you” that moves or changes, not the image.
The image being white on the left and yellow on the right are two unchanging features of the image. I know you want to say that it (the image) is unchanging with respect to time but that it (the image) is changing with respect to space. But that doesn't seem right either since this relies on an equivocation.
Getting back to your initial floor example, you suggested the "floor changes from wood to bamboo, from one room to another, at the one time." Would you be willing to say that if you consider a further spatial displacement the same distance in the same direction, you are therefore getting out the house altogether and "the floor" changes into a pine tree in the backyard? Or maybe 'it' changes from being a floor altogether to being a thin slice out of this pine tree? If that doesn't make sense it's because the pine tree isn't a part of the floor at all. But since your construction depends on us talking about separate parts of the floor, I want to remind you that the whole floor isn't numerically identical with any one of its proper material parts. So, saying that "the floor" changes from (being materially constituted of) wood to "it" (being materially constituted of) bamboo, while insisting that it's always about "the floor" (that is, the whole floor) that you are talking about, equivocates on two distinct senses of "the floor".
That's the wrong question. Certainly you don't think when I "move from left to right", I'm actually walking on my monitor along that path, right? I don't "move from left to right" in the first place. This is metaphorical motion.
The metaphor specifically conveys degree-of-change-in-place in the image along a particular direction; namely, to the right. We can use other metaphors. The image is 1110 pixels wide. The x-coordinate (in classic computer graphics labeling) ranges from 0 to 1109; or 0 to 1106 if we ignore the 3-pixel gray area. Using this labeling, we can say that the color changes towards yellow with respect to a change in the x coordinate.
The metaphorical motion here is to the right, but nobody is actually moving right here (you could attend to points and move your attention to the right, but you aren't changing the image by doing so; you're just noting that change).
Quoting Luke
So? What's being claimed is that change can be applied place to place. Your notion of "change in image" here is a red herring. There's a change from place to place on this image that does not change. In fact, the fact that there is a change being described despite the image not changing kind of counters your very point (if change only applied to time, and the image doesn't change, how could there be a change in it?)
There are road signs BTW that say strange things like "Road narrows". Nobody is removing road ahead of this sign, and they aren't talking about the roads shrinking due to the cold weather. The narrowing is a change with respect to place.
That seems to be different from what @Banno is saying. You acknowledge that the image does not change. What you qualify as "change" just is a functional dependency of the color the image has at some location as a function of this location. That is alright as far as ordinary language goes. But Banno further insists that it is "the image" that changes, which you just acknowledged it doesn't.
Best I can tell that's illusory. I'm just calling the entire array the image, and referring to the colors of pixels at specific locations in the image. Banno's referring to parts of the array as the image (the parts on the left versus the right). We're saying the same thing, just using slightly different dictionaries.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Yes.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
But that's nuanced too:
Quoting InPitzotl
Luke says the image is the same as the one he saw yesterday. But that itself requires us to play a kind of game equating now-image with yesterday-image. By saying "the image is the same", we're making claims like "location x-y on yesterday's image has the same color value as location x-y on today's image". Incidentally, it's still a fictional object, sometimes off my screen and sometimes on it, not necessarily being defined as what's on my screen, I can speak of "pixels" partially because it's a PNG image, etc.
What’s the right question?
Quoting InPitzotl
If the motion is metaphorical then the change is also metaphorical (i.e. not actual).
Quoting InPitzotl
I don’t know about “degree-of”. The metaphor simply seems to indicate change-of-place in the image along a particular direction. But what changes place? Nothing in the image.
I don't see how. If you prefer, the colour of the image changes from left to right. There's nothing odd about such a locution. It would make sense to propose that instead of yellow the white might change to green, for example; or we could have blue changing to red, or make the change from top to bottom; all with a clear meaning. Nothing at all odd or equivocal.
That you need to talk of things being "numerically identical" or having "proper material parts" to articulate your supposition does not bode well for you; It makes the sophistry more apparent. If we were to go down that path I'd point to Wittgenstein's demonstration that what counts as a "simple" depends on the task at hand.
Quoting Banno
Yes, I agree that there isn't anything odd about this locution. But what it conveys it is perfectly consistent with the claim that the image itself doesn't change. It also lends itself readily to the analysis I had suggested with my skater and frozen lake example. The locution you used earlier was "the following image changes from one colour to another, from left to right" (my emphasis). This sounds more odd, at least to my ears. Furthermore, the odd formulation isn't innocent. It's meant to buttress you initial philosophical claim that "Time and change have no special relation. Change occurs from place to place as well as from time to time". This thesis is not an expression of mere common sense and it is telling that you had to make use of an odd locution to buttress it.
Depends on what you want to ask, but it certainly isn't the question of how I can do what I do not actually do. I'm certainly not literally walking left to right on the image.
Quoting Luke
Nonsense (at least in the manner intended). Insofar as "the image" is such a thing (according to the canon rules of the game we're supposed to play when we treat this fictional object having been posted yesterday as the same object someone else displays on their screen today), it is a matter of fact that at x coordinates 123, 246, 369, and 492, the RGB value is (255,255,255). And at 615, it is (255,252,251). And at 738, it is (254,239,227). And at 984, it is (252,188,111). And at 861, it is (253,213,176). And at 1106, it is (252,176,65). This demonstrates a change in color as the x coordinates increase in value. Incidentally, I reported 984's RGB value before 861 just to drive the point home; it's the x coordinate that this gradient varies on, not the order in which we look at it or the order in which I report the coordinates.
Quoting Luke
That's not what is being described here:
Quoting InPitzotl
From the samples above, the transition from the RGB value at x-coordinate 492 to that at x-coordinate 615 changes towards the color RGB (252,176,65). From 615 to 738, it changes again towards the color RGB (252,176,65). The color at 615 is closer to RGB(252,176,65) than the color at 492 was, and the color at 738 is even closer still.
These examples show that it is a game that we play:
Quoting Banno
@InPitzotl provides further examples.
The point is, we understand these locutions perfectly well, but it plays merry hell with the notion that time is required for change to occurs.
It’s your responsibility to clarify what you meant by “as you move from left to right”, not mine. You explained it as a “metaphorical motion”, which is not any actual motion or change, is it? I fail to see how you get actual change from metaphorical motion.
Quoting InPitzotl
You still haven’t told me what moves or what is “in transit” from one x-coordinate to another, even if metaphorically speaking.
It sounds like a conditional: that if you were to gradually move (or look) from one place to another, left to right, then you would see the colour change from white to yellow. Okay, but how is that potential motion (or perception) possible without time?
Some of the locutions you used would indeed be well understood in some ordinary life contexts. Other locutions that you made use of seemed rather strained to my ear and, as I have already pointed out, seemingly relied on equivocation for you to make a characteristically philosophical point about change and time. Against the charge of equivocation you offered no defense.
Wittgenstein's idea that meaning is use may be strained too much in saying that what change, as such, requires can be elucidated through looking at every ordinary language use of the word "change" and homing in on what is required for "change" (that is, whatever "change" refers to in those contexts) to meaningfully be said to occur in all of those uses. Using this methodology, one could claim that there is no conceptual connection between something being a rabbit and something being a mammal since there are ordinary uses of the word "rabbit" where this word refers to wooden sculptures, or images of rabbits, that aren't mammals at all. I think it is likewise mistaken to move from instances of ordinary language where the word "change" is meaningfully used in order to draw philosophical conclusion about some unique concept being referred to by that word and identify what is or isn't necessary for it to find meaningful instances. It is, it seems to me, this unwarranted move from the multifaceted uses of a word in very dissimilar contexts to philosophical conclusions about essential or inessential features of an allegedly unique concept being referred to by it that constitutes a paradigmatic example of what Wittgenstein called "language gone on holiday".
One can see that the colour changes from left to right. Your pretence of not seeing this is duplicitous, your wordplay disingenuous.
Nope. I am quite interested in how the word "change" is actually used. But I am also pointing out that one must be sensitive to the fact that not all the different contexts of use are equally suitable to buttressing the philosophical thesis that you were putting forth. (Although your thesis was negative, an amounted to the denial of a necessary connection between change and time, it was still a characteristically philosophical thesis).
As I noted in my first post and have re-stated a couple more times since:
Quoting Luke
You still haven't addressed this point as yet. I won't hold my breath.
And likewise it's your responsibility to ask a sensible question, not mine. The question you asked is invalid:
Quoting Luke
I live on a hill. There is a neighbor down the road; he is lower than me. There's a neighbor further down that is lower still. The statement "If I walk down from here to the first and then the second neighbor, I will get lower and lower on the hill" describes a shape... it describes how the altitude of locations changes as you progress in the direction down the road. The hill might look something like this:
...but that statement doesn't mean that the second neighbor is only lower in the future, or that the second neighbor is only lower if you walk to him. The hill is there at T=0. Your question has nothing to do with the substance of the claim (that there is a change in height on the hill that varies according to place); it only has to do with some irrelevant dead end fork you took by taking a metaphor too seriously.
I could suggest a better question... "how can you explain the change without a metaphorical walk"? And incidentally I've answered that question (even here; there's a change in height as a function of where you are on the road (place to place). But that's not necessarily the question you want to ask. The question you asked, though, is simply invalid. The metaphorical walk is simply a description of what changes as a function of place, as my description of the shape of the hill.
Quoting Luke
You're begging the question. There's hypothetical motion down the hill here, but there's a real gradient. The change in values per change in location (which is what a gradient is) is real.
Quoting Luke
Why must something move? The claim is that change can occur place to place as well as time to time. The height of the hill changes (change in value) as a function of the distance along the road (change in place) without involving any movement.
Quoting Luke
You're focused too much on the conditional; the graph above is literally a graph of the distance to the color RGB(252,176,65) as a function of the x coordinate in Banno's image up to x=1106 (that bump at x=800 is the anomaly I discussed several posts ago). IF I move left to right, THEN I will go lower. But I don't have to move left to right for that function to be lower at higher values of x. The motion is entirely unnecessary; it can be discarded. It's a factual matter that the curve on the right has lower values than the curve on the left. Even if I start that walk, the points on the right would have the values they have at T=0.
My take on the so-called planck time:
It's basically the smallest time a clock with the smallest possible "tick" can measure. Time has been defined in terms of frequency of light. So, imagine there's an upper limit for such frequencies, call it x Hz. So the planck time = [math]\frac{1}{x}[/math] seconds. Planck time then has something to do with gamma rays.
Am I getting this right?
:ok:
:grin:
That'd be because you restrict yourself to change over time, and the image changes over distance. I showed that your point was erroneous.
It's a different example, so I don't see how my question is invalid.
Quoting InPitzotl
Because you said there was metaphorical motion.
Quoting InPitzotl
Unless you can actually move "place to place" and change "where you are on the road", then it makes no sense to say that "the height of the hill changes (change) as a function of where you are on the road (place to place)". And I don't see how any motion is possible without time.
Quoting InPitzotl
What does that have to do with change? The height of the hill does not change (at any given time). It has different heights at different parts. I still don't see support for your stronger claim that the height of the hill not only has different parts with different heights, but that its height changes (at any give time); especially that we can speak of any sort of change here without involving time.
Certainly in some sense the white changes to yellow. That much we can comfortably assume all of us understand. So the question must be: in what way is 'change' being used in Banno's rebuttal? And then: Is 'change' being used in the same way 'change' has been used in the description of its relationship to time?
If I thought this was an important question, I would want to hear an answer.
Quoting Luke
Time is required to perceive the change from white to yellow. That's not in question.
Hell yeah it's in question.
@Banno's original claim was that:
Quoting Banno
That is, Banno has claimed that change can occur "from place to place" without time (because he draws a distinction here between change-over-place and change-over-time).
The only support for his claim that time is not required for change-over-place is the image he presented. This image, he claims, "changes from white on the left to yellow on the right." So it is very much in question whether time is required to perceive any change from white to yellow (or for the static image itself to somehow "change" from white on the left to yellow on the right).
Because it has nothing to do with the claim you're objecting to.
Quoting Luke
Metaphorical motion is not motion; literal motion is motion. I repeat the question... why must things move?
Quoting Luke
Nonsense (see below).
Quoting Luke
Yes. And if it has different heights at different parts, then it must have different heights in different places. Therefore a change in place can correspond to a change in height. So what's the problem?
Quoting Luke
Then you're either insane or you're lost. Let's zoom in.
A and B are different points, right? Well, this curve "has different heights at different parts". But more specifically, A to B represents a change in place of dx1 (along the x coordinate), and a change in color of dy1. I remind you the claim is that there can be a change from place to place. Well, there's a change in place with a change in color. Likewise, B to C represents a change in place of dx2, and a change in color of dy2. So there's another change (dy2) with respect to a change in place (dx2).
Nothing has to actually move from A to B for that change to be a change of dx1 in x coordinates or a change of dy1 in color. And nothing has to move from B to C for that change to be a change of dx2 in x coordinates or a change of dy2 in color.
Incidentally, in this post I mentioned the color at x=615 and another color at x=984. Here, we can clearly see the change in x is 984-615=369; and here the change in color using this metric is 152.44. This was calculated without "going from x=615 to 984" even in any metaphorical sense. So, what I'm talking about is definitely not restricted by what you claim it has to be restricted by (I have described the precise amount of change of color in terms of change in place here without relying on any well defined movement, even metaphorical).
The problem here isn't in what I'm saying. The problem here is only that you're insisting what I mean by change isn't what you think change means.
I'm objecting to Banno's claim that there can be change-over-place irrespective of time. The question I asked you was:
Quoting Luke
My question has everything to do with the claim I'm objecting to and is completely valid.
Quoting InPitzotl
You said "there is a gradual change in degree of difference as you move from left to right". You subsequently clarified this as "metaphorical motion". I don't understand why you are now asking me why things must move. I guess because you said that there is change "as you move from left to right".
Quoting InPitzotl
I imagine there must be something that actually changes place. Wouldn't that take some time to move?
Quoting InPitzotl
Nice.
Quoting InPitzotl
Nothing needs to move for something to change its spatial coordinates (or for what is at a spatial coordinate to change)? And exactly what is changing coordinates here? The hill? Part(s) of the hill? The part of the hill you are looking at?
Yes. Contrast change-over-place now with change-over-time. Forget the concept for a moment and look at those those two phrases. In the phrases, what's different?
Let's talk about a change over time. I jog on the road... in 10 seconds I cover 150 feet. So I am moving 150 feet (unit-of-distance) over ten seconds (unit-of-time). My average speed then is 15 feet per second. I change my location by 150 feet in 10 seconds.
Contrast this with a hill. In 150 feet (unit-of-distance), the hill rises 50 feet (unit-of-distance). So the hill has a gradient of 50 feet over 150 feet. The units cancel and we're left with a gradient of 1/3. The hill changes its height by 50 feet over a run of 150 feet.
Quoting Luke
Wrong... and I'll repeat this:
Quoting InPitzotl
...so here is your question again:
Quoting Luke
You are asking how something ("you") moves irrespective of time. That question presumes something is moving in the first place. But nothing moves when a hill changes its height by 50 feet over a run of 150 feet. You're the one insisting it's a valid question... you're the one insisting something must move for a hill to change its height by 50 feet over a run of 150 feet, so you tell me what it is that is moving.
The claim you're objecting to:
Quoting Luke
...doesn't say anything at all about anything moving. Luke is the only one insisting something must be moving. Motion by the way is change in position over change in time. Change in height over change in position (the hill) is not motion. Change in color over change in position (the image) is not motion.
Quoting Luke
Hint: You're just lost.
Quoting Luke
The graph is just a representation. It's spatial because graphs are spatial things. The x coordinate on the graph corresponds to an x coordinate in Banno's image, but the y coordinate on the graph corresponds to a difference in color. We could talk about the RGB space as "spatial", but it's obviously just an abstraction. On this graph, only one coordinate is spatial (in the sense of physical space; and even this requires us to "play the game" of talking about the image the way we're supposed to).
Quoting Luke
More "moving" questions? Banno's claim is not about something moving (change-in-place over change-in-time; speed; feet per second). Banno's claim is about something changing over place (change in color over change in x coordinate; color gradient; color-distance per pixel). Change in color over change in x coordinate is not motion (i.e., it is not change in position over change in time).
That's an enlightening approach! Can time, an instant, have a real existence? Do we move through time as we move through space? Do we "pass" all values on a clock, like we pass points in space while moving? Or is the hand of the clock just passing different positions on the dial?
With great interest I follow this hot rational discourse. The problem seems to be the question if change can exist without time. Can change exist without time? Why not? If the difference between particles varies then it can do so without comparing it with a clock. The distances don't vary in time. Only when the variation in distances is compared with the linear motion of the hands on a clock, it seems the physical states flows in the river of time.
You're conflating change and the perception of change. Banno isn't.
Can you explain the difference in a mathematically justified picture? Can change be mathematically described without reference to time?
If we consider change as the difference, can't we make the change independent of the hands on a clock? How can things move through time, if there is nothing to move through except from space?
Sorry, I don't have the background to understand your question.
Sure. A derivative can describe a rate of change with regard to a non-time variable: dy/dx
But it takes time to go from x to x+dx and from y to y+dy. How would you describe the path of Earth around the Sun without the use of time? A line integral over the orbit?
Why a thumb down?
dy/dx is not dy/dt.
It does not involve time.
A function f(x)=y is stationary though. Only if you move on it you see it changing from point to point.
One says "place" and one says "time". I invite you to also consider the idea of change-over-place (without time). In such a scenario, there is no change at any spatial location; nothing changes or moves at (or from) any spatial coordinate.
Quoting InPitzotl
How does the hill "change" its height? I understand that you can calculate all this, and that a change of distance or spatial location or x-coordinate is required for your calculations, but the hill doesn't actually change at all (without time). All you are doing is comparing one part of the hill to another in order to obtain a mathematical result.
Quoting InPitzotl
Begging the question. That's what is in dispute here. You are also insisting that what I mean by change isn't what you think change means.
Quoting InPitzotl
I asked this question in response to your statement that "there is a gradual change in degree of difference as you move from left to right". You have since backpedalled, at first claiming this motion is only "metaphorical", and now pretending as though you never said anything at all about motion.
Quoting InPitzotl
Why don't you tell me what is moving, given that it appears to be part of your calculation. The two main examples that have been offered are change-in-colour and change-in-height over change-in-distance. If something changes distance, then doesn't it move? I'll ask again: what changes distance in these examples? If nothing changes distance, then why is it part of your calculation?
Quoting InPitzotl
Change in position...is motion. If nothing changes position, then why measure change in position? I take it that when you measure change in position, you are measuring the change in position of something?
Quoting InPitzotl
Yes, a change in position requires time. That's my point.
Although change is analytic to time, I'm not sure time is analytic to change. Maybe there is an abstract use of change that isn't measurable, but this would seem not to be a real event.
This makes "change" dependent on measurability. But measurability is dependent on the human capacity to measure. If you remove this requirement, measurability, you can allow for the reality of change which is imperceptible to the human being, therefore unassailable to the human capacity of measurement.
Quoting Sam26
Actually the opposite of what you say is what is really the case. If we tie time to measurability, then all the changes which we are unable to measure, appear as if they are outside of time. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to talk about things outside of time. This could be the case with some of the issues in quantum physics. And not only does it make sense to talk about things "outside of time", to account for all those aspects of the universe which are completely outside the realm of our understanding, when understanding is derived from our empirically based capacities, it actually becomes necessary to assume something outside of time.
This is why the Christian "God", as eternal (outside of time), is fully comprehensible, and even necessary, when we limit time to our capacity to understand and measure. All those aspects of the universe which are prior to the physical reality which we perceive (this perception grounding our empirical sciences), yet are still very real, as the cause of, or the reason for, the way that physical things are, lie outside of time, when "time" is restricted in this way.
Sure. Using x,y,z,t coordinates, A=(1,1,1,1), B=(2,1,1,1), C=(1,1,1,2), D=(2,1,1,2). A to B is a change in place. A to C is a change in time. A to D is a change in place and time.
Quoting Luke
You're mixing change and motion here (second time you did that). But let's talk motion. Let's say an object O moves from A to D. The problem is, facts at points in time don't change. So if O moves from A to D, O is always at A and always at D. In fact, we can talk about O-at-A and O-at-D separately; change (and motion) requires us to do so. O-at-A is what is at x,y,z coordinate (1,1,1). O-at-D is what is at (2,1,1). We don't really consider O to have moved in this case unless O-at-A and O-at-D are "the same O".
So O-at-A is "the same O" as O-at-D, "just in different points in time". There is a change in O's x-coordinate from O-at-A to O-at-D for the same O.
Quoting Luke
Definitionally. You have a hill only if there is a change in height of a terrain such that some place in the terrain is higher than surrounding areas. A terrain H like this could be a hill: A1=(1,1,1), A2=(1,2,1), A3=(1,3,1), A4=(2,1,1), A5=(2,2,2), A6=(2,3,1), A7=(3,1,1), A8=(3,2,1), A9=(3,3,1). The height changes at A5 versus the surrounding specified areas from 1 to 2. A5 is "the same hill" as A1, "just in a different point in space" (cf above). There is a change in H's z coordinate from H-at-A1 to H-at-A5 for the same H.
Quoting Luke
Sure. But:
Quoting Luke
...this is just narrative. The problem is that there's no way to take this narrative seriously, as there's no sane reading of "there is a gradual change in degree of difference as you move from left to right" in a non-metaphorical sense.
Quoting Luke
Sure. Nothing is moving. The distance from my head to the wall is about four feet. The direction from my head to the wall is west. Neither of these statements require a thing to move from my head to the wall. If they "appear" to be about motion to you, that is simply because you're choosing to imagine it that way.
But there is a hill at A4, and the same hill at A5. The height change from A4 to A5 is one unit. That is a height change of the hill (nothing moved), from one place on the hill (A4) to another place on the hill (A5).
Quoting Luke
Well first let's fix your question. "Distance" here refers to horizontal distance from a peek. The hill is changing height over distance analogous to how O changes position over time. So you should analogously be asking if something changes height over distance, does it move? And the answer is no, it doesn't. Motion is a time relative change; a change in position over a change in time.
Quoting Luke
Answered above, repeated here. The hill is changing height. The-same-hill is at a different height at A4 as it is at A5; i.e., 0 units from peek it is at a height of 2, 1 unit a height of 1.
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
Now you're outright conflating change with motion. If a change in color over a change in x coordinate is not motion, that does not mean it is not a change; in fact, it kind of presumes it is a change.
That's great, except that (until now) you have been talking about a change in distance, not merely distance. What does it mean to say that there is a change in distance from your head to the wall? Something's gotta give. Once again, what is it that changes distance?
Quoting InPitzotl
Then there must also be no sane reading of "the hill changes its height" in a non-metaphorical sense. If the change in distance is metaphorical, then the change in height must also be metaphorical.
Quoting InPitzotl
This would imply that it is the hill that changes its distance. Or is it only part of the hill? Which one does 'O' represent?
I have not used that phrase in this thread.
Reading through your post, the only match I get to what you might be referring to is the fact that I said this:
Quoting InPitzotl
...and that I plotted the difference four posts later as a Euclidean distance. Is this what you're referring to? I'll go with that for now.
I think you're confused. This statement refers to the degree of difference of the color at a given x coordinate in Banno's image to "the color on the right": RGB(252,176,65) (the color at coordinate 1106). "Euclidean distance" here is simply a metric... it just means we're going to measure a color (r,g,b)'s difference to (252,176,65) like this:
[math]\sqrt{(r-252)^2+(g-176)^2+(b-65)^2}[/math]
The value here is abstract; the units AFAIK don't even have a name (not feet; not pixels; something more like "1/256 of the available value space of an RGB coordinate"). This is just a number that gets smaller as a color approaches (252,176,65) and larger as a color diverges from it. As an example, in Banno's image, at x coordinate 881, the color is (253,208,165). The color distance at this point is 105..
Now here's the plot again:
...the x coordinate of this graph correspond to an x coordinate in Banno's image. The y coordinate in this graph corresponds to a difference between the color at that x coordinate in Banno's image and the color on the right, as measured using Euclidean distance in the RGB color space, as described above.
Quoting Luke
The colors are changing their distance to (252,176,65). The claim is equivalent to saying the color at an x coordinate approaches the color at the right as the x coordinate increases. That is equivalent to saying the color-distance of the color to the color at the right approaches 0. You can see exactly what I described in this graph; as x increases, the trace of color distance of that color to the color at the right approaches 0.
Quoting Luke
Why would it imply such a thing?
Quoting Luke
Is what only part of the hill?
Quoting Luke
O has a x-y-z coordinate of 1,1,1 at the time t=1. The same O has a x-y-z coordinate of 1,1,2 at the time t=2.
H has a height of 1 at the place x,y=2,1. The same H has a height of 2 at the place x,y=2,2.
Analogs side by side:
...so to answer your question, "O" is analogous to "H".
You have variously referred to changes in the x-coordinate, distance, position and place. I have taken all these to amount to roughly the same thing. For example, you said:
Quoting InPitzotl
Please correct me if 'dx1' does not represent a change of place (or change of distance/position/x-coordinate). I'm happy to use 'change of place' or 'change of position' instead of 'change of distance'. I think it more clearly emphasises my point.
Quoting InPitzotl
Surely the statement refers to a change in the degree of difference of the color at a given x coordinate?
You are simultaneously asserting that nothing changes place while relying on a change of place (change of x-coordinate) in your calculation.
Quoting InPitzotl
In what sense do the colours change their distance to the colour on the right? In Banno's static image, the colour (at each x-coordinate) is a fixed distance from the colour (at the x-coordinate) on the right. Where does change enter the picture? How does any colour "approach" the colour on the right?
Quoting InPitzotl
What does the increase in x represent? And how does x increase? Remember, you have agreed that nothing moves.
Quoting InPitzotl
If there is a change in time for O, then there must be an analogous change in distance for H.
Quoting InPitzotl
I meant: Is it the whole hill or only part of the hill that changes its distance? In the example of Banno's image, you seem to indicate that only part of the image changes its distance to the x-coordinate on the right.
Here's the image again:
The colour does not change over time. It does change over the distance from left to right.
Hence there is a change over distance that does not involve a change over time.
Your denying this is for me of a par with MU's denial of instant velocity; it leaves me nonplussed. There's nought queer as folk.
What do you mean by "from left to right"?
This from the preson who claims not to know what "...from left to right" means:Quoting Luke
Come on.
The colour does not change over time. It does change over the distance from left to right.
Hence there is a change over distance that does not involve a change over time.
I asked what you meant by it.
Does it mean that you start on the left and end on the right?
WARNING! Contains flashing images (A very small percentage of individuals may experience epileptic seizures when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights. Exposure to certain patterns or backgrounds on a computer screen, or while playing video games, may induce an epileptic seizure in these individuals. Certain conditions may induce previously undetected epileptic symptoms even in persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy.)
No change in distance, color change in time only in the video above.
Compare that to @Banno's image.
Where C = color, S = distance, T = time, and [math]\Delta[/math] = change,
Banno's image is [math]\frac{\Delta C}{\Delta S}[/math]
The question is, can distance change [math](\Delta S)[/math] in the absence of change in time [math](\Delta T)[/math]?
Motion! Motion! Motion! and...Time!
I'm going to have to look into formatting maths.
You said that the colour "changes over the distance from left to right".
I think I understand what you mean by the distance - I take it you mean the horizontal length of the image. But I can't make much sense of directionality without time. Do you mean that the change occurs or happens from left to right? Do you mean that the colour change can be seen in the image if we look at it "from left to right"? Can you provide any explanation about what you meant by "from left to right"?
Indeed, this is apparent. I do not understand how you think like this. You can see that the left of the image is a different colour to the right.
I'm forced into the opinion that your reticence here is disingenuous.
Nobody is denying that there is a difference. The question is, how do you infer a change (especially a change that, in your own words, "occurs") from a difference that is, quite clearly, a difference between two or more separate things such as the parts of an image?
The main point of Kant's Second Analogy of Experience was to analyse what's required, conceptually, to differentiate a mere subjective difference between two percepts, that may or may not refer to two different objects, or to any object at all, from the perception of an objective change in something that's empirically real. Merely having two different percepts doesn't indicate that anything changed appart from your own state of mind. Those two percepts must refer to the same objective thing that had, first, some quality and then some other quality. This thing, or substance, must have those qualities at two different times since something can't have two inconsistent qualities at the same time. This is how the concepts of change and time are bound up into the concept of a substance: an objective thing in the world that is the cause of our varying perceptions of it.
And yet it changes.
So his account is problematic.
In terms of McTaggart's B series, every temporal referent, e.g. date, is different - by definition of "referent" . This is used in calendar logic, but also applies to the above colour difference picture in which one instantaneously recognizes more than one colour referent. In both calendar logic and the above picture, what is called "difference" is recognized without any concept of temporal passage coming into play. ( a stimulus-response to an image shouldn't be interpreted as being an inference, because the future is irrelevant as far as the stimulus-response is concerned)
"Change" refers to two referents being associated with the same indexical. For example, if one thinks that "now" becomes "now", then one creates the confusion of temporal passage. But if instead one thinks of the first act of "now" as referring to '09:09 on 26th Jan' and the second act of "now" as referring to '09:10, 26th Jan' then no change can be acknowledged.
You still are using the word "it" ambiguously in order to trade on an equivocation. Suppose your image were replaced with an image depicting two distinct squares sitting next to each other with no overlap. The square on the left is red and the square on the right is blue. Would you say that, from left to right, "it" changes from red to blue? What would "it" refer to in order for that claim to make sense? There are two different squares and they don't change. By contrast, when a green apple ripens and turns red, the apple that was green and the apple that is now red are numerically identical. They're the same object and this object changed. An object doesn't change through merely replacing it with a different object, let alone by dint of shifting our attention to a different object that's located elsewhere.
Middle: Chronos (cardinal time, the meeting lasted for 1 hour)
:smile:
There's no rigour in modern word usage. Rigor mortis has set in.
I we consider a constant t there is a change in color when we vary x. These are partial derivatives though: [math]\frac{\partial c} {\partial x}[/math]. How on Earth can you keep t constant?
Your squares example is gratuitous. There is no equivocation; the colour changes over distance.
Notice that the branches change, becoming thinner and more numerous towards the top of the tree?
Notice that the white space changes to fish, the back space to birds? Again, over distance, not over time.
How do you know? By moving your attention from bottom to top in time.
There is an incipient antirealism at work here.
Is it true that there is a change across space? How you know is irrelevant.
Indeed. On your side. Time can't be kept constant. It runs no matter what.
I would not be placing myself at odds with everyday use by claiming that bears are essentially mammals even though there are perfectly good everyday uses of the word "bear" where it is meant to refer to a plush toy. The latter use is derivative from the former one. There is not one single sort of thing called "change" that material entities often undergo when time passes and that can also occur over distance. You are the one disregarding variations in ordinary word usage. My main point is that the existence of the latter use doesn't tell us anything about the conceptual connection between change and time, when we are using the word "change" in the former sense. This conceptual connection is much deeper and richer than a mere functional relationship between two mathematical variables (and, as Kant has shown, it also involves the concept of a substance). Investigating this connection is a fruitful philosophical enterprise. Just pointing out alternative uses of the word "change" that merely point to functional relationships, to merely potential changes, or to substitutions of the ordinary bearers of change, is trivial and uninteresting. It doesn't have any philosophical import.
Quoting Luke
No, it refers to a change in degree of difference of the color over different x coordinates.
This is also true about motion. When O moves from (1,1,1) to (2,1,1), that does not refer to a change in O's location at a given t coordinate. Nay, O cannot possibly be said to move from (1,1,1) to (2,1,1) unless O is at (1,1,1) at some t coordinate t1, and then finds itself at (2,1,1) at some different t coordinate t2, with the further requirement (due to the use of move from...to) that t2 is in the future direction of t1.
Quoting Luke
As opposed to what? You're just misconceiving change. When O moves from A=(1,1,1,1) to D=(2,1,1,2), nothing is changing time. O moves because O is at A and is at D, D and A are at different times, and D and A are at different places (and more reasons which I'll ignore here for now). O never stops being at (1,1,1) at t=1. There's no such thing as a thing that moves from (1,1,1) at t=1 to (2,1,1) at t=2:
Quoting Luke
And? In model of motion, O (at each point in time) is also at a fixed location. We say O moves because O finds itself at different places at different times.
How on Earth you wanna keep t constant? By clapping in your hands and make time stop? If so, how you wanna move over x?
Sorry! Didn't see this! :smile:
Which means time is involved in the change in color.
Well, no. Consider this:
Now it is very clear that the fields change into birds. And further, that this happens over distance, not over time.
The locution "The fields change into birds" makes sense in the context. It's clear what it being said. If you were to ask for a print of the Esher in which fields change into birds, it would be clear what you were after.
And it is I who is saying these locutions are part of our world, a way of talking that makes sense, and you who must make the claim, in the face of the evidence, that they do not. It is you who is the one disregarding variations in word use.
Frankly, Kant was writing more than two hundred years ago. When folk invest some considerable amount of their time reading him, as they must if they are to understand him, they look for a payout in terms of using what they have learned. Hence the defensiveness so often found in his acolytes.
In so far as Kant concludes that change must be temporal, he is in error.
Again, it is not I who seeks to restrict the use of the word "change" to temporal events. It is not I who disregards ordinary use.
:roll:
Only when your eyes gaze over Escher the day turns into night. Escher even predetermined you gaze and perception. You have to stop time first. Only then the partial derivative makes sense. The changes in space, dx/dy, pertain to constant time. How you stop time?
t is irrelevant; it doesn't matter if you "keep it constant" or not. Banno's image doesn't change over time.
Quoting Cornwell1
What gave you the idea that it means that? O changes location over changes in time. The color change in Banno's image is over a change in x coordinate.
The very observation that it stays constant in time needs time in the first place.
But why is that relevant?
O is at x,y,z,t=(1,1,1,1) and at x,y,z,t=(2,1,1,2). A change in time coordinate here from t=1 to t=2 results in a change in the x,y,z coordinates here from (1,1,1) to (2,1,1). So that is a change in x,y,z coordinates (position) over a change in t coordinate.
Banno's image has colors like r,g,b,x=(253,216,182,850) and r,g,b,x=(253,204,155,900). A change in x coordinate here from x=850 to x=900 results in a change in r,g,b values from (253,216,182) to (253,204,155). So this is a change in r,g,b coordinates (color) over a change in x coordinates.
But Banno's image doesn't change over time. Right now (t=0), we have r,g,b,x,t=(253,216,182,850,0). 999 time units from now, it will be (253,216,182,850,999). Here we have a change in time coordinates from t=0 to t=999. But that results in the same r,g,b coordinate: (253,216,182) versus (253,216,182). So we have an equivalence of color over a change in time, not a change in color over a change in time.
Because the picture you look at can't exist without time.
We have some crossed wires here.
I've shown that a change in t coordinate does not correspond to a change in color. You respond to that by trying to demonstrate, in effect, that there are at least two t coordinates. It appears to me that you're a wee bit behind what you replied to.
Your discussion on block universes might be of some interest in the thread, but it has little to do with the thing I've been discussing.
I acknowledged that those locutions make sense. But they are making use of the word "change" in a derivative way. I never said they were nonsense (except in the few cases where you were equivocating on the reference of "it" in order to suggest that some determinate thing literally changed into something else). Clearly, there is a sense in which the fields remain fields and the birds remain birds. In that sense, they don't change. They are elements from a static picture. And in another sense, the fields change into birds (and the background patches between the white birds change into black birds, and vice versa).
How can something both change and remain unchanged? It would have to change in some respect and remain the same in another respect. But that's not what's occurring here. The repeated pictorial elements both change*, and fail to change, in the exact same respect: that is, in what they depict. The only reason why there isn't a contradiction is that the word "change" is being used in two different ways, with two different senses, or in a literal sense and a derivative sense. In the present case, the derivative sense is clear. Escher created a pattern of repetition with small incremental spatial variations meant to evoke a metamorphosis: something that is changing in the first, primary, sense. The pictorial elements change* (secondary sense) in the sense that they evoke a change (primary sense).
I can't see this discussion making progress... see . There's too much baggage ridding on the investment in change being only temporal.
Might leave it there.
I see this in mathematics. It's hard to reach and survive on the leading edges, no matter what intellectual direction one takes. What's left to ponder are elemental concepts, long eclipsed by experts, as we've seen on this forum.
It seems like objecting to change as being temporal is precisely disregarding ordinary use, but hey what do I know.
I think what others are trying to say is true, your images show change with change in distance, but can change in distance take place without change in time?
I commend you nonetheless since you've managed to interpose distance between change and chronos. That's a win in my book.
But I don't think that this - our present topic - is so very specialised. Intelligent, well-educated folk should know that dx/dy describes a change without time. It's pretty elementary stuff - high school applied maths.
I didn't even attempt to argue that change only is temporal. I simply indicated conceptual connections that illuminates the core concept and pointed out that that conflation with derivative uses of the word "change" tend to obscure those connections. So, basically I tried to widen the context of the discussion beyond the simplistic thesis that change is whatever people use the word "change" to refer to regardless of context or intent.
It seems to me that you have ignored some of the more difficult questions I put to you, such as how a colour in Banno's image can "approach" the rightmost x-coordinate, or how an x-coordinate can increase.
Quoting InPitzotl
Okay, thank you for correcting (my correction of) your original statement.
Quoting InPitzotl
According to the definition of motion you gave the other day:
Quoting InPitzotl
Per this definition of motion, how can O move if "nothing is changing time"?
Analogously, how can O move if nothing is changing position?
Perhaps you allow for an object to change in position (even though you do not allow for an object to change in time)? I only ask because you appear to suggest so here:
Quoting InPitzotl
It seems logical to me that if nothing is changing in time then nothing is changing in place, either. According to such a view, there can be no change over time or place.
Quoting InPitzotl
Then nothing moves or changes (according to your definition of motion).
Yes. In one comment I quoted you for having used two t's, t1 and t2. I thought you had seen the light. Apparently, you hadn't. Of course, the image doesn't change in time. All dx/dy is invariant wrt time. I don't dispute that. I dispute that do arrive at dx and dy you don't need time. It takes time to perform the analysis. The picture is embedded in time. A change in x and y has to be accompanied by a change in t, dt. dx/dy is independent from time. In relativity, [math]ds^2=-dt^2+dx^2+dy^2[/math]. So for both dx and dy a dt is involved but they cancel upon dividing. So the use of time is implicitly present but hidden.
Nevertheless, one can still create the idea of 'change' by using an indexical such as 'this' to refer to two or more referents, as when recognising that the colour of an object has changed - something that is objectively nonsense for the reasons you point out, and yet subjectively meaningful.
Perhaps one can say that the mind is change, implying that philosophical theories concerning personal identity over time are unnecessary and redundant.
What does change are distances. A change in spatial distance is a change in time.
I can play by these rules, thank you.
Quoting sime
That would make sense, but it also wouldn't tell us much :wink:
Unfortunately, distance between two points p1 and p2 cannot be measured at a given time t0. To measure distance, we need to move between point p1 and point p2. Movement requires time, as nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Distance doesn't exist in the Universe, as it is something that occurs through time.
Quoting pfirefry
Distances between particles exist every moment in time, even if we can't measure them. If they change, time changes.
Indeed, to measure a distance, you have to walk with an odometer or, for distances in time, look at the clock. Ýou can even calculate changes in distance by knowing the change in time. [math]s=\frac{1}{2}at^2[/math].
You are talking nonsense! ( :wink: ) Change is everywhere!
No, it doesn't. To see what philosophy in modern times looks like, read some actual philosophy, e.g. here: https://philpapers.org/browse/time/
Which means to be a scientist as well? Or better, a mathematician? :roll:
It does. You just have to actually know something about science and mathematics. Jgill does.
Fundamentally speaking, you're trying to illustrate a problem with the notion of a change-over-place as opposed to a change-over-time. Your questions can so far be classified into one of three types, which I'll just label here. Type A questions can be trivially addressed by a proper analog from place to time. Type B questions assert something that is ridiculous when applying the analog from place to time. Type C questions are non-analogous only in the sense that they apply particularly to change-over-time.
Quoting Luke
This is a Type A question. A time analog would be a video comprised of 1110 frames of 1x662 images. If we were to take the Euclidean distance of colors to the color at 1106 (0-based frame indexing) as they change-over-time in such a video and map the progression over-time, the graph would look like this:
...incidentally, this is the exact graph I showed you three days ago, which shows how the color's in the image approach the color at 1106 over-x-coordinate.
Unless you have an objection that the colors in the video approach the color at frame 1106, then all you're doing is begging the question.
Quoting Luke
This is a Type B question. Single points do not change, even in a change-over-time sense. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're demanding that a single point change and then turning around and demanding there be multiple points in time.
Quoting Luke
Position here refers to the x,y,z coordinates. P1=(1,1,1) is an x,y,z coordinate. P2=(2,1,1) is an x,y,z coordinate. Statements like R1="O is at P1" are time-relative statements; we consider the truth value of such statements to change depending on the time of consideration. R1 is true at t=1; R1 is false at t=2.
A=(1,1,1,1) includes a time coordinate; this is equivalent to "P1 at t1". D=(2,1,1,2) likewise is equivalent to "P2 at t=2". The statement "O is at A" is thus equivalent to "O is at P1 at t=1". That is a time-fixed statement. The truth value of time-fixed statements do not change over time. If it is ever true that O is at P1 at t=1, it is always true. The past cannot change.
O does not move from A to D; O is always at A and always at D. O moves from P1 to P2 by virtue of having-been at P1 at some time, and then having-been at P2 at some different time. In the time-slice of t=1, O is at P1. In the time-slice of t=2, O is at P2. Those are different locations at different points in time, and that is what I said motion was... a change in position over a change in time.
Likewise, in Banno's image, in the coordinate slice x=850, the color is (253,216,218). In the coordinate slice x=900, the color is (253,204,155). There is no more anything moving from x=850 to x=900 here than there is something moving from (1,1,1,1) to (2,1,1,2); the color is always (253,216,218) at x=850 just as O is always at (1,1,1) at t=1, and the color is always (253,204,155) at x=900 just as O is always at (2,1,1) at t=2.
Quoting Luke
Sure. It changes position over time in the exact same fashion that Banno's image changes color over x coordinate.
Quoting Luke
But it is changing in time, just as Banno's image is changing in space. You're just misconceiving what a change is. The "thing" you're asking me to show moves from the left to the right is the "thing" you're assuming moves from the O at (1,1,1) at t=1 to the O at (2,1,1) at t=2, and that is the reified erroneous object you presume to exist that there is no such thing as. There is no such thing as that moving thing; there is only the O at (1,1,1) at t=1 and the O at (2,1,1) at t=2, and it is that thing that meets the criteria requisite to say O moved from (1,1,1) to (2,1,1).
Quoting Luke
No, there's no such thing as Lukeian motion. It suffices for InPizotlean motion that the O-at-P1-at-t1 and the O-at-P2-at-t2 are in different places at different times; it's just the Lukeian concept of motion that requires this reified O-ghost to move through the O-at-P1-at-t1 into the O-at-P2-at-t2 for there to have been a motion of O. My definition makes no reference to this reified O-ghost.
I’m asking you to explain this “approach” to the rightmost x-coordinate absent of time, so your analogy that includes time doesn’t help.
Quoting InPitzotl
You said earlier:
Quoting InPitzotl
I’m looking for you to explain this “increase” in the x-coordinate. You said it, not me. I asked you what this change in the x-coordinate represents and how it increases.
Quoting InPitzotl
No, I’m asking how can the x-coordinate “increase”, or how can any colour “approach” the colour on the right, given that there is no time and nothing changes position.
Quoting InPitzotl
You said in your previous post that I was responding to:
Quoting InPitzotl
Now you are saying that something is changing in time? Well, which is it?
I got nowhere else to go... All people are against me...
:cry:
Not sure what you're looking for; if it's analogous, it's the same property. But okay.
Given an ordered sequence of values v[sub]1[/sub], v[sub]2[/sub], v[sub]3[/sub], ..., v[sub]n[/sub], and a distance metric D; if the sequence has the property that [math]i < j \Rightarrow D(v_j,v_n) < D(v_i,v_n)[/math], then we say that the sequence approaches v[sub]n[/sub]. (FTR, this is a simplification good enough for our purposes here).
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
Consider three points: B1=(900,10), B2=(850,1), B3=(850,17); their colors are C1=(253,204,155), C2=(253,216,218) and C3=(253,216,218) respectively.
Given this particular set of points and associated colors, the statement above is describing the ordered sequence (253,216,218), (253,204,155). Each element in this sequence is "the color at an x coordinate". The sequence's order is specified by "as the x coordinate increases"; the order of said x coordinates is 850, 900. The statement is claiming that this sequence approaches the color on the right.
Quoting Luke
Those look like different phrases to me. Refer to your quote here:
Quoting Luke
"Change time" without the "in" is used as an exact analog to "change place" in this quote. B2 doesn't change places to B1; B2 and B1 are merely different places on the same image. The "change" presumably involves a time at which something is at B1, followed by a time when it is at neither B1 nor B2 but traveling, followed by another time at which it is at B2 and not B1. O doesn't do that either. There's no such thing as a time when O is not at A.
"Change in time" with "in" contrasts with this; to me, this indicates a time relative view. O changes in time; as you change time coordinates, you get a change in position. Analogously, the color changes in x coordinates; as you change the x coordinate, you get a change in color.
Time is Now.
Describe Now.
Suppose the color im question is red and it changes at the rate from 10/cm where 10 is a measure of intensity of red. There's a speed here that comes with the cm (distance). Suppose this speed is 5 cm/s. What's the temporal rate of the color change? [math]\frac{10}{cm} \times \frac{5 \space cm}{s} = \frac{50}{s}[/math]
The now is constantly running from the past, fleeing towards the future. The past never catches up, the future always resides. We're caught in between.
Space [math]\uparrow[/math]
Time [math]\uparrow[/math]
Yup. Some good recent books also, like Sebastian Rödl, Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Intellect, Harvard University Press, 2012, and Yuval Dolev, Time and Realism: Metaphysical and Antimetaphysical perspectives MIT Press, 2007.
Are you trying to ask how the coordinates are laid out in graphics? The coordinates are labeled x and y thusly: (x,y). For any a and b, (a+1,b) is one pixel right of (a,b). (a,b+1) is one pixel down from (a,b). (0,0) is the coordinate of the leftmost topmost pixel.
Quoting Luke
Because that's what you asked me to do:
Quoting Luke
...Banno's image consists of an array of pixels. The x coordinates form a finite ordered sequence. The colors associated with the x coordinates form a corresponding finite ordered sequence. Approaching a value is a description of what ordered sequences do.
Quoting Luke
Because that's the phrase under question:
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
Correct. "O is at A" no matter what time you say it. "O is at A" is a time-fixed claim. "O is at A" is true at t=1, and "O is at A" is true at t=2.
Quoting Luke
Correct. "O is at P1" is a time relative claim. "O is at P1" is true at t=1. But "O is at P1" is false at t=2. "O is at P2" is false at t=1. "O is at P2" is true at t=2. Time relative claims have truth values relative to the time under consideration. P1 to P2 is a change in position of O over the change in time of O from t=1 to t=2.
Quoting Luke
"View" is not the right word to apply here; these are manners of speaking.
Quoting Luke
Almost. This phrasing is x-coordinate relative, not time relative. "as you change the x coordinate" is telling you what it's relative to.
Quoting Luke
It's not time relative; it does not matter when you say it. And it's not time fixed; it's not talking about a particular point in time. It is x-coordinate relative.
Quoting Luke
Correct. There isn't an O-ghost that moves from O-at-A to O-at-D. There's just the O-at-A and the O-at-D. And there's no coordinate ghost that moves from 850 to 900. There's just a coordinate of 850 and a coordinate of 900.
Quoting Luke
They aren't views; they are manners of speaking. Our language is filled with relative and fixed references; "yesterday" is a time relative reference to a day, "Jan 27, 2022" is a time fixed reference. The fact that sometimes I use relative references and sometimes fixed references is not a conflict.
In the previous post I considered first B1 at time T1 let's say, then B2 at T2, then B3 at T3, where T1
Since we are talking about time, glancing over some of the papers in the metaphysics of time (the truly philosophical area) much concerns the A-theory and the B-theory, and reading on one finds that subjects in physics, like relativity theory, come into play. Here the philosopher can only use popular versions of physics phenomena in their arguments - unless they have more in-depth knowledge of physics.
In the philosophy of mathematics it would appear that one becomes equally versed in foundation and set theory in order to make contributions. But I speculate. You may be right.
It are the collective motions and interactions that can be said to constitute time. The relations, the distances, between them, change and the time on a clock quantifies the process.
No. I'm asking what the increase in the x-coordinate - that you mentioned earlier - represents. This applies equally to your hill example. What does an increase in the x-coordinate represent there? Again, I imagine it represents something spatial concerning the image or the hill, not something concerning an algorithm.
Quoting InPitzotl
Why must the ordered sequence of the colours in the picture be from left to right? More to the point, why must the sequence approach "n" at all? Who or what is calculating the ordered sequence to "n" to enable the "approach"? In other words, what initiates the ordered sequence being followed?
Quoting InPitzotl
That's circular. The x-coordinate increases because of the sequence's order and the sequence's order had to be specified by "as the x coordinate increases"...because that's what's in question? That's no explanation.
Quoting InPitzotl
I was talking about your viewpoint(s) or opinion(s). I meant that I find them to be conceptually opposed; contradictory, incompatible.
Quoting InPitzotl
Sure, it's the space-relative view, analogous to the time-relative view. I understood that you were drawing an analogy. But you still hold these relative views and don't consider them to be problematic or incompatible with your opinion that nothing moves or changes position, right?
Quoting InPitzotl
Like I said, "without time".
Quoting InPitzotl
But on the time-relative view that you endorse, which is analogous to the space-relative view, there is an O-ghost. The O-ghost on the space-relative view is the increasing x-coordinate.
Quoting InPitzotl
What about the increasing x-coordinate(s) and their associated colour(s) "approaching" the colour on the right? Isn't 900 to the right of 850? Doesn't the colour at 850 "approach" the colours to its right, including the colour at 900?
The real mystery is the experience of time. Sometimes an hour seems passed in a second, sometimes a minute takes an hour... Why is that? Why the good things last so short and the bad things that long?
Like I said, don't take us bullshitting on this forum as an indication of what's going on in academic philosophy.
DTT is a purely physical explanation of puzzles encountered in quantum mechanical and general relative approaches to time. It offers a coherent, self-consistent way out of the conundrums and paradoxes encountered in contemporary philosophy of time.
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
What do you mean by "no"? You asked me what an increase in x coordinates means in terms of space. I gave you a full specification of the coordinate system in an image, including the spatial relation you asked for. If you're looking for something else, I'm afraid you have to rephrase your question.
Quoting Luke
I don't see any real questions here. This is just a giant chain of leading questions based on dubious premises.
Quoting Luke
No, it's reference. Surely you're not trying to make an argument against staying on topic in a thread? This is the example you're asking about, right?
You seem to be making an assumption that somebody claimed that only in this direction does a color approach another color. But you dreamed that claim up whole cloth, then leaned into it as if to prove someone wrong. It's downright Quixotic. The only special thing about increase in x coordinates here is that Banno posted an image and made a claim about a change of color from left to right.
Quoting Luke
Nope. I never said nothing changes or moves position; you said I said that.
Quoting Luke
That does not follow.
Quoting Luke
That's not an O-ghost (in my endorsed "view"); that's just O moving. Refer to this:
Under "reference", I show O moving from (1,1) to (2,1). O here is the yellow dot with the gray border.
Under "right", I show the same thing using a spatial coordinate for t. In this depiction O looks like a thick gray line, because it is smeared through all intermediate points, because if O is ever at some point (x[sub]k[/sub],y[sub]k[/sub],t[sub]k[/sub]), it is always at that point.
Under "wrong" there are two O's, and one of them doesn't belong. There's the O that actually traces a path in time; that is, the genuine O, the real deal. That is the thick gray line. And then there is that second O that moves through the genuine O from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2). That second O is the ghost that doesn't belong. That is the reified fictitious monster you keep trying to find in Banno's image that isn't there.
Incidentally, none of these depictions have to do with time-relative versus time-fixed references. I can describe points in both the left and the right images using both time-relative and time-fixed references.
Quoting Luke
I was chocking this up to a mistake earlier and ignoring it, but you repeated it here. The increasing x-coordinates are not approaching the color on the right; they are just increasing, as it says on the tin. The colors are approaching the color on the right; but that phrase is an underspecification. Approaching is something an ordered sequence does, and we have to specify how the colors are ordered so we can meaningfully say it's approaching the color. That is what the phrase "as the x-coordinate increases" does... it imposes the order.
This was already explained to you.
Certainly doctorates in physics or math - especially theoretical physics - can place one in the borderlands of philosophy and science. That was my point. Thanks for the info.
Once upon a time...
This does nothing but replace x-coordinates with a-pixels. None of this explains what the increase (a+1 or x+1) represents or why there is an increase. What is represented by the increase from a to a+1? You have used mathematics to demonstrate that there is an increase, but you then explain this increase as mathematical. I don't agree that there is any change over space without time. Where does this change come from? What, in spatial terms, does this change represent? Your explanation is circular, referring to the increase itself, not to what it represents.
It might be clearer if you could explain what the increase represents in terms of the hill. What does the increase in the x-coordinate represent there? Does it represent a change in position on the hill? If so, what has changed position on the hill? (Please do not say that the x-coordinate has changed position on the hill.)
Quoting InPitzotl
The claim is that there can be a change in colour over a change in space, absent of time. I am of the opinion that, absent of time, nothing changes in space. Therefore, I think you need to account for the assumed change in space (absent of time) and/or what such change represents or corresponds to. If your argument is that things can change in space (absent of time), then you can't simply assume that things do change in space (absent of time) in your argument. You want to say "as the x-coordinate increases, then there is a change in colour/height". But you first need to account for how the x-coordinate increases (absent of time), and what that increase represents. Otherwise, I think you are begging the question.
Quoting InPitzotl
You've said that nothing moves or changes position in various ways recently:
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
Isn't each colour associated with an x-coordinate? If the colours are approaching the colour on the right, as you say, then I don't see how each x-coordinate isn't also approaching the colour on the right. You said that the x-coordinates were increasing, yes?
Quoting InPitzotl
Why are the x-coordinates increasing?
Quoting InPitzotl
This is still circular: the x-coordinates increase due to the ordered sequence, and the ordered sequence is ordered due to the phrase "as the x-coordinates increase".
You took the words right out of my mouth! There exist no space-like world lines in physics. Only time- and light-like. Both involve space and time. Every change in space is accompanied by a change in time.
Exhibit A:
Quoting Luke
What the heck is an a-pixel? And what do you mean "replace x-coordinates"? a and b here are numbers; (a,b) expresses an x,y coordinate with x=a and y=b. 12+1=13; so (13,7) is one pixel right of (12,7), and (7,13) is one pixel down from (7,12). FYI, this is grammar school level competency.
Exhibit B:
Quoting Luke
None of those things say "nothing moves"; none of them say "nothing changes". Incidentally, isn't this you?:
Exhibit B2:
Quoting Luke
...so I would like to know, Luke, if you're going to prefer to be consistent and claim that you are saying nothing changes, or honest and admit that you are just building straw men.
Exhibit C:
Quoting Luke
...exactly what you would expect, if the increase is mathematical. That 5 is an increase from 3 ipso facto makes it an increase in value because it is that value being described by increase.
Exhibit D:
Quoting Luke
This I believe is the first time in my life that I have seen a mathematical form of guilt by association fallacy. The fact that you don't see why this is wrong, I'm afraid, disqualifies you from having this conversation; it's basically a tacit admission that you don't understand what approach means. But to let you in on it, no. It doesn't work like that. We would never say given f(x)=x/2, that x approaches 5 as it approaches 10 because it is associated with a f(x) value; and that's a case where x and f(x) are both numbers in the first place. In Banno's image, x is a number and "f(x)" is a color.
Quoting Luke
Coordinates are grammar school material, Luke. You shouldn't be confused in the first place.
Quoting Luke
I think the main problem here is your own confusion.
Quoting Luke
...I smell an epistemic double standard. The value of your opinion is proportional to the justification. You're not only lacking that; you're apparently so allergic to opposition, you invent straw men even on points you agree with (exhibit B).
So let's talk about that word change. That is an English word; used by English speakers. Applied to change-over-place, we can examine how people in the wild use that word. Here are some samples:
From here.
From here.
From here.
From here.
The last reference (RPC) is similar to my early example of a "road narrows" sign, with the explicit use of the word "change" by Markatos-Soriano and Keeney. Here's an image:
Here, D1/D2 depict what a "road narrows" sign is trying to warn people about. The sign is up where a road does something like D1. That part of this image doesn't animate; i.e., there is no change in time here of the road. Roads simply don't do what's shown in B1/B2/C1/C2. And a road like A1/A2 would be described as not changing width.
Similarly:
...Banno's image is depicted here as E1. That is a gradient; it is what the Amadine tutorial calls a natural change in color as opposed to a solid fill. Just as D1 does not animate, E1 does not animate; i.e., there is no change in time of this coloring, in contrast with F1/F2/G1/G2, where there is such a thing. Still images, which is what Banno's image is, cannot do what F1/F2/G1/G2 does.
So here it is boiled down for you Luke. Do you agree that D1 and E1 do not animate? Do you have an alternate view of what Markatos-Soriano and Keeney are complaining about before the RPC, or what the Amadine tutorial is describing? Ostensively speaking, D1 and E1, especially opposed to B1/C1 and F1/G1 and friends, are changes that are not changes over time. By contrast, ostensively speaking, B1/C1 and F1/G1 show changes over time.
FYI, I'm not advancing any opinion on your stated opinion anyway (outside my sensitivity to epistemic double standards)... my point is only about the existence of changes other than change over time, as all of the quotes-in-the-wild above describe.
This should be overkill, but unfortunately it seems to be needed.
The charm of TPF :roll:
Right, x=a. My point was that a-pixels of a given value are no different to their associated x-coordinates of a given value, because they are both associated with the same colour. That is, the a-pixels of a given value form a vertical line of the same colour and they all cross the x-coordinate at the same point. Or, again, x=a. I asked you what the increase in the x-coordinate represented and you explained it in terms of a-pixels. My criticism was that this did not explain what the increase in the x-coordinate (or an increase in the a-pixels: from a to a+1) represented, and that you had merely expressed the same thing in a different way.
Quoting InPitzotl
Yes, that's me. My position is that nothing changes without time. I thought you held the opposing view? But it seems you hold both views and think it's unproblematic.
Surely the first statement of yours quoted above (in bold) can be read as saying that nothing moves, or that there is no such thing as a thing that moves from one position at time t1 to another position at time t2? Do you also assert that there is something that moves from one position at t1 to another position at t2? Maintaining both statements is a contradiction.
Quoting InPitzotl
I simply thought that the mathematics somehow linked back to the examples of Banno's image or the hill. I have asked numerous times what the increase in the x-coordinate represents but your only response has been that it represents the increase in the x-coordinate itself, not that it represents anything about Banno's image or the hill.
Quoting InPitzotl
What does an increase in x represent in Banno's image (in terms of the image, but not in terms of the function/colour)?
Quoting InPitzotl
I'm not confused; that's not why I asked.
Quoting InPitzotl
It's not a straw man to point out your contradictions.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think that when the word "change" is used "in the wild", then it isn't typically assumed that time is absent, like we are assuming in this philosophical discussion. This is evident from your quoted examples. In the absence of time, what you call a "change", I would call only a "difference". There is no going or getting from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, or movement in any other direction. This is why I keep asking what the increase in the x-coordinate represents.
Quoting InPitzotl
Yes, I agree.
Quoting InPitzotl
What "road narrows" usually indicates is that the road gets narrower as you travel down the road. Absent of time, there can be no travel down the road.
This was explained already. You're confusing a change in place over time with a change in place-and-time over time, the latter of which makes motion incoherent. I'm not claiming this isn't motion; I'm claiming it's not motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2). The change here is from O's being at (1,1) to O's being at (2,1); not from O's being at (1,1,1) to O's being at (2,1,2). Think about it; (1,1,1) and (2,1,2) are different points-in-time, sure, but so are (1,1,1) and (1,1,2), and the latter is just called staying still. But it gets worse than this...
If O's being at (1,1,1) were to change, then by what means do you think you get to say O was at (1,1)? When would it have even been there... at t=1? Nope; that's no good... that's the very thing you'd be claiming changed... that O was at (1,1) at t=1. So if you can't say that O is at (1,1) at t=1, given you're going to claim that its being there changes, then how can you claim it was ever not at (2,1)?
That is the contradiction, and it's on your end. If you're going to claim that facts about where an object is in place-and-time change, then you cannot get motion off the ground in the first place.
Or to rephrase it, see the "right" and "wrong" column again:
Quoting Luke
Okay, then you're wasting my time.
Quoting Luke
Nope. That's B2, C2, and D2. The sign is just telling you the road is shaped like D1.
What causes change over distance?
In the case of everyday physics, change over time via motion is caused by a change in the inertial state of a material object.
A real-world, specific example goes thus: a boulder sits at the base of a hill. Its inertial state is rest. Another boulder, rolling down said hill strikes the first boulder, setting it in motion. It rolls for a distance of 20 feet over a time interval of 29 seconds.
This change over time via motion was caused by a change in the inertial state of the resting boulder to the inertial state of a rolling boulder.
Can you give a real-world, specific example of a cause that effects a change over distance, with elapsed time equal to zero?
They can't! Every change in space, dx, is accompanied by a dt. You're absolutely right!
There are no spacelike worldlines.
Maybe you mean "Everyone talks about time". Because, if you really mean "Everyone knows what time is" then I guess you also mean or can expect that everyone can give a workable definition of description of "time". Have you asked any of them what time really is? Can you answer that yourself? It would be interesting to do that and hear hundreds of different answers, which in fact, will not explain what time really is.
You have talked abput Einstein and clocks and that time can't go backwards and so on. Do any of that explain what time really is?
Then, if as you say "time is an old subject that can be traced back to the antiquity (much before Plato, before 1,500 BC, and philosphers and scientists still speak about and disagree on it, doesn't this make it a "mystery"?
Iit is the same mystery as with "consciousness", "reality" and other concepts, the nature of which is a subject very common in the agendas of philosphers and scientists since a long time ago and yet unresolved!
Can't we say that time is an irreversible collective motion of particles, which started near time zero?
Quoting InPitzotl
Of course it is motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2). Why is it not? It denotes a change in position over a change in time, which is the definition of motion that you provided earlier.
Quoting InPitzotl
If the latter is called staying still, then the former must be called moving. So are you saying that the object does move from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2)? But you have just said "I'm claiming it's not motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2)". It can't be both motion and not motion.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think what you are trying to say is that the object does not move from t1 to t2 (per the definition of motion), or that a change in time (only) is insufficient for motion, but that's not what you have said. Obviously, the object does change from being at t1 to being at t2. Moreover, it is also obvious that the object cannot change position (i.e. move) unless it also changes time.
Quoting InPitzotl
Because it was at (1,1) before it changed. Right? That's what change is.
Quoting InPitzotl
Yes, it was at (1,1) at t=1. That's what is denoted by O being at (1,1,1).
[As an aside, you were earlier using notation of (x,y,z,t), but in this post you have changed to (x,y,t). I am just trying to follow your notation.]
Quoting InPitzotl
O was at (1,1) at t=1 and then it changed (e.g. to being at (2,1) at t=2). I don't see the issue.
Quoting InPitzotl
It is at (2,1) at t=2. At least, I presume that's what you've been saying. I don't see why I can't say that O was at (1,1) at t=1 and then it changes/moves to (2,1) at t=2. You may need to spell out further what the problem is here.
Quoting InPitzotl
What is the contradiction on my end? That objects can change position and time?
Quoting InPitzotl
I never said anything about changes in facts. I have only spoken about the changes in the positions and times of an object.
You have switched from talking about changes in positions and times of an object to talking about changes in facts about the positions and times of an object. Are you implying that changeless facts about the positions and times of an object implies changeless positions and changeless times for that object? Then motion is impossible.
To repeat, if changeless facts (about the positions and times of an object) implies changeless positions and changeless times (for that object), then motion is impossible. But I have not said anything about changeless facts. However, you have said that O does change position, and you said this as recently as your latest post:
Quoting InPitzotl
Then again, you have also said:
Quoting InPitzotl
These contradictions are your own.
We could say that time is irreversible, based on common sense and experience. (And Physics laws, I guess, but check https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6501215 about time reversal. Im' not good in Physics though!)
We can't say "(collective) motion of particles" since, as far as I know, it has not ben proven that time consists of particles.
And we certainly can't say either that "it started at time zero", since this is a circular statement: time started at time zero! :)
Consider the possibility of "time zero". This would mean that there is a future without any past. Why would there suddenly be a past? "Time zero" itself makes sense, but it requires a cause from outside of time, something which causes there to suddenly be a past. It's the "cause from outside of time" which is difficult to make sense of.
Because it's still at (1,1,1). That didn't change.
Quoting Luke
Sure. It's motion from (1,1) to (2,1). That is a change.
Quoting Luke
No, I'm saying it moved from (1,1) to (2,1).
Quoting Luke
Right. It's motion from (1,1) to (2,1); not motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2). The former is a change; when it's at (2,1), it's not at (1,1) any more. That's a change over time; it's at (2,1) at time t=2; it's at (1,1) at time t=1. The latter is not a change; when O is at (2,1,2), it's still at (1,1,1). That's what that underlined phrase represents, right?:Quoting Luke
Now again:
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
Quoting InPitzotlQuoting Luke
Quoting Luke
There. Underlined. You're saying that if O's being at (1,1,1) were to change, then you can still say O was at (1,1) at t=1, because O's at (1,1,1). At once, O's being at (1,1,1) changes, and it doesn't change?
Quoting Luke
What are you talking about? O's always being at (1,1,1) and always at (2,1,2) does not imply O is at (1,1) at time t=2, nor at (2,1) at time t=1. Nor does it imply that (2,1) is the same at (1,1). Nor does it imply that O is not at (1,1) at time t=1; nor that O is not at (2,1) at time t=2; nay, it actually asserts both. Why would you think it implies any of those things? That implication that motion is impossible if facts about time don't change came only from Luke's own confusion.
This reminds me the way two couples use to repair a broken relation: "OK, let's forget about the past. Let's start a new life from now!" :smile: And similar funny cases ...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course. Like a new bing bang, for example! :grin:
I assume this means let's make a baby.
Then what has changed?
Quoting InPitzotl
The object being at t=1 and then at t=2 is also a change. How can you allow for the object to change position if you do not allow for the object to change time?
Quoting InPitzotl
You seem to be saying that the object does not change time. But isn't that a requirement of motion, per the definition?
Quoting InPitzotl
I'm not the one saying that O's being at (1,1,1) doesn't change. It does change. What you are accusing me of with respect to time is what you are guilty of with respect to position. You are saying that the object both changes and does not change position. You say that the object is always at (1,1,1) but you also allow for it to change from (1,1) to (2,1). You are the only one of us saying that O doesn't change in some respect. I'm saying that it changes with respect to both position and time. Therefore, the contradiction is yours.
You introduced changeless facts into the discussion. If, according to your logic, changeless facts imply that change of any sort is a contradiction, then that's on you.
In that case, it would rather be "Let's create a new life" :grin:
A weight sitting on a cushion deforms the cushion. The weight cause the cushion to change over distance.
Note that you have changed the topic from change over time to cause over time.
The deformed cushion, a rest state, doesn't exemplify change.
Exercise leads to (causes) big muscles. This is, clearly, change in the state of a physical body over time.
As long as you use CHANGE in your proposition, you will need to demonstrate a change of state of one thing that consumes zero time.
Change refers to an alteration in the state of a thing. Often over time, but as has been shown, not always.
But that you have now introduced cause we may begin to gain an understanding of why this triviality is of such import to you.
I'm guessing causation is fundamental to some notion you hold dear - perhaps arguments for a god, or some such.
The “state” of a thing is its condition at a given time.
change in the state of a material object with time equal to zero for the change.
To emphasise my point:
You say that there is motion from (1,1) at t=1 to (2,1) at t=2; and
You say that there is not motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2).
Please explain:
How is (1,1) at t=1 different from (1,1,1)?
How is (2,1) at t=2 different from (2,1,2)?
In what sense? The object is at (1,1) at t=1; therefore the object is at t=1. The object is at (2,1) at t=2; therefore the object is at t=2. So O is both at t=1 and at t=2. Where's the change?
Quoting Luke
Nope. The object's position changes over time; that's exactly what the definition requires.
Quoting Luke
And yet it apparently doesn't:
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Luke
I guess by change, you mean that "O's being at (1,1,1)" changes from true to false and back again based on when Luke thinks he needs to say O's not at (1,1,1) and when Luke thinks he needs to say O is at (1,1,1). Perhaps during the phrase "O moves from (1,1) to (2,1)", O's being at (1,1,1) starts off being false, then somewhere near the "from (1,1)" part it reverts to being true again, and as soon as you reach the "to (2,1)", it becomes false again. Something like that?
Quoting Luke
Nope; I'm saying the object changes position over time. It's at one position at one time, and a different position at a different time. That's not a problem. Being at one position at one time doesn't preclude being at a different position at a different time. You're the one that says the object both changes and doesn't change position. It's you who says that O isn't at (1,1) at t=1 any more, and yet, O is at (1,1) at t=1.
You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You need for O to be at (1,1) at t=1 to say it's in a different place at t=2, when it's at (2,1). You eat that cake when you claim that O's being at (1,1,1) changes. But then you try to have it when you try to establish what it changed from and when.
Quoting Luke
The change from (1,1) to (2,1) is a change over time. O's at (1,1) at t=1; it's at (2,1) at t=2. Those different positions are at different times.
Quoting Luke
And you appeal to them; you just compartmentalize it.
Quoting Luke
You're just parsing the English wrong. Here, it's "(from (1,1)) (at t=1)", not "(from ((1,1) at t=1))". The "at t=1" describes when it was "from (1,1)", not where it's moving from. Similarly for the other phrase: "(to (2,1)) (at t=2)", not "(to ((2,1) at t=2))".
But the weight has to sit down first.
State 1: cushion without weight = shape of cushion 1
State 2: cushion with weight sitting on it = shape of cushion 2
Question - What causes shape of cushion 1 to become shape of cushion 2?
When asking about causation, we're asking about a connection or relationship between two states of being. We're asking about the before and the after.
What's at the center of our focus here is connection, or relationship. We're not looking at State 1 and then jumping to look at State 2. Such a jump, like a cut in a motion picture from one scene to another, can be conceptualized as being timeless, but, in phenomenal reality, there are no timeless cuts.
In your head, you can visualize a motion picture like cut and imagine it to be timeless, however, in phenomenal reality, as Schootz1 points out, the weight deforms the cushion via the action of gravitation upon its mass, which causes movement across an interval of time of positive value.
You can talk about juxtaposing two points of view of a material object and say they express two different forms of the same object. You can call this a juxtaposition of different forms, but change of, or change over - outside of time - don't apply.
You have not given a single example of change of state of being outside of time. Your persistence in claiming such is based on a misuse of change over distance.
That's obviously a different example.
Quoting Banno
There are a few physical formula in which time does not play a role. Each of these is an example of cause without time. The resistance of a circuit and the colour of a black body are two more examples. Trouble is, for some reason you cannot accept them as falsifying your hypothesis. A adoration of Kant or Jesus or some such. Hence your need to move the goalposts from change to causation. Whatever argument is presented against your view will be met with an ad hoc defence.
Your inability to see the flaw in your position is not my problem.
Ask yourself that question. You have made clear your belief that O does not change in time, presumably due to its four-dimensional existence at both t=1 and t=2. However, this change in time is required by the definition of motion: "change in position over change in time". So where is the change in time that is required in order for you to say that O moves? (Also, where does O move from/to?)
In my opinion, this is easy to answer: The change in time is that O is first at t=1 and then subsequently at t=2. However, since you hold that O exists at both t=1 and t=2, and that O therefore does not change in time from t=1 to t=2, then how do you account for a change in time?
Quoting InPitzotl
The object changes from being at one time to being at another; that's exactly what the definition also requires. Change in position over change in time.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think you overlooked the word "was".
Quoting InPitzotl
"O's being at (1,1,1)" is true iff O is at (1,1,1). If "O's being at (1,1,1)" and "O's being at (2,1,2)" are both true, then how can O possibly change from being at (1,1,1) to being at (2,1,2)? What does "change" mean in that case?
Quoting InPitzotl
No, it doesn't, but a difference is not necessarily a change. Existing at both times precludes changing from one time to another.
Quoting InPitzotl
How does O change from one time to another if it always exists at both t=1 and t=2?
Quoting InPitzotl
Okay then:
You say that there is motion from [(1,1)] [at t=1] to [(2,1)] [at t=2]; and
You say that there is not motion from (1,1,1) to (2,1,2).
How is [(1,1)] [at t=1] different from (1,1,1)?
How is [(2,1)] [at t=2] different from (2,1,2)?
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
You obviously think change & cause are two very different things.
I think they're directly connected. When there is a cause, change occurs. When change occurs, it has a cause. If this direct relationship is true, and we both know it is, then your claims about change over distance imply a cause. You should therefore have neither complaint nor critical commentary in response to being asked to supply one. Elaborating how it comes to pass that some type of change over distance is caused is a basic part of your job in supporting your claim with an argument. Your examples thus far have brought forth denials supported by commonplace, definitive evidence.
When you assert that change over distance is a timeless phenomenon within our empirical reality, you're advancing a radical claim that naturally excites calls for elaboration of scientific truth unknown to most observers.
You're obviously hunting around for qualifying examples. Thus far, you haven't found any.
resistance of a circuit > drop in current flow CAUSED by resistance of a circuit is not timeless
change in color of a black body > measurement of color temperature as based upon a theoretical black body is not timeless
That'd be because they are. It's why we have two different words, one for change, the other for cause. Thinking otherwise requires philosophy. You have for whatever reason taken on a particular philosophical stance and are engaged in ad hoc hypothesising in order to defend it.
Take a mattress with a medicine ball sitting in the centre. The depth of the mattress is constant everywhere except for the area around the ball. Near the ball the depth of the mattress changes. That change is caused by the ball.
Do you deny this? If so, show me a change that has no cause. In this instance, your example can be a phenomenon of change that takes time to occur.
Also, do you think the above is philosophy? I think it's common sense.
Change and cause are not identical.
Indeed. U=IR. I is time dependent. PV=nkT. Dynamical balance.
:up:
Regarding time without direction (pre-Big Bang), can you elaborate some behavioral details? For example, do past-present-future evolve simultaneously?
Motion is necessarily what this horse did in 1878:
[hide="Reveal"]
...whether the horse "exists at both times" (whatever "both" means) or not.
Quoting Luke
The change in time is from t=1 to t=2. O moves from (1,1) to (2,1). The answer still won't change if you ask again.
Quoting Luke
I think you overlooked the word "is". If you're speaking at t=3, both t=1 and t=2 are in the past. You're making the claim that the past changes; in particular, you're saying that O moves through time. So when you're speaking at t=3, according to you, O is neither at t=1 nor is it at t=2 (just as that horse is nowhere on that track in 2022). The word "was" doesn't help; "was" is just the word normal people use to talk about something in the past. You are claiming the past changes; and the manner of change is such that there's nothing there any more. Everything moved to the present. So what then is the truth bearer of facts about the past, if there isn't anything in the past? What is the thing that "was" at (1,1) at t=1, at the time you're speaking being t=3, if nothing is at t=1?
You don't know what "both" means?
Let's be clear: are you advocating a four-dimensionalist, eternalist view of time where time is a space-like dimension, and where all past, present and future times exist, or not?
Quoting InPitzotl
I don't see how you reconcile this with your assertion that "O's being at (1,1,1)" and "O's being at (2,1,2)" are both true. If the change in time is from t=1 to t=2, then is the statement of "O's being at (1,1,1)" true when O is at t=1 but false by the time O changes to t=2? If not, then how can you say that O changes in time from t=1 to t=2? Isn't your claim that O exists at both t=1 and at t=2?
Quoting InPitzotl
No, the present changes.
Quoting InPitzotl
"Was" is a word people use to talk about something which is presently in the past. You also used the word "was" in the exchange that I quoted and replied to.
Quoting InPitzotl
I believe that our present evidence, theories and statements are the truth bearers of facts.
Otherwise, there is also the growing block theory of time, which posits that both past and present exist and that new things come into existence as the present moves forward in time.
You're picking out the wrong thing. And yes, what does "both" mean here? We have a horse moving in 1878. We can pick out pairs of frames, but that horse isn't "here" in 2022 according to you. 1878 was a long time ago.
Quoting Luke
The present is the year 2022, at the time of this writing. All frames in this video are in 1878. That horse is long gone in 2022.
Quoting Luke
Not necessarily eternalist. I'm advocating past facts don't change. You're by contrast advocating that they both do and do not: "O was at (1,1) at t=1" but "O is not at t=1". O changes time, from past to present, but still has a past location at past time t=1.
Quoting Luke
No. t=1 to t=2 being a change in time is not describing O's being; t=1 to t=2 is a change in time per se. We could have O's that don't exist at t=1 and exist at t=2; that's creation. If an O exists at t=1 and not at t=2, that's destruction. But t=1 to t=2 is still a change in time. It's over that change in time that a moving object changes position. You're injecting O's being being dragged along through time into your reading of the phrase, but that's not what the phrase means.
Quoting Luke
It's not just that Luke. You're not just talking about time changing. You're talking about O's being at a particular time changing... you're specifically arguing about O "changing time", presumably changing into the present.
Quoting Luke
That's not enough. How can an object move if it can't be in some place at all in the past, and how can it be in some place in the past if all objects are only in the present? And that's just the starters... wait a blink, and that very question gets re-asked about the past.
As the horse is now dead, I would say that the horse no longer exists. Alternatively, an eternalist would say that the horse still exists in 1878, and that dinosaurs still exist at the time they existed and that the future now exists in its entirety, too. Given that you claim the object, O, exists at both t=1 and at t=2, then you seem to be leaning towards eternalism. "Both" simply means that the object exists at t=1 and at t=2.
Maybe this will help:
Quoting InPitzotl
I could quibble that all frames in this video were photographed in 1878. We clearly still have those frames (now) in 2022, making the YouTube video possible.
Anyway, according to you, does the horse still exist (in the ontological sense)?
Quoting InPitzotl
You appear to be accusing me of a contradiction, but those statements are entirely consistent: The object was at t=1 and is not (presently) at t=1. The latter statement ("O is not at t=1") need not be read tenselessly.
Quoting InPitzotl
I reject the claim that O "still has a past location at past time t=1" at any time after t=1.
Quoting InPitzotl
I wouldn't consider it a moving object unless it changes its spatiotemporal location. Given that the object always exists in all of its spatial locations (including x=1 and x=2), and at all of its temporal locations (including t=1 and t=2), then how does it change its spatiotemporal location? In what sense does it move?
Quoting InPitzotl
And you're rejecting O's "being dragged along through time" from your reading of the phrase. O's "being dragged along through time" is precisely what motion is. What else could it be? Motion is a type of displacement. No object is ever displaced on the four-dimensionalist view because all objects forever remain at every place and time of their existence. Therefore, no object is ever in motion.
Quoting InPitzotl
According to presentism, the only time that exists is the present time and the only objects that exist are those that exist at the present time.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think a presentist can say that there were objects in the past, even if there are no objects [in the ontological sense] in the past now. A presentist can say that an object was in the past and that it changed from t=1 to t=2. I don't believe an eternalist can say the same and remain consistent with their eternalism.
Time dilation is where everything gets silly. You can't dilate a measurement. Space and matter are the things in question. Time does not dilate. It's absurd. Think about it.
Time has a duality. One one side is the perception of time which requires the ability to hold memories (to be conscious) as without memory we have no recollection of the past and if we have no accessible past we cannot anticipate a future by proxy. In this case the only thing to exist is the present moment which would be meaningless because what is the present without the past and future to give it reference?
So in essence memory is a prerequisite for conscious/aware beings. Consciousness cannot exist without the acquisition and documentation (writing down/recording/memory) of experience.
On the other hand we have objective time - the thing we measure objectively by quantifying it with frequencies (orbits, tides, seasons, day and night, hours, minutes and seconds etc) the rhythm of vibrations of quartz clocks, the swing of a pendulum.
Both aspects of the passage of time are mutually dependent. We cannot acknowledge cycles/frequencies/repetitions (the objective measure of time) without memory (subjective/a product of awareness) Otherwise each cycle would be a "first encounter" with no reference to a previous one.
The difference between simultaneity and chronology is our existence as objects - matter. Energy travels at the speed of light; where space contracts so much, and time dilates so much that everything happens simultaneously (as a singularity - with no distinction between beginning and end, no distance, no start or end.)
On the other side of this duality is existing as matter (which cannot travel at the speed of light). Therefore it must experience change/rate, and thus chronology; cause and effect are separated rather than simultaneous and the same.
So the ability to be conscious and have memory depends on being physical objects. Memory/documentation/recording cannot occur in pure energy as its massless and non physical and doesn't experience time. Memory must be recorded on a stable unchanging objective physical medium which does experience time - something that doesn't travel at the speed of light.
Perception of time requires consciousness and understanding information first is required. Information exists as brain state and brain state is the physical brain AND its mental content. Mental content, being emergent from the physical brain, is where time perception exists, as you were explaining.
I think past-present-future evolve simulateneously, through deceleration away from/ in reference to - the speed of light (where past-present-future are one and the same/simultaneous/singular). That's relativity for you.
Only objects experience time (can be changed/are subject to transformations from one physical state of being to another).
Because of that a past (A state), present (B/current state) and (C anticipated/predicted) future state can be observed in objects in motion. The easiest of which to predict would be a simple linear movement from A through B to C, but as we know things can also move in revolutionary/circular, and pendular motion. Oscillations. That's a little trickier to predict for us which consider time to typically only operate in a linear fashion.
This can be done by other objects (ones that observe - for example humans, with the condition that conscious awareness requires memory).
Without memory, we cannot acknowledge change in reference to something pre-recorded/stored.
Yes quite right. Non-conscious matter in theory wouldn't "experience" the passage of time but conscious matter (people) do experience time as its perception requires awareness.
However that would leave us with a conundrum if we stop there. Because if only matter can undergo change (time), unlike energy at the speed of light, and only conscious beings like us can perceive that change, when does consciousness emerge from unconscious matter and become "animate" as we are?
I think the key to accessing a possible answer to that is to not consider memory as explicit to/strictly confined in the "human brain", but rather simply the storage of information in something physical (matter), that can be rearranged and processed through time (reviewed)
Well when we consider memory in this definition, we can appreciate consciousness in a new way - a continuum all the way from "potential energy" at the speed of light (unconscious), deceleration into matter (the first recording/memory/storage of energy) as well as the beginning of time and the continued generation of information (change) - a very primordial consciousness.
Then organisation of this stored information (memory) takes place (gravity) and diversification of that information through processing (birth of new elements in stars, thus new molecules), new cycles (tectonics, ocean currents, tides, seasons etc) and evolution of that stored information (memory) of those systems all the way up into life and further towards humanity.
All the while the capacity for condensed and ever more efficient computations - manipulations of stored/memorised/encoded information is pressured by evolution and our consciousness ("human self awareness") as we know it emerges.
Why not. Are we not made from physics? We are physical. The information we hold in our brain is as much stored in the physical (anatomical synapses) as any information in the objects/ physical world we see around us.
To split physics information from biological information or chemical information is to randomly assert that we are separate from physics which I think is a pretty unreasonable conclusion.
It's only useful to segregate for the purpose of specialisation in that discipline but all human disciplines of observation of the universe (be it scientific, philosophical, spiritual, medical or social/political) are not discrete. We have huge overlap of our disciplines with one another otherwise technological information could never influence medical, scientific could never influence philosophical and so on.
Big picture, little picture, macroscopic, microscopic, it's just on the order of scope/magnitude. All information (of whatever quality/content) is connected.
If it wasn't we would just be in separate innumerable multiverses that have no connection or sense to one another
I hear what you're saying and from the perspective of a specialist that has narrowed, strictly defined and specified their line of thinking and empirical evidence a great deal to be on the frontier of that specialty, it seems incorrect to overlaps departments of knowledge.
We love to categorise and make discrete so we can better apply constants with one another and find novel outcomes.
But just as the electromagentic spectrum can be quantized into discrete packages (photons) let us not forget its wave duality - the fact that is is at the same time a spectrum that is not discrète.
So information can be packaged and solid and particulate , but it can also be fluid and miscible. Like water. Science likes to control information by giving it parameters, taoism acknowledges the flow and interconnectedness of things
That's fine. You seem to prefer discretion and finitude than open flow and infinities. I think you would make an excellent specialist in a field. Are you a specialist in some discipline?
Don't get me wrong I love to particularise and define things too. It definitely has its advantages. Science is an incredible tool for understanding. But so is intuition and open, creative lateralised thinking.
You may see it as hocus pocus. I see it as a duality. Both are correct depending on perspective and they can be overlapped or kept separate in whatever way you see fit.
Oh yes we definitely bestow information on objects. That's our "meaning" for them right? It's characteristics (form, texture, appearance, how it "feels" to us) and its purpose (sentimental value, usefulness, how it behaves) - "Qualitative information".
We "know" physical objects through how we interpret and formulate this meaning for them.
The meaning can change from useful to useless, from beautiful, precious to worthless and ugly, disposable, ignorable.
Not only do we have the information we apply to them (their relative meaning or quality to an individual) but they have innate information (that which science elucidates - "Quantitative information" - its mass, component atoms, density, luminosity, heat, caloric content - the energy contained in joules, its gravitation, the wavelengths of light it absorbs and releases.
So information about the same object in question can be qualitative (subjective meaning/information ) and quantitative (discrete, objective, universally measurable meaning/information).
In that way the information we have for any given object is a). Open to interpretation/possibility (waveform) and finite and precise (particulate)
As quantum physics suggests. Conscious decision has influence on the outcome for the information received from an object. Consciousness I believe is universal and fundamental, how we decide to use and interpret it is up to us as observers, we can quantise everything or qualify everything. We ought to do both simultaneously though I guess, to get the "full picture".
Hence the original post I have on the big bang and its relationship to consciousness which prompted our conversation with one another.
You're always free to object or point out the flaws. To consider it hocus pocus. I welcome the debate. I learn from you as much as you learn from me. The basis of philosophical debate I would imagine.
I can see the image change, but as it has been stated multiple times already, that perception requires time.
However, from a meta perspective, if we can imagine such, then the image is what it is, all at once. There is no happening per se, e.g. no changing. It's just a static image beyond any possible perception.
Why can't both be true?
Correct indeed.
Duality my friend. Things can be one and separate simultaneously, depending on where we choose to discriminate, to draw a boundary, to place limits. Those limits are always movable. Wave, particle, potential, actual, false, true, real, ideal.
Its a matter of perspective
That's simple enough to grasp.
It definitely appears to be a duality of sorts. Does this relate in any way to dualism, the idea that the physical and mental are distinct substances?
I would say yes in a once sense and no in another (Duality again see? Haha)
In the yes sense: mental energy (electrical impulses that make up thought-scape) has the capacity to behold ideals, new concepts, new ideas, new innovations, an imagination, dreams and ambitions: things that are not "physical" and don't have a strictly physical counterpart in reality.
Yet.
"Yet" being the key word. As any thought, idea or concept, emotion or personal expression (mental) can be made physical: articulated, demonstrated, written down, painted, invented/constructed, argued, portrayed in media: films, literature, scientific reports, etc to make that mental into something tangible - something physical and thus appreciable by others. Communication - the Bridge between the mentalscape and physical landscape of existence.
In the no sense: the mental is a product of physical processes: the brain is organic, chemical and electrical in nature, it can only absorb, process and modulate, amend, adapt, recreate, reformulate physical observable/empirical/pre-existing information from its environment through the various senses.
Duality in this sense pertains to the border of self: "I/me" vs. "other". I exist as a product of the environment around me and a creator of the environment around me simultaneously.
A "two-way" information exchange between my memory and active interactions going on in the external world that I can observe and either make memories from or ignore/not focus on and dismiss or forget.
In this way I shape not only my self identity but also the external world relative to me simulatenously. If I identify as a pessimistic/cynical person I will perceive the external world as thus, devoid of magic, pointless, uninteresting, skeptical, unimaginative, overly binary, purely rational, just mechanistic and objective.
If I on the other hand if identify myself as positive/inspired/optimistic I interpret the external environment thus - a magical place full of potential, the fantastical , mysterious, creativity, imagination, irrationality, pure energy and intuition.
This is the inherent Duality of relativism. I think overly engaging in either front is detrimental: if we fixate on the optimistic side/the ideal - we are all hippy-flippy, erratic and rely too much on intuition, if we fixate on the rational we purge ourselves of all ability to be creative, we accept what is the case will always be the case which is depressing and leaves us helpless, impotent to do anything new.
We must consider Duality as a balanced system, an equilibrium - and in that case there is both rational and irrational things in the external environment as there is equally in the internal environment, the mind.
As above, so below, as outside, so within.
I hope this explains dualism more robustly. If you have anything to suggest, contradict don't hesitate to do so :)
Quoting Banno
:up: Math to the rescue ... again!
Quoting Gnomon
Can you elaborate further on, how shall I put it?, the relationship betwixt time and change.
I've never studied math beyond basic trig. I've only touched on a little calc.
I assume that this person's math proves that the image we're discussing changes over distance, from right to left, with no respect to time.
As it has been stated before several times, that is true...but only If we take all perception out of the equation. Once perception is introduced, then change only has meaning in the context of time, e.g. it takes time for my eyes to scan the image and process changes in the patterns.
I can if you'd like Agent Smith. :)
Change requires the "energy" to do it, and the "time" for it to get done.
Change exerts change on everything around it but itself because the only way change could change itself is to become "unchange" .
Mind boggling contradiction here I know.
That's where time sweeps in to rectify it.
Change acts from a timeless state (speed of light). Here in the timeless state change is constant in its quality to change things around it.
Those things around it exist in time. They have duration, transformation etc. Hence why they can be changed. They are temporal existents.
So in conclusion time is the medium that divides the cause (change with its fixed quality to cause) and that which is subject to it/acted upon (fixed quality to be effect).
Hope this clears things up.
Since this is a philosophy rather than a physics forum, I thought I’d throw in some ideas on time from a few philosophers.
Kant attributed to Newton the notion that space and time are absolute qualities of the world , and to Leibnitz the idea that space and time are only relational qualities of matter. Kant argues instead that the quality of change you describe is an idea of the mind rather than an absolute or relative property of nature. Time is the form of inner intuition. Everything we will ever perceive will be perceived as being in time.
“ Now what are space and time? Are they actual entities? Are they only determinations or also relations of things, but still such as would belong to them even if they were not intuited? Or are they such that they belong only to the form of intuition, and therefore to the subjective constitution of our mind, without which these predicates could not be ascribed to any things at all?”(Critique of Pure Reason)
Henri Bergson argued: “duration is a principle of qualitative differentiation in a heterogeneous multiplicity.
“The concept of quality, in opposition to quantity, is not sufficient to understand nature. Both concepts lack what the other has. Pure qualities are perfectly individual but are not connected to each other (CII 430-435). This is why qualitivism leads to Leibnizian idealism of monads without windows, according to Bergson. Quantities, on the contrary, are related to each other but to such a degree that they do not have an individuality or inner principle. Bergson wants to avoid both (monadological) idealism and mechanism by understanding nature as “both participating in extension and force, in quantity and quality” (CII)”
Alfred North Whitehead followed this line of thinking further.
“The rejected Newtonian doctrine of simple location dovetails with the conception of space and time in terms of external relations, that is, the conception of space and time as absolute ‘immovable’ containers external to and unaffected by the things located in space and time (see Newton’s Scholium cited in PR 70). By understanding
spatiotemporal relations as external relations, Newton develops a “ ‘receptacle’ theory of space–time”
(PR 70)—which, for clarity’s sake, should not be confused with Whitehead’s later notion of ‘the Receptacle’.
Understood as such, space and time are ‘empty’ forms (PR 72) that merely ‘accommodate’ bodies, without affecting or being affected by what they accommodate. Mirroring the two inseparable aspects of the doctrine of internal relations, Newton’s externality of space and time entails, first, that bodies enjoy an independence from their spatiotemporal relations and are ‘simply located’, and, two, that space and time remain unmovable and unmodified by the extension of bodies.
Rejecting Newton’s doctrine, Whitehead takes precisely the opposite stance; Of the ‘Receptacle’— which in Adventures of Ideas is his concept referring to “the general notion of extension” (AI 258; see also AI 192)—he says: “It is part of the essential nature of each physical actuality that it is itself an element qualifying the Receptacle, and that the qualifications of the Receptacle enter into its own nature.” (AI 171) In other words, the fact that “the relata modify the nature of the relations” (AI 201) entails that extension as the “primary relationship” (PR 288) between actual occasions, is modified by these occasions. “
I think Kant and Leibnitz were both correct. Because Kants notion of time and space being absolute (controlled for/assumed constant) gives access to the formulation of Newtonian physical equations. Which have very good predictive value.
Until, Einstein revealed leibnitz's view as on a par in terms of importance, that relative motion of matter in space-time are relevant. That time behaves differently for objects at different speed. Which again has good predictive value.
So it seems that time has a Duality. When we objectify it as a quantitative constant it allows us to observe the Newtonian physical qualities and behaviours of the universe.
When we do not fix it as a quantitative constant but rather a quality which is "perceived" by a physical observer, we open up to the special relativistic character of time, something that experientially based can pass at different rates for different observers based on speed.
It doesn't seem sensible to allow for such a contradiction regarding a phenomenon. But I use the analogy of two people staring at the number 69 on the floor.
One argues that it says "69" and the opposition on the other side states that it clearly reads "96".
Both are absolutely correct in their perception of the number from their relative viewpoints as anyone else would be if they assumed the same positions relative to the number.
But the truth is that this is a dualistic setup. Where an observer has more than one rationalisation available to them despite the fact that it negates the other, despite them being equal and opposite.
Newton described that every action has an "equal and opposite reaction" ironically including his choice to formulate newtonian physics, its equal and opposite being relativistic physics later elucidated by Einstein. Both highly intelligent scientists in their own right.
The contradiction can be created by assuming only one is correct, and removed by understanding why they are both correct yet different, by encapsulating them in a greater set of truths.
Kant’s notion of time is a critique of Newton’s. Time is neither an absolute quatitative constant for Kant, not a relationship between material objects. It is the passive exposure of subjective intuition to an outside, to something existing. We generate time in apprehending, and must have something outward if there is to be apprehension. Time is the activity of pure self-affecting.
I hope that's not the last word on the subject. :roll:
"...only If we take all perception out of the equation". A better question is why you insist on including perception.
You are making the unfounded assumption that change only occurs when perceived, with all the antirealist consequences I've pointed out many times before.
Changes may happen unperceived. We just do not know about them. What is true and what is known are different things. You are concatenating them, to the detriment of your capacity to explain stuff.
There are things that are true yet unknown.
Quoting Benj96
As has pointed out, this is just incorrect. The scare quotes probably indicate that Benj is aware of this, but thinks of pointing to some alternative use of "energy" and "time". But then, why the pretence of talking about physics?
Quoting Joshs
...quoted in a paragraph of it's own as if it said something useful.
The only positive one might take from these appalling posts is the reminder that there are folk hereabouts who are not interested in clarity, in explanation, but have instead an active preference for the cryptic and esoteric. These are the folk who will explain the ineffable at great length, with no awareness of the irony involved. Historically such a thread runs parallel to, but against the flow, of philosophy, which seeks open rational explanation.
Now to be sure there are profound mysteries all around us. But doing philosophy badly is no way to address them. What's unfortunate is that folk such as see such discussions and rightly laugh at philosophy.
All this by way of saying what is being argued here is not my cup of tea, so I'll leave you to it. The way out of the flybottle might be over there, when you are ready.
As a layperson, I'm inclined to hold a similar perspective to this. The problem for someone like me is that in the absence of a theorized philosophy, all I have are intuition and 'common sense'. It is fascinating to me that some forms of philosophy seem to hold irrationalist positions and seek to remove any form of foundational thinking as though philosophy is tantamount to demolition work. It's fascinating and exciting to read, but I understand your dismay.
That makes sense.
What about time though? How can things change without time?
Is this all theoretical or are there examples of things that change without time?
Is it possible to explain it simply?
How does change happen without time?
Maybe. Suppose you are looking at the computer screen before you. It is devoid of imagery, but is a continuously changing color from yellow on the left to red on the right. If you allow your eyes to move from left to right there is an element of time change involved. But if you simply move back a bit and look at the entire screen what you see is yellow changing to red as an entity of its own, not requiring a period of time.
This seems overly simplistic. Banno can do better.
Quoting Banno :up: :lol:
So let me get this straight. Are you arguing that the contributions to the understanding of time offered by the likes of Bergson, James, Whitehead, Husserl, Heidegger, Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty runs “against the flow of philosophy” and opposes itself to “open rational explanation”? Or are you just unhappy with the quality of posts on this particular thread?
Are you talking about perceiving red and yellow as one simultaneous unity? Together but separate?
A mass of a given unit measure can exist in the physical present. A temperature of a given unit can exist in the physical present. Length exists in the physical present. Also voltage, moles, and luminous intensity.
A duration of time cannot exist in the physical present and is a derived unit by referencing to other matter. Brains exist only in the physical present. However brains perceive past, present and future. Past and future, of course, do not physically exist in the physical present.
So what I'm seeing is that our brains deal with more than actually does physically exist. And our brains hold ideas of time, some of which could be in error.
Perceiving the changing from yellow to red simultaneously. Not quite change, I'll admit.
It might be helpful if you quoted what he/she said so I could understand better her point of view.
I use scare quotes for certain words as I have a dualistic approach to things. Energy means one thing physically/objectively and an another as a concept/sensation/feeling.
It has quantitative and qualititative characteristics.
I would imagine from the context you gave me that jgill is referring to energy and time from a materialism/objective perspective. From the point of view of an observer using them as controls (constants) for the purpose of newtonian measurements.
Again the quote would have been useful as I don't like to make assumptions about what others said.
Quoting Banno
It's not pretence. In case you weren't aware physics treats time dualistically as well (newtonian =where its absolute/external and constant) and special relativity (where it changes in reference to an observer depending on velocity).
So if I'm "just incorrect", shall we discard special relativity altogether? I think you'll have a hard time trying to convince physicists to that.
Perhaps then you presumed from your own rigid set of assumptions the interpretation of exactly what I meant when I used the scare quotes. Communication is as much about what the listener already assumes as it is about what is meant by the orator. The difference is the interpretation.
I hope i clarified my position a bit better now.
Well I think he ought to have not critiqued Newton's findings as incorrect as they're extremely useful and gave rise to a pretext for the elucidation of all of mechanical newtonian physics.
At best he ought to have clarified that "perception of time" is another facet to objective/standardised and discrete time, the former created internally through the ability to have memories and thus anticipate change in reference to that data set.
They dont mutually exclude the existence of both facets of time. One is (conceptual/our experience of it) the other is how it runs outside of us as observers (objective).
Physics later confirmed this with the advent of special relativity which considers the role of the observer on how the external time changes at different velocities. It consolidated newtonian physics and relativity as referring to the same thing just with a separate prerequisite set of assumptions.
This is Banno's patented bullshit story, which Banno knows is bullshit, yet will continue to defend until the very end of Banno's time. Simply put, you see yellow on one side, and you see red on the other. You do not see yellow changing to red, nor do you see red changing to yellow, as the latter assigns a priority to red, and the former assigns a priority to yellow.
This bullshit is just a ploy by Banno to create ambiguity in the meaning of "change", so that equivocation can be effectively used in the practise of sophistry. It is examples like this which display the reason why I accused Banno of dishonesty in the truth thread.
Your thought experiment read simply, but the instructions were not that clear to me.
Is this color scheme, this shift from yellow to red on the computer screen a static gradient? What am I supposed to be imagining here? "Continuously changing color" is throwing me off.
Now if I move back from the screen far enough, I can kind of see where you might be going. Colors can blur together, and from that distance away, one could see things as the same.
Do you happen to have an image or a gif that you could post for this example that might help?
The computer screen example I gave is really all about how something has changed, rather than change itself.
Quoting Watchmaker
Sorry for presenting it. :sad:
I linked to it.
(Canales)
(Bergson)
For Bergson the concept of "duration" - inadequately defined - speaks to the continuity of time, similar to the continuity of the real line vs the line as an uncountable collection of dimensionless points (though mathematically, "separable" - having a countable dense subset).
It has the smell of Tory romanticism about it, that pining for what might have been.
Sure, but in measurement there is a duality of the thing measured, and the measurement. These two are distinct. What the clock says, is the measurement. What do you think is being measured?
This is very similar to heisenbergs principle of uncertainty.
Take a particle at a single instance in time. It is a fixed point. Locatable. But we have no sense of its Velocity when we only have the present instant to base that prediction off. You cannot ascertain the speed of something in time when the time stamp is precise.
Now allow the particle to move in its sphere of potential locations. Now the Velocity is measurable (the track it takes, as a waveform of probable positions) however we now have lost its exact position (particularity) in this moment. Because we are not in "freeze-frame" but motion.
This is the uncertainty that partitions the particulate (objective) from the wave (potential/probability).
And in essence this explains as you referenced above with the elastic analogy by Bergson.
Time, like particles vs waves (light) is a Duality.
To know one state you cannot know the other.
Because to know both leaves no room for "change" (uncertainty).
Progression of physical matter.
Clocks are physical matter that can delivery a number.
The idea of duration of time can exist in your mind and it's very useful but duration ( time initial to time final ) can't exist in the physical present. All we are doing with the idea of time is piggybacking on the progression of physical matter.
Indeed mark. In physics we standardise time as a constant so we can place it in reference to other phenomena and make calculations/predictions.
What is a clock but something cyclical - whether its based on atomic oscillations or a pendulum, or the rate of decay of an unstable isotope, or the vibration of a quartz crystal, or a 12 hour domestic circular clock face, it measures the "to-and-fro", the frequency, of something that repeats.
We use that frequency as a standard to make things linear or "chronological", and that gives us access to Newtonian/mechanical physics (objective and discrete).
What it doesn't offer though is access to special relativity or quantum physics unless we look at time from two other formats: (the perception of an observer - relativity) and probability/uncertainty (the Wave-particle function of quantum physics).
- as i outlined above in response to jgills Bergson post.
Well, is our body and brain not progression of physical matter also? Our body has an inherent rhythm, from which our mind (the energy coursing around our nervous system) extrapolates a perception of time from. This perception is considered both very precise but also inaccurate.
In the sense that "time flies when you're having fun" - processing a lot of alerting/thrilling stimuli. But in another way one can easily train themselves through routine to wake up one minute before their alarm goes off (which I think is amazing).
Meanwhile time continues in a non "your perception" sense when you die. As time is required for your body to decay and be transformed through natural processes.
When we speak of time really we are speaking about three things and their interrelationship: 1). Energy (potential to do work), 2). Matter (potential to be worked/acted upon) and 3). Information/change - the intermediate between and including the first two: as energy holds information, matter holds information, and acts (the process of their influence on one another), again has information.
To me, the best way to understand time psychologically is to define information as brain state existing as the physical brain with mental content. No Tinkerbelling please. Energy should be just energy and matter should be just matter.
Quoting Gnomon
:100:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2346548-quantum-trick-sees-light-move-forwards-and-back-in-time-simultaneously/?utm_source=nsday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nsday_111122&utm_term=Newsletter%20NSDAY_Daily
I'll try my best not to tinkerbell haha.
What do we mean by "information". For me it is synonymous with "change" and thus requires two distinct states of existence: 1). An observer and the 2) the observed
So far so good?
Observation is an active process (it requires information to travel from A (the object) to B (the subject).
Information can only travel between the two if there is a). Inherent information on offer within the object - for example matter - which gives quantitative and qualitative information: how much, what shape, what texture, size, colour, location etc.
b) inherent information in the subject (a database for reference - Memory, as well as the perception of time that that data offers by being static (stored) in a changing external environment (one where new stimuli are constantly flowing in through the senses and influencing the database.
.
c). Sufficiently short distance between A and B so that the information exchange can be accurately interpreted as occurring almost simultaneously. Things that are light-years away are not occurring "now" when the light reaches our eyes. The speed of light (fastest rate at which information can travel) has an influence.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
But it is not.
They are the equivalent by a function of the speed of light. E=mc2. If energy should just be energy and matter just matter than you'd have to contest Einsteins famous and widely accepted formulas relating to general and special relativity.
Thank you jgill. :)
But what is measured by the clock, as time, is decisively not the "progression of physical matter". It is something which applicable to all the progression of all physical matter, yet it is not the progression of any physical matter itself. This is evident from the relationship between time and light. In this sense, time, as the thing measured, becomes more like a limit or restriction to the progression of physical matter.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
No that's not the case at all. As indicated above, we use time in the practise of physics, to restrict the things we can say about the progression of matter. So it is not a case of "piggybacking", it is a case of us saying, this is what time is, and time imposes limitations on matter, so our conceptions of matter must abide by these limitations which we say time enforces. A good example is the law of entropy.
The problem though, is that when we stipulate this is what time is, and these are the limitations it imposes on matter, how do we know that we have it right?
My mindset is that it's always the physical present and that physical matter changes.
What if instead of calling it time in our math we switched to calling it physical change units? The math would work out exactly the same and we would relieve ourselves of the false perception of time.
Is time a mathematical construct external to matter , such that it acts as a generic and universal limit on matter , while matter itself has aspects or properties which can be understood independently of time? Is time external to and unaffected by the things located in time?
Do they? Or do they think they know? :smile:
Quoting Raymond
Well, I don't think that it is a mystery: it is not something kept secret, neither something obscure nor something puzzling. No one questions what "time" is, since this word is deeply rooted into our minds and lives since ever. We are talking about it ... all the time. Right. Like in this expression, time has a lot of meanings and uses. We also personify it, using it as an entity, in phrases like "Time goes by", "Time heals", etc. And we treat it as something that we even own: "I have no time for this", "My time is limited", "My time or your time (different time zones)?", etc.
But the essence of time escapes most people, even philosophers and scientists. Yet, Heraclitus had shown --2,500 years ago-- in the best way possible the essence of time, and without even talking about it: "Everything flows". "You can't walk into the same river twice." Perpetual movement and change. So, the actual mystery is why have we kept on chasing a phantom since then! :smile:
How would we relieve ourselves of false perceptions of time when we cannot avoid perceiving time? Its part of consciousness.
If you ask 10 people how much time elapsed after a fun/exhilarating event like a roller-coaster ride, you'll find a large descrepency between individual opinion. Some may say it took 28 seconds, others 1 minute and 10 seconds, when according to a clock it may have actually been 47 seconds.
I would say no as time passes internally (perception) and externally (standardised for use by everyone as a collective).
A person just waking from a coma likely has a very different perception of the passage of time as someone who lived their life conscious during that coma period.
When you sleep does it feel like 8 hours have passed? Or does it feel like you fell asleep, had a few minutes worth of dream recollection and then woke up? The perception of time is dependent on level of consciousness.
Time clearly then has Duality. That which is personally interpreted to have passed, and that which has objectively passed/elapsed.
Well you would find relatvity very interesting then. As because it takes time for light/other perceivable information to travel a distance, according to relativity nothing is "simultaneous".
According to relativity an absolute "present" doesn't exist for objects/observers. If it did then everything - past, present and future would all occur equally instantaneously.
Empirical Science studies the effable & phenomenal (physical) aspects of the world. So, it's left to Philosophy to dabble in the ineffable & mental (metaphysical) features of reality. Whenever a scientist makes a generalized inference about her object of study, she's doing philosophy or metaphysics, not physics. The art of philosophy is to describe abstractions, such as space & time, in metaphors that allow us to imagine concepts that are not physical things, but "psychologically real" metaphysical meanings. Metaphors & analogies are intended to express ineffable ideas in meaningful comparisons.
Ironically, the best scientists are not just data-loggers, but philosophers who extract general meaning from the specific data. "Rational explanation" is not a phenomenal observation, but a logical (philosophical) inference. Nobel-prize-winning scientists are usually the ones who make the ineffable effable. For example, Einstein replaced the notion of Space as a vacuum lacking contents & properties, with the metaphor of space as a flexible fabric and a pool of potential (virtual ; unreal) energy. :smile:
phenomenon : noun. ['f??n??m??n??n'] any state or process known through the senses rather than by intuition or reasoning.
Ineffable :
There are two slightly different flavors to 'ineffable', let's call them 1) things impenetrable to our understanding and 2) things that defy description. For the latter we need not venture beyond our imaginations to find the limitations of language...
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/65854/have-philosophers-explored-the-ineffable-and-what-in-our-language-makes-it-impo
The illusion of time :
[i]Why is time controversial? It feels real, always there, inexorably moving forward. Time has flow, runs like a river. Time has direction, always advances. Time has order, one thing after another. Time has duration, a quantifiable period between events. Time has a privileged present, only now is real. Time seems to be the universal background through which all events proceed, such that order can be sequenced and durations measured. . . .
To many physicists, while we experience time as psychologically real, time is not fundamentally real. At the deepest foundations of nature, time is not a primitive, irreducible element or concept required to construct reality.[/i]
https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html
Quoting Gnomon
And the physical and the mental are separable aspects? Empirical science isnt already dealing with the mental in studying the physical (the objective as the product of intersubjective organization of subjective experience)? Time is a more abstract concept than physical object?
What?
We can't escape our mental models of time even when we try to do physics only time... it's still a mental model.
Anyway, I agree it's been a good discussion.
I would agree we should think in two categories, psychological and physical. Also the importance of consciousness and memory as you mentioned last week.
But it's great that we have the imagination, creativity and lateral thinking skills to posit deeper questions about what time means to us, how is it perceived, where it comes from and what is its relationship to not just us but anything at all.
In that way it's the most basic, trivial/mundane of things but also one of the most profound and illusive.
Of course! Don't you distinguish between those categories? Physical is real & tangible, while Mental is an imaginary intangible model of Reality. One is matter-based, and the other is meaning-based. One is here & now, while the other is anywhere & any-when.
Animals, who don't make such "trivial" irrelevant distinctions, live in a material world of the 5 senses, while humans live in a cultural world modified by the mind. For example, turkeys feel blessed to be currently living high-on-the-hog, with no mental concept of Thanksgiving in their future. :smile:
I don't see how anything could be understood independently of time. I think we could presume to understand something independent of time, but that would just be a misunderstanding.
Time (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
People sure have come up with a few ideas about time over the years (pun intended):
Whatever time may be, it seems to involve duration and simultaneity, so, a theory of time would have to account for those.
Science tends to tie space and time together, at least in some respects. What about absence?
Abstract Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Abstractionism in Mathematics (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In a way, objects (spatial) are to space what processes (temporal) are to time (and vice versa). Common, everyday stuff:
It's not easy to talk about something that can't be expressed in words. Good luck.
That doesn't seem to inhibit scientists & philosophers from inventing new words to express formerly ineffable concepts. For example, C.S. Pierce coined the term "pragmaticism" to distinguish his personal philosophy from what he considered to be a corrupted sense of "pragmatism". Creation of Neologisms is a form of terminological innovation. Ineffable concepts are usually expressed indirectly by metaphors & analogies. :smile:
Neologism :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism
Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy :
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/ineffability-and-its-metaphysics-the-unspeakable-in-art-religion-and-philosophy/
It’s interesting that you identify the material
with the tangible. What is physically real is what we can touch. Touching is interacting If we further analyze the basis of information we receive through touch, we find the sensory and the motoric, in the modes of our ways of moving in relation to objects, and the kinesthetic feedback from our movements, are inseparably involved in what objects are to us. In other words , what allows us to interpret objects as objects is a body schematic integrating touch sensation, kinesthetic feedback from bodily movement , as well as the input from other sense modalities, especially vision.
This is also how other animals construct meanings concerning the world they interact with. Animals may move in a ‘material world’ , but that world appears very differently to different animals as a result of the different body schemas of various animals. In sum , a perceived object is a product of a scheme of interaction with an environment based on the needs and purposes of an organism. We call aspects of our environment ‘material’ and ‘physical’ as a result of the ways we have come to interact with our world. Thus, not only our experience of the imaginary, but also our experience of the actual is a synthetic construction of the real. The real is a production and not a passive
observation , something we enact as much as discover.
Yes, but doing so has the drawback of inferring false information while attempting to make an arcane subject accessible to the average person. Here are two examples of existing realities that are difficult to convey with words, hence a bit ineffable, where popularization by science writers is misleading. However, no harm is done.
Virtual "particles"
"Curved" space
Yes. Some posters on this forum naively assume that they know Reality, when what they know is an imaginary construct inferred from a variety of sensory inputs. Those mental models tend to be based on limited experience with reality, and include some emotional evaluations that are specific to the observer. These limitations & filters are what make philosophical Epistemology necessary for weeding out the irrelevant or erroneous elements of our worldviews. It's a never-ending struggle, that has a modern nemesis in the ease-of-access to fringe opinions, viral memes and assorted misinformation & disinformation. Fortunately, by exchanging opinions with opinionated people (in real or virtual forums), we can learn where our models of reality overlap, to reinforce or weaken our prior opinions.
Back to the OP : the "mystery" about Time involves the philosophical problem : that we can legitimately question whether it is a property of Reality, or of human Imagination or both. :smile:
The illusion of time :
According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04558-7
Epistemology :
the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
Yes. Ideally, Science is supposed to be objective and dispassionate. But scientists are human beings, whose reasoning may sometimes be used in service to emotions, including comfortable prior beliefs & paradigms. So they can't help having feelings about their facts. And it's those ineffable Feelings that cannot be encapsulated in objective language.
That's why the pioneers of Quantum Theory so often resorted to metaphors, analogies, and Eastern religious concepts in their struggle to make sense of counter-intuitive and non-classical behaviors of sub-atomic reality. Presumably, it was the potential for watering-down of truth-values due to the fuzziness of feelings, that motivated frustrated Feynman to argue that physicists should not play the role of feckless philosophers ; instead, just "shut up and calculate". :smile:
David Hume on Reason :
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~mthompso/readings/hume.influencing.pdf
Shut up and calculate :
does a disservice to quantum mechanics
https://aeon.co/essays/shut-up-and-calculate-does-a-disservice-to-quantum-mechanics
Note -- By focusing solely on abstract Mathematical Values, purely objective Science loses the concrete and humanizing touch of Philosophy, which takes into account Moral Values & Personal Meanings : seeking to average individual emotions into universal motives, such as Love, Curiosity, etc..
Feelings :
"a feeling is an idea that hasn't been articulated yet" ___Timothy Morton, Object Oriented Ontology
Note -- Poetry & Philosophy are different ways of articulating ineffable feelings & hunches. No harm, no foul.
I thought it was Feynman, also, but it wasn't: David Mermin
Quoting Gnomon
It's tough being a leading edge physicist these days. At least mathematicians get to create their weirdnesses and don't have to attempt to interpret what nature throws at them. :chin:
Apparently, Feynman was quoting Mermin. But it was Feyman who made the quip famous as a viral meme. Quotes are usually attributed to the popularizer, not the originator, of catchy ideas. :cool:
Quoting jgill
Yes, but even uber-logical mathematicians work on the basis of a metaphysical worldview, implicitly assuming the existence (being qua being) of non-physical mathematical objects, that they mentally manipulate as-if real things. Time is just another non-physical notion that has practical applications. Subjective Metaphysics is usually about generalities & causal processes, not specific inert lumps of Objective Matter. :smile:
Mathematical Metaphysics :
[i]A third option immediately presents itself, which is a metaphysical account
that admits the existence of mathematical objects but not of physical objects.
Because it is intuitively obvious that physical objects exist, this appears absurd,
and so it should not be surprising that few philosophers have considered it[/i]
http://shelf1.library.cmu.edu/HSS/2015/a1626190.pdf
Metaphysical Mathematical Objects :
Unlike physical objects and properties, mathematical objects do not exist in space and time, and mathematical concepts are not instantiated in space or time. Our mathematical intuition provides intrinsic evidence for mathematical principles.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/
True enough. Many ideas pop out of the subconscious before the "uber-logical" aspect comes into play.
I've long considered mathematics a metaphysical realm with varying degrees of reality. Rates of change, derivatives, are close to physical reality, whereas infinitesimals are out there towards the other end of the spectrum.
Quoting Gnomon
I try to stay away from that odious clump. :cool:
Yes. All of those mathematical concepts are related to physical reality, but not detectable by the 5 senses. The connections are logical, not material. That's why I call the logical structure of the world, Meta-Physical. We "know' such things only by the 6th sense of Reason, which "sees" invisible relationships between things, and even between non-things (e.g. ideas). Even Infinity is conceivable relative to physical Finity. It's merely Space that is more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts, as indicated by unending ellipsis . . . . . . .
The "meta-physical realm" is not super-natural though, but simply mental (and meta-animal). It's an imaginary world parallel to (not above) the sensory world. Even gods & ghosts are imagined with evanescent bodies analogous to physical human bodies. Mystics who are especially tuned-in to the metaphysical world, seem to take their fantasies as more-real than reality. I've never had a mystical experience, but I have had, what you might call a "mathematical experience"*1 : when a logical interrelationship pattern suddenly becomes apparent. Some of those numerical epiphanies may sound like woo woo*2 to hard core materialists. :smile:
*1. Mathematical Experiences :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Experience
*2. My mathematical talents & skills are very ordinary, but in a Calculus class, I (me??) was surprised to be asked by a straight-A math major to explain the holistic concept of "Integrals". I guess the notion of wholes as more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts was more instinctive to little ole me, than to an either/or analytical/reductive thinker. On this forum, the taboo term "holism" will often bring-out the woo-boo-birds. But the concept of a composite whole is not super-natural, merely meta-physical : a rational concept, not a physical percept. :nerd: