What is Time?

[Vroomfondel]

The title speaks for itself: what is time?

To narrow the question down a little, is time an intrinisic feature of the universe, or is it an a priori conceptual projection of the human mind?

Or could it be a product of the interaction of both these features (i.e. "objective" features of the universe meeting the "subjective" human mind)? Or is it something else altogether?

[Kelly Jones]

I'd say that without the kind of consciousness that can remember, there's no time. There's just an indistinct blur of somethingness.

Within the remembering type of consciousness, it's said that time passes. I think that's supposed to mean something's seen and remembered to have changed.

[brokenhead]

Money.

[divine focus]

Time is a translation within perception of change and the continuousness of the present moment.

[Vroomfondel]

I'd say that without the kind of consciousness that can remember, there's no time. There's just an indistinct blur of somethingness.

Interesting image. What about anticipation of the future? Would this kind of consciousness be able to understand anything other than "now"?

Within the remembering type of consciousness, it's said that time passes. I think that's supposed to mean something's seen and remembered to have changed.

I think I agree with this, insofar as "time" is linked inexorably with "change".

Time is a translation within perception of change and the continuousness of the present moment.

Do you think you could expand on this a little more, divine focus? I'm not sure what you mean by "a translation within perception".

By "continous of the present moment" are you implying that there is only one "moment" or continum that our minds divide into "past" "present" and "future"? Or something else altogether?

[divine focus]

Time is a translation within perception of change and the continuousness of the present moment.

Do you think you could expand on this a little more, divine focus? I'm not sure what you mean by "a translation within perception".

By "continous of the present moment" are you implying that there is only one "moment" or continum that our minds divide into "past" "present" and "future"? Or something else altogether?

Change is inherent in the nature of consciousness. Within physicality, perception creates the reality of now and then. This is a translation of the remembrance of change within the continuous present. The present moment is not divided, but the past and future are abstracted within imagination and seemlessly integrated into the perceived reality of the passage of time.

[Kelly Jones]

I 'd say that without the kind of consciousness that can remember, there's no time. There's just an indistinct blur of somethingness.

Vroomfondel: What about anticipation of the future? Would this kind of consciousness be able to understand anything other than "now"?

Have a look at this post by Kevin. I wish I could think like this.

[truth_justice]

what is time?

tick-tack,tick-tack,tick-tack... get it? It's a pattern. And you, the thing you are, has the ability to recognize such patterns. So to a certain extend, time is you, and you are time.

[Ataraxia]

Have a look at this post by Kevin. I wish I could think like this.

Yes,that was a clever way of proving time logically.In fact it's a pretty good entire thread.Thanks for linking it.

What would be interesting, as a postscript, would be to learn how Kevin proves logically that time existed before he had memory.ie before he was conscious that time 'passes'-before he was born.

It seems to me when one says something is 'older' than our personal consciousness(in my case 40 years),then it must be an empirical claim, or an inference.

[Pincho Paxton]

Time is a descriptor of the allignment of events, it is an event address in a linear order. The descriptor has no substance beyond human understanding, it is not an entity, it is not mallable, it is merely a word. Any theory involving time as a variable is a theory that is using an unknown quantity which has been misplaced as time. Time as a variable cannot work in a theory, therefore the theory is at fault. The theory of relativity therefore has an error built into its foundations. There is a build speed, there is an aging universe, but there is no restriction on the speed that this build speed can take place. If the tick of a clock took 1000 virtual years to occur (Years where the next event in your brain has not taken place yet.) you would still feel that 1 second had passed. The speed in which your brain is updated is the 1st clock that a human can relate to.. however it does not prove that a second actually passed. You could be frozen in ice for 1 million years, and your brain would not be updated until you next awake. You would still feel that 1 second had passed. So time is relative only to yourself, and is therefore a human concept.

[brokenhead]

"Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."

- Richard Feynman

[Tomas]

The title speaks for itself: what is time?

To narrow the question down a little, is time an intrinisic feature of the universe, or is it an a priori conceptual projection of the human mind?

Or could it be a product of the interaction of both these features (i.e. "objective" features of the universe meeting the "subjective" human mind)? Or is it something else altogether?

Time is your heart ticking (nuclear reaction of universal truths) and when your heart stop beating you will know time no longer. Six-feet-deep.

Remember; things are not travelling along in straight-straight lines anymore, they travel in burrows which interconnect, you might dig into someone elses burrow without realizing it, it may be furnished with the most fantastic things you've ever seen. You might alight on an unfamiliar flower. But we must be sure that we make an escape passage or route unto another plane.

Tomas (the tank)
Prince of Jerusalem
16 Degree
Scottish Rite Free Mason




.

[mikiel]

Time is the human artifact/concept of "clocking" event duration.
The "event" is selected by the observer with "clock in hand" and it ... the event... "starts" when the observer starts the "stopwatch" and ends when s/he hits the "stop" button.
Beyond the limits of linear thinking, there are no beginnings and endings, pe se but the ongoing, eternal Now.

"The future" is the mental concept for what hasn't happened yet, (not yet real and *present*),and the past is the record/memory/concept of what has already happened (not still real and *present.*)
"Between" the two concepts, there is no "time", only the ongoing reality, the perpetual *present,*which is omnipresent.
mikiel

[Sapius]

"Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."

- Richard Feynmann

Nice

IMO, Time is no more than the rate of change in and of causality. Does it need to be anything more than that?

Mikiel;

Time is the human artifact/concept of "clocking" event duration.

So? How unnatural in a human or their “artifacts/concepts”?

Beyond the limits of linear thinking, there are no beginnings and endings, per se, but the ongoing, eternal Now.

And yet... the limits of linear thinking has discovered, (or should I say 'conceptualized'?), an eternal NOW. Wow!

"The future" is the mental concept for what hasn't happened yet, (not yet real and *present*),and the past is the record/memory/concept of what has already happened (not still real and *present.*)
"Between" the two concepts, there is no "time", only the ongoing reality, the perpetual *present,*which is omnipresent.
mikiel

Without a literally real past present and feature (Time), one could not arrive at the ‘perpetual *present* which is omnipresent’ concept, nor formulate or hold it, or communicate, supported by an actively dynamic memory. If it were not for a dynamic change in and of things, things that have the capability to sense or dynamically think, one could never ever arrive at anything.

The omnipresent NOW encompasses and actually IS the living moment of the linear past present and feature (Change, which requires Time), without which an “omnipresent” NOW could not “omnipresent*ly” be. Could it? Now one can choose one over the other by attributing profound importance, but both seem to be necessarily interdependent in my opinion.

[mikiel]

"Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."

- Richard Feynmann

Nice
One of my faves too... for a witty quip
IMO, Time is no more than the rate of change in and of causality. Does it need to be anything more than that?

Why "rate of change" rather than the universal fact that nothing is static... everything changes... which can be said to "have duration" (tick-tock) tho its always now.

Mikiel;

Time is the human artifact/concept of "clocking" event duration.

So? How unnatural in a human or their “artifacts/concepts”?

So timing or clocking *selected* event duration doesn't make "time" into an actual thing in-and-of itself. The concept has been erroneously reified to be such a reality.
As per the thread opener:So timing or clocking *selected* event duration doesn't make "time" into an actual thing in-and-of itself.
As per the thread opener:
"To narrow the question down a little, is time an intrinisic feature of the universe, or is it an a priori conceptual projection of the human mind?" So I say the latter, not the former.

Beyond the limits of linear thinking, there are no beginnings and endings, per se, but the ongoing, eternal Now.

And yet... the limits of linear thinking has discovered, (or should I say 'conceptualized'?), an eternal NOW. Wow!
If you followed my post, future ain't yet here and real... past aint still here and real... so what's left is NOW... always present.
Memory operates in the present. Anticipation and prediction of the future operates in the present. NOW simply is not "then."

"The future" is the mental concept for what hasn't happened yet, (not yet real and *present*),and the past is the record/memory/concept of what has already happened (not still real and *present.*)
"Between" the two concepts, there is no "time", only the ongoing reality, the perpetual *present,*which is omnipresent.
mikiel

Without a literally real past present and feature (Time), one could not arrive at the ‘perpetual *present* which is omnipresent’ concept, nor formulate or hold it, or communicate, supported by an actively dynamic memory. If it were not for a dynamic change in and of things, things that have the capability to sense or dynamically think, one could never ever arrive at anything.
The past is gone, the future ain't born yet. Get a grip.
Now is present reality, always.

The omnipresent NOW encompasses and actually IS the living moment of the linear past present and feature (Change, which requires Time), without which an “omnipresent” NOW could not “omnipresent*ly” be. Could it? Now one can choose one over the other by attributing profound importance, but both seem to be necessarily interdependent in my opinion.

"The living moment of the linear past" ain't still "living." It *was* living when it was happening in the present. Ditto "future."

I have 5 very real grandkids. My youngest son just got married, and they are looking forward to popping out a couple more. "They" are "now" just that gleam in the lovers' eyes... not yet "real kids."
(This is all *so obvious*... but it's one of my favorite debunking games... which makes it enjoyable... or I wouldn't waste my "time."
mikiel

[Sapius]

I have 5 very real grandkids. My youngest son just got married, and they are looking forward to popping out a couple more. "They" are "now" just that gleam in the lovers' eyes... not yet "real kids."
(This is all *so obvious*... but it's one of my favorite debunking games... which makes it enjoyable... or I wouldn't waste my "time."
mikiel

I'm glad for you, mikiel, enjoy! :)

[chikoka]

Quote:
"Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
- Richard Feynman

I'd like to point out that "now" or "once" is still also time .
What is meant when we speak of no time is a situation where there is no now , past and future.
True timelessness is something that is very hard to imagine.
It's almost as hard as imagining "no space"
No space does not mean something dark and empty.
That is still space. You can stretch it , curve it and do all sorts of things to it.
"no space" means not even that.

"No time" would not refer to something frozen so to speak because that instance is still time.

We could also imagine a state where "all time " exists.
Each moment of time would have with it a function that would generate the whole universe for each instance.
That would mean that each of us only exist momentarily but we exist momentarily a lot of times .There would be no movement ,so to speak , of time but that illusion will be that each moment of you will have a memory of the "past" and so will seem as if you came from there.

[mikiel]

chikoka: 'True timelessness is something that is very hard to imagine."
Imagine this:
Earth never formed... no humans... no clocks. The rest of the solar system/cosmos remains as is... tho Earth's orbit is naturally "filled in."

All bodies keep spinning and orbiting. All atoms keep oscillating. Light still travels at the same velocity, tho obviously not measured in Earth-commensurate terms.
Everything, in short keeps happening the same, but no humans are running around with stopwatches selecting events and designating their "beginnings and endings" with respective pushes of the button.

Where is "time" in this scenario? Now is all there IS, ongoing, always, perpetually "flowing" without the artificial "segments" we humans designate as arbitrary slices, fractions of an Earth rev. or orbit.

Now IS eternal. Now is omnipresent... same "now" everywhere. No "pieces" of anything anywhere called "time." We invented it and now most "believe" it is something real in and of itself. Not!
mikiel

[Dan Rowden]

Time is a measurement of rate of change. Without a consciousness that experiences change and has memory, time just wouldn't exist.

As for eternity, well, that's not a very long time; it's really no time at all.

[Alex Jacob]

Time, I have to say, is something I have never understood. I confess complete ignorance on the subject...

It only made me think of this melancholic song:

Who Knows Where the Time Goes
________________________________________

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

[Dan Rowden]

No aesthete can ever be wise.

[Ataraxia]

Time is a measurement of rate of change.

Yes

Without a consciousness that experiences change and has memory, time just wouldn't exist.

Ok,then my question to you is :what does man say in regard to this when he digs in the earth and observes layers of strata containing different species.Is this not ,at least empiricial evidence, that what you've described as time above 'passed'; prior to consciousness/memory?

How do we speak of time,during the 'time' of the early development of organisms?

Do we say that the earth has "memory'"?

[mikiel]

Time is a measurement of rate of change. Without a consciousness that experiences change and has memory, time just wouldn't exist.

As for eternity, well, that's not a very long time; it's really no time at all.

Time is a measurement of "event" duration, and the "event" is designated/selected by what the measurer is focused on measuring.

"Rate of change?" You are making it overly complicated, Dan. Change requires "duration." This cosmos is not a picture "frozen in time." My last post was to this point. Time is a product of "timing" or "clocking" whatever is the observer's focus and "window of observation."

Yes, Earth is about 4 billion years old. The dating of rocks proves it... meteorites being over 4 billion and native rocks about 3.5 billion if my old-fart memory serves well. So, in terms of Earth orbits, we can say the above with a fair degree of accuracy. But "time" remains just the concept of duration here, specified by our invented "segments of time"... of which there are none in the real cosmos.
As to : "Without a consciousness that experiences change and has memory, time just wouldn't exist"...
True, but, as per my above post, everything still "happens." It aint a "still life," but saying 'change takes time" does not reify "time."

And finally, I agree that eternity is no time at all. That's what the ongoing (eternal) present means. Now is not divided into specified pieces. This is our mental/conceptual creation only.

mikiel

[Jamesh]

Nice

IMO, Time is no more than the rate of change in and of causality.

Nice!

Does it need to be anything more than that?

What you just said is it's holistic meaning, its "infinite" meaning. As we all know, time also has meaning in the traditional finite sense, the passage of time we observe.

Both are observations of the same "thing". In effect, these are dualistically opposite to each other, and in doing so both definitions must be valid, as only the unity of both sub-definitions creates the "thing" that is Time. Both are measured or compared dualistically against a "now" that has no change. Your use of the phrase "rate of change" above is similar, it is a combination of the finite and infinite. I guess the phrase "Time is in and of causality" is more accurate - it encompasses Cause "In" and Effect "of".

A cause cannot be a cause unless part of the reason it is a cause is that its action is "time creating". That causes are 'time-creating" signifies that what causes "rates of change" is fundamentally one and the same. This means time, as a descriptor of causal action, should also be dualistically divisible. And it is, as I have indicated on other occasions.

[I have doubts I've made myself sufficiently clear above -it doesn’t read well]

[hsandman]

No aesthete can ever be wise.

Then -> No wise man can ever be aesthete.

One has to be wise to know the difference between poop and a rose.
One has to be aesthete to appreciate the difference between poop and a rose.

I keep roses in my vase.
Just knowing the difference is not enough for me. Wise man knows the difference, yet he can not appreciate it, for "No aesthete can ever be wise".

Is this your "pearl of wisdom" or did you take wrong turn somewhere step in it and brought it home on your shoe soule? Where are you getting these contorted definitions of words from? Wise,Genius.. I know the words Truth and Courage is meaning-less to you people as indicated by the lockdown of Worldly forum…

Do you have special meaning for word Honesty as well, or is this boards motto some sort of twisted word pun at reality?

There is more to Life. You don’t have to be a “machine/psychopath” to be wise and enlightened, you can also, at the same time be alive and enjoy and appreciate the ups and downs of this “time” and not just define “what it is”.