If Time exist then the future exists. We would have no real say in its outcome.
Oh man, that’s a tough one.
My guess is, I would have no idea, philosophically because I don’t see how anything can be empirically proved of time, and practically because my various clocks will all continue to display the same numbers.
Still, between you ‘n’ me and the philosophical fence post, the primary conditioning power of the categories in both Aristotle and Kant metaphysical doctrines would be in serious jeopardy, if time should be “proved” illusory.
But if ‘Time’ is real then whether or not I reply, or what is my reply has already been decided and/or posted. I’m not trying to be difficult it’s just that in a determinate universe we would be locked in and have no actual say, that is my response if any would be dictated/predetermined. But as it is I believe we do have free will and for that reason also believe that Time does not exist.
I don’t know anything much about physics but have encountered this argument and see it as almost clutching at a straw, inconclusive and for that reason still arbitrary.
That’s right—‘time’ refers to motion, whereas ‘Time’ would be a chronological progression, with the arrow of time pointing in a specific direction.
One thing clear is that time is nowhere to be seen in the real world. What is seen is, motions, changes and intervals of objects. If we call them time, then they do exist. But are they?
Isn’t time human perception of the intervals of the changes and motions taken place in regularity, and evolved into the social contract in the civilisation.
Please be aware that not everyone accepts that premise.
Personally I think Determinism is a red herring. No-one can describe how “free will” decisions would work in a non-deterministic universe.
If my choice of coffee or tea is not a function of which one I like the taste of, and prior knowledge (e.g. “A cup of coffee will keep me awake too late”), then what else?
Strikes me that an analysis of the “realness” of time fails for different reasons than the realness of things in that time and things are of different categories entirely.
Asking whether the boat I see is the “real” boat fails because it imposes an incoherent use of “real” on the boat. That is, we’re not asking if it’s a mirage or real, but whether it’s absolutely real (really real), which leaves us with a metaphysically impossible question.
But the question whether time is really real doesn’t fail for the same reason as boats. I know what it means to say “there’s no real boat in the sea” (e.g. it’s a toy, a mirage, etc.), but I don’t know what it means to say “there’s no real time in the sea.” Time is necessary for coherence, making it a necessity for meaning. To ask if there’s time is to ask whether there is meaning.
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Time is real in the sense, that we use them. Time is illusion in the sense, that it is invisible.
Suppose it is proven illusory. We still interpret time. We still die.
How would these doctrines be jeopardized?
If time is illusory, then there should be no demonstratable physical phenomena (e.g. the aforementioned Second Law of Thermodynamics) that depend on time. Yet such phenomena do exist. That in turn implies that time is not illusory.
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Not the doctrines; the categories contained in them, which are principles having time as their ground. If time is illusory, then so are categories, insofar as those propositions may not be true, and if they are not true then that which is grounded by them may not be true, which ends up being…..it may not be true, e.g., to be perceived is to exist. From which follows it may be possible to perceive that which doesn’t exit, and the whole world falls to pieces, including those stupid clocks!!! (Gasp)
For these categories…
The schema of possibility is the agreement of the synthesis of various representations with the conditions of time in general;
The schema of reality is existence at a determinate time;
The schema of necessity is existence at all times.
Even if that’s all pure junk given the so-called advances in philosophy these days, it remains a fact there would be a drastic change in at least one philosophical perspective if time is proved illusory.
And given certain presuppositions, it’s quite simple to prove time is not real.
But a universal proof for either seems vanishingly small, so……
Certainty is too high a bar for any theory.
But I digress, the argument that time is illusory is so ill-posed that it doesn’t make sense to take it seriously.
Now, if time is emergent, that’s another thing. But it wouldn’t change the status of whatever categories we have, I don’t think.
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I’d say time is real but not fundamental.
I believe time and space emerged when the energy of the big bang became matter.
At the most fundamental level there’s energy, and if some fluctuation converts it to matter before there is space, it is extremely compressed, hot, explodes and expands. That’s how I imagine the beginning of space and time.
Suppose we’re still embedded in that timeless non-spatial state of affairs. Is it what enables entanglement of particles? Is that what’s waiting inside a black hole?
Just my Sunday speculation..
Yep. That was what I said.
So water and air are also illusions. But not mirages, which are visible.
Given the time that has passed since you wrote that reply, a more reasonable response is that the presuppositions are wrong. So much for Kant.
Why would that be so? Time does not immediately imply determinism. Any number of different events might occur in the future; there would still be a future.
Sure there would be many time lines we could choose from but these would be chosen from a/any ‘now’ position. We accept the ‘past’ as being fixed, “chronologically protected” the present variable, but then how can the state of future be explained, and how do we explain these inconsistencies. I mean why is the past ‘set’ if the ‘present’ isn’t. I’m not here looking for any explanation for this my hope really is that as a theist freewill can be confirmed, (which of course would not confirm theism but instead meet one of its expectations).
And I didn’t mean to be blunt with my other reply, it’s that I hit the ‘reply’ button instead of Bing’s AI ‘rewrite’ button, a service that I sometimes use to improve the legibility of my posts.
Don’t to confuse what is the case with what we believe to be the case. They are district.
We do not know yet whether you will reply to this post or not. Yet you either will, or you will not.
In either case, time will pass.
Your choice is irrelevant to the passing of time.
What we perceive and what physicists understand, though sometimes (these people are) inconsistent, are not the same. For instance, we think of apples falling from trees. While evidence suggests time might not exist—potentially allowing for free will—I still believe determinism holds, yet I see a faint hope for free will. I can’t go further down this path without the tools, math, or a deeper grasp of physics. The issue lies not in your logic, which is sound, but in the understanding from which the argument stems. Whether or not I respond implies a concept of time, but it need not be more than that—a concept. Still, I’d prefer to focus on the free will aspect that the non-existence of time, as we understand it, could permit.
What evidence?
The muddle here is indeed trying to do physics without the maths, as you suggest. Notice that time is inherent in physics - despite the several pop articles and books that headline with something else. In quantum mechanics it becomes a parameter rather than a variable, yet there remain durations and detection events.
That is, even if time is somehow not fundamental, it would be an error to conclude that therefore time does not exist.
But “Time does not exist” makes a good title for someone’s YouTube clip, so it recurs.
As for determinism, again, better to treat this separately; there is good reason to reject the dogma that even classical physics is deterministic. There was a thread about that in the old forums.
Two things stuck in my mind and left me puzzled: Einstein’s response to the “spooky" aspect of entanglement and Hawking’s talk of someone traveling into the future. These have since been resolved as being only personal, non-scientific observations. Einstein, being Jewish, had his pride stirred beforehand by the suggestion that “God may play dice,” while Hawking was just offering to the layman a depiction of time travel. I’d like to elaborate further, but I don’t have the skills to address the commonly held fallacy that time exists. Although I accept determinism, it doesn’t necessarily rule out free will; it might just be a faint light glowing at the end of the tunnel though.