# How did the beginning of time start?
**URL:** https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671
**Category:** Metaphysics & Epistemology
**Created:** [April 12, 2026, 8:07pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671 "2026-04-12T20:07:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 10:40am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/43 "2026-04-20T10:40:53Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> The 16 propositions describe how existence works — unbounded capacity for distinction that cannot be switched off, configurations appearing because difference cannot be prohibited, asymmetry inevitable because perfect cancellation is impossible locally, bubbles forming wherever asymmetry finds a stable pattern, nesting infinitely in both directions with no privileged scale.
Much cloudy concepts in the content. What existence are you talking about? Existence of what? Unbounded capacity for distinction? Who makes such distinction? Who was to switch it off? How do you switch on or off distinction? And why?
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 10:49am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/44 "2026-04-20T10:49:53Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> When we continue — I want to come back to your three dimensions of time, how they relate to each other, and how Kant wrestled with the same territory we are walking through now.
In Kant, time and space is the precondition for perception. You cannot perceive or experience anything without the precondition. All objects you perceive must conform to the category of time and space.
The reason that you can perceive motions and movements is that you have the intuitions a priori i.e. time and space in your mind. Hence you can perceive the psychological time passage even if you are locked up in the space with nothing changing.
But for telling the universal or objective time people use, you need perception of the external world changes which conform to your internal sense of time.
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### Author:  [@Chelydra](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Chelydra)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 11:35am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/45 "2026-04-20T11:35:13Z")
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> Not sure if cancellation is correct word. Cancel means something ending by intervention. Who intervenes material time?
Resolution is more precise. Asymmetry moving toward resolution — no intervener required.
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> Distinction is not required or existent. Distinction only happened when you managed to perceive it.
You said distinction only exists when perceived. But you exist. Are you not yourself a distinction — from everything you are not?
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> Much cloudy concepts in the content. What existence are you talking about? Existence of what? Unbounded capacity for distinction? Who makes such distinction? Who was to switch it off? How do you switch on or off distinction? And why?
Unbounded capacity for distinction is not made by anyone. It has no outside from which to be switched on or off. That is what unbounded means. The question of who makes it assumes something external to the system. There is no external.
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### Author:  [@Chelydra](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Chelydra)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 11:36am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/46 "2026-04-20T11:36:01Z")
Kant stops at intuition. It is simply there, underived. I am asking what intuition is made of. That is where our frameworks genuinely diverge.
The question that remains: _What is the condition for the first distinction?_
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 12:07pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/47 "2026-04-20T12:07:40Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> Resolution is more precise. Asymmetry moving toward resolution — no intervener required.
Resolution is for solving problems by agreement or intentional effort. It still doesn’t sound right.
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> You said distinction only exists when perceived. But you exist. Are you not yourself a distinction — from everything you are not?
I am not a distinction. I am just an individual human. I don’t need distinction of any sort. I just exist with no need for distinction. The whole universe is residing in my mind. Why would I need a distinction?
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> Unbounded capacity for distinction is not made by anyone. It has no outside from which to be switched on or off. That is what unbounded means. The question of who makes it assumes something external to the system. There is no external.
So where did it come from? I have no idea what “unbounded capacity” means. Whose capacity is unbounded?
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### Author:  [@Mww](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mww)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 12:09pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/48 "2026-04-20T12:09:04Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> Kant stops at intuition. It is simply there, underived.
Technically, with respect to human experience, he begins at intuition, for which he must give account. And while it is true he doesn’t say much about intuition itself, it is in fact derived, or proposed as manifesting, through the predicates of the transcendental aesthetic.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2026, 12:09pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/49 "2026-04-20T12:09:19Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> The question that remains: _What is the condition for the first distinction?_
Please explain what the first distinction mean. Whose first distinction on what? Where did you hear the word “the first distinction” from? In what context?
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### Author:  [@Mijin1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mijin1)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 12:12pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/50 "2026-04-21T12:12:36Z")
(Let me know if this is too much of a hijack)
There seems to be a trend recently, on atheist and philosophy channels, of espousing the view that the cosmos is eternal and uncaused. So, even if this pocket of space time is “only” 13.8 billion years old, it’s part of a wider cosmos, or perhaps is a bounce from a previous collapsed universe.
I think it’s misguided.
Not that I have any issue with an eternal universe – it may well be the case, but ISTM the reason for being a proponent of this position is motivated by a desire to get rid of a first cause, and thereby “solve” something.
But IMO I don’t care much if the universe had a discrete start or is eternal, because I think the philosophical questions of how/why anything exists and why this reality is the one that exists is valid to ask in either case.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 1:33pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/51 "2026-04-21T13:33:46Z")
> [@Mijin1](#):
>
> (Let me know if this is too much of a hijack)
>
> There seems to be a trend recently, on atheist and philosophy channels, of espousing the view that the cosmos is eternal and uncaused. So, even if this pocket of space time is “only” 13.8 billion years old, it’s part of a wider cosmos, or perhaps is a bounce from a previous collapsed universe.
You cannot escape out from your own time of life. No one can. Because no one experienced time before his birth, and no one will experience time after his death.
All the talks on billion years old, and 100 years from now are just imagination and hypes from the fictional minds attracting attention of the gullible public.
All you have is “Now”, and this moment you live in.
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### Author:  [@Sam26](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Sam26)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 2:21pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/52 "2026-04-21T14:21:18Z")
> [@Seemak](#):
>
> Imagine you are the architect of existence, a timeless entity lounging in the infinite expanse of your cosmic home.
The concept of a “timeless architect” is contradictory, and I don’t think the contradiction can be escaped by the usual moves.
An architect, creator, or designer is a person in the broadest sense, something with intentions, will, and acts. Personhood analytically involves change, viz., to deliberate, to will, to act, to create all imply transitions between states. A being that never transitions from intending-to-act to acting, never responds, never does anything that constitutes a difference from a prior condition, isn’t recognizably a person or an agent. And change just is what time measures. Wherever anything differs from one state to the next, time is present. So “timeless architect” asserts an agent who acts without any of the features that make agency agency.
The standard escape is to say the change happens only in the created thing, not in the creator, the creator “timelessly wills” that the universe exists. But this either preserves the change-involving features under a different label (willing, grounding, sustaining all still implicate the creator in what’s happening) or strips them out entirely, in which case we’re no longer describing a creator. We’re describing some impersonal ground of being and calling it a creator by courtesy. Either the personal language is doing real work and smuggling in temporality, or it’s been emptied of content and we’re talking about something we can’t actually define.
So the dilemma is, if the creator is person-like enough to count as an architect, change is analytic to the concept and timelessness is ruled out. If the creator has been abstracted past the point where person-like features apply, “architect” is the wrong word and the imagery in the original post doesn’t refer to anything coherent. Either way, the opening premise doesn’t survive.
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### Author:  [@Chelydra](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Chelydra)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 3:31pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/53 "2026-04-21T15:31:41Z")
> [@Mijin1](#):
>
> There seems to be a trend recently, on atheist and philosophy channels, of espousing the view that the cosmos is eternal and uncaused. So, even if this pocket of space time is “only” 13.8 billion years old, it’s part of a wider cosmos, or perhaps is a bounce from a previous collapsed universe.
You take things like emergence, fractals, and the idea of infinity, mix in this intuition that everything is made of smaller things and part of bigger things, throw in a bit of quantum entanglement, plus how genetics links everything living and how consciousness seems to arise out of it, and you get overwhelmed by how everything ‘is’ connected. Add a bit of existential curiosity, and it can feel like you’re glimpsing some deep underlying unity - ‘solution’.
But then you hit the brakes when you look at what science actually says.
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### Author:  [@Chelydra](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Chelydra)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 3:43pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/54 "2026-04-21T15:43:42Z")
We might experience more, but let’s live without relying on that.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 5:42pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/55 "2026-04-21T17:42:01Z")
Talking about non-experienced ideas are either fiction or imagination. You cannot step out of your own time capsule limited by your birth and death.
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### Author:  [@Chelydra](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Chelydra)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/56 "2026-04-21T22:22:11Z")
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> You cannot step out of your own time capsule limited by your birth and death.
Surely, I will keep you posted.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 11:41pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/57 "2026-04-21T23:41:22Z")
> [@Chelydra](#):
>
> Surely, I will keep you posted.
Time is also semantics. You said you **will** keep me posted. It is the time in your mental frame manifested in the word.
The time started when you started thinking and speaking or writing.
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### Author:  [@Mijin1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mijin1)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 12:17am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/58 "2026-04-22T00:17:56Z")
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> You cannot escape out from your own time of life. No one can. Because no one experienced time before his birth, and no one will experience time after his death.
>
> All the talks on billion years old, and 100 years from now are just imagination and hypes from the fictional minds attracting attention of the gullible public.
I also cannot experience the time before I was born. So by that logic, when I read about, say, world war 2, I should call it “imagination and hypes from the fictional minds”
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### Author:  [@prothero](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/prothero)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 2:41am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/59 "2026-04-22T02:41:35Z")
I am still having a great deal of difficulty imaging the meaning or significance of “time” in an empty or unchanging “motionless” universe. It is events we experience. It is events that are the fundamental units of which reality is composed. We mark time only through events, the seasons, the rotation of the earth, the moon, the planets, the oscillations of a spring, swinging of a pendulum. There is no meaning to time separate from the events we use to measure and mark it. Time is a derived concept not a primary independent feature of existence, hence its absence in physics.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 7:40am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/60 "2026-04-22T07:40:13Z")
> [@Mijin1](#):
>
> I also cannot experience the time before I was born. So by that logic, when I read about, say, world war 2, I should call it “imagination and hypes from the fictional minds”
Yes, you should. Quite correctly so! Although you wouldn’t call it hypes from the fictional minds, if you have an educated sense.
You are reading someone else’s writings on the subject, which is not your own direct experience.
Maybe the event had happened in reality, and maybe some are true, and some might not. No one knows it for sure. You cannot verify that from you own experience.
The important point here is that you must accept the fact that it is not your own direct experience.
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### Author:  [@Mijin1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mijin1)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 9:19am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/61 "2026-04-22T09:19:17Z")
> [@Corvus](#):
>
> The important point here is that you must accept the fact that it is not your own direct experience.
No-one claimed it was. The point is only that we can gain confidence that events have happened, or will happen, on the basis of evidence and verified models.
I think you’re taking us off track though. I began my initial post with checking that I was not hijacking, but discussing the concept of an eternal universe is much more on-topic than questioning everything outside of personal experience.
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### Author:  [@Corvus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Corvus)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 10:00am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/how-did-the-beginning-of-time-start/671/62 "2026-04-22T10:00:04Z")
> [@Mijin1](#):
>
> I think you’re taking us off track though. I began my initial post with checking that I was not hijacking, but discussing the concept of an eternal universe is much more on-topic than questioning everything outside of personal experience.
I think you are missing the point. My point was, realistically your time starts when you start thinking and speaking and writing about time, and that is all you have access to time.
The concept of eternal universe is just a fiction, which is really off-topic. You could try to prove it in any possible way though. I shall prove it is a fiction.
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