Calling Time

[Philosophy Now]

Anthony Proctor asks: Are we on time? Do we have time? What is time?

https://philosophynow.org/issues/152/Calling_Time

[Walker]

That's rather wild.

Here's a related thought prompted by the article.
viewtopic.php?p=608979#p608979

[Age]

There is NO use asking these questions if one is NOT OPEN to the answers.

Which, by the way, are UNIFIED with EVERY thing else, and thus IRREFUTABLE.

[owl of Minerva]

Time is likely due to the Precession of the Equinoxes. A duration of 26,000 thousand years in Western astronomy. A duration of 24,000 years in Vedic Astronomy. The latter likely to be more accurate as derived from higher ages. Epochs come and go and humanity adjusts and adapts accordingly. The Great Year is a 24,000 year cycle. A day is a 24 hour cycle.

[Walker]

Time is likely due to the Precession of the Equinoxes. A duration of 26,000 thousand years in Western astronomy. A duration of 24,000 years in Vedic Astronomy. The latter likely to be more accurate as derived from higher ages. Epochs come and go and humanity adjusts and adapts accordingly. The Great Year is a 24,000 year cycle. A day is a 24 hour cycle.

There is a balancing precision by every scale that makes portions of the future predictable, and back in those olden days, before writing was widespread, the intelligent but illiterate common man could probably note many patterns and changes such as comets and asteroids and maybe some other things as soon as they appeared in the shining nighttime display.

Before electricity, back in the olden days, the night sky must have been their television and computer screen. One screen shared by all. "It's a clear night and the star channel is on. Let's watch, and listen for lions."

When only the elites could read they probably shared secret notes with one another through time that would read something like ... "in such and such a year, on such and such a day, at this particular time, the sun will quickly turn black, so plan your miracles accordingly."

[owl of Minerva]

Walker,

As I commented in a different post the ancient view and the modern view are also likely related to how things are seen. Either through perception that is in touch with surroundings and knowledge of the ‘thing in itself’ or through cognition; a formation of beliefs, and the ability to make decisions, etc. The former, perception is the ancient way, the latter, cognition is the modern way.

Which is better? It may be that one is more dominant in one era and less dominant in another. For both, perception and cognition to be equally dominant may not be necessary. As perception alone would be enough. Cognizant may be for the less astute. It is likely the case that if perception is a lost art then cognition is necessary. Even in the Dark Age, especially in the Dark Age, cognition was necessary. Even if it saw things ‘Through a glass darkly,’ 1 Corinthians 13:12, as in the Dark Material Age all knowledge of forces other than gross matter was lost.

[Impenitent]

unlike Mick Jagger, who had time on his side, I have time on my wrist...

-Imp

[owl of Minerva]

Time on the wrist can be slowed down or speeded up. But don’t expect to be on time.

[attofishpi]

Anthony Proctor asks: Are we on time? Do we have time? What is time?

https://philosophynow.org/issues/152/Calling_Time


Interestingly not a single equation anywhere in physics identifies our special ‘now’ moment, or even embraces dynamical change as we perceive it – apart from as a simple slope on a graph. This leaves us two choices: either time is non-existent (and all nows and dynamical changes are illusory), or mathematics cannot describe everything in the universe (and physics is doomed).

Pretty sure the wave function collapse is an example of the "now" moment:-
\langle \psi|\psi \rangle = \sum_i |c_i|^2 = 1.


The concept of time is simple, now that conscious minds exist, time exists as a construct that man has developed pertaining to measurement correlated to events.

Ergo:
Time is a man-made concept that we use to measure events within the physical universe. In a true single moment (NOW), there is not a EVENT occurring, not an electron spinning, a photon emitting, not until for example, an event such as a photon emitting from an ELECTRON, THEN, we have TIME. Interesting, TIME reverses to EMIT. Interesting MASS is where people attend (actual) churches.

Time is NOT a dimension that can be traversed at will.









Events occurring are BINARY - either an event occurs or is doesn't - within 3D space.

www.androcies.com

[Walker]

Walker,

As I commented in a different post the ancient view and the modern view are also likely related to how things are seen. Either through perception that is in touch with surroundings and knowledge of the ‘thing in itself’ or through cognition; a formation of beliefs, and the ability to make decisions, etc. The former, perception is the ancient way, the latter, cognition is the modern way.

Which is better? It may be that one is more dominant in one era and less dominant in another. For both, perception and cognition to be equally dominant may not be necessary. As perception alone would be enough. Cognizant may be for the less astute. It is likely the case that if perception is a lost art then cognition is necessary. Even in the Dark Age, especially in the Dark Age, cognition was necessary. Even if it saw things ‘Through a glass darkly,’ 1 Corinthians 13:12, as in the Dark Material Age all knowledge of forces other than gross matter was lost.

Interesting. This dovetails with what is most important to every person.

I’ll approach it slowly to connect with what you wrote, so best to read slowly.

- For modern humans, we can premise that concepts are important. One must be be able to think through reality with concepts such as words, thoughts, traffic signs, the conceptual meaning of sounds, maps, machines. Modern life requires conceptual apprehension translated into meanings and motor skills.

- For this reason, the conceptual capacity of humans, the abstract capacity, is quite developed and important.

- Concepts are important to people.

- The most important concept is self-concept. The concept of self. What one says to oneself, about oneself.

- People say, I am this, or I am that. This is because we are slaves to conceptual existence, conceptual being.

- Not only are we slaves, this concept of who we are is the most important thing to a person.

- For many people, it is more important than life. For example, a person might have the self-concept of mountain climber. That’s dangerous to life, but the self-concept is more important, so he climbs mountains.

- You get the drift. People will do anything, even sacrifice their life, to maintain a self-concept, or return to what it was after the big weekend that lasts longer than planned.

- For example, such a person might say that because she is a doctor, because that is her self-concept, she is obligated to expose herself to disease in order to relieve suffering, because she’s just that kinda gal and she has no choice about maintaining and defending that self-concept.

- Self-concept is the most important thing to each person, whether they be criminal or saint.

- Self-concept will be explained with concepts, defended with concepts, and defended even with life.

- For example, yes, he ran into the burning building to save the children, because he’s just that kinda guy. More importantly, he always thought of himself as that kind of guy. It was his self-concept. He thought of himself as one who would die for strangers.


Question: Would you say that for the primitive less tied to concepts, self-concept is not so rigidly precious, to be maintained and defended even at all costs, and thus identity is more fluid? For an ancient culture less dependent upon conceptual capacity, is identity less bound by the limitations of concepts, or notions.

[Walker]

You may ask, what is the relevance of all that to time?

Some folks say time is a concept, so that's a launch pad.

[owl of Minerva]

Walker,

There is a lot to unpack in what your wrote.

It is true that modern life does require concepts. We investigate, classify and name things in order to know what they are, what their function is and we may have some idea, not always, of how they relate to their environment, which requires some understanding of resonance.

Self-concepts then and now are likely very different. Now we focus a lot on the self, the ego, and less on how we relate to the whole, to a universal Self. If perception was dominant in ancient times, all was animate, a form of consciousness everywhere. Dormant until a slight sensation in plants, sensation, and as now deemed likely, some intelligence in animals, sensation and the first total expression of intelligence in humans.

The ancients appear to be less egotistical, more related to a living universe. Their identity appears to have been based less on what they did, their role in life, rather on who they were in relation to life; their place in a living universe. It is likely accurate to say that they did not see themselves as egos contemplating dead matter, composed of chemicals, and forces which bore little relationship to themselves.

How all this relates to time may be that they saw time, not as an abstraction, but being caused by something in the universe. They understood the Precession of the Equinoxes as a 24,000 year cycle. A descending arc of 12,000 years and an ascending arc of 12,000 years. Time as a real unfolding of epochs of varying durations of the Precession of the Equinoxes that repeats like clockwork, The documentary ‘The Great Year’ deals with this cyclical precession.

Our 24 hour day is based on that. We derive our time from the universe, from that starting point; day and night, year and hours.

[Walker]

How all this relates to time may be that they saw time, not as an abstraction, but being caused by something in the universe. They understood the Precession of the Equinoxes as a 24,000 year cycle. A descending arc of 12,000 years and an ascending arc of 12,000 years. Time as a real unfolding of epochs of varying durations of the Precession of the Equinoxes that repeats like clockwork, The documentary ‘The Great Year’ deals with this cyclical precession.

Our 24 hour day is based on that. We derive our time from the universe, from that starting point; day and night, year and hours.

Yes, an observation, a discovery, rather than a creation created by words. The words are just reports of the news of what is.

These arcs you mention are predictions of the future but are unverifiable by the observation of a single lifetime. Such huge arcs are only visible as ever-existent within a singular block of phenomena that includes the three times. From the three-dimensional perspective, past performance can weigh into the probability of arc-prediction accuracy. It would require the eternity-in-an-hour perspective referenced by William Blake to literally grok the arcs past and future. Was Blake perceiving via the fourth dimensional perspective? Perhaps he was a throwback from the ancients, adapting to and making his way through his present-time.

Blake may have even been a reincarnated ancient, when considering the real meaning of the word reincarnation, rather than some notion of what it's supposed to be.

[owl of Minerva]

Walker,

It is the case that in any individual’s lifetime or even in the span of a whole epoch can the nature of time, whether cyclical, or linear, be known other than in the portion of time that is experienced in a lifetime, or in the transmitted versions of epochs, either recorded or handed down by tradition. It would take cosmic insight to know the nature of time; if it is cyclical, repeating cycles until reversing to its origin and dormancy for a period, as night follows day. Awakening again as another universe; the only version of the multiverse that some physicists accept: serial rather than co-existing.

Blake was a visionary who was opposed to the mores of his time. He had a grand vision of reality which pedestrian views had lost sight of through the dogmas of religion, the industrial revolution; the overall disenchantment of life that not only did not perceive eternity in an hour but as not having anything to do with the business of life.

[ACProctor]

Pretty sure the wave function collapse is an example of the "now" moment:-
\langle \psi|\psi \rangle = \sum_i |c_i|^2 = 1.


The concept of time is simple, now that conscious minds exist, time exists as a construct that man has developed pertaining to measurement correlated to events.

That's not quite true. Wave function collapse is merely a description of the deviation of our reality from what the wave equation predicts. The wave equation is fully deterministic, and unitary, but it generates this thing called a wave function. It is defined in a mathematical space or many dimensions, and has no observable counterpart. Max Born gave it a probabilistic interpretation, as you know, but it's not the only interpretation (e.g. WMI). Unfortunately, because we only ever measure one outcome then it was posited that the wave function must collapse -- either mathematically or physically (opinions differ) -- but there is no accepted mechanism and all attempts are "bolt ons" to standard QM.

Those who believe in it, rather than the slightly more logical alternative of QM being incomplete, suggest it happens instantly during a measurement, but cannot define what that means. Environmental decoherence has been shown to only account for fine-grained probabilities and not the superposed coarse-grained ones.

More importantly, though, there is still no special "now" singled our by any equation, and relativity precludes any such concept. My stance is that "now", and hence the associated temporal flow, are associated with consciousness only, which means there is no fundamental change in the universe. This "block universe" is a bold proposition, but here's the stinger: it violates no laws we know of, it solves many paradoxes and mysteries around time, no equation in mathematical physics is affected because they have no specific "now", and there is no measurement possible to prove or disprove the difference between this eternalistic model and our normal presentist view. As far as I can tell, its preference boils down to mathematicism.