Infinte Regress Timeline...

[Speakpigeon]

we can infer the duration of something unchanging by observing the duration of things that do not change for long periods of time. So while absolute proof may be out of reach, inference is not. You don't have to measure the duration of something for it to have duration, especially in the case of something with infinite duration, which means you cannot measure its duration, you can simply infer its duration.

Einstein was describing how to measure time. Immeasurable quantities (quantities that are infinite or otherwise immeasurable) don't fit into that paradigm. It's interesting to note that GR breaks down at the BB due to various infinities, although this may be due to the theories inability to delve deeper into the conditions at that time.

duration is duration, even if not measured. While we need to keep track of duration in order to be aware of it, using various changes, stuff still has duration. And duration is useful- to orchestrate events, musical harmony, showing someone you are caring for them by orchestrating events to align with their innermost thoughts.

So the concept of time and timing is extremely useful, even in Germany.

Concepts go funny on us. Think of time without anything that would change, like a clock or a pressing need. Obviously time as we think of it is supposed to be changing somehow even without anything else changing. If you say that time on its own would change from moment to moment, always becoming the next moment in due course, then time wouldn't really exist. You would have the present moment and all past moments would no longer exist just as future moments would not yet exist. And changing from one moment to the next, if there is nothing to make a difference between the two, would be no change at all. Then you could say time itself doesn't change, only things in time change. This is I guess the physicist's view where the ontology of time is minimalist, so minimalist that it doesn't make any difference whether time exists as such or not if it's just a convenient concept for us. But then, time would be like space. Ther would be nothing really specific to time itself, only to thing happening in time (as opposed to thing happening in space). So again, concepts go funny on us and it seems that only if we stick to an ontology that fits our subjective perspective does this ontology still make sense. But this is again a minimalist ontology, the kind favoured by scientists. We use and discard according to our current perspective on things, like moral values we use and discard according to the zeitgeist.

We can infer things. Scientists do that, in particular in relation to infinity, when there's no other way to get at some acceptable conclusion. Most of the time it looks like a neat trick, a sleight of hand to get out of a bad trip. But after a while these things tend to become regarded as the real stuff of which the universe is made. Until such a time that a bright kid sees something nobody had seen before and wipe the slate clean. You said it yourself, we can't prove infinity. But if you infer it, your inference remains dependent on whatever assumptions you have to make prior to your inference. So, I would say that inference is smart but it's only an inference, not anything ontologically true, so mostly like a move at chess makes you a winner as long as you don't start a new game.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

Think of time without anything that would change, like a clock or a pressing need. Obviously time as we think of it is supposed to be changing somehow even without anything else changing.

Hey EB, going to sort of freestyle here, so please forgive any brevity in my statements, because it might be funny.

Time is duration. (For purposes of our discussion, I think we can note and dismiss unter's objection to an amount of time being time, which is similar to objecting to the fact that an amount of water is water)

Duration is real- even if it requires a bit of inference to get past the  Omphalos hypothesis (Last Tuesdayism).

Duration does not require change to be known. One can know that one's existence has duration without comparing it to change. However, one may enjoy certain forms of coordinated change (harmonious change), so compares one's changing states to changes around one self in order to notice one's internal state's harmonious coordination with external events.

You would have the present moment and all past moments would no longer exist just as future moments would not yet exist.

Now exists. The past and future are imaginary (and real) components of now, which influence what direction our combined will takes now.

Now has real and imaginary duration (0 and infinite, with both being true for both components), we can infer now's real duration from our imagined experiences of the past. Our imagination is an essential part of the perception of reality- without imagination we would not know of the duration of now, and we would not know that certain events are coming up.

Remembered past and planned future events are not non-existent- they just happen to occupy the imaginary axis of reality, which is also real and has an influence upon reality.

Anyways, the point in time now is the intersection of the imagination and reality, 0 and infinite, all of which are real and exist in the imagination of those with the knowledge and wisdom required to understand this "now".

This is I guess the physicist's view where the ontology of time is minimalist, so minimalist that it doesn't make any difference whether time exists as such or not if it's just a convenient concept for us. But then, time would be like space. Ther would be nothing really specific to time itself, only to thing happening in time (as opposed to thing happening in space).

Our imaginations stretch out various events in the spacetime continuum. Truthfully, without an imagination that connected events, a television show would just be a bunch of disjointed photons, actions, or whatever. Imagination provides cohesion to reality, and without it there are no bonds between anything or anyone. Imagination is a very real force which unites and divides (or units...) the other forces and components (or beings) of reality.

You said it yourself, we can't prove infinity. But if you infer it, your inference remains dependent on whatever assumptions you have to make prior to your inference.

We can't prove one another exist either. Inference is good enough for many applications, and definitely not good for others.

In fact, we can pretty much ascertain that something (or someone) has always existed, because if nothing had existed to cause something to begin to exist, nothing would ever have begun to exist. This makes the whole "eternal existence" thing a given.

 

[ryan]

Troubling, not even this guy Tom O’Brian understands time.

See, http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/361069820/new-clock-may-end-time-as-we-know-it .

The last half of the article is a little off topic but just so amazing.

 

[Kharakov]

Nice. I forgot to provide the link to that in my response to EB. Saw it while I was writing it out.

 

[untermensche]

A pear has volume. A pear is not space. When I have a pear I have separated a volume from space.

The volume the pear occupies is still space. You haven't "separated" space from space.

The pear is mostly space.

It is a volume of mostly space separated from a volume of mostly space, air.

I think what you mean to say is that three dimensions need to exist for 3D entities to exist. But how those dimensions are expressed in this universe, as space, which is more than the dimensions, it has weight, is not necessarily how they will be expressed in another universe.

What we call "space" may not exist anywhere besides this universe. While many universes may have 3 or more dimensions.

A year is a duration of time. A year is not time. It is an amount of time.

A year (some time) is time, like some water is water.

Time is not like water. Water is H2O and the ions like H3O(+) and HO(-) in a liquid state.

All water is this.

No two moments in time are the same thing. No two durations of time are the same thing.

1900 AD is not 2000 AD.

The point of saying that time is duration is simple: there are things that do not change, which have duration (exist for a period of time).

Nothing on this earth. Since everything on this earth is changing position very rapidly.

In fact, nothing at all is completely still. All things are moving and therefore undergoing change.

Time involves change. If you have no change you have no time.

Duration exists for things that do not change. A particles spin and/or charge has duration and does not alter while the particle exists.

Spin and charge are aspects of a thing. They are not things in themselves. And all particles are moving. They all are changing, even if they have some aspects that remain constant for the life of the particle.

2 is not a thing. It is a concept. It exists only as a human concept. And when humans exist no more neither will 2.

Following certain rules, one will always arrive at certain answers.

If you invent the rules first you can then follow them. But the rules don't exist until they are created whole.

The axioms are built into natural law: the charge of particles obeys the axioms of arithmetic- these axioms are a fundamental part of reality.

Nonsense.

The axioms were invented whole. They are just a human way of looking at things.

 

[Kharakov]

I think what you mean to say is that three dimensions need to exist for 3D entities to exist.

Not really. A pear occupies a bit of space. In fact, a pear is going to occupy a bit of me in a couple hours.

Time is not like water.

It isn't, but an amount of time is time like an amount of water is water.

No two moments in time are the same thing. No two durations of time are the same thing.

Nope, time is the same thing. The events that happen in time are not the same.

The point of saying that time is duration is simple: there are things that do not change, which have duration (exist for a period of time).

Nothing on this earth. Since everything on this earth is changing position very rapidly.

The fact that the universe exists has not changed over the past second. I went ahead and waited 5 more seconds. The universe is still existing- no change in that. The universes existence has duration. The fact that the universe exists still hasn't changed, although maybe by the time you reply it will have ceased to exist. Let me know.

Duration exists for things that do not change. A particles spin and/or charge has duration and does not alter while the particle exists.

They all are changing, even if they have some aspects that remain constant for the life of the particle.

There are things that exist that change (position is one you named), and things that exist that don't change (charge, spin, the fact that something exists).

The axioms are built into natural law: the charge of particles obeys the axioms of arithmetic- these axioms are a fundamental part of reality.

The axioms were invented whole. They are just a human way of looking at things.

Nope. They exist independently of humanity. There are Fibonacci spirals in nature, inverse square force ratios, addition of spins and charges of particles.

That which exists before humanity follows the patterns described by the axioms. Humans may have discovered the axioms, but their existence in reality's behavior far predates the existence of humanity.

2 protons has a certain mass. 3 has another. 4 has another. Etc. etc. etc. The axioms hold for reality, with or without a human to describe them.

 

[untermensche]

No two moments in time are the same thing. No two durations of time are the same thing.

Nope, time is the same thing. The events that happen in time are not the same.

Where is this time unconnected to change in this universe?

How do we speak of things existing that have no evidence of their existence?

The fact that the universe exists has not changed over the past second.

Human concepts once defined have existence as long as there are humans.

But human concepts don't have existence apart from the minds of humans, all of which are undergoing constant change.

 

[Juma]

Nope. They exist independently of humanity. There are Fibonacci spirals in nature, inverse square force ratios, addition of spins and charges of particles.

That which exists before humanity follows the patterns described by the axioms. Humans may have discovered the axioms, but their existence in reality's behavior far predates the existence of humanity.

2 protons has a certain mass. 3 has another. 4 has another. Etc. etc. etc. The axioms hold for reality, with or without a human to describe them.

You confuses our description of stuff with the real thing.

 

[Kharakov]

Nope. They exist independently of humanity. There are Fibonacci spirals in nature, inverse square force ratios, addition of spins and charges of particles.

That which exists before humanity follows the patterns described by the axioms. Humans may have discovered the axioms, but their existence in reality's behavior far predates the existence of humanity.

2 protons has a certain mass. 3 has another. 4 has another. Etc. etc. etc. The axioms hold for reality, with or without a human to describe them.

You confuses our description of stuff with the real thing.

I don't get it- Do you think protons don't have quantized spin and/or charge? Do you think they don't exist? Do you think that quantized charge does not follow the same exact pattern as the Peano axioms when adding particles together?

 

[Juma]

You confuses our description of stuff with the real thing.

I don't get it- Do you think protons don't have quantized spin and/or charge? Do you think they don't exist? Do you think that quantized charge does not follow the same exact pattern as the Peano axioms when adding particles together?

These are models. Not reality. Those models depends on how humans conceptualuze reality.

 

[ryan]

I don't get it- Do you think protons don't have quantized spin and/or charge? Do you think they don't exist? Do you think that quantized charge does not follow the same exact pattern as the Peano axioms when adding particles together?

These are models. Not reality. Those models depends on how humans conceptualuze reality.

That is your philosophical position. If the monist physicalists are right about the mind, then even our conceptions are what is out there. In other words, our models would be reality.

 

[Juma]

These are models. Not reality. Those models depends on how humans conceptualuze reality.

That is your philosophical position.

Nah. It is a very "down to earth" position based on firm evidens.

We are predictors eating information. Models is what we can build: what is really outside our sense we cannot know. Just what our senses registers. We can deduce midels from that input but it still based on that input.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Hey EB, going to sort of freestyle here, so please forgive any brevity in my statements, because it might be funny.

Time is duration. (For purposes of our discussion, I think we can note and dismiss unter's objection to an amount of time being time, which is similar to objecting to the fact that an amount of water is water)

Well, here's something funny. I noticed this debate between you two about whether an amount of X is X or not. What is funny is that while you want to say they are the same thing, untermensche insists to say they are not. This is the last part which is funny because of course I, and others I believe, pointed out to untermensche that an amount of time couldn't be said to be passing. Time is passing. Amounts are something else (basically they are quantities, a relative notion). Of course, this depends on the standard of the conversation so we have to make the distinction between an informal statement where the two could be accepted as the same thing, and a more formal, philosophical, standard of discussion where they couldn't be accepted as the same thing without risking saying stupid things. A tree can be said to be growing by a certain amount each year. Now, we could say that the tree is a certain amount of tree and that it is growing, again by the same previous amount each year. But the growth of a tree is understood as a natural process while the growth of an amount of tree (by a certain amount) is an abstract, simplified idea, a mathematical or geometrical view of the natural process. So I agree with untermensche against you but just because he is contradicting himself for the occasion.

A quantity of water is of course water. Yet, the word "quantity" refers not to water as such but to the quantity of it. It is water that freezes or bubbles up, not the quantity, even though you can have a quantity of water that freezes or bubbles up, it's not the quantity that freezes or bubbles up, it still is the water that freezes or bubbles up. Something that untermensche still doesn't understand, in spite of my explanation to him, and yet he somehow managed to get it right, at least according to me, when disagreeing with you on this.

That being said, we can conceive of time as sheer duration, which I guess implies forgetting everything about change and the physical world.

Duration does not require change to be known. One can know that one's existence has duration without comparing it to change.

I don't know that we don't need to experience change to experience or deduce duration. I don't think I can stay without changing for any period of time. Maybe I do. Maybe I stay unchanged for hours, centuries or an infinite amount of time but if I do I wouldn't notice. Experiencing change seems necessary.

Inference is good enough for many applications, and definitely not good for others.

Sure we infer if we want to but the point is that inference is not proof of existence unless the premise is good enough to allow it as in I think therefore I am. As far as I know, we cannot infer the existence of an infinite time.

In fact, we can pretty much ascertain that something (or someone) has always existed, because if nothing had existed to cause something to begin to exist, nothing would ever have begun to exist. This makes the whole "eternal existence" thing a given.

I disagree without your view here. If we assume that the world that exists today has been existing for, say, off the top of my head, six thousand years, we don't need to say that there was nothing before that, since "before that" itself has no referent. We can say instead that the world was never caused since time itself didn't exist when a cause would have been effective.

And then of course your argument falls by the wayside.

Your belief seems to be that if something exists it must have been caused to exist. But there's no basis for saying this precisely because nothingness is not a state of reality where there is no world at a certain time or period of time and suddenlly there's a world. If you think in these terms then you make the same mistake as Krauss in forgetting that time is not nothing. So to say that the world existed for only six thousand years because time itself last six thousand years is just to say that the world wasn't caused because it couldn't have been caused (since a cause always precedes the effect).
EB

 

[ryan]

That is your philosophical position.

Nah. It is a very "down to earth" position based on firm evidens.

We are predictors eating information. Models is what we can build: what is really outside our sense we cannot know. Just what our senses registers. We can deduce midels from that input but it still based on that input.

It bothers me that everything, including models, needs inductive reasoning to hold. It bothers me because every second that inductive reasoning works is a ridiculously huge coincidence. Since we can't use inductive reasoning to assume inductive reasoning, how can we justify our belief?

Why should we trust that induction will hold tomorrow? We know it will; how can our intuition be right so many times in a row?

My answer is that we are a part of this reality; we get to know nature because we are nature. We may not be this alien form reaching around in the dark and recording past events to understand what might happen in the future. Maybe we have intuition about reality because we are a sample of reality and all of its laws.

When we are young, we know things that we are not taught like breast feeding. We have intensions, we expect certain results and sometimes we get them. Of course a lot of the time other parts of nature intervenes which goes beyond our "personal" models.

 

[Juma]

Nah. It is a very "down to earth" position based on firm evidens.

We are predictors eating information. Models is what we can build: what is really outside our sense we cannot know. Just what our senses registers. We can deduce midels from that input but it still based on that input.

It bothers me that everything, including models, needs inductive reasoning to hold. It bothers me because every second that inductive reasoning works is a ridiculously huge coincidence. Since we can't use inductive reasoning to assume inductive reasoning, how can we justify our belief?

Why should we trust that induction will hold tomorrow? We know it will; how can our intuition be right so many times in a row?

My answer is that we are a part of this reality; we get to know nature because we are nature. We may not be this alien form reaching around in the dark and recording past events to understand what might happen in the future. Maybe we have intuition about reality because we are a sample of reality.

When we are young, we know things that they we are not taught like breast feeding. We have intensions, we expect certain results and sometimes we get them. Of course a lot of the time other parts of nature intervenes which goes beyond our "personal" models.

The answer is simple:
Our model works because of evolution.

 

[untermensche]

Models are abstractions of some aspect of "reality".

If they can be used to make predictions they remain. If they can't they change or are replaced, or at least better models are sought.

So in effect they do undergo a kind of "evolution", although not natural evolution, no genes are involved.

 

[ryan]

It bothers me that everything, including models, needs inductive reasoning to hold. It bothers me because every second that inductive reasoning works is a ridiculously huge coincidence. Since we can't use inductive reasoning to assume inductive reasoning, how can we justify our belief?

Why should we trust that induction will hold tomorrow? We know it will; how can our intuition be right so many times in a row?

My answer is that we are a part of this reality; we get to know nature because we are nature. We may not be this alien form reaching around in the dark and recording past events to understand what might happen in the future. Maybe we have intuition about reality because we are a sample of reality.

When we are young, we know things that they we are not taught like breast feeding. We have intensions, we expect certain results and sometimes we get them. Of course a lot of the time other parts of nature intervenes which goes beyond our "personal" models.

The answer is simple:
Our model works because of evolution.

Right, we are what nature does, and what nature does is what we are. *Maybe* we are the past, present and the future.

From what I gathered from your post to kharakov, you seem to want to think that we are outside of nature like alien scientists from another reality. It's possible I guess, but you seem to be certain of this.

 

[ryan]

untermensche

Models are abstractions of some aspect of "reality".

If they can be used to make predictions they remain. If they can't they change or are replaced, or at least better models are sought.

So in effect they do undergo a kind of "evolution", although not natural evolution, no genes are involved.

Do you believe in non-physical entities?

 

[Kharakov]

I don't get it- Do you think protons don't have quantized spin and/or charge? Do you think they don't exist? Do you think that quantized charge does not follow the same exact pattern as the Peano axioms when adding particles together?

These are models. Not reality. Those models depends on how humans conceptualuze reality.

So you're saying protons and electrons don't exist, but instead are just human models? Would you say that the reality that General Relativity describes very accurately does not display behaviors that coincide with the mathematical models (that are built from the foundation of the Peano axioms)?

There are bunch of things in nature that can be closely approximated by mathematical models (with variance in some cases due to mathematical models not including all data). The mathematical models were created, and afterwards they were confirmed. This indicates that on some levels, nature's behaviors coincide with the Peano axioms.

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

 

[untermensche]

Models are abstractions of some aspect of "reality".

If they can be used to make predictions they remain. If they can't they change or are replaced, or at least better models are sought.

So in effect they do undergo a kind of "evolution", although not natural evolution, no genes are involved.

Do you believe in non-physical entities?

What do you mean?

Do you think gravity is an entity?