Speakpigeon
Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 6,317
- Location
- Paris, France, EU
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
What is time?
As I see it, it all comes down to our impression that natural events occur with an intrinsic regularity, first and foremost the movement of the Sun around the Earth. This leads us to assume the metaphysical construct of time. By metaphysical here, I mean something we think is physical but that we cannot perceive as such, like we do pain, colours and shape for example. We can't measure time if by time we mean this sort of metaphysical construct.
That being said, man is the measure of all things. How could we have any notion of the temporal regularity of events if we didn't have in fact some kind of perception of time, or at least of something like time, something which is usually called "subjective time". Obviously, subjective time isn't too reliable since the notion itself suggests it is affected by psychological factors. Yet, there is little doubt that subjective time is our reference for assessing that natural events occur regularly.
Does any of this proves time exists as such? Not really. We can conceive of natural processes as having their own local rate of occurrence. Natural process occur essentially at the microscopic level. So, we can assume the rate of occurrence at the microscopic level to be foundational to time. "SI defines the second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds to the transition between two electron spin energy levels of the ground state of the 133Cs atom (Wiki)". This seems to give ontological consistence to time.
Yet, if we accept that the human mind is essentially a natural process, then it is very likely that our sense of time is based on the same sort of microscopic events as used in measuring time. It seems reasonable then to assume a common factor, which may well be time itself, but that could just as well be something else, something unlike what we usually think of as time, for example a sort of microstructure of reality affecting similarly our brain processes and electronic transitions in caesium atoms. You may want to call such a microstructure, of whatever would play the same role, as time itself. Maybe scientists uncovering this microstructure will say they have discovered time or the nature of time. Yet, it would certainly be something very different from what most people seem to have in mind when they think of time.
A crucial aspect to this idea is that such a microstructure makes our idea of time completely redundant. Reality would be utterly void of time. Instead, the microstructure itself would somehow trigger all events at the microscopic scale, providing a sort of universal regularity to natural processes. We can think of this as a variation on the notion of block universe. Here, instead of a growing block of events, we would have an unchanging block of events. It's a bit of a disturbing perspective but it is a logical possibility.
In this perspective, a clock follows the microstructure just as our brain does. Measuring time with a clock would be essentially providing a more convenient sequencing of our perception of the microstructure. A kind of measure, not of the microstructure itself, since we don't really care about it given that we don't even know it exists, but a measure more like a way to cadence and synchronise the various activities of all human beings. A mere convenience, somewhat like the bells of the local church to tell people when to do things. In this perspective, time, objective time, the thing supposedly measured by clocks, is a social construct, from which is derived time as a scientific concept.
Clocks don't measure time. They tell time.
If time was the occurrence of an event, or the succession of events, there would be no reason for similar processes to take the same amount of time. Instead, if you think events occur in time, in some sort of preexisting time, then events take a certain time to unfold according to their nature. Unless there is a unique sort of fundamental event in nature. Then the time for any macroscopic event to unfold would be a function of the fundamental events it is made of. In fact, I can't see any other explanation. This would explain clocks without having to resort to the metaphysical concept of time, a concept no one will ever prove.
Thus, time is an illusion. It is the appearance to us of the succession of the same fundamental event repeated over and over again. Thus, all processes are clocks. Two broadly identical contraptions will tick at the same pace because they are two different but comparable sequences of the same fundamental event. In effect, they are nearly identical clocks.
Thus, our own brain can tell time because, fundamentally, it is itself a sequence of the same fundamental event. Because it is itself a clock.
EB
As I see it, it all comes down to our impression that natural events occur with an intrinsic regularity, first and foremost the movement of the Sun around the Earth. This leads us to assume the metaphysical construct of time. By metaphysical here, I mean something we think is physical but that we cannot perceive as such, like we do pain, colours and shape for example. We can't measure time if by time we mean this sort of metaphysical construct.
That being said, man is the measure of all things. How could we have any notion of the temporal regularity of events if we didn't have in fact some kind of perception of time, or at least of something like time, something which is usually called "subjective time". Obviously, subjective time isn't too reliable since the notion itself suggests it is affected by psychological factors. Yet, there is little doubt that subjective time is our reference for assessing that natural events occur regularly.
Does any of this proves time exists as such? Not really. We can conceive of natural processes as having their own local rate of occurrence. Natural process occur essentially at the microscopic level. So, we can assume the rate of occurrence at the microscopic level to be foundational to time. "SI defines the second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds to the transition between two electron spin energy levels of the ground state of the 133Cs atom (Wiki)". This seems to give ontological consistence to time.
Yet, if we accept that the human mind is essentially a natural process, then it is very likely that our sense of time is based on the same sort of microscopic events as used in measuring time. It seems reasonable then to assume a common factor, which may well be time itself, but that could just as well be something else, something unlike what we usually think of as time, for example a sort of microstructure of reality affecting similarly our brain processes and electronic transitions in caesium atoms. You may want to call such a microstructure, of whatever would play the same role, as time itself. Maybe scientists uncovering this microstructure will say they have discovered time or the nature of time. Yet, it would certainly be something very different from what most people seem to have in mind when they think of time.
A crucial aspect to this idea is that such a microstructure makes our idea of time completely redundant. Reality would be utterly void of time. Instead, the microstructure itself would somehow trigger all events at the microscopic scale, providing a sort of universal regularity to natural processes. We can think of this as a variation on the notion of block universe. Here, instead of a growing block of events, we would have an unchanging block of events. It's a bit of a disturbing perspective but it is a logical possibility.
In this perspective, a clock follows the microstructure just as our brain does. Measuring time with a clock would be essentially providing a more convenient sequencing of our perception of the microstructure. A kind of measure, not of the microstructure itself, since we don't really care about it given that we don't even know it exists, but a measure more like a way to cadence and synchronise the various activities of all human beings. A mere convenience, somewhat like the bells of the local church to tell people when to do things. In this perspective, time, objective time, the thing supposedly measured by clocks, is a social construct, from which is derived time as a scientific concept.
Clocks don't measure time. They tell time.
If time was the occurrence of an event, or the succession of events, there would be no reason for similar processes to take the same amount of time. Instead, if you think events occur in time, in some sort of preexisting time, then events take a certain time to unfold according to their nature. Unless there is a unique sort of fundamental event in nature. Then the time for any macroscopic event to unfold would be a function of the fundamental events it is made of. In fact, I can't see any other explanation. This would explain clocks without having to resort to the metaphysical concept of time, a concept no one will ever prove.
Thus, time is an illusion. It is the appearance to us of the succession of the same fundamental event repeated over and over again. Thus, all processes are clocks. Two broadly identical contraptions will tick at the same pace because they are two different but comparable sequences of the same fundamental event. In effect, they are nearly identical clocks.
Thus, our own brain can tell time because, fundamentally, it is itself a sequence of the same fundamental event. Because it is itself a clock.
EB