This is why ignore GR and Einstein. Ontology becomes deeply derailed into an experienced of illusion. From this point, everything, including this thread becomes totally pointless. Anything and everything becomes an illusion. — Rich

Not necessarily, all that it would mean is that direct experience would not be sufficient to confirm what is illusory and what is not. For example, if I'm trying to build a satellite system that allows me to locate things around the globe, then I better take the effects of GR into account, even if they seem weird based on my everyday "direct" observations of life. For example, direct observation may indicate to me that the Earth is flat. So I need to do some measurements, make some predictions, etc. to gain access to the experience that the Earth isn't flat.

I take this approach for the same reason the Daoist did, it yields concrete, practical results that I can truly understand and believe in, because I actually experience it. — Rich

Well I too am a practical person, but it depends on what the truth is. Knowledge of the truth is what can truly help you take practical steps.

Not necessarily, all that it would mean is that direct experience would not be sufficient to confirm what is illusory and what is not. — Agustino

Once an individual allows illusions to become explanations then magic becomes real. Anything and everything can be explained as an illusion. There are no limits and we can't pick and choose. I seek the explanation.

Once an individual allows illusions to become explanations then magic becomes real. Anything and everything can be explained as an illusion. There are no limits and we can't pick and choose. — Rich

Yes, but on what do you base the idea that direct experience cannot be illusory? Clearly, for example, the experience that the Earth is flat is illusory, right? So an experience isn't sufficient to justify and ground what we believe, correct?

I don't mean to suggest everything is illusory, just that some things can be illusory, and we need a way to distinguish between what is illusory and what isn't.

Yes, but on what do you base the idea that direct experience cannot be illusory? — Agustino

It is my experience, it is not illusory. If someone says that it is illusory, then we need to inspect the differences in our experiences. Differences in experience is real, it is not illusory.

It is my experience, it is not illusory. If someone says that it is illusory, then we need to inspect the differences in our experiences. Differences in experience is real, it is not illusory. — Rich

So when I am in an open field and I look to the horizon and it seems that the Earth is flat according to my direct experience, should I really conclude it's flat? Or how do I reason about it that it's not flat?

It seems to me that the conflict between what is being claimed in this thread to be time as conceived by scientists and time as conceived by philosophers relates to the whole problem of the objective versus the subjective. What is objective is scientifically verifiable. What is subjective is not. And the flow of time as we experience it is not objectively verifiable. Since science operationally only has access to the objective features of reality, it doesn't say anything about what we experience subjectively. Science ignores subjective time for the same reasons it is unable to adequately address the question of consciousness or subjective experience. But we all know that regardless of the fact that subjectivity cannot be objectively verified, it is nevertheless real. We know this directly. And we know exactly what it is, qualitatively, even though we can't explain it. I'd say that the same goes for time as qualitatively different from space and as something that passes, that gives us the experience of change.

The essential feature of experienced time is simply change. One thing gives way to another. There is a flow. Raise your hand and move it across your visual field. Right there, in that experience, is a mystery that science will never address.

The scientific view of time gives us a picture that doesn't give us any reason to expect an experience of change. The scientific view of time simply spatializes it. Imagine, for instance, a movie reel unrolled, the film stretched out flat on the floor. We tend to model time like this, events being spread across a spatial interval. But here, the events are simply adjacent. There is no real before or after. There is no causal dependency. There is no causality at all. Most importantly, there is no change. There is just a static set of events arranged in a sequence.

But isn't this spatialization of time just a convenient way for us to represent it in order for us to "picture" it? It allows us to draw graphs. But as usual, we should be careful that we aren't confusing the map for the territory. Real things have qualitative aspects that are not captured by simple quantity, that can't be carried by a variable in an equation. And we tend to forget that even a spatial interval as we experience it is more than a simple quantity. It isn't just a number. Like time, it has its own quality. And when we spatialize time, we are simply mapping the quantitative aspect of one qualitative feature of our experience onto another. It is essentially a lie. We are taking what is not simultaneous, what is temporally sequential, and what is not necessarily visible or visual at all, and rearranging it in our experience so that we can see it visually, and so that we can see it all at once (ignoring that we must take time to take it all in with a bunch of eye saccades). It is no wonder that our representations tend to lead us into confusions about time.

Consider how you can represent any quantity spatially, or with sound, or with color, or whatever else might come to mind. I can represent population, or luminance, or heat, or profit with a number. I can also represent any of these with a changing pitch of a musical tone. Or, to make it all available to my mind sort of simultaneously, I can draw a graph with a green line. But what is being represented is not fully captured by these representations. And heat certainly isn't green, even though profit might be!

Sound can be represented as a visible waveform. But in doing that, you've lost what most distinctively makes sound what it is. You can't experience music by scanning a waveform representation of it with your eyes. To take our spatial and mathematical models of time as directly conveying the true nature of time is a huge mistake. Our maps are useful for making predictions and for helping us to visualize and understand things in a certain way, but they are just maps.

With our scientific models, all we have are maps that show how certain things are related quantitatively. But I suspect that we discover the true nature of time in our subjective experience of it. We know it directly. We know exactly what it is when we talk about it by referring to the direct experience. And there is no way we are going to know its deep nature any better by any objective means. The objective study and modeling gives us a different kind of understanding, very much useful, but not adequate for fully capturing the thing in question.

We can see why the time of the scientists is what it is. Perhaps the time of the philosophers is what it is (it varies widely) simply because of the puzzles that subjective time poses, especially since there are such glaring differences between our subjective experience of time and the time found in our equations and graphs.

Whatever the case, even with all our modern theories, time remains incredibly mysterious. But space is no less mysterious. We only tend to fail to see it as mysterious perhaps because it is that aspect of our experience onto which quantities can be mapped by which we can most readily and immediately comprehend relationships. It is that in terms of which we seem to like to understand everything else. But do we understand it itself? Maybe, in our direct experience of it, we do. And maybe that's all there is to it. And maybe time and consciousness are like that too.

Probably, what space actually is objectively isn't even captured by our experience of it. We have our subjectively experienced spatial field, in which our other experiences are situated, and it has a certain quality of, well, what else, spatiousness! And we imagine that beyond our minds, the universe is another big spatiousness just like it, only endless. But maybe not! Perhaps what exists objectively is only quantitative. Or maybe it's something else altogether, something unknown to us. Consider the numbers that represent spatial relations in a computer game. They have no spatial quality at all in themselves. It is only when we map them onto a monitor, which maps them onto our visual field and thus maps them onto our subjective space, that we experience anything resembling space. The same goes for color, sound, and so on. There is no qualitative difference between the bits in a sound file and the bits in an image file. They only gain their differences when we map them to different sensory modalities.

The world as our minds construct it might be qualitatively and substantially (assuming the world has any substance as we tend to conceive it) very, very different from the world itself, even if there is a mapping, a kind of correspondence, between the structural features of the two.

Consider that pain is part of our experience of the world. The world as experienced has features that have the quality of pain. And pain has a quantitative aspect too, an intensity, that can be mapped and represented in other ways while losing the painfulness. But it is hard to imagine that there is anything like pain out in the world itself, existing objectively. Why should any other feature of our subjective experience be any different? Why should there be color in the world? Maybe, there is nothing like time as we understand it subjectively in the objective world.

Darn good post. I have to read it more closely and will be back if I have any comments.

There's no reason to disagree with special relativity for the simple reason that we have never observed light traveling at a different speed anywhere in all our observations so far. It could be possible, but we've just never seen it happen. So there is no reason to doubt SR. A rational person just cannot doubt it. — Agustino

This doesn't make sense. First, your claim with respect to special relativity, was that light in all circumstances always travels at the same speed. Now you say that just because we've never seen light travel at a different speed, this claim is verified and there is no reason to doubt it. The problem with your position is that human beings live only in a very limited, and specific set of conditions, and therefore they have no capacity to measure the speed of light except under these very limited conditions. These conditions make up a very small proportion of possible conditions. So until human beings derive a way to measure the speed of light in all of these vastly differing possible conditions, there is very good reason to doubt the accuracy special relativity. It's like going to a pond and finding that all the fish in that pond are goldfish, then making the bold assertion that all fish in all bodies of water are goldfish.

It's not true, light speed is only constant in a vacuum, it varies in speed while moving through any medium. Scientific concepts tend to take place removed from most conditions in, a more or less theoretical void... So the opposite of that is actually true.

The essential feature of experienced time is simply change. — oysteroid

Agreed. More specifically I would say change in memory. This becomes important as one constructs an ontology of perception.

Consider how you can represent any quantity spatially, or with sound, or with color, or whatever else might come to mind. — oysteroid

Emotions, intensity of a feeling.

Probably, what space actually is objectively isn't even captured by our experience of it. — oysteroid

If one stares at space, maybe as an artist, space appears to take on a new experience. Artists, such as the impressionists, or maybe Da Vinci saw in space what most cannot, because the skills have not been developed.

It's not true, light speed is only constant in a vacuum, it varies in speed while moving through any medium. — Wosret

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That's how we get refraction, and the bent stick effect, from the change in speed.

Unless the speed of light has been measured in every possible type of circumstance, then there really is no reason to believe in SR. — Metaphysician Undercover

"No reason"?

None, since it directly contradicts GR. It's a theory with no home.

It's not true, light speed is only constant in a vacuum, it varies in speed while moving through any medium. Scientific concepts tend to take place removed from most conditions in, a more or less theoretical void... So the opposite of that is actually true. — Wosret

Yes this is correct. I should have been more specific. Light always travels at a constant speed in a vacuum.

Although it does bring up an interesting point. In a medium, do signals - say force traveling from one end of a body to another - travel slower than in vacuum? Cause in a vacuum if force is applied to the end of a very long object, the front of the object only becomes aware of the force at a later time, not instantaneously.

It would also be interesting how the relativity equations change if one of the two observers is in a non-vacuum medium.

The problem with your position is that human beings live only in a very limited, and specific set of conditions, and therefore they have no capacity to measure the speed of light except under these very limited conditions. These conditions make up a very small proportion of possible conditions. So until human beings derive a way to measure the speed of light in all of these vastly differing possible conditions, there is very good reason to doubt the accuracy special relativity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay, but we've also observed a large portion of the Universe through our telescopes and other such instruments. It's true that it is logically possible that the speed of light in a vacuum would be different in other places of the Universe, but what reason do we have to suppose this is the case? The mere fact that it's possible is a sufficient reason - it's also logically possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow, yet we don't really entertain that supposition all too seriously. Why not?

None, since it directly contradicts GR. It's a theory with no home. — Rich

The problem with your view is that you base it off direct experience of duration, without understanding that there is a need for all experience to be coherent with each other. When someone like Einstein says that time is illusory, they mean that according to their experience, time only seems real from our limited perceptions of it, which don't show the true reality of the Universe that we can grasp through the process of trying to understand our perception and experience. They make this statement in the same way that we make the statement that the Earth is round even though it appears flat, or that the Earth travels around the Sun, even though it appears like the Sun travels around the Earth from our perspective. And yet, you want to deny their position. But to do so, it's not sufficient to appeal to your experience, for that is precisely what is under the question, you have to rather show why your experience is valid, and their process of reasoning is not or cannot be.

"No reason"? — Srap Tasmaner

I would say "no reason", just like in my example with the gold fish, there is no reason to believe that all fish are gold fish, just because the one pond which was analyzed had only gold fish. Of course you could call this a faulty reason, but then how would you distinguish faulty reason from no reason?

Consider a situation where someone attempts to understand something, and believes oneself to understand, and claims to understand, but really misunderstands. We cannot say that the person understands, because as per the description, the person really misunderstands. Yet the person claims to understand, and has reason for the believe that the thing has been understood. We must somehow disqualify that "reason", as unreasonable, and therefore "no reason", in order to validate the description, which is that the person misunderstands.

It's true that it is logically possible that the speed of light in a vacuum would be different in other places of the Universe, but what reason do we have to suppose this is the case? — Agustino

Do you know about the Doppler effect, red shift, and theories which describe the universe as expanding?

Do you know about the Doppler effect, red shift, and theories which describe the universe as expanding? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. What about them suggests that the speed of light in a vacuum would be different in different parts of the Universe?

Thanks!

If one stares at space, maybe as an artist, space appears to take on a new experience. Artists, such as the impressionists, or maybe Da Vinci saw in space what most cannot, because the skills have not been developed.

I am an artist of a somewhat traditional sort, doing mostly painting, drawing, and a little sculpture, and I have long been very interested in space. I like to look at arrangements in space that draw attention to the spaces between things, which make the space part of the composition. Unfortunately, painting can't really do this. I also love to hike, climb, and generally spend time in nature, especially up around and on top of big mountain peaks. And what often interests me most is just the sense of space and the arrangement of things in it. The big spaces around and between rocky peaks is impressive, but so is the space in a forest or crag or in and around a plant. Architecture often exhibits space nicely as well.

It is hard to explain just what it is that I find most interesting about space.

It seems that without any objects or landscape, if you were to inhabit a completely featureless, empty space, you wouldn't notice the space. You need intervals between things and to have depth perception and the ability to move around the scene to appreciate or to even have the experience of spatial depth.

I have no idea if I notice anything about space that others don't, but I usually get blank stares when I talk about how much I like to pay attention to the spaces between and around things, so perhaps you are right.

Even in two-dimensional arrangements, I find a great deal of interest and aesthetic feeling in even a single drawn line. The gestural quality, the relative intervals between prominent features, the dynamics of the curves, the texture, the varying intensity of the line, and so on, are all very worthy of contemplation and appreciation! I quite like looking at signatures!

I love time too, and am deeply fascinated by it. Arrangements in time are wonderful. Few things I have found give me bliss like playing a good hand drum, even though I am not terribly good at it! The better I get though, the more satisfying the experience becomes.

I find movement to be incredibly blissful. I live to engage with interesting, usually rocky, terrain and to bring my attention to what I am doing, to the spaces I am moving through, to the sense of change, and to make every action as deliberate, conscious, efficient, graceful, skillful, and quiet as possible. I tend to treat it like a Japanese tea ceremony. It isn't just the space and time that I appreciate in such activity, but also how energy behaves. I like to become conscious of gravity, momentum, friction, and so on, often visualizing changing force vectors, trying to fully appreciate how it is that I manage to find purchase on small footholds by utilizing oppositional pressure, by controlling the directions in which force vectors point by using momentum, and so on. The world and my body and perceptual apparatus become a thoroughly engaging toy!

Rock climbing is one of the most aesthetically pleasing things I have found in all my years. It brings together many of the things I most appreciate: space, time, movement, interesting physics, finesse, strength, the need for courage and mental fortitude, mindfulness, the symbolism of ascent, skill, puzzle-solving, effort, breathing, a Heideggerian sort of engagement with the environment and tools, interesting knots, sun and weather, all the many aesthetic qualities of natural stone, danger, pain, and so on. Yes, pain and strain! It's part of it! Pure bliss! By far the most beautiful sport there is, in my opinion! Underappreciated! And it's not merely a sport, but also an art and a form of spiritual practice! For some, it is religion!

The point of all this is that I am indeed a great lover of experienced space, time, and qualitative physics and I am also an artist and athlete. But, is this appreciation really rare? I am not so sure. I think that mechanics and mechanical engineers have a similar appreciation of how interacting machine parts relate in space and time, how forces operate, the qualitative aspects of the functioning of a well-functioning machine, the properties and interactions of the materials, and so on, all in space and time, even if they aren't conscious of it. Athletes of many sorts, I think, are sensitive to these things. Anyone who appreciates music, nature, or art probably has it. Dancers clearly do. Skilled drivers too. I suspect that it is a fairly universal feature of human experience. I have known a few though who seem to primarily have an intelligence and appreciation for all things related to language, and who seem to have deep deficits when it comes to space, time, and intuitive physics.

Even though science comes into play in much of this, science is blind to most of what I am gesturing at. Perhaps this is the space and time, not of scientists or philosophers, but of world-engaged aesthetes! And perhaps it is these who are most in touch with what space and time really are! It is like the difference between a scholar of love who doesn't love and one who loves deeply without a great deal of intellectual analysis. Who has the greater insight into the thing in question? I guess the different approaches to these things simply offer different kinds of insight.

I get so carried away!

One of many baffling things about time involves the question of how quickly time passes and the idea that time cannot be its own evolution parameter. Let me explain.

Velocity is distance over time:

V=d/t

This means that as an interval of distance is covered, a certain amount of time passes. Let's say that the velocity is 10 miles per hour.

V= 10mi/1hr

Relating distance to time in this way works fine. But how quickly does time pass? If we try to express the rate of change of time this way, we seem to be trying to put time over time.

V=t/t

Time passes at 1 second per second or 1 hour per hour. This tells us nothing! And 10 hours over 10 hours equals 1 with no units, since the units cancel. No matter what time interval you plug in, you get this result. As you can see, time cannot be its own evolution parameter. It is as pointless as saying that there is one inch of distance in one inch of distance. But time does seem to pass at a finite rate! Notice that you don't experience your entire lifetime zipping by in a snap. You also don't experience it passing so slowly that it is almost stopped or actually stopped. You experience it passing at a certain rate. This rate might seem to vary a little as with time flying when you are having fun. That apparent variation isn't particularly interesting to me. What I am interested in is the strong experience that we have of time passing at a rate, even though this seems absurd when you think about it.

It might seem that the rate of time passage lies in something like the rate at which you are passing through a series of states. Instead of 1 second per second, you have 24 frames per second. But this solves nothing. Why does a second, which contains the experience of 24 frames, seem to pass at the particular rate it does? We are back to the problem we started with. This time that is passing outside the film strip that allows us to move with respect to it seems to pass at a certain rate.

Consider the following. With a film strip, we could have an animation of a moving dot and could mark our film frames with frame numbers standing for a kind of time unit. So the dot will change position from frame to frame at a certain rate with respect to the frame numbers. It might move at a rate of 1 millimeter per frame. But here, we still have no motion, real or apparent. It is just a static collection of frames. In order for you to move with respect to the film strip to see apparent motion in it, you need real time outside of the film strip. So now, as you move, you are passing through so many frames per second. You can keep doing this, removing yourself once, twice, three times, and so on, each time spatializing the time dimension. You could make another filmstrip depicting your dolly motion with respect to the first filmstrip, each frame containing an image of your dolly at a certain position along the strip. But in order to have change, you need to introduce another time dimension orthogonal to the previous one, this time real. And then you need to really move with respect to the strip. But how is this possible? Baffling and fascinating!

But, is this appreciation really rare? — oysteroid

I cannot speak to how rare it is , but it is highly unusual. Observation and appreciation of real nature has for the most part been replaced by electronics, to the extent that rather than being at one with nature, people are at one with computers and are quite literally in love with them. They are trying to actually emulate robots. Technology has become without exaggeration the real reality.

But be that as it may, and we all can choose our own path of exploration, I like you explore the arts because I am really interested in understanding life.

Another very interesting post. Have you read Bergson or watched any of Stephen Robbins YouTube videos?

Yes, I think technology does interfere with a proper appreciation of the natural world. It is sad that so many these days spend so much of their time texting rather than engaging with the world around them.

It is good that you explore the arts! There is much value to be found there.

As for Bergson, I haven't read more than just a tiny bit here and there. He has long been on my to-do list, but I have always felt a bit intimidated, as I have difficulty understanding what he is talking about when I do sample his work. I started to read one of his books several years ago and didn't get very far before something else grabbed my interest. But I will have to put more effort into his work one of these days! I would like, in particular, to understand his view of time.

As for Stephen Robbins, I watched the first video a week or so ago, which I saw mentioned on these forums somewhere, maybe by you. It seems interesting, but I am not sure I quite understand what he is trying to convey yet. I mean to watch more to see where his line of thought leads. I also have read part of his book, Time and Memory, and mean to finish it one of these days. Right now though, I am trying to finally tackle Kant's first critique, starting with some secondary introductory material and the Prolegomena. That reading project might take me a little while at my slow pace!

Well, you are pretty much channeling Bergson. Robbins is dry and slow but incredible depth and insight.

Yes. What about them suggests that the speed of light in a vacuum would be different in different parts of the Universe? — Agustino

OK, you're familiar with the concept of spatial expansion, that's good. So observational information is taken and interpreted according to the precepts of relativity based theories. The interpretations show that distant objects, stars and galaxies are all moving away from us. Of course we cannot conclude that all the objects in the universe are moving away from us, because that would make us the centre of the universe, just like geocentrism. Also, we wouldn't want to admit that relativity theory is defective, because applying it makes it appear like we are the centre of the universe. Instead, cosmologists have produced the theory of spatial expansion.

Now we have the motions of objects which are subject to relativity theory, plus motions which are subject to expansion theories. Since relativity theory is supposed to apply to all motions of material objects, then the latter motions, those explained by expansion theories cannot be called motions. So we have "motions" those which are consistent with relativity theory, and "non-motions", those motions which require expansion theories to explain. Instead of recognizing that relativity theory is inadequate for interpreting all the motions in the universe, cosmologists prefer to accept contradiction. They allow that there are motions which are not real motions, because they are inconsistent with relativity. Then they are forced to produce new theories, spatial expansion, to account for these contradictory motions.

OK, you're familiar with the concept of spatial expansion, that's good. So observational information is taken and interpreted according to the precepts of relativity based theories. The interpretations show that distant objects, stars and galaxies are all moving away from us. Of course we cannot conclude that all the objects in the universe are moving away from us, because that would make us the centre of the universe, just like geocentrism. Also, we wouldn't want to admit that relativity theory is defective, because applying it makes it appear like we are the centre of the universe. Instead, cosmologists have produced the theory of spatial expansion.

Now we have the motions of objects which are subject to relativity theory, plus motions which are subject to expansion theories. Since relativity theory is supposed to apply to all motions of material objects, then the latter motions, those explained by expansion theories cannot be called motions. So we have "motions" those which are consistent with relativity theory, and "non-motions", those motions which require expansion theories to explain. Instead of recognizing that relativity theory is inadequate for interpreting all the motions in the universe, cosmologists prefer to accept contradiction. They allow that there are motions which are not real motions, because they are inconsistent with relativity. Then they are forced to produce new theories, spatial expansion, to account for these contradictory motions. — Metaphysician Undercover

You mean similar to how geocentrists first addressed errors that appeared in their model by introducing different fudge factors to account for the actual orbits of the planets?

Yeah, something like that. When "the rule" has difficulty dealing with the fringe factors, you need to make up more rules to deal with those exceptions to the rule. Cosmology is just the half of it. At the other extreme, in the microcosm of quantum mechanics, physicists use special relativity to produce fields. And here we have the same result, contradiction, particles which are not really particles. So in the one extreme, with the massive objects of the vast universe, there are motions which are not really motions, and at the other extreme, in the miniature world of quantum mechanics, there are objects which are not really objects. Both of these problems come about from the use of relativity theory which is really only applicable in the middle realm of the human environment, where the discrepancies that are amplified at the extremes, do not cause any problems.

Bergsonian Time might be best approached from the perspective of Quine: internal states are not real because they're unverifiable. This is sort of what Einstein was driving at in his debates with Bergson. In so far as we now understand thru GRT that time/space is created by the flux of the gravitational force, we can infer that the sense of time that's inside our heads is a product of GRT, as well. Or else, again, we're speaking unverifiable timely nonsense.

In passing, permit me to add the quote of Einstein that time isn't real (ie it's an outcome); only clocks are real.