So you think that if an event if present, it is also future and past? — Bartricks
You can't be dead in the future, because there is no future, there is only conjecture. I know from empirical observation that I will cease to be a human being in the present, because I will be dead. Just that it is not this current moment, but another, future, moment, that I am dead.So, "I will be dead in the future" means the same as "I am dead" yes? That is, if I am dead in the future, I am now dead.
There is no single time: there is a different duration for every trajectory; and time passes at different rhythms according to place and according to speed. It is not directional: the difference between past and future does not exist in the elementary equations of the world; its orientation is merely a contingent aspect that appears when we look at things and neglect the details. In this blurred view, the past of the universe was in a curiously ‘particular’ state. The notion of ‘present’ does not work: in the vast universe there is nothing that we can reasonably call ‘present’. The substratum that determines the duration of time is not an independent entity, different from the others that make up the world; it is an aspect of a dynamic field. It jumps, fluctuates, materialises only by interacting, and is not to be found beneath the minimum scale...
None of the pieces that time has lost (singularity, direction, independence, the present, continuity) puts into question the fact that the world is a network of events. On the one hand, there was time, with its many determinations; on the other, the simple fact that nothing is: that things happen instead. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’
The fact that we cannot arrange the universe like a single orderly sequence of times does not mean that nothing changes. It means that changes are not arranged in a single orderly succession: the temporal structure of the world is more complex than a single linear succession of instants. This does not mean that it is non-existent or illusory.
The distinction between past, present and future is not an illusion. It is the temporal structure of the world. But the temporal structure of the world is not that of presentism. The temporal relations between events are more complex than we previously thought, but they do not cease to exist on account of this...
What confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organised around an absolute distinction - ‘past/present/future’ - that is only partly apt, here in our immediate vicinity. The structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. We say that an event ‘is’, or ‘has been, or ‘will be’. We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’
By refresh-rate, you are referring to the duration of a moment for a human, what we would describe as a few seconds. Or about a second with a fade in and out of a second each side, the past and future?
Also you are saying there are other reset periods, like day length determined by physical circumstances? — Punshhh
This sort of concept can be a tongue twister and philosophically mere speculation.
If one approaches the question from a spiritual perspective you can go a lot further and consider the absolute. — Punshhh
Some people interpret Block Time and Eternalism as-if our experience of sequential space & time is an illusion due to our warped view from Relativity. So, the speculative inferences they draw are pretty far-out. But we need to remember that Block Time is a mathematical theory with no empirical evidence. Therefore, unless you are a theoretical physicist, I wouldn't worry too much about the weird implications of Block Time.I can’t answer the question because I’m only just getting my head around the theory of Eternalism which I find supportive of my OP. — Brett
So we too-often confuse those Ideal notions with Real things. If we were to leave the Real world, and go to the Ideal world, we would have to abandon our 3D bodies, and become fleshless ghosts. Unfortunately, we also have no empirical evidence of humans "crossing-over", just imaginary stories of "the other side". — Gnomon
I assume that Eternity-Infinity (timelessness and spacelessness) is the default state of BEING.
But the idea is that mathematical knowledge was already there. Does this then mean that everything is already there, it only awaits our ability to see it; America was there before it was discovered, Einstein’s theory of relativity was there before he formulated it, viruses existed before we identified them. Over time we learn to see more as our knowledge expands. But even then, despite our advancement in science, are we still only comprehending one small aspect of a virus. Might we one day discover that a virus has a mind? — Brett
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