If you could wind that clock back, then it wouldn't actually be keeping time for the universe, would it? If you wind back your clock, then the time it gives is no longer true, if it had the true time before. But winding it back doesn't affect when it started keeping time. — Metaphysician Undercover
No, that is not how modal logic works--the negation of "X is necessary" is "X is not necessary" rather than "not-X is necessary." Denying that time necessarily had a beginning does not entail affirming that time necessarily did not have a beginning. Instead, both disjuncts are false: time did not necessarily have a beginning, and time did not necessarily not have a beginning. In other words, whether time had a beginning or not is contingent.#2 would be false only if both disjuncts are false i.e. time necessarily had a beginning is false AND time necessarily didn't have a beginning is false but notice these disjuncts are contradictions and being so they'll always have opposite truth values and so the the compound statement will always be true, not false. — TheMadFool
That is because you vastly overestimate the strength of your arguments. They are all question-begging, assuming what they set out to prove. For example ...I've tried a couple of arguments with you but none have convinced you. — TheMadFool
This is an assumption, not a conclusion.There can't be a present if that present wasn't a future at a time preceding it. — TheMadFool
No, that is not how modal logic works--the negation of "X is necessary" is "X is not necessary" rather than "not-X is necessary." Denying that time necessarily had a beginning does not entail affirming that time necessarily did not have a beginning. Instead, both disjuncts are false: time did not necessarily have a beginning, and time did not necessarily not have a beginning. In other words, whether time had a beginning or not is contingent. — aletheist
1. Necessarily, time either had a beginning or did not have a beginning.
2. Time either necessarily had a beginning or necessarily did not have a beginning. — aletheist
hat is because you vastly overestimate the strength of your arguments. They are all question-begging, assuming what they set out to prove. For example .. — aletheist
I get your point that relativity may play a significant role but I'm basing my arguments on the same facts that show the Big Bang took place 13.8 billion years ago. Thanks — TheMadFool
I was responding to what someone else said in terms of why a universal clock wouldn't work, thats why i mentioned special relativity in the comment. — christian2017
The past can't be infinite i.e. time has to have a beginning — TheMadFool
I'm making (trying to) the case that time has no beginning. Every time we have ever dealt with can be put into the framework of past, present and future. You can't deny that. So, if for no other reason than statistical ones, the Big Bang too must fit into this model of past, present and future i.e. there was a time before the Big Bang. An argument against this, a claim that the Big Bang was the beginning of time, doesn't exist at all. — TheMadFool
But yes in short i agree with you. I understand we base our reality on what is happening in the present and what we percieve as having happened in the past or past presents. — christian2017
The clock runs normally but the universe is traveling back in time. When the universe reached the Big Bang singularity, the clock reads 13.8 billion years and vanishes into the singularity. That the clock is no longer there is of no concern for even if we destroy all the clocks in the world, time will still flow. Does time stop? No, it'll continue on to before the Big Bang and beyond and had the clock survived, it would've given us pre-Big Bang time. — TheMadFool
When you consider that the present marks the division between past and future, you'll see that it marks the end of one, and the beginning of the other. It doesn't make sense to talk about future and past without a present, but it does makes sense to talk about a future without a past, and a past without a future. Before a person is born, they have a future with no past, and when a person dies they have a past but no future. So, we can talk about the future, or the past, in exclusion of the other, but we cannot talk about the present without implying both future and past. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. Relativistic physics denies that premise. NOT every time we have ever dealt with has a past and a future. You seem unable to comprehend the concept of time having a beginning. Time is not a philosophical term any more, but a scientific one. Your attempt to discuss this question purely in philosophical terms is therefore flawed. You seem to be denying what is perceived by physicists as scientific truth, either through ignorance or some counter belief. Unless you can expound your counter theory and it stands up to investigation, your argument has no merit to me. — Tim3003
But yes in short i agree with you. I understand we base our reality on what is happening in the present and what we percieve as having happened in the past or past presents.
— christian2017
Not only that, but there is an intuitional, instinctual, built in, or hardwired perspective of what the present is. Look at it like we have a window of observation onto the passing of time, and we call this observational perspective "the present". This, what we call "the present", must be a length of time, perhaps a couple hundredths of a second or something like that. Now imagine if that window was just a nanosecond, or if the window was a million years. The world we perceive would be completely different if this were the case. So, the world we perceive, what we sense, is very much shaped by that temporal perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover
The clock runs normally but the universe is traveling back in time. When the universe reached the Big Bang singularity, the clock reads 13.8 billion years and vanishes into the singularity. That the clock is no longer there is of no concern for even if we destroy all the clocks in the world, time will still flow. Does time stop? No, it'll continue on to before the Big Bang and beyond and had the clock survived, it would've given us pre-Big Bang time.
— TheMadFool
Is the clock outside the universe then? If it continues on, it must be. But how is that possible? You are assuming a thing (the clock) which is outside the "universe", which by definition includes all things. — Metaphysician Undercover
If it is true that past, present, and future are required to cognize reality, how does that square with the law of non-contradiction?
In other words, all three comprise the idea of Time. It seems that taking any one out of the equation precludes cognition, no?
And so, could time be another illogical form of existence? — 3017amen
On what grounds? — TheMadFool
I haven't mentioned anything about causality. — TheMadFool
Really? :)
There'd be more time than time? — jorndoe
My comment was really just about sufficient reason, much like the opening post but analogous, deriving a contradiction from sufficient reason instead — jorndoe
No, again, that is incorrect. This is Modal Logic 101.Since this disjunction consists of contradictory statements, they're necessarily true (tautology wise). — TheMadFool
The contradiction of (a) is "time did not necessarily have a beginning"--i.e., "time might not have had a beginning." The contradiction of (b) is "time did not necessarily not have a beginning"--i.e., "time might have had a beginning." Notice that these two propositions can both be true, such that we can combine them into one: "time might or might not have had a beginning"; i.e., whether or not time had a beginning is contingent, rather than necessary either way, as I have been saying all along.If not, what are the contradictions of: a) time necessarily had a beginning and b) time necessarily did not have a beginning? — TheMadFool
Yes, there is. The clock measures some physical process, such as a moving shadow, an oscillating pendulum, or a vibrating quartz crystal or cesium atom. Going backwards to the Big Bang, all such motion would cease at that moment, so the clock would show that time had stopped.Imagine there's a special clock that records time in the normal way but the universe is now traveling backwards in time ... There simply is no good reason that such a clock should come to halt at the point proffered as the beginning. — TheMadFool
No, you assumed that an infinite past would entail an actual infinity, and that this is impossible. As I mentioned upstream, an alternative is that time itself had no beginning, but there was nevertheless a first event (e.g., Big Bang). Time would then be a potential infinity, rather than an actual infinity, which is not problematic.Actually, in my OP I proved that time has to have a beginning for the simple reason that the past can't be infinite. — TheMadFool
We had this discussion already, in the thread that I just linked. — aletheist
I would say no--time is a real law that governs existing things, not itself an existing thing--but you have steadfastly refused to give your own definition of time. Instead, you keep talking about clocks, which obviously are material.Is time material? — TheMadFool
That sounds like what I just described--time extends infinitely into the past, but events began with the Big Bang.... the clock is not time and even in its absence time extends infinitely into the past of the big bang. — TheMadFool
No, but that has no bearing on whether time logically could have had a beginning. Instead, the issue is whether time is entirely continuous or had at least one discontinuity--a present that was not preceded by a past.So I'll restate the question: can you remove the past, present, and future from the concept of Time itself? — 3017amen
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.