I've been pondering the same thing on and off for much of this year - the present moment may be all which exists, but how are we to understand looking back? I think we just have to take past, present and future as structures in human cognition which help us to make sense of our reality, but I don't know how much we can say beyond this. We can't really examine time outside of our experience of it.

I advocate for the Carlo Rovelli descriptions of time.


Having watched all his youtube offerings regarding time, a few times, I think that from the reference frame of an individual human, we experience time/spacetime, 'completely personally,' from cradle to grave.

My time and your time are never exactly the same. Even when I am right next to you, staring at your face, there is still a physical distance between your eyes and mine. That distance has to be covered by light. So I am not seeing you as you are now, as it took a duration >0 for the information regarding your image, to reach me and be interpreted/processed by my brain. As long as distance and brain process time, exists between you and what you are looking at/observing/detecting, you cannot observe/detect 'now.'

I think that's part of the description of time, as Carlo describes it but I fully accept, that this is my interpretation, of part of what he says about time.

Yes. My strongest intuition of the meaning of the nature of time as we experience it might be summed in this excerpt of my favourite passage (by Fichte):

Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered; — this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself? This can never be the vocation of my being, and of all being. There must be something which exists because it has come into existence; and now endures, and cannot again re-appear, having once become such as it is. And this element of permanent endurance must be produced amid the vicissitudes of the transitory and perishable, maintain itself there, and be borne onwards, pure and inviolate, upon the waves of time.

The sensation of the meaning of time contains not only trivial empirical-causal elements, but the awareness of being part of a culture, a species, a world, a universe. Right now I'm reading a chapter called "Intuition of Time" in Cassirer's Phenomenology of Cognition. It woke me up early this morning. A lot of times, I find reading about time to be...frustrating. It's as Augustine said: What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.

Cassirer mentions that different types of metaphysical systems correspond with differing types of temporal intuition, which I think is accurate. He says Parmenides and Spinoza embody the "present type" while Fichte is determined by futurity. Personally, I am exploring the idea that, while objects may have a temporal position, consciousness actually has a temporal "size." Objects are three dimensional and moving through or in time, as it were. But consciousness actually exists in the past, present and future, has actual temporal dimension. An intuition.

This doesn't correlate with my intuitions of time. It seems to reflect an inherently reductive mechanistic ontology (which would be reasonable for a physicist). And the correlation of the intuition of time and ontology was something Cassirer mentions. Certainly, from the standpoint of "pure objectivity" time is illusory.....

Personally, I am exploring the idea that, while objects may have a temporal position, consciousness actually has a temporal "size." Objects are three dimensional and moving through or in time, as it were. But consciousness actually exists in the past, present and future, has actual temporal dimension. An intuition. — Pantagruel

Food for thought.

Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered; — this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself? — Pantagruel

Ha! I can only agree with Fichte and have had similar thoughts, as I am sure many do. More recently I feel time is like being trapped inside a speeding train, the stations I see passing in a blur are like the obligatory seasonal and life events which come and go by with monotonous regularity and are also opportunities I've failed to make use of.

Yeah, I am only attracted to the physics of time. Metaphysical notions/projections/handlings of time are a little like watching sci-fi, great fun, very entertaining, sometimes even thought provoking, but not real.
There is always the possibility that some sci-fi becomes sci.

:up:

One physical dimension that does interest me is the relationship between entropy and time. Usually, it is theoretically possible to trace any number of paths in any given context. However it seems like the arrow of time might be fundamentally related to the physical gradient of entropy. However the universe doesn't just align itself to the gradient of maximum entropy. There are discrete relativistic frames with - possibly - discrete timelines. And negentropic gradients exist within those frames. Does negentropy entail some kind of divergence of of temporality from its fundamental gradient? Stuff like that.

Absafragginlootly!

However it seems like the arrow of time might be fundamentally related to the physical gradient of entropy — Pantagruel

Isnt this a description of a content that takes place within the structure of time rather than an elucidation of the form of time itself?

My preference is for William James’ notion of specious time:

“The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and the future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past—a recent past—delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past.”

James goes on:

“the original paragon and prototype of all conceived times is the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible.”

In another formulation he enters into more detail, and says something about what this short duration contains:

“The unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward—and a forward-looking end. It is only as parts of this duration-block that the relation of succession of one end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel one end and then feel the other after it, and from the perception of the succession infer an interval of time between, but we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded in it.”

In the same chapter of the Principles James also writes:

“Its content is in a constant flux, events dawning into its forward end as fast as they fade out of its rearward one … Meanwhile, the specious present, the intuited duration, stands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own quality unchanged by the events that stream through it. “

James clearly believed that there is an unvarying structure or mechanism underlying our temporal awareness, as did Husserl after him. If this is right, and if (as many believe) consciousness is essentially temporal, then this structure (or mechanism) is an essential component of consciousness itself, in all its forms.James is well-known for emphasizing the continuity of experience

“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up into bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly … It is nothing jointed, it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is naturally described…”

and James’ stream metaphor strikes many as apt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

↪Pantagruel
Yeah, I am only attracted to the physics of time. Metaphysical notions/projections/handlings of time are a little like watching sci-fi, great fun, very entertaining, sometimes even thought provoking, but not real. — universeness

To me it’s the opposite. It’s the physics of time that’s not ‘real’. Or put better, such empirical accounts are profoundly limited by their ignorance of the subjective structures that make them intelligible.

Is it? I thought the concept of the thermodynamic arrow of time was fairly 'fundamental'.

↪Joshs Is it? I thought the concept of the thermodynamic arrow of time was fairly 'fundamental'. — Pantagruel

Yes, what I should have said is that a description of time in physics is already a metaphysics. That is, it uses the conventionalized language of empiricism to express a metaphysical position on time. The thermodynamic arrow model brings physics closer to recent approaches in philosophy, butI think you’ll see further modifications, perhaps along the lines of Karen Baead’s agential realism.

Sean Carroll discusses that area quite well, with:

"In his book The Big Picture, physicist Sean M. Carroll compares the asymmetry of time to the asymmetry of space: While physical laws are in general isotropic, near Earth there is an obvious distinction between "up" and "down", due to proximity to this huge body, which breaks the symmetry of space. Similarly, physical laws are in general symmetric to the flipping of time direction, but near the Big Bang, there is an obvious distinction between "forward" and "backward" in time, due to relative proximity to this special event, which breaks the symmetry of time.
Under this view, all the arrows of time are a result of our relative proximity in time to the Big Bang and the special circumstances that existed then. (Strictly speaking, the weak interactions are asymmetric to both spatial reflection and to flipping of the time direction. However, they do obey a more complicated symmetry that includes both.)"

To me it’s the opposite. It’s the physics of time that’s not ‘real’. Or put better, such empirical accounts are profoundly limited by their ignorance of the subjective structures that make them intelligible. — Joshs

Well, I agree that any proposed structure of, or structure to, time, remains in some sense, empirically unproven.
Do you think that there is an existent universal frame, in which time truly ticked from 0 to 13.8 billion years? I can only imagine such a reference frame being 'outside' of spacetime, observing in and I currently reject that, as an impossible reference frame.

Under this view, all the arrows of time are a result of our relative proximity in time to the Big Bang and the special circumstances that existed then — universeness

Do you think this might relate to the apparently anomalous extremely-early galaxies discovered by the JWT?

Well, Sean talks of our relative proximity in time, rather than in spacetime, but I assume that he meant spacetime.
I always assumed that whichever direction we point our telescope in space, we observe the past, yes?
We cannot observe a galaxy any older than our own, can we?
There is no galaxy we can observe that is further from the big bang than us, as any such galaxy would be older than 13.8 billion years, and in a sense, in our future. That does not mean such galaxies do not exist, but they are beyond our observation, based on my understanding of the expanding 'raisin bread' metaphor. So, the very early, large galaxy formations reported by the JWST, are not explained by our 'proximity in spacetime,' unless I am missing something in my interpretation.

Perhaps there was a different phase of hyperinflation that affected the temporal dimension differently in the very early universe.

:up:

“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up into bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly … It is nothing jointed, it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is naturally described…”

and James’ stream metaphor strikes many as apt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I agree that it doesn't feel that way, but it could just as easily be that way. Perhaps consciousness is a case of perpetual last-thursdayism, where every moment of consciousness is there for a moment and then gone, and the next moment is a consciousness that only feel as though it's connected to previous moments because it "remembers" those previous moments.

Would there be any difference between those two things? Between a genuine continuity and an illusion of continuity due to memory being persisted? Maybe not. But there is potentially an ethical difference, even if there's no detectible difference. The ethical difference between those two worlds is, the teleporter problem ceases to be a problem in a world where the continuous nature of consciousness is merely an illusion. Not that that matters anyway...

Perhaps there was a different phase of hyperinflation that affected the temporal dimension differently in the very early universe. — Pantagruel

Cant think how that would be conceptualised. Inflation just proposes faster than light expansion, how would such have an effect on our current position in the universe? Inflation only lasted from ${10^{-36}}$ seconds until ${10^{-32}}$ seconds after the big bang. After inflation, the universe was a volume of around 0.88mm cubed. If inflation happened for much longer then I think that would affect the speed of light constant, would it not?

Just spitballing. Conjectures about the laws of physics themselves changing? I mean, if somehow there was a divergence of relativistic frames? I don't know. I will be interested to see where it goes.

:up: Brainstorming is always fun, no matter how the runes fall!

Does what we designate as time really only refer to the awareness of time? — Pantagruel

the present moment may be all which exists, but how are we to understand looking back? I think we just have to take past, present and future as structures in human cognition which help us to make sense of our reality, but I don't know how much we can say beyond this. We can't really examine time outside of our experience of it. — Tom Storm

We don't have awareness of time, per se. If there's "nothing" in the universe but time, then we wouldn't be able to perceive it. How we perceive time is through object permanence and memory. I saw a huge tree when I passed the bridge, then I came back the same way and saw the tree again. In my memory, I saw a tree on my way, then I saw it again on my way back. The two moments are both in our thought. The second time triggered my memory that I saw that tree the first time. If I deliberate further, because my mind has object permanence, I believe that I will pass that tree again tomorrow if I go that way (unless someone cut down the tree before I get there).

Edit. there are things that we perceive that isn't temporal.

I sir must refer to a type of clock to know there is a time. At any given present moment without a clock I can only make an estimate, approximately to the time I last looked at the time, or in oversight of the star in the sky (time of day). Try the instance of measuring time at night! You might make use of the compound terms, "moment-to-moment" which can be "movement-to-movement," etc. My conscious brain is not a computer which can readily calculate any of the physics of phenomena, I am too dumb mathematically to do this at a superior capacity, though some measurements only require a bit of focus and mathematical computations. One invention that can exist is a pair of augmented glasses that make all kinds of computations more speedily than some more lethargic brains. What would be the purpose, I do not know? Enhance intelligence? But why do that? Will there eventually be some kind of "future vision" specticals, like in the movie "Deja vu"? I foresee...not in this generation. :D

The thing that I don't like about marijuana is that it disturbs my sense of time passing, such that time seems to pass very slowly for a while. It has other effects as well.

Does anyone happen to what parts of the brain THC would have to affect to result in the sense of slowed time? Does that part of the brain also cause older people to feel time is passing faster than it did say, 40 years earlier? (This seems to be real, not just old folk's imaginations.)

Does what we designate as time really only refer to the awareness of time? — Pantagruel

I don't think so. It's much more than that. "Time" is ... scrambled eggs which cannot ever unscramble (and reshell) themselves.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/585498

"Awareness of time"? That's like looking through a keyhole at the Atlantic ocean or the Grand Canyon or a hurricane.

Suppose we are relative clocks interacting with, and by way of, innumerably other, relative clocks (pace Heidegger / Kant) à la unbounded atoms swirling-recombining ...

Suppose cosmological – the Hubble volume's – expansion is, in effect, all clocks winding down, or unwinding ...

No doubt, as far as I can discern it, this is a metaphysical question that has only a physical solution. :chin:

:up:

Suppose cosmological – the Hubble volume's – expansion is, in effect, all clocks winding down, or unwinding ... — 180 Proof

Yes, I am very interested in the relationship between time and entropy, including the possible temporal implications of negentropy.

What I find interesting is the temporal differential between relativistic and gravitational time dilation. For any sufficiently massive object, there is essentially a temporally inflated zone which includes both a relative past (nearest the mass) and a relative future (distantly orbiting the mass).

Perhaps the concept of time only makes sense in the context of awareness. — Pantagruel

I’d agree with that. But then, in order to justify the concept itself, one has to ask…..what is the irreducible awareness which limits the context, such that without it, the concept wouldn’t even occur.

I’d agree with that. But then, in order to justify the concept itself, one has to ask…..what is the irreducible awareness which limits the context, such that without it, the concept wouldn’t even occur. — Mww

:chin:

I don't know. I guess my intuition is that, an event happens in a now. But we don't perceive discrete-instantaneous nows, rather a continuous flow. So the "awareness of time" is itself fundamentally temporal in nature, that is, is "stretched out" in time.