Try this: imagine you're in the 60's and you are tripping on acid. You have thoughts of a round triangle. When you sober up the idea lingers. Now reason may say such a thing is impossible, but something opened that got you "out of the box". I propose this as chemically induced faith. — Gregory

That sounds like hallucination rather than faith. Faith is also underlying motive for the actions aiming at certain achievements or enlightenment. Faith is not purposeless.

Hold on, we shouldn' jump to conclusions if there is any doubt. There is knowledge. It is always contingent, — Gregory

Knowledge requires verification and evidence for its validity. When the object or existence under investigation is lacking such requirements, but still folks think or believe in the truths or existence of such objects, then they have faith rather than knowledge. No?

beliefs that may transcend reason perhaps are not irrational but maybe a-rational. — Gregory

What do you mean by "may transcend"? a-rational? Isn't it just another way of saying irrational?

Of course we're going to notice the difference, it changes the pitch. It's like Alvin and The Chipmunks. They take a recording and speed it up. It's noticeably not normal. — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you know slowed or fastened reproduction of the music is not normal? I was pointing out, it is a priori concept of temporality in our minds which can tell they are not normal, rather than the music itself.
Hence human mind has innate temporal knowledge of time? Would you agree?

1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

Could faith be irrational and unjustified beliefs? Rational and justified beliefs are knowledge.

This is because increasing the speed at which you play an instrument does not change the way that the notes are created so it does not effect the frequency of the individual notes — Metaphysician Undercover

I wasn't talking about difference in perception of live music performance and reproduction of the music from the records. I was only talking about the perceptual differences and the judgement of the listener on the same music reproduced in different speeds. Please listen to the recordings of the same music played in different speeds.

A person listening to an artist playing an instrument rapidly (decreased time between particular notes), will hear something completely different from a person listening to a recording which is speeded up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I agree. But still I was talking about how the different speed of the same music reproduced via the recordings will be noticed by the listener as incorrect and correct just by listening to them. That judgement comes from a priori concept of temporality or musical aesthetics in human minds rather than the music itself.

So changing the speed of a recording is a completely different thing from changing the speed at which a person plays the particular notes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure. Good point. However, what you are talking about seems to be the reproduction of music theory. My point was more on the perceptual aspects of the music listeners.

Compare that with the normal speed version.

Yes. Music makes a good laboratory to examine some of our intuitions here, because (most?) acousticians accept the idea that the "movement of sound" is an illusion. — J

Music played faster or slower speed than the original version will sound not right. Nothing is different than the speed of the playing in the music implies that human mind has perceptual ability to detect the correct speed of music just by listening to them?

You mean the "ontology of time" topic. I didn't post to that since time was not defined clearly. — noAxioms

The OP started with little assumption and open mindedness on the definitions, because it is known to be historically abstract and contentious topic. It was looking for good arguments from different angles for exploration, which could offer us better understanding on the concept of time, and possible solid definitions and conclusions.

Professor Donald Hoffman and Rupert Spira discussions above were really clear and good explanations on the topic. I was totally enthralled by the clarity and lucidity of their ideas and explications, which I agreed on every points.

The second video on their discussion put down the final nail on the coffin of the time realists shallow and misled slogans where their misunderstandings come from.

Youtube is not perfect. It gets bad names for the commercialism and mindless ads sometimes, but there are also excellent academic discussions videos like these ones. One just has to look for the rare diamonds in the muds. Saying all Youtube videos are ads are from the shallow minded folks with no genuine effort to search for the gems in the platform.

Happened with Kant's CPR. Tried start reading the original texts, but they were hard to bite in with convoluted archaic writing styles and word meanings from different versions of translated texts, which got me nowhere.

Put down the original texts, and read several academic commentaries, articles and ChatGpt sessions on the topic. They gave me clearer understanding on the whole picture of CPR, and now I am ready to get back to original texts.

'State' shouldn't be there, especially since a universe does not have a state, but a world at a given moment in time does. One definition is that a thing is present at a moment in time. People exist, dinosaurs don't. That's a reference to state. The universe is all worlds, the entire structure, the initial state of which is what we know as the big bang. — noAxioms

If you mean by universe as some physical entity, then I am not sure where you can find space and time. You see the objects and objects in movements, changes and motions, but where is time? Isn't what you call time the durations and intervals observed and measured with the clocks and watches in some variables? Is that case, is time real? If you use some other measuring device other than the standard watches, clocks and calendar systems, you will get totally different measured time variables. In that case what is the real time? What are the nature of real space and time then?

Space and time is contained in the universe only makes sense, if you mean the universe as an entity created in your mind, not something out there in material entity. But in this case, is it correct to say space and time exist or contained in the universe? There are some physicists saying that spacetime doesn't exist. It is just an illusion derived from our imagination.

That looks like an arbitrary distinction. Faint/clear? — Metaphysician Undercover

Hume makes clear statement on the definition of ideas in his Treatise and Enquiries too. Impressions are sensations which first appear into our minds with liveliness and vivacity. Ideas are the matching copies of the impressions which are faint in vivacity and liveliness. This makes sense. When we remember past events, the images and ideas are not as lively and vivacious as the impressions from live perception.

Perception is not accurate, that's the point. We create accuracy with conception, and that is why we need proper principles to distinguish between perception and conception. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course perception is not 100% accurate. Nothing is. But it is far more accurate than guessing or imagining.

and that is why we need proper principles to distinguish between perception and conception. This allows us to understand how conception obtains such a higher degree of accuracy. Kant for instance, proposes the a priori intuitions of space and time, as the condition for sense impressions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that is a guarantee for absolute accuracy on perception. Space and time as a priori condition for perception in Kant is just the foundation his transcendental idealism is based on. What Kant was aiming at was possibility of Metaphysics as Science, not accuracy of perception.

The point being that ideas and perceptions are not properly separated or distinguished. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hume distinguishes ideas from impressions, and the rest of perceptions too.
Ideas are faint copies of the matching impressions. Only ideas work under the principle of the association i.e. contiguity, resemblance and cause and effect.

No I don't think so. The fact that some motions are too fast to sense doesn't affect the fact that we sense motions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your saying "we sense motions" sounds like contingent acts of guessing. Not accurate perception. Your visual sensation can never capture the motion of a flying bullet. You would be just guessing it. That is not perception. What does it tell you? Continuity is an illusion created by your mind, and it is a concept. It doesn't exist in reality.

Another good video on Time.

The book "Subjective Time" arrived, and the 1st chapter starts with the excerpt from "The Principle of Psychology" by William James. James starts the chapter saying he will deal with what is sometime called internal perception, or the perception of time. So, James seems to have thought that time is an internal perception.

The question seems to ask "what location is distance?" and "when is duration?", both circular. — noAxioms

The OP is about existence prior to predicate, and existence is closely linked to space and time in some of the definitions, hence we were trying to clarify existence in space and time definition.

The question as you worded it implies that space and time are objects. They're not. They're properties, but so are objects. — noAxioms

Some folks seem to think space and time are objects, and exist as real entity. But I am not sure if that is the case. I am more into the idea that space and time is emergent quality from movements of the objects in perception, as in the other thread running at the moment.

And chatbots are notorious for wrong answers when it comes to cosmology. — noAxioms

I went to ChatGPT, and it was actually quite good. It seems to be getting better all the time. It was quite different in response since my last visit a few months ago. For getting the basics of any topics or subjects, ChatGPT seems quite capable in providing good information.

I will do some concentrated reading on the rest of your post, and will return later with my points on it. Many thanks for your reply on the question.

Good point. But when the actual text is abstruse, preliminary readings on the academic commentaries and even ChatGPT sessions do help accessing the text later?

Here, my only interest in Plato's World Soul is as a rational intelligent agent that after the original divine origin, continues to create natural observable things by mixing definite finite forms with indefinite primal substantial elements. — magritte

:ok:

Found an info page on Chora (Khora) in Wiki, which looks good. I am sure you must have seen the page if your main interest is Plato's philosophy. Do you agree with the content on the page?

Aristotle is known to have rejected the idea of Khora, and came up with his own version of the idea called hyle, as in this page Hylomorphism.

Space and time are everywhere in the universe, and nowhere not in the universe, at least in the 4D spacetime model that cosmology uses. There are some naive models that have the universe contained by time, in which case things like big bang and black holes go away, to be replace by some other interpretation. There is no valid model of the universe being contained by space, which is akin to suggesting that the big bang occurred at some specific location and has been expanding into some kind of void since then. — noAxioms

It was more to hear about your own view on the point.

I cannot explain it much better than that to somebody not familiar with even the basics of cosmology. — noAxioms

That sounds a daft statement. The basics of cosmology, and the whole the other subjects are on the internet ChatGPT. We are not asking what is the basic cosmology. We are asking where in the universe, space and time contained. It should be a simple few statement explanation with a coupe of examples. We don't expect to hear on the basics of cosmology the lot here.

E4 "Is part of the objective state of this universe" — noAxioms

It just sounds vague and empty statement, hence more elaboration with detail wouldn't go amiss. What do you mean by "the objective state", "the universe", and does it include space and time? You said space and time are contained in the universe? So, a simple question was, where in the universe are they contained? In what form and nature?

Julian Barbour is an independent scholar who also argues that time doesn't exist. I haven't listened to the whole presentation, but it might be of interest to you. He also has published a book on the subject. — Wayfarer

Great video. Thank you for the info. Much appreciated. :pray: :cool:
I was really inspired to see someone who has a similar ideas to mine on the topic.

This is indicative of the problem I am talking about. Hume does not acknowledge the difference between sensing (simple observation as time passes), and the analysis of what has already been sensed. By saying that for Hume "every mental state is a perception", you confirm that Hume does not recognize the difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

Isn't sensing via impressions, and the matching ideas for thoughts, reasoning and reflective analysis in Hume? So, there is a clear division between the live sensation and knowing, thinking, reflecting, remembering in Hume. The former are via impressions, and the latter by the matching ideas.

Impressions and ideas work under the principle of association of contiguity, resemblance and cause and effect.

What I am arguing is that sensation consists of a continuous flow of change and motion, whereas the analysis consists of representing this continuity as distinct states, perceptions, impressions, or ideas. There is a fundamental difference between these two, the continuous flow of sensation, and the succession of discrete impressions. This difference implies that this type of analysis is fundamentally flawed. It's based in the false premise, or assumption, that a continuous activity can be truthfully represented as a succession of discrete states. — Metaphysician Undercover

Doesn't it depend on how fast the movement was? When you are observing a fast movement of an object, let's say, firing a gun at a long distance target. You will not see the bullet flying due to the high speed it travels towards the target. All you will perceive would be loud banging, and see the smoke, and instant bullet holes on the target. You haven't seen anything, but the movement still happened from the bullet movement starting point i.e. the barrel, to the end of the movement, the target. With the high speed of the object movement, the continuity was not visible but it was still there.

Now think of a movement of a Chinese man doing Tai Chi. His arms and legs move as he performs the Tai Chi practice. The movement is well visible, and even stoppable while the movement is being made. The speed of the movement of the arms and legs are so slow, the impression coming into the perceiver appears smooth and continuous. The impression of the movement is not deceiving anyone, but it just appears as continuous, and that is just the way perception works.

that we know of a vast period of time before we existed. — Wayfarer

We can guess about anything before we existed. But it neither can be proved nor disapproved.

Yes, we are aware of that. That period is measured in durations of years, which are based on the period of time it takes for the Earth to complete an orbit of the Sun. — Wayfarer

:up:

Which supports my view, that time is meaningless without there being an awareness of duration. In that sense the expression ‘the world before time began’ is not entirely metaphorical. — Wayfarer

Many important philosophers in history and the contemporary physics folks view time as emergent properties from human mind.

The point though is that the creation of "a single impression", is a product of that act of reflecting. It is not the direct product of sensation, so it is not an accurate description of perception, it is a description of how perception appears when revisited in the memory. This makes the "single impression" a mental abstraction rather than a sense perception. — Metaphysician Undercover

But in Hume, reflection and inspection on perceived ideas are also perceptions. Every mental event is perception.

There is no real start and end. The start and end are arbitrarily assigned by the sensing being, for whatever purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Think of a security camera monitoring a set space in your garden.  When it detects a movement via infrared lighting, the sensor in the camera triggers recording.  When the motion ends, or goes out of sight, the detection operation switches off, ending the recording of the image of the object which triggered the recording.

Motion and movement have start and end points, hence they trigger the sensing mechanisms of the cameras or monitoring devices. Start and end point of movement also allows you to be able to measure the time it took for the movement completion for further analysis on the energy it generated and velocity of the movement etc.

Fine, write your own, but also tell me in what way it is distinct from E4. Space and time are contained by the universe, and I see little point in listing the contents in the E4 definition. — noAxioms

Where in the universe, are space and time contained?

That's why Banno's conception of "instantaneous velocity" is self-contradicting nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sounds like an irrelevant word dug up from ChatGpt.

The problem is that there is more than one way to take "a slice of the movement". — Metaphysician Undercover

Revisiting Hume, it seems the case that he is not saying that we perceive movements via the sliced impressions. As I said previously, we can perform the operation of inspecting a single impression or ideas in our reflecting operations by mind after the perception.

What Hume seems to be saying is that impressions of movement are perceived as continuous movement via the principle of association of the ideas and impressions based on the contiguity of space and time.

Is continuity a single movement of smooth, undisturbed and conjoined movement from start to the end of the movement? Or is it an illusory appearance of the many instances of the sliced images? What is your own idea on this?

It is not off-topic if we accept that Earth is subject to change. That is an example of a physical that is subject to change and does not a need a mind to observe it. So again, Earth is subject to rotation all the time whether one observe it or not? Yes or no? — MoK

Earth or electron are not good example for physical here. Because as you have seen, they are not directly perceptible objects, which easily confuse you onto mixing up the arguments.

The baseball was a good example. You can see it, hold it, place it on the desk, you can drop it, or throw it, and observe if it moves or changes. But whatever you do, don't confuse it with Earth or electron.

If you are not happy with baseball example, then MoK could be a good example, if you prefer. You can observe MoK, because you are MoK. You cannot be mistaken MoK for the Earth or electron.

Let us know whatever example you prefer to discuss on the change of physical issue.

Could the quantum universe be in a possible world? Or would it be a legitimate existence in the universe?

You mentioned about "the World Soul". What is the World Soul? Do humans have souls?

Interestingly there is a modern quantum version of the World Soul. — magritte

How about "Existence is perceptible object in space and time"? This must be the defacto definition of existence.

Depends what you mean by perceptible. If it's the anthropocentric definition (perceived by humans), then E2 applies. If it is perceptible by anything, even in the absence of an observer noticing it, then E4 applies. Both definitions are relational, essentially 'is a member of X' where X is human perceptions (E2) or X is 'is somewhere in our universe' (E4) where universe is anything with coordinates relative to say time 0, Greenwich. Dark matter exists despite not being easy to perceive. — noAxioms

None of the definitions of existence mentions on space and time. Are being in space and time not important factors for objects qualifying as existence?

I can think of several definitions of 'exists' that one might use, but some possibilities:
E1 "Is a member of all that is part of objective reality"
E2 "I know about it"
E3 "Has predicates"
E4 "Is part of the objective state of this universe"
E5 "state X exists to state Y iff X is part of the causal history of Y"
E6 "existential quantification", where 51 is not prime because there exists an even divisor that is neither 1 nor 51.

There are probably better wordings. — noAxioms

You need to demonstrate if physical objects change on their own. Or at least explain, what you mean by that statement.

So Earth is subject to rotation all the time? Yes or no? — MoK

Earth is off-topic for this thread. The topic is "Physical cannot be the cause of its own change".

So, according to you, that is the Sun that moves around Earth? That is the only thing that you perceive! So please explain how you could conclude otherwise! — MoK

I never said that. You are saying it. :D

Do you have faith in what other people, experts in other fields of study, say? — MoK

I have faith in the folks with rational minds and claims.

Correct. But I talk about your perception rather than perception in general. Do you think that you can figure out everything alone? — MoK

One can only access one's own perception. But the rational and logical analysis on the contents of perception is the basis of object knowledge.

If one misuses rational analysis on the contents of the perception, then he misunderstands the world. I was just pointing out the misuse and misconception of your analysis and claims.

But your perception is limited so your arguments could not be rational or logical if you depend on them. — MoK

Perception is the origin of knowledge. Without perception, you are a blind and deaf.

Are you willing to learn anything except what your perceptions tell you!? — MoK

The point is not just about perception. It is about rationality and logic in the argument.

So, you cannot tell that the Earth is moving because you cannot see it moving. Is it a correct statement? How do you explain the motion of the Sun in the sky then? — MoK

I am just saying my statement is based on observation, but your argument is based on your imagination and the words of mouths from the vulgars.

I am arguing against what you said: "Movement is only a movement when perceived by mind.". There was a period when there was no life on Earth but Earth was moving. Are you denying that? — MoK

That is also imagination from the words of mouths of the vulgars. There is no observational evidence in that statements.

But the table on Earth. Adding an extra object does not help you. — MoK

When talking about movements, the rational folks talk about the movement from A to B on the earth. Think about your movement from your house to your school. When you are in your house, you are at the starting point. You have not moved from your house on the journey to the school when you are in the house. The movement starts from the house, when you go out the house making journey towards the school.

No one would drag the earth into the arguments, and claim that you have been always moving without moving. It is a hideous contradiction to say that the earth moves, so everything moves.