Essay Abstract

A number of seemingly intractable puzzles in science could be unraveled if the element of time were introduced. It seems strange, in fact, that time is missing at all, considering that it is perceptively ubiquitous. A re-examination of time is needed in order to show its functionality within science and philosophy, laying to rest the notion of objectivity and in so doing will disambiguate the notions of unverifiability, unexplainability, and unpredictability.

Author Bio

Ronald Green, a former lecturer in linguistics and philosophy at Tel Aviv and Oxford, is the author of Time To Tell: a look at how we tick (iff Books 2018) and Nothing Matters: a book about nothing (iff Books 2011), and 13 ESL books used worldwide. His articles on philosophy have appeared in a number of journals, while his short stories have been published in several literary journals. He is active in showing the connection of philosophy to science, and explaining it in terms that are popularly understood.

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Dear Prof Ronald Green,

Your Essay on "Time" is wonderful. Your words....

...............So prisoners we are. We cannot help looking back, just as we continue looking forward as part of our experiencing the proverbial flowing of time. An analogy with space, given by Bernardo Kastrup,5 is illuminating. Describing a road in the desert, where mountains are ahead of us and the valley from where we have come, it is claimed that we see it all simultaneously as a "snapshot of your conscious life." But the images don't hit us simultaneously. The further the places, the longer it takes for us to see them, all of which..........................

You are exactly correct here about time. I want to add an example that tells about time:.......... Think about your living room. Your there now. But you got a memory that you were not there in that room for month, came today only. Take the 3d space coordinates as the room. By the way of your memory, you know that you are not there yesterday. So the space coordinates are same, but the "memory" is another coordinate tell this fact, which is nothing but "time", what do you say???

By the way.....I just elaborated what should be the freedom available to an author when the " real open thinking" is supported. Have a look at my essay please.

"A properly deciding, Computing and Predicting new theory's Philosophy"

=snp.gupta

By the way....

Hi Ronald,

reading your essay reminded me of Goethe: "Thus our relation to the past is one of the destruction of monuments: we dig up the graves of the past to be properly buried."

What this says is: TIME=PSYCHOLOGY. Would you agree?

However, as far as historical records go, stones keep on falling to the ground, not into the sky. In other words, what then is the dimension in which KNOWLEDGE exists?

Heinz

    Dear SNP Gupta,

    Thank you for your comments.

    When you say that I am in my living room now, I would say - as I did in my essay - that I am never anywhere now. 'Now' is too brief to have any events taking place in that time called 'now'. Even as you read these words, 'now' has slipped to the past and replaced with other 'nows' that are also moving back.

    You are correct that at the same time that I am in my living room I have memories of when I was there before. And those memories are added to other memories mentioned above, thus changing them. So our memories are continually and continuously changing within the fluidity of our past. In other words, our past is always changing, so that there is no objective, absolute past.

    I would like to read your essay. Will I find it in this forum?

    Best wishes,

    Ronald

      Dear Heinz,

      Thank you for your comments.

      That is an appropriate quote from Goethe. In the light of my essay, I do have a quibble with the word "properly". The point is that there is no (objective) "properly", and certainly not when it comes to putting memory to rest. Memory is never buried; it is a constantly moving phenomenon of a past that is always changing.

      History is rife with the destruction of monuments, done so that a new present is created instead of a disappeared past. But all it does is to not only change the past, but also to change the present that becomes its own past.

      Regarding the notion that time = psychology, it could be considered so only in the sense that everything connected to human thought is linked to psychology.

      I place time within perception, i.e. its function as part of what time *is*. I am interested in the connection between philosophy and science. Time is a prime example of that connection, since it cannot be examined without reference to both disciplines.

      So when you say that "stones keep on falling to the ground", that is "true" only here on Earth, where we consider down to be where our feet are placed and that the sky is up. But in space, there is no up and down. Even closer to the ground, a fighter pilot looses any feeling of "up" and "down", and needs his instruments to keep him focused on that.

      When one takes into consideration the theories of relativity, it is just as valid to understand the ground as moving to the stones as the opposite. After all, relativity applies to both sides.

      You ask where knowledge exists. I don't know if we can refer to existence other than as a fluid approximation when it comes to knowledge. As I have put it, knowledge is memory. It cannot be anything else than memory. Interestingly, though, knowledge contains an element of the future, since knowledge is presumed to continue being (continuing to 'exist') in the future. This is an example of the symbiotic relationship between the past and the future, that I mention in my essay.

      There is, of course, a connection to Truth, the common denominator being time, as I set out in my book "Time To Tell".

      Best wishes,

      Ronald

      Hello, very relevant philosophical analyse of this time. Congratulations. I work personally about my theory of spherisation, an optimisation evolution of the universal sphere or future sphere with quantum coded 3D spheres and cosmological spheres and a gravitational aether sent from the central sphere. I consider the philosophy essential for our physics like the maths, the philosophy permits to better understand the transformations matter energy. I consider personally a kind of god of Spinoza, I love his works and Kant also in philosphy. So I respect the determinism of physics and I don t affirm my assumptions, I recognise that all must be proved by experiments or maths. This time is intriguing indeed, I consider it inside the physicality respecting an irreversible entropical Arrow of time and I know also that the GR permits to have a dilation of this time. Beyond this physicality I consider like I told you an eternal infinite consciousness, a thing that we cannot define, and this thing for me needs to transform the energy and code it, that is why I consider that this aether of consciousness is without time, space, matters, geometries and topologies and create the gravitational aether from the central cosmological sphere, I consider that this gravitational aether is made of finiet series of 3D spheres playing between the planck temperature and the zero absolute and if we apply a specific serie, the space disappears in taking a central biggest sphere after we consider the same number than the cosmological finiet series of spheres and we decrease the volunmes and increase the number , oddly we approach the dirac large number, so 3 smaller around the central sphere and after 5 smaller aroubnd the 3 and we continue witht he primes, this model I have remarked permits to explai our unknowns like this quantum gravitation, the dark energy and the dark matter, I have reached it this quantum gravitation in encoding in our nuclei a cold dark matter, I have just changed the distances because I consider that this standard model is just emergent due to this gravitational coded aether. Now the relevance is to consider for these finite series of spheres the Ricci flow, the Hamilton ricco flow, the lie derivatives, a new assymetric Ricci flow that I have invented with a person to explain the unique things, the lie groups like the E8 to superimpose the particles and fields, the topological and euclidian spaces, and others mathematical Tools, that permits to rank the heat, the cold, the volumes, the oscillations, the motions, the rotations, the moments, the senses of rotations, the angles, the densities and this and that of these 3D spheres of this gravitational aether.The photons in this logic are just particles coded of this aether and are just a feul permitting the electromagnetism, the fact to observe due to light and the life Death, so the time becomes interesting also to analyse in this line of reasoning. Now of course about the body mind soul problems, I have assumptions, but I am not going to explain here. It is not the aim. In all case the philosophy is essential indeed to a better underatanding of this physicality in evolution spherisation for me, we need to understand why we are and why we exist and what are our foundamental objects and what is the main cause of all our reality. Regards congrats for your essay about this philosophical time, I liked a lot,

        How this time must be understood philosphically speaking in fact ? like the infinity , the infinities and the finiet series if I can say. Because if we have this eternal infinite consciousness beyond this physicality and that this time does not exist there and that we have a pure eternity, we have the same paradoxal problem that with the infinity and infinities and finite series inside the physicality, like you have seen I don t consider that this God if I can say oscillate the energy infinite and eternal to create our reality and its topologies, geometries, matters and enmergent space time, I consider this gravitational aether and particles instead of Waves, so I don t consider these strings and a 1D main field or points and a geometrodynamics. I prefer particles coded in a superfluid aether, the space and vacuum so become relevant to analyse deeper. And about the infinity, and the time so we have interesting philosophical questions to analyse. ps sorry for my post, I write too quickly without rereading and I don t correct so sometimes they are errors, and my English is not perfect I am french speaking, regards

        Hello Professor Green,

        I think that you do a wonderful job constructing a historical philosophical narrative. I thought that your essay was very interesting. Many of the essays that I have read lately are not dissimilar to mine. Have you read Daniel Kolak's I am You. Please let me know if you would be interested and I will send you a link to the pdf of the book. Kolak provides a wonderfully unique proposal on metaphysical identity. I saw a lot of material on identity in your essay:

        A) "...Time-shattering would be mindshattering..." I agree (also, great adjective- "mindshattering"). For such examples of (potentially) "time-shattering" one might consider psychedelic experiences (much research is being done today in this realm. You can see the following link for just one of many examples https://mind-foundation.org/

        B) "...the past is memory and is unverifiable..." From an absolutely practical perspective, yes, this seems intuitive. However, could the past ever be verifiable if causality is 'mastered' sometime in the future? Perhaps there is no "now" but there are likely events which happen in space (and time- hence we don't know when because each individual's when is nearly non simultaneous).

        ("...Andy Warhol summoned back memories by sniffing at perfumes he had worn in the past - his personal 'scent museum' - so that he was instantly brought back to those periods...") On remembering the past and memories evoked from scents please see https://qualiacomputing.com/. There are essays on perfume and qualia. (see Perfumery as an Art Form)

        C)

        D) It seems that this essay predominantly encompasses physical phenomena and is not related to mathematical vernacular so much.

        E) "...In which way is there a future? If it can be said to 'exist', it is only as potential. And as potential, the future is not of what will happen, but of what could possibly happen, perhaps even probably happen..." You write a lot about unpredictability in the conventional sense. What about differing theories of the objective existence of time (opposed to how we perceive the chronological or even the 'realness' of events in space and time).

        F) Kindly see my essay for references to various theories which might be of interest to you. I also recommend works by Deutsch and Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture also see more info on counterfactuals for more implications of 'could have/would have, et cetera.

        G) I also recommend looking into various alternative theories of causality (e.g. top down) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3262299/ also see theories on retro-causality too.

        H) Although you wrote a conventional essay, overall, it was well written and interesting.

        Best,

        Dale C. Gillman

          Dear Steve,

          Thank you for your comments, which I found interesting.

          Dear Dale,

          Thank you for your comments and for the links and suggested readings, many of which I am, of course, familiar with.

          Regarding your comments in E, my essay points out briefly why there cannot be an objective existence of time, and that time 'exists' only relatively to other points at which time is said to exist. This, as well as aspects of causality, is greatly expanded in my book "Time To Tell: a look at how we tick (iff Books 2018).

          Best wishes,

          Ronald

          You are welcome, thanks , I found your essey interesting also, we search answers after all to this universal puzzle and its main unknowns

          4 days later

          Dear Dr. Green,

          Your essay on time is very well written, but I think you completely ignore the main issue:

          Time is all about causality. "A implies B" is not the same as "B implies A".

          Time is not reversible in the real world. A dropped glass will break into a hundred small pieces, but the pieces will not spontaneously recombine.

          I make several key points about time in my own essay, The Uncertain Future of Physics and Computing.

          First, time and space are obviously different, and an abstract mathematical spacetime is not needed to explain relativity. Time is relative because the atomic clocks that calibrate its passage are variable.

          Second, microscopic determinism is fully compatible with macroscopic uncertainty. I question the presence of fundamental quantum indeterminacy at any level, yet our ability to predict the future in complex systems is rather limited.

          Third, consciousness is based on temporal pattern recognition of agency and the self, and creation of a simplified narrative in time involving the self, which connects past and future. This can be emulated using artificial neural networks.

          Finally, let me comment on the conclusion of your essay: "we must question the deep-seated belief that the past is intrinsically different from the future ..."

          No, it is a fact that past and future are different, not a belief.

          The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

          Alan Kadin

            Dear Alan,

            Thank you for your comments and for the time you took in examining my ideas. I am pleased to have the opportunity of addressing some of your issues.

            I must disagree that "[t]ime is all about causality." Time is all about change, in which causality is a feature.

            I agree, of course, that time is irreversible and it is linear, as I state "...the immutable linear movement from birth to death." Why would you think that I contended something different? My contention regarding memory was that the past is memory, which is fickle and not objective. The fact that our past constantly changes does not mean that time moves backwards, but that our perception of what happened is constantly changing.

            I can't agree with your implication that because "time and space are obviously different", they are not inexorably linked. It's not for nothing that Einstein referred to spacetime as a fundamental of nature. Surely it is obvious that when we move spatially, we also move temporally. Time is relative because it depends on - and seen as such by an observer - the location of the events being timed.

            According to the theory I set out, the ability to predict the future is thwarted. We never get to the future, but see it only when it has happened, i.e. it is the past. The future is a probability based on the probability of the past (our memories).

            The above is the reason for my conclusion that the past is not *intrinsically* different from the future. They are both probabilities, i.e. not objective facts. I am not saying that what has happened is the same as what will happen. My point is that we have really no more absolute knowledge of what did happen as we do of what will happen. Our belief that we know what happed is, I'm afraid to say, merely a belief, and I show why that is so.

            As for the quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, on the surface it is cute. But 'really', according to what I demonstrate, we do each create our own facts. Nobody's facts are exactly the same facts as someone else's.

            Again, I am pleased to have received your comments, that gave me the opportunity to answer as best as I can.

            Best wishes,

            Ronald

            Thank you Prof Ronald Green,

            You gave good explanation of Logical NOWs...

            Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability are very much undesirable properties and out-comes of any theory. That theory might have developed by a very reputed person or by a group of well-educated and knowledgeable persons. There is no point of poring resources, money and highly educated man power into that theory when that theory is failing on above three points.

            I just elaborated what should be the freedom available to an author when the " real open thinking" is supported. Have a look at my essay with title......

            "A properly deciding, Computing and Predicting new theory's Philosophy"

            =snp.gupta

            Ronald,

            Wow! That is a lot to take in. If I understand part of what you say, we live in a memory centric existence. It seems to be dependent, not on time, but perception that moves forward based only on our past. As I read you essay it reminded me of one perceptionяГа one person. I was struck by your reminder that Einstein said that time can't be the same everywhere because there is distance between things. I had just concluded that there has to be a fundamental time to underlie protons that are everywhere the same. They are energy based and energy is E=h(1/time). This is consistent if everything is coincident and based on probability and perception. This would be extremely subjective.

            I am aware that communication is difficult because we live in our own worlds. My view, I think, is similar to yours. I believe in an information based universe and believe that wave-function collapse is the basis of my (yours since we all have our own) perception. The perception, according to the Schrodinger equation is probability 1. But I think there is a huge amount of information in probability 1. It is information about nature and it is based on probabilities 1*1*1*1. Each 1 is the combination of probabilities that contain information fundamental to our perception of the proton in nature. It contains the laws of nature. Information processes separate (create) energy with equal and opposite halves in a creative process that we become part of. It might be one perceptionяГа one person but we are part of a process that is apparently billions of years old. Bohm's concept of an implicate order is appropriate. Billions of similar organisms have unfolded each with an apparent perception. I agree with a subjective view but have been working toward understanding the underlying structure that supports it.

            I like your concepts.

            Dear Gene,

            Thank you for your comments. I note that we seem to have similar views about the perception of 'reality'.

            The connection between time and perception is an important point I make. With time as change, perception changes and it does so continuously for each of us as individuals. So, yes, it is - and can only be - subjective.

            Your comments about information are interesting. Particularly interesting is your last sentence regarding the search for an underling structure. It is interesting in the sense that I don't believe that there is an underlying structure; there can't be if all is in constant change. An underlying structure would be objective (and untestable) and somewhat akin to Kant's 'thing in itself'.

            Thank you again. Keep up the good work.

            Best wishes,

            Ronald

            18 days later

            Dear Ronald Green,

            "However much we try,we cannot imagine a world that has no time." This is similar to saying we can't imagine a wold that has no change.

            The nature of change in physics is based on energy, which is the complement of time, but that brings 'persistence' into the picture. Noson Yanofsky's essay treats persistence, whether in people, ships, nations, etc which retain identity over time while the pieces constituting the entities undergo constant change.. He too places the enduring or persistent 'structure' in the mind.

            I believe that physicists project (in their minds) mathematical structure onto the world, then come to believe that physical reality actually has that structure. Some unlikely structures, such as 'qubits', taken seriously, lead to bad places.

            You observe that 'now', 'the present', has fuzzy edges and we don't know where it begins or ends. This was, more or less, the topic of three papers in Found. of Physics last November, that I treat in my essay, Deciding on the nature of time and space. You observe that special relativity complicates this further. My essay analyzes special relativity's frozen 4D-ontology versus the (3+1)D-ontology of universal simultaneity across all space, which is the energy-time formulation of 'spacetime'.

            Whereas I agree with your observations about perceived or 'experienced' time as unique to each person, nevertheless, as you say, "we cannot imagine a world that has no (objective) time." As I do not believe we can capture the experience of time, except allegorically or metaphorically, I focus on the shared or common time so necessary to physics. I hope you will read my essay and I welcome any comments.

            Thanks for an insightful, topical essay.

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear Edwin (if I may),

              Thank you for your comments which I found not only interesting, but extremely helpful to the development of my thoughts on the subject and its ramifications.

              I read your essay "Deciding on the nature of time and space", which I enjoyed, and which added perspectives to my own theories, and to which I will refer as well in my reply below.

              I find much in your comments with which I agree. One example is your comment about physicists projecting mathematical structures onto the world. Mathematics works nicely within its own mathematical context/bubble.

              We both write about "the nature of change", but we do so from different perspectives. I don't believe that physics gives us the "real nature" any more than philosophy does (while together a rounder picture may be presented). To further complicate things, I don't believe that there is a "real nature", i.e. THE real nature of the universe or of how things work or how they really are "objectively out there", per se untestable.

              This viewpoint has everything to do with relativity and approximation, which I introduced in my book "Time To Tell: a look at how we tick" and which is featured in a number of essays and that I am developing further.

              It should be obvious that in a world of the moving 'now', I don't have any truck with "persistence". Persistence "in people, ships, nations, etc which retain identity over time while the pieces constituting the entities undergo constant change" is, of course the Theseus paradox.

              A point I do want to make regarding so-called "moving clocks". The interpretation of Einstein's special law of relativity that "clocks in motion run slower than clocks at rest." is incorrect. Clocks do not move slower or faster for an individual, whose clock continues at its rate however fast he is travelling. Clocks move relative to other clocks according to an observer. I am in agreement with your position against Susskind's regarding simultaneity. There is a danger in removing the observer from physics, which leads to puzzles in physics that are unnecessary, such as Mermin's rocket ships whose various clocks have been "deliberately set out of synchronization". Whatever time is shown on each clock, that clock will continue in its merry way, whether synchronized or not.

              Regarding the two models, "an empirical model based on measurements in absolute space and time and a conceptual model based on axioms that assume the existence of multiple time dimensions", it would seem that my model is the latter. I'm not sure, though, since each of my time dimensions is itself in constant change; there is no time dimension per se, since each is relative even to itself. So your comment that we cannot capture the experience of time, I agree with. My point is that we can "capture" it only afterwards, when it is seen in retrospect, and even then as a changing retrospection.

              I realize that squeezing in an adequate response to your comments is more than difficult. I am, though, very interested in your points, especially in pages 8 and 9, since in my work in progress I am looking at numbers and approximation.

              Thank you again for your interesting comments,

              Ronald

              24 days later

              Dear Ronald,

              A nice essay on various aspects of time.

              I wrote a long post to you but was logged out after submitting and all was lost!

              Now I am too tired to re-do it. My essay covers some aspects of time from the philosophy of presentism that may be of interest to you. I hope you find 'time' to read it.

              Best Regards

              Lockie Cresswell

                7 days later

                Hi Ronald. You tackle a subject close to my heart. You do a good job of explaining the experience of time from the human condition. The validity of memory is something you could have said more on. That memories are plastic and sometimes false. There is research showing false memories can be induced. I'm not sure the past is as unpredictable as the future, but memory and records are clues to what was and not certain truth. Authentication and corroboration help. Very readable. Regards Georgina