How to explain motion if time does not exist

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Secret, Jan 13, 2012.

  1. Secret Registered Senior Member

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    IF there is no such thing as time, how to describe and explain motion?

    P.S. if means we are assuming
     
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  3. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    Time is real, but the English description is screwed up. It is just flow. So you can still use it as a measurement.
     
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  5. Secret Registered Senior Member

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    You have mistaken, I mean ASSUME TIME DOES NOT EXIST, how would we describe and explain motion in such hypothetical universe?
     
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  7. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    You could use Cause/Effect lines, but it's not easy to do. It would be like a weather diagram with the pressure points leading to changing velocities.
     
  8. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    The movement of something?
     
  9. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    "Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. Space is what prevents everything from happening to me."

    - John Archibald Wheeler
     
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Physicists who are comfortable with the consequences of relativity tend to explain-away motion and the seeming flow of individual events as having something to do with how the relations of the brain might be organized along its worldline (rather than just the state of its "wiring" in a single moment). That is, the "flow" is subjective or a property of the brain rather than objective. Some of those brain relationships can be considered discriminating judgements that "this state of the world" is different from "that state of the world", thus shifting cognition along through the spacetime structure (that the "history" of a human body is embedded in). Accordingly yielding our perceptions of change and motion, the concept of time, and the classifications of this or that change as belonging to past, present, or anticipation of the next (future).

    Brian Greene -- "In day to day life, physicists view time in the same way that everyone else does. And that makes it all the more surprising when we examine how time appears in our current theoretical frameworks, because nowhere in our theories do we see the intuitive notion of time that we all embrace. Nowhere, for example, can we find the theoretical underpinnings for our sense that time flows from one second to the next. Instead, our theories seem to indicate that time doesn't flow --rather, past, present, and future are all there, always, forever frozen in place." --A Conversation With Brian Greene

    Brian Greene -- Relativity also upends the way we traditionally organize reality. [...] Under these rules, what constitutes a moment in time is completely subjective. [...] In my mind's eye, I often conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization. [...] The choice, however, of whether to be fully seduced by the face nature reveals directly to our senses, or to also recognize the reality that exists beyond perception, is ours. --The Time We Thought We Knew

    Hermann Weyl - "The objective world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --P.116, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. Princeton University Press, 1 edition. 2 edn, Princeton University Press, 1950. An expanded English version of Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, München, Leibniz Verlag, 1927.

    If "time" as defined in another context is considered some objective organizing power that change conforms to (or a system that relates one event to another as classifications of past, present, or future) -- then elimination of time may still leave disorganized change. To an imaginary observer unaffected by such loss of temporal continuity and causation, Roscoe the racing greyhound might appear to be teleporting randomly from one part of the track to another, or his adult version intermittently disappears altogether to be a young pup back at the kennel he was raised. IOW, change as continuous-appearing motion or an ordered progression across space is lost (events are jumbled from lack of the regulatory nature of time).
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2012
  11. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    How to describe change let alone motion without time?
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2012
  12. Techne Registered Senior Member

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    Time can be seen as a function of change. Without change there is no perception of time. Time is merely an abstraction after observing change. Atomic clocks measure the change in energy levels of atoms and this rate is then abstracted to indicate the passage of time. If there is not anything that changes in the universe then there would be no perception of time.

    Change, from an Aristotelian point of view, is the reduction of potentiality to actuality by something in a state of actuality.
     
  13. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    Or can time be seen as fundamental to change which can be called the true time.
     
  14. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Change (globally speaking) happens in the 'direction' of increasing entropy. So while I am comfortable with it (time) being described as an abstraction, it is also governed to some extent by a fundamental law of physics.
     
  15. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    I don't think time depends on entropy, it's the other way around that's why local reversals of entropy are possible in an open system, change doesn't have any set-in-stone direction.
     
  16. Techne Registered Senior Member

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    I am always fascinated by the way people talk about how stuff is governed by "fundamental laws of physics".

    For example, some people use "fundamental laws of physics" in a prescriptive manner as if these laws are somehow causally influencing how things operate. In other words it really causally governs stuff. On the other hand some people use "fundamental laws of physics" in a descriptive manner. In other words, we observe certain phenomena and after enough observations we are able to describe certain regularities in nature as "fundamental laws of physics".

    In the case of entropy we observe an overall increase in entropy and thus describe it as a "fundamental laws of physics".

    If a person asks "why do things change in such a regular and orderly fashion that we observe an overall increase in entropy", it appears to be fallacious to all of a sudden say the increase in entropy is all of a sudden governed by this law as if the law somehow causally influences how things operate.

    To me laws, like time, appear to be abstractions of the observations of nature. They are not causally active forces or causes. Time doesn't govern how things change and the laws of nature do not govern matter. Instead, time and "laws of physics" are intellectual abstractions as a result of our empirical observations of how things change.

    So the real question is to describe how and why things change and why things change the way they do.
     
  17. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    I was using the phrase in a descriptive manner. In fact it would seem rather absurd to me to suggest that the laws of physics are entities in their own right. The properties that give rise to the descriptive 'laws of physics' exist within the system being described rather than outside of it. In other words, nature simply is what it is; it 'governs' itself (if that even makes sense).

    What I was attempting to point out is simply that the concept of time is linked not only to change, but to one aspect of the global nature of change. In other words, there's probably a reason that time 'flows' for us (as subjective as that may seem) in the same direction as increasing entropy.
     
  18. Believe Happy medium Valued Senior Member

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    Explain how you can move without time and you'll answer your own question.

    Time is passage of events and to move events must pass so no time = no movement possible.
     
  19. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    But how do you know there is going to be no change? You sit there for a long TIME and notice no change.

    So even if there is no change, there still is the passage of time. To be able to perceive means that you are alive. "Alive" means change, so it really becomes impossible to be in a situation where there is perception of no change. The thing being observed might not change but the observer is changing.

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  20. Believe Happy medium Valued Senior Member

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    Not a change the your eyes can see but your heart beats, the air moves, enzymes react, molecules vibrate, photons move to your eye (so I guess you can see that one). Lots of change.
     
  21. wlminex Banned Banned

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    Time is the perceived duration between events . . . (BTW, I'm not sure I have "time" for this!)
     
  22. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    It's not that simple lets say you're sitting there for moments and you notice no change but actually change or possibility of change has already occured because one moment has been succeded by another if there was no change one wouldn't be able to exist as an event at all. Therefore time is fundamentally change.



    I refer this to the above besides it's not the only the observer what's observed also wouldn't exist without change since whatever is observed is an event.
     
  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    That's the simplest accurate statement that can be made.
     

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