Dear Sciforumers, As a time-traveller I sometimes get lonely. My wife is also a time-traveller but she has only traversed twice. Me? Three times. I am writing to cordially invite you to travel with us. To travel time must I build a case or argument myself? In my mind? Would that be me doing it? It is impossible to travel back in time, but may we travel into the future, and Forever? Does time extend forever? Can we match this foreverness? Example: "steak dinner." When finished, there is "a plate." The plate is washed and placed on a draining board. "A plate." Should the plate be dropped, and broken, you may argue it is not a plate anymore. To this I say, "Earthquake." Tectonic "plate." If I may pursue this argument forever, opposing every counter claim, does this preclude travel?
I have no idea where you are going with this thread I hope there is a Dr somewhere along the journey I don't mean Dr Who Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Before getting to "plate"... "Time" suggests a framework or an organization of co-existing units. Collections of which everyday language might categorize as past or future depending on relationship to a potentially subjective, elusive / specious, special unit called "now". However, sometimes there may be no framework at all (only the "now" alone, but that's for later). Travel implies an already existing place or location to undergo a journey to. That is, when there is no domain beyond a stone path itself, then conjuring a new segment to the stone path may be contended to just be the path "growing" rather than the path or a component of it traveling. In the presentism view of time, no thing qualifies for travel because only a magical process featuring a conceptual state or slot called "now" is in effect, whose concrete content (the universe) is successively annihilated and replaced by a slightly altered version of itself (changes). Each new version of the cosmos is still stuck in that slot of a global "present". Past and future don't exist. In the eternalism view of time (wherein all moments co-exist, wherein labels like past / future have correlates) no thing qualifies for travel anymore than a ball rolling in a short animation strip is actually moving. In that analogy, each change or temporal part of the ball is confined to its particular celluloid frame, duration or coordinates. In the possibilism view of time, temporal parts of the world which we conceive of as the "past" co-exist, but not those collectively referred to as the "future". New moments are added but even then become the "past" rather than a future. The "travel" problem that plagues possibilism is introduced in the second paragraph above. [Or third if counting the opening line.] Finally, back to the plate. The general idea or concept of a plate, just by being so universal or already distributed hither and thither in space and time as an item of human thoughts, conversations, and plans -- yet seems to suffer the problem of the concrete object when it comes to travel. With regard to a particular plate, even if broken into pieces, the enduring "stuff" which once constituted the plate seems to lack motivity as well. Whatever arrangement the stuff is in as it changes, each change is confined to its particular moment or location in a time or or generic space / time framework. Apparently only a thing possessing consciousness (and arguably requiring the extrospective venue) can experience a representation of an object in space changing through time. Plates and the arrangement of "stuff" composing them are thereby absent to even themselves, much less having awareness of their surrounding environment. A function of consciousness, if not the core foundation of it, is to discriminate a whole into discrete entities and events, and relate them with each other (systemise them). Memory and a degree of intellect have to be included to fully accomplish that. So it shouldn't be surprising that the consciousness of a brain / body (the latter's stretch of living from fetal era to death) discriminates said brain / body into temporal parts. Consciousness of one's lifetime just is each temporal part[*] cognitively declaring itself in isolation from the others, but seeming to "take its turn" because of their relational connections to each other. Thus it produces the illusion of "something flowing" from moment to moment along a generic time / space framework, as if the immaterial spirit of folklore oozing down a matter pipeline. A mere appearance of travel taking place, and it being futureward. (Life spreads and explodes in diversity in that direction, whereas it dwindles to non-existence in the other direction. A case might or might not also be made that human language is largely only meaningful in the future direction, that it has a biased orientation for that. Even whatever substitutes for thought in turkey brains could only make sense slash be loaded for bear if facing tomorrow.) - - - - - [*] The consciousness of each milliseconds-long, temporal part of a dimensionally extended brain/body is taken for granted to correspond internally to a short, accumulated series of neural states treated as its cause. - - -
Hello. My argument precisely. Due to the human travel through time, anything proposed in the now, should it be eternal, will exist infinitely. "But you've already decided to explode yourself haven't you Fessel?"-Barry, Four Lions.
Having just a few moments ago posted in another thread dealing with the question Does time exist? it might help if I add some of the same post in that thread here Time does not exist Time does not flow Time does not have any direction Only NOW exist The PAST does not exist The FUTURE does not exist Following from those pronouncements it follows time travel is impossible simply because there are no destinations no past no future The whole of the Universe exist ONLY in a permanent state of NOW If you would like to play "Let's be god" for a moment Imagine as god you have a viewpoint outside of the Universe such as you can see the complete 3D view encompassing the spherical shape with approximately a 14 billion light years radius in every direction Everything your view encompasses is operating under a single NOW Puny humans WITHIN the Universe on Earth can only experience a local Earth NOW but can gaze at a vanished distant past as light from that NOW part of the Universe finally makes it to Earth Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The operative words in your statement are DID EXIST When it becomes our NOW it ceased to exist Sorry to rain on your parade mates NOBODY has EVER traveled into the future EVERYBODY is stuck in a never ending NOW Hard luck fellow NOW travellers you almost thought you made it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And billvon you don't even get recognition for adding 30 seconds to your age EVERYBODY who stayed alive for those 30 seconds of NOW did exactly the same as yourself It would be just to much to hand out a participation award 7 billion fellow NOW travellers IF IF IF and its a big IF you do ever do make it even 1 SECOND into the future have you considered that even such a monumental feat would never even get you recognition or a award? You see YOU would be out of touch with us plebs stuck here 1 second in your past Hope you like solitude Really really awesome solitude NOTHING in your current NOW will be there with you Still again good luck and bon voyage if you do make it Don't bother trying to send a postcard Apart from not having a postcard to send it wouldn't matter if you did as the postcard would be out of us plebs reach 1 second in the future Well enough rabbiting on its 2:15am at my NOW here in Darwin Australia so is back to sleep until 6:15am NOW Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
HA! I just traveled over 2 HOURS into the future! I am leaving your measly post behind an hour at a time!
...and what of our ancestors Michael? The Mother's and Father's who made us? Are you stating they did not exist?
What so hard to understand that the PAST DID EXIST but in our current NOW no longer EXIST Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Because you haven't supported it; you have merely asserted it. I grant that we humans only experience now, but that simply does not lead to the conclusion that time doesn't exist. How can something age, without the passage of time?
Yes Do you dispute the past existed? Do you dispute it does not exist now? What assertions would you make in response? or evidence offer? to indicate time does exist? The whole of the Universe experiences only NOW And that is NOT the basis for the conclusion of the non existence of time Has anybody Seen time? Sensed time with ANY of the body senses? Knows what substance time is composed of? AGE is not time AGE is the arbitrary name (number) given to anything which exist between two arbitrary NOW moments Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I make no assertions in response. You have made an assertion, and the onus is on you to defend it. Ah. you have inserted an important word: experience. Is that your definition of 'existing'? Something or someone must experience it? Does that mean there are no stars in galaxies that we have not imaged yet? Because no one has seen, heard or touched them? They literally come come into existence when we observe them? Relevance? Are these the criteria by which you decide that something doesn't exist? Gravity can't be sensed either. We can only feel its effects on mass. but to say it doesn't exist is folly - and possibly lethal. I think you need to revisit your definition of 'exist'. Indeed! Not only have you a] defined age in terms of time (something you assert doesn't exist), but you have also b] shown that two points in time can be compared (after having just said that the past (or future) doesn't exist, and that there is only the ever-present now), as well as c] asserted that there can be more than one NOW moment. Since I only experience now, and your claim is that there are multiple nows (simultaneously, since there's no time), the inescapable conclusion is that I am experiencing multiple events simultaneously. This is no true, showing that your claim is not true. finally, since you need time to describe events and processes in the world, just like the rest of us do, what does it mean to say this thing you need to have does not exist? A difference that makes no difference is not a difference.