Time is Timeless

[Theftz22]

Consider that to be in time, or temporal, essentially means being involved in a temporal relation. This means being temporally prior to, or temporally after, something else. Put formally, this means that given entity, event, or state x is temporal iff it is temporally prior to or temporally after another event, state, or entity.

Now consider the instance of time as a whole. I mean by that time, the entity. Time cannot be either temporally prior to or temporally after any other event, entity or state. This is because if it were, then the event, entity, or state itself would be temporal, as it would be either before or after time. But then that temporal event, entity, or state would be a part of the entity of time itself, as time as an entity may simply be defined as the sum of all temporal relations. Therefore since any event, entity, or state before or after time is involved in a temporal relation (namely, with time itself), it would therefore be a part of time. But time cannot be temporally prior or after itself. No entity can precede or come after itself, as that would entail that it has a different property than itself, namely the property: temporally precedes or comes after x (where x is taken to be the original entity we were considering). But any entity x must be identical to x (by the law of identity). Therefore no entity can precede or come after itself. And therefore time cannot precede or come after itself.

Therefore by the definition of temporal we are using, in the sense of being involved in a temporal relation, time as the sum of all temporal relations cannot be temporal. Therefore if time is not temporal, it is timeless, as timeless simply means not temporal.

In what sense can we say that time is time if it is timeless? Well, in the sense that time includes temporal relations. Within time, there are different temporal relations between different events, entities, and states. But time itself, as the sum of all temporal relations, must be timeless.

 

[Dre89]

Hence why theists say time is caused by a timeless God.

I really wish I had the trollface emoticon right now.

It's kinda like the question of what is at the edge of space. The instinctive answer seems to be more space.

 

[GofG]

This does not take into account temporal relativity

 

[Theftz22]

This does not take into account temporal relativity

I don't see that at all. My argument doesn't presuppose that time isn't relative. Even if all temporal relations are relative, my argument still follows with time as the sum of all relative temporal relations. Any temporal relation, even if relative, would still be a part of time, and therefore time as a whole still couldn't itself be in a temporal relation, even a relative one. Hence, relative time as a whole is still timeless.

But I don't why you're taking that time is relative as a datum anyway.

 

[Orboknown]

this makes perfect sense.
Time has to have no foreseeable end, as the end of time can only really come when there is no longer anything left to feel the effects of time.

 

[KrIsP!]

this makes perfect sense.
Time has to have no foreseeable end, as the end of time can only really come when there is no longer anything left to feel the effects of time.

The way I see it, time is a creation of a conscious being, in this case man, made simply to measure changes or the lack of change in comparison to other things. As such, while objects will continue to change until there are none left to go through this transition, time will only exist while there are beings who can comprehend the changes and measure them with the concept of time.

 

[GofG]

Anthropic bias, Krisp

You cannot sum all temporal relations when they are all relative. I will write a convincing counterexample when i'm at a computer

 

[KrIsP!]

Anthropic bias, Krisp

You cannot sum all temporal relations when they are all relative. I will write a convincing counterexample when i'm at a computer

Please do, I have no problem with my point being proven wrong.

 

[Theftz22]

You cannot sum all temporal relations when they are all relative. I will write a convincing counterexample when i'm at a computer

Firstly, I don't mean "sum" in terms of adding together to get a numerical quantity or something, I just essentially mean all of the temporal relations considered together, or the totality of all temporal relations, even if there is no objective "sum" of time if you were trying to add them up like 13.7 billion years or something like that. Surely I can consider the totality of a relative thing.

Secondly, I wouldn't even accept your argument if I was talking about adding up time, because we can add up relative measurements. Motion is relative, but I can sum up relative distances that I travel with respect to something else. We add up time, motion, and space in physics all the time even if they are are relative.

Of course I still don't necessarily grant the premise that time is relative anyway. And finally note that your argument, if true, leads to the conclusion that time as an entity (the totality of all temporal relations) just doesn't exist at all. That seems an absurd conclusion.

 

[Pachinkosam]

time is money :D

 

[Holder of the Heel]

time is money :D

I see a pink username in your future.

 

[Orboknown]

The way I see it, time is a creation of a conscious being, in this case man, made simply to measure changes or the lack of change in comparison to other things. As such, while objects will continue to change until there are none left to go through this transition, time will only exist while there are beings who can comprehend the changes and measure them with the concept of time.

So when man does not exist time does not exist>? Assuming that the dinosaurs lived(and im pretty damn sure they did) there was no time when they roamed earth?

time is money :D

I see a pink username in your future.

I can see another six point'er in his future. But i digress

 

[KrIsP!]

So when man does not exist time does not exist>? Assuming that the dinosaurs lived(and im pretty damn sure they did) there was no time when they roamed earth?




I can see another six point'er in his future. But i digress

No I consider any living thing to be able to grasp time. When no living thing exists time, in theory, does not exist. This is a personal opinion based on the concept of time, it does not actually stop but without anything to live and die it essentially ends with thos eliving things.

 

[Orboknown]

Alright, i can understand that. But there obviously had to be time before any living thing came about. The world had to progress to the point where it could support life(assuming it did not spring into being with life already on it) and that would take Time in order to do so. The time might be measured differently, but it would still be time

 

[Pachinkosam]

i dont know but much but its just speechless.

 

[Kal]

No I consider any living thing to be able to grasp time. When no living thing exists time, in theory, does not exist. This is a personal opinion based on the concept of time, it does not actually stop but without anything to live and die it essentially ends with thos eliving things.

This goes down to a more general question: what does something's ability to be measured have to do with it's "existence?" If we define a second as

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom

then it seems to me that the "existence" of time is independent of whether we can measure it.

One can see an analogy between this and some other measurement, such as distance. We define the meter as

the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1  ⁄   299,792,458 of a second.

If, by some inexplicable process, light stopped existing tomorrow, this would not suddenly mean distance no longer "exists." And I would say the same if all beings capable of measuring distance were to disappear; "distance" would not suddenly become "non-existent."

 

[GofG]

Time in the way that you mean does not exist, this is true. But time is still easily definable:

A system is said to be moving forward in time as its entropy increases. This is not simply how we measure time: this is what time is.

Less entropy is the past. More entropy is the future. For whatever reason, our brain interprets the data given to it in a sequential manner, in the order of the entropy of the universe.

 

[Dre89]

Time exists because it has properties. The only thing that has no properties is nothingness, so nothing has no properties.

Any properties automatically fall under either being contingent or necessary, so time shouldn't really he treated any different to any other existence.

 

[Theftz22]

Time in the way that you mean does not exist, this is true. But time is still easily definable:

A system is said to be moving forward in time as its entropy increases. This is not simply how we measure time: this is what time is.

Less entropy is the past. More entropy is the future. For whatever reason, our brain interprets the data given to it in a sequential manner, in the order of the entropy of the universe.

Listen to this podcast at 2:50

http://www.rfmedia.org/RF_audio_video/RF_podcast/Recent_Trends_in_Philosophy_of_Time.mp3

 

[_Keno_]

Time exists because it has properties. The only thing that has no properties is nothingness, so nothing has no properties.

I dont know a great deal about time philosophically, but I've always held that time has no properties, that it is simply a man-made measure of change...nothing more than the observance that cause and effect exist.

A system is said to be moving forward in time as its entropy increases. This is not simply how we measure time: this is what time is.

Can you explain this further?

 

[Dre89]

Peach- Do you consider time to be-
finite
infinite
linear
curved
an illusion
caused
uncaused

No matter which of those you pick, you are giving time properties.

Time can hypothetically be any of these whilst still being time. Think of how humans can have different hair colours, but they're all still human.

The only thing that doesn't have properties is nothingness. You can't have a nothingness with propery A and one with property B, because they aren't nothingness then.

 

[_Keno_]

I think we just disagree on the definition of property.

I consider a property to be something inherently essential to an object. Is blue the property of a blue chair? No, it is the property of the light reflecting off it (if you wanted to get even more specific, its not a property of light...but you see the point).

Would you even say that "existence" is a property of objects such as a chair or phone? Or that non-existence is a property of, say, a unicorn? I wouldn't.

Existence is really a prerequisite to having properties, it's a made-up word that has no bearing on reality other than to be the opposite of its negative, non-existence.

I suppose you could include it as a property of physical objects if you really wanted...I wont squabble too much over definitions.


But really, just because you can attribute complex ideas to something does not mean that it has properties.

I also see you listed "caused" and "uncaused" as properties, as if it was an inherit property that can be observed upon examining an object, or as if it were something that stayed with an object after its creation.

But yes, I guess the closest in your list of "properties" would be time as an illusion.

I hope you got all that, I'm at work and writing single disconnected sentences one at a time...it isnt very organized.

 

[Dre89]

Existence is a property if we're talking about concepts. So if we're talking about the concept of a unicorn it has the property of non existence, because it doesn't exist in reality.

Don't confuse properties with functionality. A replica of an original object is not identical to an original. They have the same functionality, but different properties. For example, they have different histories.

I don't believe that properties exist in an alternate dimension or anything like that, but the fact that there are properties means they need to be accounted for.

If you have finite and infinite time and don't consider them properties, then you have no way of determining the difference between the two.

 

[ElvenKing]

Time in the way that you mean does not exist, this is true. But time is still easily definable:

A system is said to be moving forward in time as its entropy increases. This is not simply how we measure time: this is what time is.

Less entropy is the past. More entropy is the future. For whatever reason, our brain interprets the data given to it in a sequential manner, in the order of the entropy of the universe.

No, it does. It has to, else our experience could not be in reality(as our experience of time would not exist, let alone the world which we perceive as acting to that time).

"Entropy" is a meaningless statement without connection to the observed properties of the world changing from one time to the next. We only know of entropy because of changes we have observed in the universe due to particular forces which are present. Changes which produce an observable difference in the nature of the world which is then conceptualised by us. Changes in entropy ARE the sequential set of events that we experience as time(bar the instances where we drop out of awareness of this passage of events). Time, as in passage of events, as conceived by us, does exist. Indeed the conception of time must occur before the realisation of entropy, as conceiving the notion of entropy relies on understanding that events are different depending on the point in time the occur.

 

[-Jumpman-]

@OP:

Your point requires time to be a seperate entity, while physicists consider time to be a property of spacetime, and thus not a seperate entity. Your position also requires time to be an entity itself, while your definition of time only describes its properties. To simplify such a concept and converge its properties would be too easy.

 

[GwJ]

That's sort of what I've been thinking the whole time, but every time I want to post about it, I feel my brain nagging at me telling me I'm forgetting something, so I refrain out of fear of omitting something obvious that makes my point pointless.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

How does time have properties? Time doesn't even "exist", it is nothingness because it is a word that we denote for movement.

Also, I've read somewhere online that argued that existence is not a property. I'll need to remember where I read that and who said it.

 

[Dre89]

Existence is a property. Take the concepts of an elephant and a unicorn. One has the property of actually existing in reality, the other does not.

Time has properties because it can be many different things whilst still being time. For example, whether time is finite or infinite. By choosing one of them (which you have to) you're giving time a specific property.

 

[GwJ]

Dre, I agree with you usually on a lot of things, but something seems off about what you're saying, but I can't quite *fix it. If I check tomorrow after I'm rested and no one's taken a stab at it, I'll see what I can work out.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Time is not "finite" or "infinite". Time is nothing. It can be neither of these things. The only difference between saying finite time and infinite time, you are just saying that whatever measurement of time you talking about in discussion is not an endless string of movement. There is no length, width, or different between one "time" and another "time". Time is a placeholder word for a concept pertaining to things moving. I'm confused as to how you think otherwise.

You say only nothingness can't have properties. You're right. But time is nothing. Just a made up concept. Nothing can come to mind when one thinks of time except OTHER things, things moving. It would be like saying life has properties, we are all living, and things living have specific properties that living things must exhibit, but does life have properties? Can someone think of something as life other than other things that are living? We just use the word life to describe the idea for our convenience. It can be hard to think otherwise because we grow up using these words like actual things, but they aren't.

 

[Dre89]

There are many different theories of time. For example whether time was created or whether it always existed. Whether it will cease to exist, or whether the cause-effect relationship will continue forever.

These things are properties of time. Calling time nothingness doesn't answer these questions. It doesn't tell us whether the cause-effect phenomena will go on infinitely or not. Whether time is necessary for the cause-effect phenomena, or whether it itself was a result of the cause effect phenomena. Whether chronological sequences are real or whether they are illusion. Whether it is fused with space or not. Whether time travel is possible or not.

Those are just some examples. You have to choose some of those properties. If you want to call that nothingness then you've just labelled something with properties nothingness. That means that actual nothingness, that which has no properties, is no less than something that does have properties.. So you're basically saying that something with properties is identical to something without properties, which is contradictory.

 

[-Jumpman-]

What I think Holder of the Heel is saying, is that time is just a word to describe a process, or intricate concept. To attribute a property to time, would be making it a seperate entity, which it isn't.

If on the other hand you are willing to attribute properties to every word or vague concept, there's no point in arguing.

 

[rvkevin]

There are many different theories of time. For example whether time was created or whether it always existed. Whether it will cease to exist, or whether the cause-effect relationship will continue forever.

These things are properties of time. Calling time nothingness doesn't answer these questions. It doesn't tell us whether the cause-effect phenomena will go on infinitely or not. Whether time is necessary for the cause-effect phenomena, or whether it itself was a result of the cause effect phenomena. Whether chronological sequences are real or whether they are illusion. Whether it is fused with space or not. Whether time travel is possible or not.

These are the properties of the universe. They can be equally formatted to say "Was there matter always in movement? Will matter continue to move eternally?" Time is merely a unit to describe specified arrangements of matter. This is where the concept of entropic time comes in. It merely points out that these arrangements of matter are tending towards disorder rather than the other way. If you want to talk about space-time and special relativity, it has to do with the relative speed of one object compared to the objects around it. These concepts of time do not treat time as an entity in itself but as a description of what matter does in certain situations. To say that time does this or time does that is a category error, the thing actually changing is matter.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Thank you rvkevin, sorry, struggled to word it beyond saying time is movement and is just a word, no more than nothingness physically.

 

[ElvenKing]

Thank you rvkevin, sorry, struggled to word it beyond saying time is movement and is just a word, no more than nothingness physically.

But it isn't actually nothing physically. Being the truth of how objects move, it has an inherent physical component to it. Whenever the physical world moves, a passage of events occurs and time exists in more than simply our experience of the world. "Time" is like "existence." A concept that refers to something of a particular quality. A concept that always reflects reality whenever that reality exists. It is a actually mistaken to suggest that it is a category error to describe time as doing something. Indeed, there is a prominent example where it is done by definition: time dilation. Of course, when this occurs, changing matter and the observation by a conscious entity are involved, but they mix to create what is effectively "the entity of time." To say: "time changes in nature" is perfectly true in this context, as "time" is a relation of matter changing, combined with viewpoint, which does in fact change.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Existence is a property.

I reject this notion entirely. Existence is the basis needed to apply properties in the first place; it cannot itself be described as a property.

Take the concepts of an elephant and a unicorn. One has the property of actually existing in reality, the other does not.

The concepts both exist, but you'll find that in the case of the unicorn, you are giving attributes solely to the concept. If I may explain:

Conceptual Elephant
Attributes:
–Is gray
–Weighs about a ton
–Has a trunk

Conceptual Unicorn
Attributes:
–White
–Has a horn
–Farts rainbows

Actual Elephant
Attributes:
–Is gray
–Weighs about a ton
–Has a trunk

Actual Unicorn
/

There is no actual unicorn in the first place; as such, it cannot have attributes at all – let alone "exists". Existence simply is not an attribute.

Time has properties because it can be many different things whilst still being time. For example, whether time is finite or infinite. By choosing one of them (which you have to) you're giving time a specific property.

The concept of time has properties. We cannot establish, however, that actual time even exists.

 

[Dre89]

But I'm only saying existence is only a property of concepts. So in the case of concepts, existence is a property of those concepts that actually do exist. I'm not saying existence is a property of existing things (even though it is, but it is a redundant attribute for obvious reasons).

 

[GwJ]

I think existence or in this case, non-existence is part of the inherent nature of a concept. Concepts, by their own definitions, are not actual things; they don't exist. Whether or not a physical manifestation of said concept exists or not is where it matters.

 

[jaswa]

So of you who are equating time to nothingness, would empty space be nothingness as well?

Since when was 'something' only that which is composed of matter...

 

[Holder of the Heel]

That is more so stepping into the ground of theoretical physics.

Time as nothingness is simply suggesting that time doesn't exist outside of that concept in our head.