On the other forum, a new thread has popped up regarding time. It got me to thinking...without an “observer,”’would time exist?
Is it more than not, simply an arbitrary system of measurement? I’ve read that there’s no agreed definition of time but if we couldn’t experience it, would it not exist?
Time is essentially just the measurement of change. So long as there is change, like natural processes, there would still be something to measure.
(Nov 5, 2020 11:35 PM)Syne Wrote: [ -> ]Time is essentially just the measurement of change. So long as there is change, like natural processes, there would still be something to measure.
I understand that part but does this mean that the laws of physics are permanent? If I don’t observe the change, the change still happens. But if I see it, I then can manipulate what I believe I’m seeing. (by using time as a measurement)
So in essence, as the observer, I’m making sense of the change. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it fall, did it fall? Yes, it did so is this the same thing?
(Nov 5, 2020 10:21 PM)Leigha Wrote: [ -> ]On the other forum, a new thread has popped up regarding time. It got me to thinking...without an “observer,”’would time exist?
Memory and other cognitive affairs are necessary for retaining a "former" state and comparing it with a "newer" one just to apprehend/conclude that they are different. The non-mental universe of today's naturalism lacks the capacity to acknowledge such "change" or value any particular state of itself as "special". It would actually lack all representational appearances for itself (i.e., not just relational judgement-making).
That Mysterious Flow
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...w-2006-02/
Postscript:
Note that a particular discipline (in science or philosophy) can preset its own definition of "time" so it is useful or compatible with its workplace endeavors. That includes requiring time to exist independently of observers, if it wants to venture into metaphysics (make declarations of that sort).
If we're instead referring to "existence" as manifested by consciousness, then obviously there is a fleeting "immediate experience" (or what can be labeled a "now") that is different from those states held in memory. Qualia are also become properties of objects in the external world that private thoughts have conjoined with their "subjective" half of mind, despite such being prescriptively eliminated from the scientific or so-called physical version of an external world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/se...istinction
The second paragraph (excluding quote) discussing Locke's scientific realism (descended from Galileo's, etc):
https://iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H1
(Nov 6, 2020 12:43 AM)Leigha Wrote: [ -> ]I understand that part but does this mean that the laws of physics are permanent? If I don’t observe the change, the change still happens. But if I see it, I then can manipulate what I believe I’m seeing. (by using time as a measurement)
So in essence, as the observer, I’m making sense of the change. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it fall, did it fall? Yes, it did so is this the same thing?
In quantum mechanics, the observer can essentially affect
when the outcome is observed (when to open the box), but doesn't in any way change the laws of physics that determine what that outcome may be (living or dead cat).
Time is not really all that different from space. Just like you need events to measure/observe durations of time, you need objects to measure/observe distances of space. Without an observer, we presume the objects and space they define continue to exist, and so it is with time. IOW, if the tree exists without us observing it, then the event of it falling also exists without observation, for the same reason. While events are more ephemeral, they are no less real than the tree was that has been turned to ash.
(Nov 6, 2020 04:49 AM)Leigha Wrote: [ -> ]After all, we do not really observe the passage of time. What we actually observe is that later states of the world differ from earlier states that we still remember. The fact that we remember the past, rather than the future, is an observation not of the passage of time but of the asymmetry of time. Nothing other than a conscious observer registers the flow of time.
I would say that the evolution of a wave function, the motions of planets, etc. register the flow of time. And the effect of past events on future events are evidence of that past like the ash is evidence of the tree.
(Nov 6, 2020 04:49 AM)Leigha Wrote: [ -> ][...] I guess what surprises me about the concept of time, is that for something so illusory, it's necessary for our existence.
There are countless different brain states throughout the lifetime of a body that fragment cognition and sensory manifestations into a sequence of distinct moments (each a kind of a island only aware of its own information content -- giving immediate "realness" to that pattern alone). But the language aspect of human consciousness has to be extended across or through them -- a complete verbal thought can't be expressed in the duration of a psychological microsecond or the vastly more ephemeral subatomic increments.
There is no
four dimensional neural configuration for experiencing all those differences at once (or is there?), so any simultaneous apprehension of "from birth to near-death" really would have to be transcendent or not supervening on a brain state (the usual dependence upon or correlation to the latter). I purely mention that because some individuals occasionally claim they've encountered some type of "entire life" awareness or whatever (whether that's the case or not). There would be severe difficulties with the memory capacity and brain-states of conventional psychological instants grappling with and processing such a gigantic information dump (not to mention lack of a causal source for it in the skull itself). A faux hallucinogenic experience, however, is amenable.
Are not all observers born with their own frame of reference? Are we not then a time clock unto ourselves, therefore each of us cannot agree on a time measurement for events?
There's a difference between time measurement and time perception. Time measurement is regulated by the physical laws that clocks operate on, and time perception is only regulated by our own subjective experience of time.
In a 2D+1 universe absent of depth, would we look at time the same way? IOW's how critical is depth to time measurement or perception?