Zeraph

The way I see it there are three main time paradigms. I'll try to explain them the best I can.

1. The obvious one, how it looks. There is one present that we are all traveling forward in, the future is indeterminate. The past is permanent. Free will to the extent that the past controls our present.

2. Time is a complete illusion. Everything "happened" at once. The past, present, and future are "predetermined" (sort of...) The metaphor for this is like reading a history book, everything is there, nothing changes from one reading to the next, you can skip to the end and it always reads the same.

3. Fluid time; separate presents that can turn back in on themselves. Time travel is possible, can go back and change the future. Future and past are rather meaningless terms, all is a "present" time for someone. Rather chaotic but complete free will. The metaphor for this is a wikipedia. You can go erase an entry and write what you want, but someone can then do the same to your entry.

Hopefully I explained them well enough, I know this is a complicated subject to talk about, let me know if I need to elaborate.

So which do you prefer?

I think #1, the most "obvious" is rather the least likely.

#2 seems the most likely, yet the hardest to understand. It is uncertain whether this would allow for free will in the normal since. I like to think that if this is the reality that free will comes in in the understanding of the choices we made.

#3 seems rather scary, as a fluid past is unsettling.

inBOIL

I prefer #3, and lack the data to say anything about which is more likely.

__________________
And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

Silvy

I'm not sure if my idea is the same as your option #2, but here goes:

Time does exist as not everything happens at once but in sequence, but it only exists as a measurement of change. There is no timeline on which we move.

Other times like 'past' and 'future' do not exist, ever. The only existince is the present.
What we consider the past, is just a memory and is fixed (though our understanding of it may change), the future is 'open'.
Timetravel is not possible because there is no time dimension in which we can move.

'Free will' can have different implementations in the above notion of time, but personally I think it does not exist either. While people do make choices, I think those choices are based completely on a person's current state + environmental influences. That 'state' and 'influence' are purely physical things: state is the way the neurons in my brain are arranged, connected. Influences are the photons of light coming from my computer screen, temperature in the room, etc.
Only those two facts determine this post....

Kind of depressing if you really think it through so I won't

__________________
"Do not kill. Do not rape. Do not steal. These are principles which every man of every faith can embrace. "
- Murphy MacManus (Boondock Saints)

little_tippler

Why does # 2 seem most likely to you Zeraph?

I have no idea which one is more likely. Which do I prefer? #1 seems more rational. #2 seems unlikely to me...what happened to free will in there? And 3....seems crazy.

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

Cynosure

Only to a being who exists outside of time and space. Thus, that being would have to exist somehow, somewhere outside of our universe, and be able to look in.

It is indeed free will for human beings (and for all intelligent life in our universe) who live their entire lives – from beginning to end – within the space-time continuum, and who know nothing else. (Although, they can speculate and dream about what might exist outside that all-encompassing boundary.)

Zeraph

All of these perspectives are of course, hypothetical, and outside of time-space. Couldn't really discuss them otherwise.

Why do I think #2...I keep trying to write my reasoning out, but it is very complex and spiritual, I'll keep trying, but for now that's all I can get out.

dolphinio55

I think number 2 makes the most sense. I think people get hung up about the issue of free will. But what is it? Our decisions are made in thought-processes which are chemical (or electrical, I'm not a neuroscientist) reactions which occur within the brain and are governed by the laws of nature and causality just like everything else. Thought exists in the same way a nuclear reaction or bioluminescence exists. That is to say that free will (or whatever you want to call it) is bound up in the physical world, and does not exist seperately.

I really don't mean to sound dogmatic in any way, I've just yet to see how it could be otherwise.

Cynosure

Well, brainiac, you could say the same thing about "love".



You don't sound dogmatic. You sound like Data from ST:TNG.

ametc

Actually, I speak to these spirits that are always there for me. Sorta like guardian angels.. but not.. it's hard to explain.. anyways... one day they were explaining the concept of time to me. They communicate to me by sending images and random sounds/phrases to my mind... so it's hard to understand them 100%.. but what I got from them was:


Time exists the same way as the universe does. Almost like a circle or a sphere.. but much more. Time travel is also possible since it's not just a mere line... but an orientation. Time can repeat itself as well and does very often. Think of the smell of the color deep orange and indigo.. that is how time smells. SOOO hard to explain. >_< Time is pliable.. which is why time can repeat itself without the event being exactly the same each time. For us... in this dimension.. time is like a running course. I dunno what that means. but, they always say it.


You can believe me or not.. I really don't care. haha I'm not crazy or anything because I used to work in a dementia ward and I know what all sorts of crazy are like... and this isn't anything near real crazy. >_<

roachboy

i don't think these 3 options reflect either the complexity of thinking time through a language that tends to spatialize and render discrete, nor the problems that accompany conflating time with the systems of marking that come to characterize or define it. in my 3-d activities, i worry these problems alot....

1 is probably best seen as a description of the dynamics of temporal experience. it isn't particularly accurate because it introduces meaningless terms into the mix (free will? what the hell is that?) and avoids thinking through how this dynamic might work if it's mapped onto the process of, say, perception which would be an aspect of the process of continual constitution of a world (and of a self that constitutes a world)...

2 is an old metaphysical illusion concerning time as manifold. the center of it seems to me to be the simple fact that time is a noun. as a noun, the word time is defined by a series of predicates. you can imagine the word as an x around which are arrayed all its predicates. shift that from the word to the concept and there you have it.

if you think the past is stable, you haven't thought too hard about the past. seriously. i don't mean to sound snippy about this because i'm not--it's just the case. say for example that a central component of your experience is memory--that's what enables you to differentiate one thing from another for example. the memory that's involved with any particular act of differentiation is not all your memory. the idea of memory as a whole, that it is a kind of object, is curious and probably follows from the name again, like the notions of time. same thing with "the past"---things move around continually, the past is continually revised in the image of the present, both at the micro and macro levels. that this revision process is bounded seems a condition of possibility for that revision process being coherent. it doesn't mean that there is no revision.

and histories change alot. trust me on this one, if you don't know this from your own experience.


3. built into the description above is something like the logic of alchemy.

i have to go, but i'll say that one of the most interesting approaches to time, its nature and limits, is alfred north whiehead's lectures on the concept of nature.
they're available online--i'll see if i can find them a bit later and will post a link.
but these are quite difficult lectures--i think they're well worth the trouble of ploughing into, but they're serious stuff.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

n0nsensical

This is a matter of religion. I personally believe that our reality is a four-dimensional fractal and it is infinite in both space and in time. It has always existed and it will always exist. Someday we may even discover the equation, much the way that we discovered the 2-dimensional fractal defined by the Mandelbrot equation z_n+1 = z_n^2 + c. Or maybe it is impossible to define. Within every atom there is another entire universe. Everything that happened today will happen an infinite number of times in the future as well in addition to everything that is possible. By analogy there are also an infinite number of realities and we simply happen to exist in this one. It is not as if the Mandelbrot fractal didn't exist before some French dude published a paper, like it existed in 1990 but not 1970. Also you choose your own reality by your decisions, but you cannot control the external forces of any such reality.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Craven Morehead

I think it was Robin Williams that said time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. So, based on that, #2 is ruled out.


I'm going with #1, time is serial. Until, there is proof otherwise, I can't see any other answer. Every historical artifact that has been uncovered proves civilization has advanced over time through carbon dating, etc. Nothing has been found from the future to support a fluid existence of time. Until there is proof otherwise, serial is the only answer. The rest are just theories.

roachboy

if you want a quite serious philosophical text that stages the problem of what time is, how to think about it etc. go here:

The Concept of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead - Project Gutenberg

just a suggestion.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

n0nsensical

Wait, didn't we already discover the equation?

Or does that describe something more particular?

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Xerxys

Some dudes who showed up on TV (I have brilliant sources eh?) Discovery and history channel to be exact, were modern day nostradamus type folk. Here's what they all had in common (Besides predicting the future), they all claimed that time is something that 'we' create in order to apply some sort of sense of existence. They claimed that in truth they were not really 'predicting' the future but actually "reading" it.

They said that they got all their info from a huge 'database' that was simply there to be accessed by whomever wants to access it. They said that it was all just there, always has been there and for some stupid reason the narrator never asked when the database "ends".

Now that I think about it, they were making an analogy for god, so when before I started typing this I was gonna go with #2, I think I pretty much am gonna go with #1 now.

Skitto

Okay, since compounding seems to be the easiest way to solve this, in the realm of time, the 4th dimension, there are 4 dimensions of sentient consciousness governing individual memory and knowledge. Relating through Time as a medium.



So, like on Bill Nye, "Please, consider the following:"

Consider the following, time is perceived in simultaneous strands of consciousness: Sensory, cognitive, computative and individual. (I'm adding a fourth)

1D. To the superficial, sense driven consciousness, time is right in front of us, a series of things that happen one, then another, and another. Sort of like a scatter plot.

2D. Then, there's the conscious memory, seeing the string and order of the events while acknowledging the time we were semiconscious of, passing by us, and away from us. More like a line graph.


3D. And ultimately, under the frontal lobe asking, "what if?", is the instinctive (primitive) brain. That, when compiled from the other two, acknowledges all that happened, and simultaneously sees all the memorable past, and plans ahead.

You ask what could have happened, planning ahead possibly for improvement, whether conscious of it or not. This is the computative mind: the frontal lobe, the fact checker, problem solver's perception of Time (and reality, but that's different)




4D. The fourth in the process is... abstract... poignant... poetic, and hardly simplistic when/if explained scientifically (empirically, if you will). So, we review by taking my graph metaphor:

1D was a scatter plot (dots of data),
2D is a line graph (dots connected by a line)
3D, is a probability simulation, all possible lines are graphed at the same time, making a landscape of what is most or least possible as determined by certain peramaters and variables. It is like a snapshot of the ocean.

4D is hard to explain to non-ambient beings, mostly because it is simply out past your blind spot, but also because the one explaining can't help but talk in circles.

But if you can imagine that it is somewhat like a combination of the three previous ones, where the frontal lobe sees the past and future in a snapshot of all possibilities, chang the closest word I can come to is...



fun, and chemical reactions.

That's as far as I can get.

---------- Post added at 09:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:21 PM ----------

In a universe of numbers up to infinity, humanity can only count to four.

__________________
Yeah, well, you're just that awesome, I guess. It's not like I guessed so anyways.

FelixP

I prefer number 2. I believe in God. I believe that god is omnicient. If God is all knowing, then he MUST know what is going to happen in the future. If he knows, then it must be predetermined. But WE don't know, which gives us free will. We can choose to do whatever we want because we don't know our own fates. See my sig.

Of course, if number three is factual, then my theory is all shot to hell. My theory depends on linear time.

__________________
Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

"I have just returned from visting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world." --Douglas MacArthur

Zeraph

"If you're quoting a statement from your past you don't need to quote yourself." -Me

"I am arrogant because I quote myself." -Me

thirdsun

My personal opinion (at the present moment) is that it is both #1 and #2 minus the illusion part.

#1 is what we are currently experiencing...this universe, which had a beginning and will have an end. In other words, time (past, present, future) started (began) as a condition or law of the universe and it will eventually stop. We exist within this universe, for a brief, personal experience of past, present, future, within the long continuation of past, present, future. As beings in time, we know that time exists (not an illusion), because we see the effects of it (aging, decay, the expanding stars, etc.). We experience things starting and ending. As individuals, we begin and eventually we end. We also know that free-will exists, because we can see the effects of it as well; in our own lives, in the lives of others, and in the collective actions and decisions of the human race throughout known history.

If time were a road stretched from New York to San Francisco, we are a free-will microbe traversing the 1000 ft or so of our brief existence on that road. During our existence, we are free-will to the extent that our decisions and the past controls our present and affects our future and The future; but, we affect The future only to a microscopic degree in the overall "big picture." As a race, our collective free-will decisions affect the planet upon which we live. Beyond that we pretty much, as a world, are a microbe within the larger universe, having little to no effect upon it as it continues on toward its conclusion.

However, there is a map of the road (the big picture). We are simply too small to see it or comprehend it (which you might argue is the illusion). Due to free will, the road is somewhat under construction, but the end-point is determined (i.e., it will eventually occur). If you believe in God, you can even say the end point is pre-determined. To use the illustration of the book (#2), the book has a first page and a last page, but it is still in the process of being written, by virtue of a universe where free will is a reality. The current page of the book is the present, but there are only so many pages to be filled. I would say that the universe is subject to the law of time (a beginning and an end), just as we are.

I do believe there is a universe or reality in which there is no law of time, in which reality simply is always now, and everything within it simply exists as it exists now. That universe or reality has no beginning and no end. It is an eternal now.