What if time were not moving forward? What if the very assumption that time moves forward is actually nothing more than just a psycological process that creates the illusion of time passing by.
ie; bob is born, young bob goes to school, then gets married and then reaches old age.
To bob, this would seem as though a long period of time has passed. Even if bob has a conversation with any paticular person, there seems to be an illusion of duration from when he first began the conversation, till the moment the conversation finished. This is a process only in us, the brain causes us to falsely believe that time is actually passing by.
Since i posted the previous post,it seems as though time has been passing by and i can almost recall the moment i first wrote that post down. But really, has anything passed or has it just passed in me? Do i create the image of before and after?
Exactly what i’m saying. You think later is not now - fair enough but would you care to explain what it is that’s actually moving forward? ‘‘Reality’’ itself isn’t changing Impenitent, i seriously think that if something is passing by then you are really are going to have to tell me what think ‘‘thing’’ actually is because i have never noticed it.
This morning i got up but now i am here. Only i have made the progress, nature itself has not progressed. It seems as though i woke up 20minutes ago and that’s where i start creating this illusion that something has been passing by, but itsn’t just because i’m doing things in a certain order/pattern and then i just recall doing them things?
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Yep, exactly what I’ve been saying. Theres only the now… when later comes it comes as the now. It is an illusion, or delusion that we are moving forward, or progressing. I was here now I am here… When really I am only here, and there is no was. The only real time, or useful aspects of time is that of the watch, chronological time, but pyschological time does not exist, you can delude yourself into believing it does but it does not.
Now is the only moment. So before and after simply doesnt exist unless we are here to actually percieve things happening ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’. So even when i was not here. This constant eternal moment has always been? But if the big bang happened then it must have happened ‘‘before’’ right? And then there was an ‘‘after’’. Even if i were not here to percieve this, it still happened. Unless of course you propose that the big bang etc happened within this constant eternal moment? And that ‘‘reality’’ is really unchanging but changes happen within it?
Kind of… eternal moment… I’d put it like this: there is only the now, and the past and future are contained in the now. Past events shaped the now that we are currently experiencing, and future events will be the result of the now, and when they come, they come as the now. It is all contained in the present moment. Reality is always changing… I doubt that you meant that last statement to be completly literal… or rather its just the language thats hard to convey. By using science we try to put together a timeline to try to understand our world, and universe more. If the big bang happened in the past… then the results are contained in the now.
Yeah if, its just a theory, but odds that our universe was created by the big bang or not, really doesn’t have any releveance to this discussion. “IF” you had a cup of coffee this mourning then the results are contained in the now, same diff.
Yeh, eachmoment is ‘‘now’’. As i’m typing to you i can say that it is ‘‘now’’ but then i end up trying to catch up with myself almost, this ‘‘now’’ right here is the only moment but it quikcly passes by and i end up telling myself that i am only in ‘‘now’’. But anyway. So the period between me drinking my coffee and me sitting here this after noon is nothing but a psychological impression that i get because of my memory? And there isn’t actually anything that is ‘‘passing’’ by in nature.
Though i now each monent that ever is for me is always ‘‘now’’. When one dies it will be in the moment of ‘‘now’’ and not in 50-60 yrs, even if you de in 50-60 yrs.
Well imagine you didn’t have a memory. There would be no before and after.
When you wake up in the morning and you go to sleep at night, your creating the impression that time has moved forward when in actual fact it is just the way that your memory works. You remember things and you remember things in order, ‘‘you went to see bob, then had dinner with your wife etc’’. You create the pattern and that’s where i think most people begin to get a different perception of reality.
I don’t know Rami, I think memory presupposes causality (which in my opinion is deeply interwoven with time). What I mean is that you can’t be talking about us having memories and stuff like that without reckognizing some form of order.
Although most likely there is a difference between what is real and what we perceive to be real, I think it’s impossible to perceive without the filter of causality. I don’t see any basis in our direct sensesory experiences to claim that nature is completely void of it.
Some of what you say almost makes it sound like if we just learn to think a little different we can surpass this notion of causality and see the truth.
Doesn’t order precede perception ? As I see it, all our perception is coloured by causality and I don’t think we will ever be able to determine the extend to which this is a part of our way of seeing things or of nature.
Even if we find a new way to look at things, this will still be some sort of order and we will just reckognize that as causality.
The only solution seems to be to stop asking why altogether.
but the positions of all particles has been changing in a smooth progression that is pretty much completely smooth no matter how far you zoom in or how small an increment of time you look at.
what are you saying? that there is no such thing as the past? or that there is no way to prove that there is such a thing as the past? there is no way to prove anything if this is your attitude. if you say inductive reasoning isnt solid, then fine youre right. what else are you saying?
RAMI !! IN THE NAME OF REASON, please read my post as well. Hehehe.
I think I understand now your original question. We cannot really “know” the passing of time (NOTE: not the time, but the ‘passing of time’) through perception–not through the senses. Because ‘passing’ is not tangible, not a property, but we do have a notion of it because we do have a notion of NOW. And we have notion of NOW because we have memory, hence a notion of ‘past’ which gives credence to NOW.
Now, you say, what if someone has lost his memory? Well, the proper inference is, I think, that he wouldn’t have a notion of NOW, would he? He wouldn’t have a notion of ‘passing’.
I don’t think that there even is a ‘‘passing’’ by. We are beings with a memory and so there we get the impression that each moment is not what it was last, an that each moment is a moment new. Imagine the ancient bred of humans that were the first process of the ‘‘evolution’’ process. You trace the process back and get the impression that the process has been changing through time, but it’s just been happening within reality. Who said there ever was a start to reality?
oh be quiet yes you do. your just tearing town the oppressive walls of assuming, which of course makes an ass out of u and me.
have you ever changed? have you gone from hungry to not hungry? has a process ever happened? what do you call it when a thing changes? god implants us with a new memory every time our sensory system takes a snapshot of the outside world? what are you saying that is different from what i believe? there is no content in this thread as far as i can see, except for the afforementioned de-walling.
I call it a change in the process. Just because thngs change, does this mean that each moment is a new moment? To you and i, yes because each moment is also our last but ‘‘time’’ is not moving forwards.