On Time!(?)

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Time is obviously a difficult thing to grasp. It is abstract, it is artificial, not natural, it is intangible, but it is there … in our minds.

Looking at time the traditional way, one has to divide it into past, present and future.
The past is that which is over, the present is what we conceive as “now” and the future is that which is going to happen. But is that really so? And how does time influence our lives?

Thinking about it, I have come to the conclusion that the present is actually never existent except for two points of time which I will discuss later.
Moreover I have found that people of different ages seem to live in different times:

The moment we are born is one of the two points of time when we are really living in the present. All through infancy, when we are becoming more and more aware of the conception and meaning of time, we move on to living in the future. Adolescense, adulthood and old age are lived through in the future as well and it is when we die that we experience the present a second time. What we are living for - all our life - is the past.

Now, what do I mean by “living in the future”?
It is simply a matter of focus. Why do we work, act or think? Why do we earn and spare money, build houses, buy cars; why do we make plans (which is one fundamental principle in life - everyone should at all times have a plan and aim)? We do all these things in order to affect our future, to “design” the future we have in mind, the future we consider good for us.
So, since all our actions, hopes, plans and of course the essentially human emotion of fear refer to the future, one can say that we really live in it.

Now, in an earlier article (On the Essence of Fear and our Need for Order) I wrote that fear is always present, but never caused by it. It has its roots in the future.
Since we live in the future all our life except when we are born or die, we live in omnipresent fear. We cannot rid ourselves of it. So the only moments when fear does not exist or is completely unnessecary are at the instant of birth or death - the only times when we are truely experiencing the present.

When we die there is actually nothing to worry about, because there is no future which could cause this worry and thus there is no need at all to be afraid of dying. One question is now, whether a religious conception of death is really reasonable, because according to Christian religion and others as well, there is a life after death, ie there is a future even at the moment of death and thus a reason to be concerned.
Could an atheistic attitude be a more reasonable choice for a happier life?

We are living in the future to serve the past and it is the moments of our creation and doom that we truely ARE.

Kindly comment on this!

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sebby said:

There seems to be a trade-off: if you live only knowing the present, like an animal, you cannot plan and make things better; but if you only plan and work for the future, you never enjoy what you have accomplished.

I think the answer is between the horn’s of this dilemma. “Always” have awareness and enjoyment of yourself and the world at or near the surface, and “always” plan what you want to accomplish. (Sometimes my plans are rather finite. Today’s plans were to clean my toaster and to visit some internet sites. Both of which, I have done.)

As for living in fear, the same capacity that lets us imagine, and plan for, things as better, lets us imagine them as worse. But would you really give up your forebrain to never have bad dreams?

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Apparently, going by your argument about the root of fear, a nonbelief in life after death seems more reasonable than a belief in it. Personally, I do not believe in life after death, and currently I am practicing some conception of it—there is no life after death, the only worth living is life here. So, then, I get two “nows”, at birth and at time of death.

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don’t out of hand think that all atheists reject life after death. and some agnostics are damn sure of life after death. although it may be wholly unsatisfying if what you wanted for life after death, was like in that commercial, to eat that cream cheese on a cloud. anyways, before you say i believe this or that, you should say what it’d mean to believe this or that… ie, what the hell are you talking about? …ie what the hell are you talking about when you say ‘life after death?’ its can get pretty complicated.

5

Ok, you say it’s in our minds, so that makes it subjective to you. But then you talk about ‘‘time’’ actually existing in the external world. But there is no proof of this, absolutely none.

How does an animal get things done then if it can think of nothing else but the ‘‘now’’? Why does it bother to chase it’s prey? Wouldn’t be quite strange if an animal were chasing another animal for no paticular reason, after all…if animals could only experiance the ‘‘now’’ then why would they evcen be chasing? How would they remmeber or know what they were doing? Or WHAT they even are? There are different levels of intelligence amongst all animals (including us animals). We all have a memory, why else do you propose that animals look after their young?

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Interesting topic sebby:

The link below I post out of a contrarian spirit, because that’s the type of mood I’m in today. Sebby, you might find it interesting because it does have a slight correlation to the assertion you make that we are continually living in the future after a certain stage of life development, but his reasoning is more scientific than philosophical so it’s possible that the correlation I percieved is not as great as I thought.

journaloftheoretics.com/Edit … 3/e3-1.htm

To counter the above link I found another one to a rather long article discussing the philosophical properties of time. It looked interesting, and from what I read that assumption holds, but to be honest here, I didn’t read more than a fraction of the whole thing. You might find something of use in it however.

utm.edu/research/iep/t/time.htm

sebby wrote:“The moment we are born is one of the two points of time we are really living in the present.”

And you say later that the other moment of life lived in the present is death, so I take it that you have designated the beginning and the end as the only moment’s of life that humans are actually in the present, and I think the reason you chose to define it that way, from the other substance you supplied is because throughout the rest of life we are simultaneously living for a future day, and remembering what we have already achieved through a perception of our personal histories, because our histories become greater than our lives after death, for it still exists through a timeline yet we no longer do. It sounds like you are trying to create a very broad spectrum that encompasses the entirety of a life. It’s an interesting way of formulating a perception of it, but I still tend to think that if I do not live the present moment I will have no future to speak of, and all I will have attained when I look back on my life 30 years from now are squandered moments of inaction, and mistake, and so it’s not so much a question of past or future that one needs focus on, but instead the actuality of the circumstances, and chances currently in front of you, or ones plans, and goals. I see what you are saying though. It makes me pause to consider.

I think the really interesting thing here is times causality; the nature of coincidence and of, to put it metaphorically, the spinning dice. Once the dice land, and you know what numbers are on the face, everything is set. There is no going back or changing it. But you are talking about the framework here, and not necessarily what is within their parameters. Again, interesting topic.

Well said rvw.

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Time is artificial logically. Seeing how its just the idea of the sun disappearing and reappearing continuously. Just the idea of the sun and moon switching positions, you might as well call it transparency to the fact you can see it.

Reasoning would say that its just two objects circulating around our home planet. So we might call it something like “occurence of dark and light over periods of wait/timing.”

Thats to me how I would create the whole topic of time if I was ancient.

We time the appearance of dark, then wait for the appearance of lightness. But what is the period of time we ponder about, how theres a even amount of hours almost of light and dark. Like theres a eary timing about it.

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Time is easy to grasp, just hard to get through all of everybody else’s bullshit about how it is complicated.
Time is simply the passing between one event to the other.

That’s all

That’s all it is

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I woke up, got ready and then had breakfast. Did time pass?

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This same topic has been discussed in various other threads on this board, most recently this one.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=142616&sid=e44ffbe5beb4650aaf0dd76ba0c249f1

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Feisty. :cry: :cry: :cry:

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If time marks change. Then,

When i wake up, get ready and then eat breakfast. Inbetween each event time has passed?

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I would argue this quote. I would say that most people ‘‘live’’. And only very few trully do exist. Most people only exist to make money for themselfs and then to make money for their children etc, this is to give their famailes a comfortable life. There is no time for most people to exist because they are too busy ‘‘living’’.

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In response to Rami: Of course

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There is only one external moment. That moment never changes. Your just creating a pattern. A clock ticking is not measuring each new moment.

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time is nothing more then a measurement our minds create , the measurement corresponds with our aging and the aging of things around us. if we never aged and the world around us never aged there would be no time, just change…p.s go to my time loop thread(2nd page), i swear it makes sense…

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Rami, You are right that a clock is not time, you are not right that it is not measuring time. That is what a clock does, it gives units to time, it only measures portions of a day, but it is measuring time.

To continue existing is change, to exist from now til then is change.

If there is only frozen time, then how do I move? How can I think?

If we did not change at all, and all we are is frozen in place, then existing would not happen, all we would be is a picture, which obviously is not the case.

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Rami, I believe that you have just stated a change. Is a pattern not continuing to exist? And if we follow this pattern, are we not changing? You seem to be arguing both sides at once without realizing what change and event actully represent.

Change- alteration of previous action, ie if I do exactly the same thiing twice, they are not the same for I did one after the other.

Event-any mark of action, doesn’t have to be noteable or predetermined, ie to exist one moment is an event, to continue existing to the next is another event, and change occured for I did not exist in the exact same moment as before, and this is time.

19

You and I are changing yes but we’re just a process within. Imagine if an empty were the world and it were all that there is. This room may be a large room for argument sake. Is the room itself changing just because you are able to move? You talk about ‘‘time’’ as though it’s a ‘play’ and ‘pause’ duration. Why can’t there just be one moment and everything else happens within this room? The processes happening within this room do not have to change, can the room not just be empty and we move around freely and these processes just happen? Each moment is new for you and me, but we can’t get confused and think that each external moment is new.

When you start saying that each external moment is a new moment then you run into asking ‘‘was there a time when there was no monent?’’. Are we so confused that we can’t understand that this one moment just is? To add to that, many processes can happen within this one room but the room itself would never have to change, it would always be there. Just as many processes can happen here, ‘‘change’’ does not show that reality is moving forward or changing.

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I believ I see what you are saying, as if the room itself was time, ‘moment’ and everything within this room merely is the definition of that ‘moment’.

Considering that this is an accurate interpretation of your assumption, would not the things taking place within the moment in it of itself be change? And would not the room itself be change as it exists from now on?

It would be impossible to imagin a ‘time’ without time for we could label this as ‘Nothing’ and how can you get something from nothing at all? Henceforth time must inexorably be eternal, continuing on forever and ever, but not neccessarily infinite, and if I can get you to understand what time really is, I will share with you how this cannot be possible.

Perhaps if you were to try and come up with another, more specific and elaborate example of your theory, I could see even clearer to which you are speaking if I have not already.