Stupid ideas 3: Time

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Even Einstein mucked up Time. There’s no evidence for Time, and all events and processes can be expressed without it. We don’t need seconds or sequences to describe reality.

What do I mean? I will tell you. Duration, before and after, and units of Time are not temporal qualities. They are physical events.

It takes no time to boil an egg. Not three minutes, not an instant. To say that it takes three minutes to boil an egg simply refers the boiling of an egg to other events, none of which have temporal qualities.

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You’re going to hurt yourself Humpty.

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i’m hitting my head in an attempt to better understand where JohnJones is coming from. perhaps putting myself in a similar mental condition will allow me to relate to him better.

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You understand obviously JohnJones that when we describe things in ‘units of time’ it’s just our way of measuring it. Once you strip away these measurements, it does become a lot more perplexing. But not as perplexing as your assertion that time doesn’t exist. It’s the fourth dimension.

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What separates two blinks of a stationary LED?

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nothing, if you do not try to establish a relationship or comparison betwwen the independent events, that is, if you experience directly without placing the experiencing within what we have invented as the concept of ‘time.’

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When we describe things in units of time we are not measuring time or duration. We are simply referring to another event.

There is no Time. We can redescribe the world without it.

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There are two blinks but there is nothing to say which one of them came first. For there is no coming “first”.

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Time exists, i’m pretty sure that’s not too debatable. But i think what johnjones is get confused is the measurement of time and the actual phenomenon of time. I agree with him that time doesn’t exist in the measurement sense, our measurement system is not actually based on time its based on position of objects in space namely the earth.ex One year = one revolution around the sun

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Wouldn’t the ultimate event to which time-statements refer be the ticking of clocks?

So if someone were to ask “How long will the egg take to boil?”, instead of answering “three minutes” we’d say “when the clock strikes 4:35”?

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Events can be expressed without reference to time. This is because “Time” is only an abbreviation for any physical event.

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To say that Time is pretty much beyond argument is a measure of how far 20th century Mankind can go in convincing itself of something that isn’t true.

Not only is time not measured, but conceptually it is unnecessary.

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Quite so, that’s why I said that we don’t need Time. The clock that reads 4.35 is simply a physical event or shape that is associated with the completion of the cooking. it doesn’t measure “how long” the egg was boiling for.

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But I think we’d still need the word ‘time’ in order to say “The eggs will be done boiling at the same time as when the clock strikes 4:35”.

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No, all you have to do is stop boiling the egg when the position of a hand on a dial falls on 4.35. The two events are one event. They are not two events temporally linked.

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JJ, is your thesis a) that the concept of time can be reduced to the concept of events or b) that there’s no such thing as time (though there are such things as events)?

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There are events, but any description of events falling on a continuum or sequence is an unncessary imaginative act, and not very coherent.

So to say that Time does not exist is to give substance to an idea (sequence) that isn’t entirely coherent. So I do not want to say that Time does or does not exist. I would rather say that Time is an incoherent concept, which imagination helps to dress up as something sensible.

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‘When’ is a temporal term; it means ‘at the same time as’.

You can treat them as a single event, but then you have no way of answering the question “During what event do I stop boiling the egg?” On the other hand, if you do treat them as separate events, then you have to employ temporal terminology in order to answer that question (as I suggested in my previous post). Show me how you answer that question without recourse to temporal terminology.

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When isn’t a temporal event - neither is before and after. These are descriptions of events, not temporal descriptions.

The egg is boiled and the clock reads 4.35.
But if we say the egg is boiled WHEN the clock reads 4.35 then we refer to another event like the clock reads 4.32 and the egg is in the boiling water and not boiled - a ‘before’ event. But before and when are only descriptions of associated events.