I just had an idea.
The word Time = movement
when there is no movement, there is no time!
More generally, time = change. No change you can’t discern time. Even so you can’t discern if time is speeding up or slowing down …
I guess I’ve already addressed this in another thread, but in what sense does time equal movement? I would disagree.
As motion decreases, time does not decrease (in fact, it increases just a bit, depending on exactly how much motion and at what rate it is changing.)
As well, Chanbengchin, you say that without motion, one would be unable to descern time. However, (and this might sound a bit odd), doesn’t the very process of discernment require time? So, shouldn’t the very act of trying to discern the existence or nonexistence of time imply the existence of time?
However, we could never discern the nonexistence of time unless we could somehow examine the universe for which we wish to know the existence of time from outside said universe.
Pi Man, I say changes, not movement. The very fact of discernment means things changed in your mind, and therefore you sensed the passage of time. What I am saying is that if there are nothing that changes, including your thoughts, then you cannot discern time.
Alrightey… what’s the difference between motion and change?
At very least, change implies motion, and motion implies change, so they’re at least logically equivelant concepts.
As well, how does the replacing of “change” with “motion” in my response change my response at all? I don’t see how it does at all.
Seeing as any electrical activity in the brain is the result of moving electrons, there’s really no difference at all.
Which is, at very least, another way of phrasing this statement by me:
motion implies change and not vice versa.
a thing unmoving yet changing in colour, eg a piece of iron left in the open will rust after time …
a thing unmoving yet changing in ideas, eg the concept of morality then and now
there are two important ideas arising if we make a distinction between change and motion:
first which is primal, ie is it change driving motion or vice versa? I think the former.
second motion only pertains to physical stuff, namely that which occupies space, and motion is the change of space; but there are things that do not occupy space, abstract stuff, and motion is not applicable but change still is.
I disagree with chanbengchin,
things turn a different colour b/c either the properties of the object are changing (e.g. elemental structure of iron, vs. chemical structure of iron with oxygen attached to it i.e. rust), and/or the amount of light pressed upon them.
motion = change = cause and effect.
Abstract ideas are bounded only by the limits of our brain activity, which is the fundamental diference between abstract ideas and ‘things’ in space (they are not subject or limited to neural interaction and communication).
We will one day prove that abstract ideas are physical things aswell, represented by the pattern of activity in your brain, and thus utterly dependent on motion. The abstract idea is bound to the relations, properties and activity of the neurons in your brain. Just a far superior level of complexity than a frog, further still than a paramecium, and further still than a virus, and further still than those litle bits of self-replicating bits of RNA found recently (I can’t remember what they’re called).
We tend to attribute inexplicable explanations for vastly complex things to mysterious inexplicable notions like “the whole is greater thant he sum of its parts”. What is it that would make any instance of this so? Some mystical ‘whole greatifying’ force? Rediculous.
For example, consider the common complaint to the following thought experiment. Suppose we build an exact replica of my brain (say, with inorganic material and we had the knowledge to do so, we’ve figured out how our brains work), complete with sensory inputs, and with neuron-correlates which were perfectly capable of functioning as my own organic neurons do (same basic functional properties, rules ect.), and giving it the same state of activation that my own brain is in…right…now…, the common complaint being that this model would still not be conscious, or that it would still not be ‘me’ or a replica of my ‘self’ due to the absense of some mystical conscious-granting force be-it a ‘soul’ or whatever. I’d argue that this model would indeed be my cognitive twin, and then slowly become less and less like my cognitive twin as differing experiences shaped our two originally-identicle “self’s” into two distinct “selfs”.
For a more practical example, how about the synergistic effects of two drugs acting on a cellular receptor. We might sit there and think “holy crap! the effects of these drugs are totally and utterly unexplained by summing up the effects of the two drugs by themselves! We’ve now proved that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts!” (note the similarity in this thinking to the last example, and to the idea that abstract ideas will foerever be untouchable in any physical sense). But in reality, there are perfectly good reasons why the effects of two drugs, together, may be many times greater than the additive effects of the individual drugs. It’s because the first time around we had not taken certain realities into account - or simply not known the whole story, or more to the point “it turns out we did not know all of the parts before we tried to sum them up!” - the whole context. e.g. membrane signal transduction induced by both drugs A and B ultimately resulted in an intracellular product that drastically slowed the rate of membrane receptor turnover (internalization), leaving many more receptors with which the drugs could act on and to produce otherwise unattainable levels of seemingly ‘inexplicable’ effect.
The only problem with the idea of cause and effect is the question “what caused the cause?” to which we could answer “that cause becomes the effect of some other cause” but after doing this for some huge number of time, we readily see that we lead ourselves into an infinite regress. Or in the case of the motion of particles; the ‘big bang’…so what caused the big bang? etc. etc.
But that day is not here, so until then what is your basis/rationale for entertaining the notion that ideas can “move” too? Even if I agree with you that ideas are but physiological manifestation of our brain chemistry, how do you locate its “position” in the mind to discern its “motion”? An "idea’ that moves from the left side to the right side of the brain is still the same idea isnt? And if it is just a rearrangement of the neural circuitry, why can’t it be that because our ideas have changed is the reason why our brains get rewired? If so then change precedes motion.
So I think it is too far-fetched an idea to hold at this point in time, and therefore the conservative and founded position right now is Motion=>Change and not Change=>Motion. When we have reasons to believe the latter then we can. For the moment I do not think it is necessary, and the more general notion of change suffices to define and discern time.
And as I have pointed out there are advantage in thinking about this more general notion of change, eg change as the motive force for motion. Even with physical stuff, for its motion there is a need for a force, and that force needs an explanation too, ie it is not time that generate the force than caused the motion, does it?
And then again, what is motion after all, if not the change in position. So without the notion of change there can be no motion at all.
“Time” is a direct consequence of the irreversibility of a certain class of processes. This irreversibility is measured with entropy. There are very few processes (i.e. changes) that do not result in an increase of the amount of entropy in the universe (an example of such an isentropic process being the adiabatic expansion of an ideal gas against a vacuum, which is rather trivial in everyday life). “Time” could not exist without this “one way street” of ever-increasing entropy in the universe.
I won’t get into what entropy actually “is” (nor do I pretend to be any kind of expert), but I’d advise anyone who wants to know more about it to avoid the definitions and explanations used in classical thermodynamics (i.e. the study of steam engines) and to start out with the microscopic (statistical) interpretation right away:
S = k ln Ω ≥ 0
t = f (S) ≥ 0 (the exact nature of f (S) being unknown, as far as I know)
Ilya Prigogine has written much about the exact nature of the link between entropy and time, but his work isn’t has highly regarded as it once was. Roger Penrose has interesting things to say about it as well, though his viewpoints, too, aren’t fully accepted.
We can crudely observe neural activity via functional magnetic imaging, positronic emission topography and single-cell sampling with tiny electrodes to name a few methods. All methods have localized certain function to certain areas of the brain. The technology is crude of course, with respect to what it would need to be in order to come to the point I am advocating, but I still think we will get there eventually through refining spatial and temporal resolutions and incorporating advances in cellular neurophsyiology. Even the single-cell sampling is limited at present in so far that it can only test single cells at a time, and not groups of cells. Neurophysiology works from the celular machinery up, and there is already evidence that memories may indeed consist at least in part, of cellular consituents, namely in terms of changes in genetic expression of certain proteins, resulting in permanent altercations in a given neuron’s function or structure. And afterall what do our senses do? They convert various forms of energy into chemical-based electrical energy. It blows my mind to think that consciousness could be so simple as utilizing, modifying and transmitting chemical-based electricity in the form of ion gradients between neurons and groups of neurons. And thus it’s hard to resist the impulse to simply shed such a seemingly simple explnation aside, and firmly embrace the mysticism of concsiousness. But then I realize that ‘utilizing, modifying and transmitting chemical based electricity’ is not simple at all. Or rather that something so apprently ‘simple’ is actuality an incredibly complex system that we have so obviously barely scratched the surface with.
The abstract idea is essentially whatever neural activity represents it (and all of the phsyiological and phsyical laws such neural activity would entail). This prospect leaves us with many more questions than answers, but I think the basic truth of this will be inevitabley prooved. I couldn’t call my present overall belief knowledge, of course, though I’m basing it upon knowledge.
Anyways, we as adults have grown and develouped in such a way as to make it impossible for us to examine our own adult brains in order to figure out how the properties and functions of the neurons came to be. My guess would be that neural function and properties change as we grow and develoup, particularly so in the earlier years. For example, ‘conservation of mass’ is something we learn at a young age and I would be willing to bet that it is precisley a change in the wiring and/or communication of neurons that allows us to eventually understand something like the conservation of matter.
I’m not pretending to know what the language of neurons is, or what their properties are, or how their functions alter over time and under circumstance. I’m confident that we will reveal the answers to these things eventually, and inevitably. I mean, do we think abstract ideas exist without our brains? Certainly not. They are dependent upon our brains in the general sense, and they will be proven to be dependent on the pattern of activation of our brains.
At any rate, there is evidence of lateralization of function in the brain, thus an idea that ‘travels’ - by way of neural signalling - to one side of the brain may indeed be altered in some fashion, but then again it may not be.
I would say that rather than be the dumb founded toxicologist by attributing observed effects to inexplicable notions such as “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, I’d rather be the guy that says “hang on a minute, maybe we should search for some more facts before we jump to such rash notions which imply unknowable forces.”
I think motion is change as change is motion. I think you’re jumping in and out of the abstract by claiming one precedes the other. They are both one and the same. Absolutely no motion would mean absolutely no change. Though I would not know what to say about time in such a case.
Time may be somewhat dependent on motion/change, but i suspect time would still be around even if space was devoid of matter, or if the matter in space were motionless/unchanging.
I am no expert either (obviously 
) but why must time be linked to entropy in such a fashion as to make time impossible without entropy?
Time doesn’t need us to give it a meaning for it to exist, does it?
I don’t think time could be measurable without motion be it via ‘photometer’ clock or atomic clock, or even ourselves counting covertly in our own head (as all these involve motion do they not?), but immeasurable time doesn’t prove it’s non-existence, does it? Empiricism would simply cast such a notion as i’mmeasurable time’ (in the aformentioned sense) to the gutter, correct?
Does the fact of whether time’s existence is independent of entropy (note I did not say the procession of time was not linked with entropy) have any effect on any mathematical theories? If not I’d say it’s pointless to talk about immeasurable time.
This is a very deep topic, both in terms of philosophy and in terms of “hard science”. I’m not a philosopher, so I’ll stick to the science. But even then I can’t claim to be knowledgeable enough to explain this to you properly.
I’ll have to look into it more deeply, but just from memory I’d say that:
(a) Man doesn not measure absolute time, just time intervals (in other words: we measure the passage of time between events);
(b) Absolute time began at the precise moment of the Big Bang, but we don’t know exactly when that was (we estimate it to be on the order of 15*10^(+9) years ago.
(c) Entropy is what we use to measure irreversible changes in the universe with. The ever-increasing entropy defines the “arrow of time”. This issue, known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is ultimately rooted deep in the statistical mechanics of irreversible processes. I’ll look it up someday soon (I’ve got a nice mini-library at home) and see if I can present the highlights here. (There used to be a time when I could present arguments like these by memory, but I got rusty.)
(d) Entropy is the ONLY fundamental unit known that MUST be positive (or zero, under rather strict circumstances). One might argue (and I do) that entropy is the “real” time of the universe, not what Man calls “time”. We appreciated “time” well before we knew about entropy, in the same way that we knew about stars and the Sun well before we understood that one was part of the other. “Time” is our everyday tool to sequence events and is easier to work with than entropy.
ribbon23, heard of something called Ockham’s razor? I think you are making it more complicated that it is necessary.
Even if I can locate “ideas” in your head, how do I know those neurons firing are what caused the ideas or vice versa? We know things like habit, perhaps like driving, cycling or swimming. It is wired in you, by training, but you can change it by further training, ie a conscious effort of mind over matter.
And also it seems that you are a materialist or physicalist, ie all things can be reduced to matter and you deny the spiritual realm. What I am alluding to is that there is something outside matter that can cause changes to matter, and hence the existence of time.
But let me reiterate, motion is only one type of change, namely that of location. Surely there are other attributes of any entity, other than its location, which can change too. I will accept your argument that Change=>Motion and Motion=>Change if you can argue that ALL changes in an entity’s attributes or properties are due to motion of one sort or another.
Now as to whether there is time if there is no matter or there are no changes, I have said that it could be, only that you cannot discern it.
On entropy, it is not necessarily the cause of time. The “arrow of time” is not the cause of the arrow. Entropy is just an attribute of a close system, which we can use to mark time, and whose changes in its value, can be used to discern the passage/“movement” of time, ie an earlier instance will have a lower entropy, and later instance, a higher entropy. It is a “fundamental”, not because it creates time, but because its change is continuous and constant, in one direction only, and therefore can be used as standard reference for time.
This forum is called “Natural Sciences”. The chances of encountering someone with a strictly scientific approach in such a forum is appreciable, I’d say. I personally see no need for spiritualism in a discussion about entropy.
I think that entropy is much more than “just an attribute of a closed system”. It is of paramount importance for living organisms, for instance, which are hardly closed. Only in completely adiabatic systems containing an ideal gas does entropy not change (this is an ideal system which cannot be realized in practice). The Big Bang spawned a universe that does not match this description. Entropy started to rise above zero at the precise instant of the Bang. Had it remained constant, then the notion of time wouldn’t have existed. As you said, a change in the value of entropy can be used to discern the passage of time. No entropy change, no passage of time. An isentropic Big Bang with zero (or positive fixed) entropy would lead to a “timeless” universe.
I’d like to stress, though, that science deals with “models” and that no model regarding the origin of the universe, entropy and time is 100% accepted. Careful analysis leads me (and many others) to trust most models as accurate descriptions of the phenomena around us. No more, no less.
And the whole site is called “I Love Philosophy”.
Anyway I am not discussing “spiritualism” in the context of entropy. You mixed my two responses up.
Sure. Just as 100 is more than a number but still a number. It does not affect my point if entropy is “more than just an attribute of a closed system”. And only entropy of closed system, such as the entire universe, is increasing inexorably. This will not be the property in an open system, isn’t it?
We may not have a perception of time, but that does not mean that there is no time. Time may still exist apart from entropy.
Models are useful representation of “true” things to the best of our abilities and knowledge, until we know better.
On accuracy, maybe I’ll start a new thread …
Sorry guys. I’ve not gotten the time to read every post after mine, but I wish to reply to this.
All change is due to motion. I’ll illustrate later:
Had the air been completely motionless (relative ot the piece of iron) no rusting would have occurred, so in this instance motion is a necessary condition for change, so change implies motion.
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a thing unmoving yet changing in ideas, eg the concept of morality then and now
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You’re talking about concepts? Um… ok… Without moving electrons in our brains, we would have no concepts, so even without moving a muscle, our minds generate the motion required for the change in ideas, so change again implies motion.
This holds, at least, unless you believe in a dualist theory of mind/body or mind/brain.
Is such a distinction needed? I suppose in everyday language, “change” is a bit more specific, but in the strictest sense of the word, it would imply motion, and motion would imply change, so unless you’re speaking of specific instances of change (change in color, change in depth, change in meaning…) the general sense of “change” is logically equivelant to motion.
As for changes in color, something somewhere must be moving for the change in color to occur, and forcing that motion to a halt would also force the change in color to a halt. Think of leaves on a tree changing color in the fall. Certain pigments leave (motion) the leaf (hah hah. “leave the leaf.” I crack myself up sometimes. 
) and are replaced by other pigments. This process requires motion. Quite a bit of it, in fact.
So, can you find an instance where change can occur without any motion whatsoever?
Um… sortof both, as both imply eachother.
Okey. Tell me. Do you believe in the “spiritual” or “occult?” If one is to accept non-material things as real, then yes, there is a difference between change and motion. Otherwise, they are logically equivelant.
But, if we are confining this discussion to materialistic theories, then “abstract stuff” is simply the result of something like a very complex computer, residing within our skulls, which is powered by electrical impulses (and of course, nutrients and oxygen, etc.) Cease all motion in the brain, and those concepts cease to change. So, again, change implies motion.
Actually I can concede that change <=> motion as far as physical changes are concerned. Even entropy is a movement, ie of energy, a spreading of energy, so that energy evens out in a closed system. For example if you leave a lump of hot coal in a sealed container, eventually the coal, the air and the inner walls of the container all reaches the same temperature. The energy is moved, transported by the air molecules, ie convection, and by photons, ie radiation, from the coal to the entire enivronment. And rusting is movement too.
But things are not only material. Immaterial things changes too, like ideas. And I do not hold the view that our neurons firing causes us to have ideas (and even if so what causes our neurons to fire in such a coordinated way that we can even have ideas?). Rather I hold the vice versa view, and that ideas exist in the spiritual realm. And things can change there too, and the notion of motion is not applicable when no physical space is occupied. So change is the more general notion, philosophically speaking, eg you have to define motion in terms of change, namely of position.
But if you want to confine yourself to only the physical realm then the equivalence of change and motion is acceptable, pragmatically, although I rather not have the circularity when thinking philosophically.
Actually, the spontaneous increase of entropy occurs in an isolated system, not merely an open system. And the question whether the universe is an isolated system in the thermodynamic sense is, as far as I know, unresolved.
As far as I know, there isn’t any scientific support for this statement. In physics, they seem to be inexorably linked.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a hopeless purist when it comes to accurate descriptions of things like energy and entropy, but entropy is not identical to the “dispersal of energy”. Granted, the classical description of entropy is given by
dS = dQ / T
in which dQ is the amount of heat transferred between the system and its environment, but this equation is one of the most misunderstood notions in physics (the classical description of entropy is notoriously confusing). In space, especially, the notion that an increase of entropy is somehow related to the “dispersal of energy” goes totally awry. Examples are:
(1) The very low entropy of light (such as that emitted by our Sun, the low entropy of which is essential for the formation of life on Earth - see, for instance, Penrose’s new book for a great overview);
(2) The fact that the gravitational pull, leading to differences in density and ultimately the formation of stars and galaxies, actually increases the entropy of the universe;
(3) The entropic properties of a black hole (for a nice summary, see chapters I and II of http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9807/9807045.pdf).
As for the distinction between motion and change (if there is any, which I am currently unsure about): the phenomenon of quantum teleportation might be an example of change without motion. For a brief and non-mathematical explanation of this, see http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation.
It would have been nice to know that a bit earlier…
Okey. If one takes the immaterial to be real, then, yes. Change and motion are not necessarily logically equivelant.
What makes you think this is circular? Equivelance is not circular.
The complexity found in the human brain is plenty sufficient to account for the rationality we exibit as humans. And, this rational thought process leads to what we would call ideas.
Our neurons fire in “such a coordinated way” because we have evolved to have brains that allow for such coordinated thought. This intelligence is what makes us the dominant animals on this planet.
Now, if you claim the existance of a “soul” which thinks, for what do we need such a complex brain? Computers are not yet complex and “rational” enough to act completely on their own, so they require a user to produce anything orderly or helpful. Humans, on the other hand, have brains more than suited to the task of the rationality we exibit.