Is time an abstract idea?

[coberst]

Is time an abstract idea?

Time, motion, and change are such basic philosophical concepts that we see them being considered by all philosophers throughout Western philosophical thinking. These are fundamental concepts about which philosophers theorize and they are fundamental concepts about which every DickandJane deal with constantly in their ever-day actions and thoughts.

All of these concepts are abstract ideas that are constructed of multiple metaphors resulting from literal ever-day experiences. Our society thinks of metaphors as being the venue of poets; however, metaphors are not arbitrary or culturally and historically specific. “Rather, they tend to be normal, conventional, relatively fixed and stable, non arbitrary, and widespread throughout the cultures, and languages of the world”

Most importantly we must recognize these metaphors as being abstract but also that they are grounded in specific experiences.

Philosophers have theorized as to whether time really is; is it bounded, is it continuous or divided, does it flow like a river, is time the same to everyone, and is it long or short. These are common questions for DickandJane but philosophy seems to discount most of these human quizzes as being irrelevant. Often philosophers point out paradoxes embodied within these questions.

We have a rich and diverse notion of what time is. Time is not a thing-in-itself that we conceptualize as being independent. “All of our understandings of time are relative to other concepts such as motion, space, and events …We define time by metonymy: successive iterations of a type of event stand for intervals of “time”.” Consequentially, the basic literal properties of our concept of time are consequences of properties of events: Time is directional, irreversible, segmentable, continuous, and measurable.

We do have an experience of time but that experience is always in conjunction with our real experiences of events. “It also means that our experience of time is dependent on our embodied conceptualization of time in terms of events…Experience does not always come prior to conceptualization, because conceptualization is itself embodied. Further, it means that our experience of time is grounded in other experiences, the experiences of events.”

It is virtually impossible for us to conceptualize time as a stand alone concept without metaphor. Physics defines motion, i.e. velocity, in terms of distance and time, thereby indicating motion is secondary to time and distance. However, metaphorically we appear to place time as dependent upon the primitive sense of motion. “There is an area of our visual system of our brain that is dedicated to the processing of motion.”

MOVING TIME METAPHOR

“There is a lone, stationary observer facing in a fixed direction. There is an indefinite long sequence of objects moving past the observer from front to back. The moving objects are conceptualized as having fronts in their direction of motion.”

The time has long past for that answer. The time has come. Time flies by. Summer is almost past. I can see the face of trouble. I cannot face the future. The following days will tell the story.

In this metaphor I conceptualize time as an object moving toward me. The times that are in front of me are conceptualized as the future and the times that have passed me are the past. The present time is that time that is now beside me. This is why we speak of the here and now. My position is a reference point, thus tomorrow is before me and yesterday is past me. I can see the future and the past is gone forever.

MOVING OBSERVER or TIME’S LANDSCAPE

The second major metaphor for time represents a moving observer wherein the present is the position on the path in which the observer is positioned.

In this metaphor the observer is moving through time. Time is a path that I move through. Time, i.e. the path can be long or short, time can be bounded.

There is trouble ahead. Let’s spread this project over several days. We reached summer already.

In this metaphor we construct temporal correlates with distance measurements: long, short, pass, through, over, down the road, etc.

Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson

[Virtual Particle]

In regard to the gravitational effects of black holes? Time, as we consider it, can be changed and this brings consideration to time, as a part of space and a dimension of same.

The phisical dimension of time exist in relation to the above and it can be measured....

Any thoughts?

Edited August 13, 2009 by Triad

[Lady Amethyst]

Time is abstract. I mean, a year is different to 12 months. Discuss that.

[Virtual Particle]

Time is abstract. I mean, a year is different to 12 months. Discuss that.

It takes a year for the earth to orbit the sun.

It takes 12 months for the earth to orbit the sun.

How are either of these concepts abstractions? When in relation to time, the gravitational effect of the sun, in relation, to the earth is the cause. There are of course the subjective sensations related to time. Like, being at work or school, 1/2 hour before the end of a difficult day and looking at the clock, as opposed, to doing something that is very entertaining and looking at the time 1/2 hour before the entertainment ends.

That effect, that subjective experience is relative to how you (plural) feel. Consider that the happier you are the faster your life will seem to pass in time to you. Slower it will seem to pass when one is not happy.

Any thoughts?

Edited August 22, 2009 by Triad

[Lady Amethyst]

Being happy or having fun? Being unhappy or instead feeling bored? I found that waiting for someone/something slows down time than it does if you're active and busy.

Edited August 24, 2009 by Lady Amethyst

[Virtual Particle]

Being happy or having fun? Being unhappy or instead feeling bored? I found that waiting for someone/something slows down time than it does if you're active and busy.

Well yes, I have felt that when one is very happy, time, seems to go by even faster than when one is simply active or busy.

Any thoughts?

Edited August 25, 2009 by Triad

[CaitSith]

It seems like time moves faster the older I get. My son sure seems to think time a lot longer than I do.

[Virtual Particle]

It seems like time moves faster the older I get. My son sure seems to think time a lot longer than I do.

Yes that also happens to mostly everyone.

Any thoughts?

Edited August 25, 2009 by Triad

[Drayno]

Is Time an abstract idea? Time itself is conceptually abstruse in my opinion.

As every person interprets time differently, it is really hard to thoroughly define. The complexity of the entire concept bugs me, but simultaneously I've realized that our comprehension of time is possibly paradox. Every aspect of our comprehension of time is contradicted by another.

A boy receives a bike from his parents for his sixth birthday.

The boy rides the bike everyday until it brakes months later.

On his father's birthday, the boy gets his dad a personalized tool-kit, with his father's initials on it.

Before the boy and his father can fix the bike, his father tragically dies in a car accident.

The same day the boy's father dies, but before he he learns of his father's death, a strange man comes up to the boy and asks if the boy's bike is still broken. The boy says yes and the man helps the boy fix the bike with a set of custom tools identical to the boy's father's set, with the boy's father's initials on them and all, holding the exception that they are more worn and obviously older.

At some point after he inherited the tools, and knowing exactly how his bike was broken at the age of six, the boy who had now become a man slips into the past and helps his younger self fix his bike to cheer his younger version up, using the now worn set of tools he got for his father right after his bike became broken - on the same day his father died.

That is an example of a simple proposed time paradox.

Now..

When the boy, now a man, slipped into the past he noticed a woman. The woman was obviously upset and was walking away with tears in her eyes from a drunk man who was shouting at her. The woman walked away from the drunk man, and the man took out his keys, started his truck and drove away.

The man wanted to say something to the drunk man about treating women with respect, but instead kept his thoughts to himself.

The man headed towards his old home while the drunk man drove opposite ways towards the dad's work.

The man's father, then alive, was driving back from work to go play catch with the man's younger self. However, the drunk man, driving furiously, crossed the median, and crashed into the father's car and killed him.

The man arrives at his destination and helps his younger self fix the pick, thus fufilling a full time paradox.

In a full circle..

The boy had his bike broken and his future self, a.k.a "the man", came to fix it and cheer his younger self up to keep his spirits high, because the same day his father would die.

However, when the man didn't express his thoughts to the drunk man about treating women with respect, he did not occupy the drunk man for a short period of time, and therefore the drunk man drove off at the exact time the the man's father was driving home. Thus the man inadvertently killed his own father.

This is an example of how time-travelling, if a possibility in the future, can ultimately produce a full-scale paradox. This also rather fundamentally reflects the theoretical standpoint of how one minor decision can universally effect one person's lifetime. Ultimately this example expresses how complex the theory of time is in a simpilistic manner, and how dangerous it would be if time, abstract or not, could be "bended" to allow a sentient human to slip into the past.

To understand the said "philosophy of time" a little more efficently, I found it helps to to discern cause and effect...and to use to logic to establish the probablity of one outcome based on people and their personalities, reactions towards actions, etc.

Considering my age I'm not entirely educated on the subject of time, but with the fine line between how potentially abstract the idea of time is, and how conceptually it is fluid in nature, I would propose that the ability to fully comprehend time is beyond man at this point. Every aspect of humanity is subjective in the definition of how one thing pertains to another. Circumstance and subjectivity effectively prevent of us from thoroughly analyzing and understanding time, pretty much due to our own human nature and how we integrate thought and idea.

The understanding of time in a philosophical sense, however, in my opinion is worth it. If we continue to strive intellectually we will be able to fully deduce the process of things. However, considering how every aspect of time is relatively debatable, I don't know when that will be.

- Drayno

Edited August 31, 2009 by Drayno

[Virtual Particle]

Time is a phisical thing that is related to space today and a question today is? Can awareness be somehow tied in to the Universe? These subjective experiences could in fact be representative of issues related to objective matter (kind of like saying we, as aware life forms, are reflecting what matter is and as a result, we can have variations in our temporal experiences. Paradoxes are interesting thought experiments and if one looks carefully, one can find that physicist work to solve paradoxes, which in and of, itself, can be very rewarding. You seem to suggest Drayno that this is not something we should look into, but that someday we will understand. When exactly will it come if we do not start asking questions?

Any thoughts?

[Neem]

Yes and no.

Yes for "abstract": Calendars, clocks, and other miscellaneous devices that calculate "time" are manipulated and created by man, therefore creating false conceptions.

Other than that, time is natural, just like mathematics.

[Virtual Particle]

Yes and no.

Yes for "abstract": Calendars, clocks, and other miscellaneous devices that calculate "time" are manipulated and created by man, therefore creating false conceptions.

Other than that, time is natural, just like mathematics.

That is a conclusion I can live with....

Any thoughts?

[Drayno]

Time is a phisical thing that is related to space today and a question today is? Can awareness be somehow tied in to the Universe? These subjective experiences could in fact be representative of issues related to objective matter (kind of like saying we, as aware life forms, are reflecting what matter is and as a result, we can have variations in our temporal experiences.

I was of course was speaking of time in a philosophical sense. Scientifically speaking, I agree with you. But it's my job as a philosopher to question and understand things. We use time in a literal sense to note the various sequences that occur, and mathematically we use it to keep track in our system of time, ie. clocks, etc.

Our reaction can differ based on how we biologically interpret things in accordance to how we mentally examine and process things. But I am intrigued by what you say. So you suggest that all our positive and negative experiences, whether physical, physiological, or mental, are merely just reflections of our environment? Correct me if I am wrong.

This would imply a complex dynamic between how we mentally interpret things, and how we biologically interpet things.

Paradoxes are interesting thought experiments and if one looks carefully, one can find that physicist work to solve paradoxes, which in and of, itself, can be very rewarding.

I think of a paradox like a mental exercise. I enjoy writing them and separating all the various occurences and reasoning how they'd work out. It certainly does sharpen your mind.

You seem to suggest Drayno that this is not something we should look into, but that someday we will understand. When exactly will it come if we do not start asking questions?

I said...

"If we continue to strive intellectually we will be able to fully deduce the process of things. However, considering how every aspect of time is relatively debatable, I don't know when that will be."

I meant that if we continue to grow and we continue to reason and interpret time conceptually as a whole, we will be able to fully understand its fundamentals and everything that has to do with the subject. I believe we have grasped the fundamentals, but in my personal opinion things are universally subjective, so everyones interpretation of time varies considerably..whether it be philosophical or directly in a biological sense.

So, as every view varies, every aspect of time will be debatable among people due to the differences. Pardon me for not being clearer.

[Virtual Particle]

Modern Science has not yet presented a definition for the past, I mean there is the conclusions related to electron wave response with regards to electron function (entirely theoretical)in respect to space-time (the past can be defined as an aspect of the present).Reality is very complicated and perhaps, we are as complicated as reality is in fact.

Any thoughts?

[Drayno]

I believe both time and reality are closely related in the sense that both are to be perceived.

[Virtual Particle]

I believe both time and reality are closely related in the sense that both are to be perceived.

The Origin of Time, Quantum Mechanics, and Free Will

Abstract: A metaphysical exploration of the origin and nature of Time, Quantum Mechanics and other issues. The goal of this exploration is to provide some alternative viewpoints to many of the popular interpretations and dogmatic beliefs that surround these topics, such as the notion of the Quantum Multiverse, or the interplay between pre-determination and free-choice. The hypothetical scenarios described herein attempt to be anchored in principles from basic physics, dressed up with hand-waving and imagination. One particular (heretical) hypothesis is advocated: Quantum mechanics (and time itself) is a side-effect, an outcome of physics at Planck scales, rather than inherent in it.

This is not a religious tract, nor is it physics, nor is it philosophy. It is meant to be no less and no more than a rational discourse on some of conundrums at the outer limits of our known physical understanding today. Since its arguably B.S.; lets just call it metaphysics and be over with it. The intent is, however, serious. The exploration here is meant to be part of a puzzle piece, along with a parallel exploration of freewill and the existence of Platonic realms, and a critique of Heidegger. Some of this might be experimentally tested? And maybe we can even associate some mathematical equations with these ideas, giving them at least a little bit of traction.

Rest of link

Any thoughts?

[Virtual Particle]

I've always held the view that time is abstract and only "linear" because we perceive things that way. Essentially I believe as a result time travel is impossible.

Sad thing is I can never think of the words to explain it.

Fourth spatial dimension

In the spatial sense, the fourth dimension is a space with literally 4 spatial dimensions, or four mutually orthogonal directions of movement. This space, known as 4-dimensional Euclidean space, is the space used by mathematicians when studying geometric objects such as 4-dimensional polytopes. It is not to be confused with Minkowski space, where time is the fourth dimension; the latter space is not a metric space. Regarding this, Coxeter writes:

Little, if anything, is gained by representing the fourth Euclidean dimension as time. In fact, this idea, so attractively developed by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine, has led such authors as J. W. Dunne (An Experiment with Time) into a serious misconception of the theory of Relativity. Minkowski's geometry of space-time is not Euclidean, and consequently has no connection with the present investigation.

—H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes[6]

Mathematically, the 4-dimensional spatial equivalent of conventional 3-dimensional geometry is the Euclidean 4-space, a 4-dimensional normed vector space with the Euclidean norm. The "length" of a vector

expressed in the standard basis is given by

which is the natural generalization of the Pythagorean Theorem to 4 dimensions. This allows for the definition of distance between two points and the angle between two vectors (see Euclidean space for more information).

[edit] Orthogonality

In the familiar 3-dimensional space that we live in, there are three pairs of cardinal directions: up/down (altitude), north/south (latitude), and east/west (longitude). These pairs of directions are mutually orthogonal: they are at right angles to each other. Mathematically, they lie on three coordinate axes, usually labelled x, y, and z. The z-buffer in computer graphics refers to this z-axis, representing depth in the 2-dimensional imagery displayed on the computer screen.

A space of four spatial dimensions has an additional pair of cardinal directions which is orthogonal to the other three. This additional pair of directions lies on a fourth coordinate axis perpendicular to the x, y, and z axes, usually labelled w. Attested terms for these extra directions include ana/kata.

Rest of link

We live in a world of three dimensions. Well, we only perceive three dimensions. We can hypothesize many more dimensions. But, they are difficult to imagine.

Because of Einstein, we often call time the fourth dimension. Special relativity shows that time behaves surprisingly like the three spatial dimensions. The Lorenz equations show this. Length contracts as speed increases. Time expands as speed increases.

Scientists have been graphing time, as if it were a length, for hundreds of years. To the left is a typical graph, showing two things in motion at the same speed, one to the left and one to the right. Time never behaves exactly like a spatial dimension. You cannot go backward in time. And you normally cannot go forward at different rates. But, there are surprising parallels. For some purposes, it is handy to call time a fourth dimension.For other purposes, it is not.

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Pretend, for a moment, that there are more than three spatial dimensions. What is a four or five-dimensional cube like? It is hard to visualize. But, we can make a few deductions about such an object. What if a 5-dimensional cube is 2 centimeters on a side, what is its 5-dimensional volume? Well, we can easily generalize from the first three dimensions. A 2x2 square is 4 (2x2) square centimeters in area. A 2x2x2 cube is 8 (2x2x2) cubic centimeters in volume. A 2x2x2x2x2 5-dimensional cube is 32 centimeters-to-the-5th-power in 5-dimensional volume. None of that can be visualized. But, it makes sense. What is the distance between two points in 5-space? You can easily deduce a 5-dimensional Pythagorean Theorem.

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Itzhak Bars has a long history of finding new mathematical symmetries that might be useful in physics,” said Joe Polchinski, a physicist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. “This two-time idea seems to have some interesting mathematical properties.”

If Bars is on the right track, some of the most basic processes in physics will need re-examination. Something as simple as how particles move, for example, could be viewed in a new way. In classical physics (before the days of quantum theory), a moving particle was completely described by its momentum (its mass times its velocity) and its position. But quantum physics says you can never know those two properties precisely at the same time.

Bars alters the laws describing motion even more, postulating that position and momentum are not distinguishable at a given instant of time. Technically, they can be related by a mathematical symmetry, meaning that swapping position for momentum leaves the underlying physics unchanged (just as a mirror switching left and right doesn’t change the appearance of a symmetrical face).

In ordinary physics, position and momentum differ because the equation for momentum involves velocity. Since velocity is distance divided by time, it requires the notion of a time dimension. If swapping the equations for position and momentum really doesn’t change anything, then position needs a time dimension too.

“If I make position and momentum indistinguishable from one another, then something is changing about the notion of time,” said Bars. “If I demand a symmetry like that, I must have an extra time dimension.”

Simply adding an extra dimension of time doesn’t solve everything, however. To produce equations that describe the world accurately, an additional dimension of space is needed as well, giving a total of four space dimensions. Then, the math with four space and two time dimensions reproduces the standard equations describing the basic particles and forces, a finding Bars described partially last year in the journal Physical Review D and has expanded upon in his more recent work.

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Any thoughts?

Edited September 4, 2009 by Triad