Ontology of time

[owl]

ALL definitions are tautologies. It does not diminish "time" (or its definition) to speak of it in that way.[/Quote]

 

Wikipedia on tautology:

Tautology (rhetoric), using different words to say the same thing even if the repetition does not provide clarity. Tautology also means a series of self-reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because the statements depend on the assumption that they are already correct.*

(Historical):

The word tautology was used by the ancient Greeks to describe a statement that was true merely by virtue of saying the same thing twice, a pejorative meaning that is still used for rhetorical tautologies.

*For instance, the *assumption* that time exists as an entity, and "that" is what clocks measure.

“Time is that”... does not address or define what time is, which was my point.**

Dictionary.com on tautology:

...needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness,...

World English Dictionary:

...the use of words that merely repeat elements of the meaning already conveyed.

 

No, Iggy. All definitions are NOT tautologies. Some actually define what the subject (time in this case) IS!

Iggy:

Indeed, the scientific definition of time (that which a clock measures) is a tautology. It is also circular. If it were not these two things then it would not be a proper definition. So... your point is meaningless.

 

Do you mean "proper" as in the Wiki and dictionary definitions of tautology above? Readers: see my point** above.

In case there is anyone reading this thread who is taking you seriously, they should know that your unsupported declarations have been shown to be nonsense around a half-dozen times.

 

More personal derision does not make me wrong, i.e., your declaration that am full of nonsense doesn't make it so. So quit with the smear tactics and be specific in your criticism, hopefully with more cogent arguments than claiming that all definitions are tautologies.

Note to readers: I have in fact used the "aurameter" example before, and it is perfectly relevant as used again above. It's like the old Smothers Brothers revision of the "Streets of Laredo" song...

"If you get an outfit you can be a cowboy too."

It would end like this,

If you get a (whatever) meter you can measure (whatever) too.

It will not, however, make whatever into a real, actual entity.

Edit: I was wrong when declared that I would not reply to any more of your posts. This post is proof of that... easily corrected, however...

Edited November 3, 2011 by owl

[Daedalus]

I believe Pantheory and I have the best or simplest definition for what time actually is:

 

Time is an interval of motion / change

Edited November 3, 2011 by Daedalus

[md65536]

After all your venomous personal attacks, I am way beyond caring whether you take me seriously. You didn't even get the very clear sense in which I just agreed that "clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks."

 

Yes, but it's the specifics that matter.

If your theory also predicts that clocks will slow down, then it predicts some phenomenon that SR also predicts.

If it predicts it accurately enough, then you don't need SR to explanation the phenomenon.

Repeat for everything SR successfully predicts, and if you still have a consistent theory that is different from SR, you might have a chance of overthrowing relativity.

 

You seem to have a serious need to make me wrong, even where I agree with relativity (if not the language of "time dilation" reifying time.)

 

My goal is more along the lines of stopping you from being wrong. To be fair, you're free to believe what you want and to never expand beyond that and to judge what is right or wrong; you don't have to care about what I say. Regardless of whether you care, what I'm saying is that I'd prefer it if you stopped repeating your beliefs as if they are facts -- you are misinforming people -- especially when it's been explained time and again that your beliefs are not consistent with reality given the axioms that you've agreed to.

 

I have often disagreed with mainstream science, particularly about how it uses the concepts of time and space with only disdain for the ontology of what they are in the "real world", off the graph or conceptual coordinate system, so to speak. So If you claim that I am in error, explain how so. Repeating as if it is a given that 'time dilates' does not make me wrong. Neither does repeating that no one knows the real, true shape of Earth, because relativity dictates that there are no preferred frames of reference, and it might look like an extremely oblate spheroid from an extreme FOR. We all beat that one to death, but the above argument didn't make me wrong or the Earth just as likely very flattened as nearly spherical.

So if you really need to make me wrong, be specific.

This has all been explained, specifically, before. Please reread your previous posts regarding these topics and then read the many replies that various people have given.

 

It's fine to disagree with mainstream science. It's fine to state your disagreement (perhaps not repeatedly in science forums). It's not fine, in my opinion, to treat your disagreements as fact and then try to shove it down as many throats as you can.

 

 

[Iggy]

The thing I am trying to wrap my mind around is the what. What does does a clock measure?

It measures time. A more detailed description of 'what' is being measured is getting in to metaphysics -- which is fine, but not something necessary for science or something I'm wanting to get in to.

 

Instead of using "what" in the definition, we could use 'variable' or 'quantity'. Time is the variable measured by a clock. The best analogy is that "distance is that which a ruler measures".

 

Motion from point A to point B?

While a clock doesn't measure motion -- motion is necessary for the working of a clock. This is no different from distance. A ruler doesn't measure motion, but motion (usually the motion of light) is necessary to measure distance.

 

Without motion you can't measure distance or time, but this doesn't mean motion=time or motion=distance (which is something I mention only because so many people think along those lines).

 

Is time a physical thing that has substance?

No, absolutely not.

 

Can measurement differ at the same point in space or is it a constant?

It can differ. Time's rate depends on velocity, not location. Two clocks which share a location but have different velocities will disagree on rate.

 

I saw the science channel doing a show on time. A guy was doing a study on perception. He placed a subject in front of a computer and had them click on a spot on the monitor with their mouse. When they clicked the spot he had set a flash to go of at a fraction of a second after the click. After doing this for a set amount of time he reset the time of the flash to go off at the same instant as the click of the mouse. The subject believed the flash was going off before they even hit the mouse button, and percieved this for another alotted amount of time. Do you guys think that this was a convincing study that time could be more perceptive than a physical state?

That explains why scientists use accurate clocks and automated systems to record their measurements--so that the passage of time in an experiment will not be susceptible to variations in perception.

 

I would guess that some physical states, like color, rely on perception at least as much as time.

 

“Time is that”... does not address or define what time is

correct

 

No, Iggy. All definitions are NOT tautologies. Some actually define what the subject (time in this case) IS!

Is your brain present at all while you're typing posts?

 

Even if I dumb down what I'm saying to an absurd level (going as far as drawing pictures of the idea) -- you still fail to get it. It's like you're trying to misunderstand.

 

The definition of a word means the same thing as the word itself. The word and the definition have the same meaning. Ok?

 

Don't just skim over the above two sentences looking for something to which you can respond. Read them to understand them.

 

Once you understand it, you should understand "time = X" is a tautology. X means the exact same thing as "time". You said something then you repeated the exact same concept.

 

Do you mean "proper" as in the Wiki and dictionary definitions of tautology

Read the first sentence of Tautology (rhetoric) -- wikipedia. In particular, find these words: "using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing" then compare that idea to the idea of a definition -- the idea of using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing. Can you guess what those two exactly similar things have in common?

 

 

More personal derision does not make me wrong, i.e., your declaration that am full of nonsense doesn't make it so.

No, this thread speaks to your nonsensical notions. My point was that some people just now arriving may not know that your conclusions are pseudoscientific and illogical. Specifically, they may not know that you keep accusing the scientific definition of time of being tautological even though it has been repeatedly pointed out that the same could be said for any definition.

 

This problem comes up because you speak as if you have some kind of background in science and/or philosophy, but you don't. Your experience with ontology is limited to a single article which you can't help but mischaracterize.

 

Your experience and background are in spirituality and 'gnosis', yet you talk about time dilation and relativity in an authoritative tone. You say ridiculous things like "I have studied spacetime extensively". Nothing could be further from the truth, but a person would need to spend 2 or 3 posts talking to you in order to realize that. I was queuing people in on that fact.

Edited November 3, 2011 by Iggy

[owl]

Pantheory,

(I agree 100% with your paragraph above this statement):

“Time: is an interval of change that involves relative motion.”

 

How would this statement be different if “relative” were omitted?

Universally true, I say. Not limited to how movement is observed.

The motion of all objects does not depend on how, from where/when, from what frame of reference that motion is observed.

Like above, movement of anything from A to B has its own elapsed time (not requiring measurement), its event duration, regardless of the frame of reference from which it is observed.

What say you to this?

 

Edit: Just read Iggy's last post. Off the top, can anyone here imagine what he means by,

"Two clocks which share a location but have different velocities..."?

I knew he was confused,but...

Doesn't to "share a location" mean that the clocks are at rest relative to each other... at the same place... impossible with "different velocities'?

More later. No 'time.'

Edited November 4, 2011 by owl

[md65536]

What say you to this?

Still incorrect. But try repeating it verbatim again and see if that changes anything.

[derek w]

if a clock travels at speed of light,its internal workings would have to stop or travel faster than light,to keep working.

[pantheory]

 

"Time: is an interval of change that involves relative motion."

My quote above

 

How would this statement be different if "relative" were omitted?

It would not be different. I added the word "relative" as a reminder that all motion is relative to something else.

 

Universally true, I say. Not limited to how movement is observed.

The motion of all objects does not depend on how, from where/when, from what frame of reference that motion is observed.

Like above, movement of anything from A to B has its own elapsed time (not requiring measurement), its event duration, regardless of the frame of reference from which it is observed.

What say you to this?

 

For a definition of time I think the words "relative motion" or simply "motion" might be eliminated but the word "change" cannot, since almost every type of change involves motion of some kind.

 

Edit: Just read Iggy's last post. Off the top, can anyone here imagine what he means by,

"Two clocks which share a location but have different velocities..."?

I think he is referring to two clocks that pass by each other at the same location in an instant of time, that have different motions relative to each other.

 

I knew he was confused,but...Doesn't to "share a location" mean that the clocks are at rest relative to each other... at the same place... impossible with "different velocities'?More later. No 'time.'

Edited November 4, 2011 by pantheory

[Iggy]

I think he is referring to two clocks that pass by each other at the same location in an instant of time, that have different motions relative to each other.

yes

[mooeypoo]

!

Moderator Note

Guys, please avoid getting into personal attacks. Explaining why a claim is wrong is good. Asking someone where his brain is while he writes his posts is not. Follow the rules, stay civil.

[Iggy]

Will do. Thank you

 

No, Iggy. All definitions are NOT tautologies.

I apologize for asking where your brain was as a response to this claim.

 

Reading hundreds of unsupported claims in this thread brought out a negative emotion which I should have filtered when composing my reply. If the thread isn't closed due to rehashing the same answers to the OP unremittingly, or you are not somehow prevented from making unsupported claims, I will continue explaining why the assertions are wrong without insult. You can see specifically why this unsupported claim is wrong in my last post (#304).

Edited November 4, 2011 by Iggy

[owl]

!

Moderator Note

Guys, please avoid getting into personal attacks. Explaining why a claim is wrong is good. Asking someone where his brain is while he writes his posts is not. Follow the rules, stay civil.

Thank you. Iggy has been engaging in personal attacks on me since early in my participation here. Is there a way to block him from my threads? (Sorry if this is in the rules and I missed it.)

 

Here is a further example of such harassment:

Your experience and background are in spirituality and 'gnosis', yet you talk about time dilation and relativity in an authoritative tone. You say ridiculous things like "I have studied spacetime extensively". Nothing could be further from the truth*,...

I have never brought my spiritual interests to this forum, yet he attempts to discredit me for my interests outside science. (I have many interests outside science.) Further, he claims expertise in what I have and have not studied extensively.* I have in fact studied 'spacetime' extensively for many years. My disagreement with relativity's reification of space, time, and spacetime is just that, disagreement, not lack of information. I have often cited other authors and the International Society for the Advanced Study of Spacetime, also in disagreement with the mainstream on 'spacetime.'

 

I would really like to keep this civil and focused on the scientific arguments rather than these continuing personal attacks.

Ps; about tautologies and definitions, some repeated from previous quotes on tautology but bolded for emphasis:

The Free dictionary on tautology:

Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy.

 

Wikipedia:

using different words to say the same thing even if the repetition does not provide clarity.

("Time is that...")

Dictionary.com:

needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness,

 

definitions plural of def·i·ni·tion (Noun)

 

1. A statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a dictionary.

2. An exact statement or description of the nature, scope, or meaning of something.

Meriam Webster:

a : a statement expressing the essential nature of something

 

"Time is that which clocks measure" does not fulfill the bolded requirements for a meaningful definition and does fulfill the bolded tautology references for how it is a meaningless "definition."

Enough already.

This thread is about what time IS. If you don't care, don't participate.

Edited November 4, 2011 by owl

[swansont]

Is there a way to block him from my threads? (Sorry if this is in the rules and I missed it.)

 

!

Moderator Note

Blocking an individual from participating in a particular thread is not an option. There is an "ignore" option in your profile settings; AFAIK that means you will not see any of those individual's posts.

 

If you feel you have been personally attacked, you have 2 options: report the post, or ignore it. If you feel like lamenting how you have been abused, I refer you back to those two options

[owl]

!

Moderator Note

Blocking an individual from participating in a particular thread is not an option. There is an "ignore" option in your profile settings; AFAIK that means you will not see any of those individual's posts.

 

If you feel you have been personally attacked, you have 2 options: report the post, or ignore it. If you feel like lamenting how you have been abused, I refer you back to those two options

Thanks for the info. I don't feel like lamenting anything, just avoiding such nasty personal attacks and keeping it a civil discussion of science, which does, of course, allow disagreements.

[owl]

JustinW, post 293:

I see your point, but time as presented as (past,present,and future), wouldn't mean the rocket showed up in the future. It would mean the inner dynamics or matabolism of the human body slowed to reduce deterioration. (aging)

 

Sorry for the delay. A bit late but agreed. All activity happens (present tense of the verb 'to happen') in the present. (Seems blatantly obvious, but...) When what is now “ in the future” becomes the present, it isn’t the future anymore, and the present can not be somehow transported into a “when” that has yet to become present.

(Time is not "something" that can be 'traveled through.')

 

PeterJ, from ‘The present time’ thread (in which I am not allowed to discuss time):

As I see it, if the past and future do not exist then the present 'instant' cannot have a duration.

 

Exactly. No duration but ongoing, as the concept of “the future” passes into the already over-and-done past.

 

Daedalus, post 302:

 

I believe Pantheory and I have the best or simplest definition for what time actually is:

 

Time is an interval of motion / change

 

Yes. No clocking required. As everything moves/changes, we say that time elapses... whether clocks measure it or not. This is the essence of the ontology of time.

[Iggy]

As I see it, if the past and future do not exist then the present 'instant' cannot have a duration....

 

So I don't really understand how is possible to have an experience of the present, and wonder whether in fact we do, or whether what seems to be an experience of the present is in fact a mixture of short-term memory and anticipation.

I think you're exactly correct. Philosophers would call the extended present which we experience the "specious present". Perhaps you're aware of the term and the literature. Here is an example from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

 

That leaves us with (4): a duration which is perceived both as present and as temporally extended. This present of experience is ‘specious’ in that, unlike the objective present (if there is such a thing — see The metaphysics of time perception below) it is an interval and not a durationless instant. The real or objective present must be durationless for, as Augustine argued, in an interval of any duration, there are earlier and later parts. So if any part of that interval is present, there will be another part that is past or future.

 

So, I agree with you and I think most philosophers would. We don't have an experience of an objective durationless present, but rather a specious present that is extended in time.

[owl]

Note: I am not allowed to post on presentism in the "present time" thread or even note there that I am posting here on the same subject. Very heavy handed "moderation!"

 

Wikipedia on Presentism:

Saint Augustine proposed that the present is a knife edge between the past and the future and could not contain any extended period of time. ...

I hope that his religion does not disqualify him here from having an intelligent perspective on time.

 

The thing is that it IS always the present, ongoing, transcending "elapsed time" between one instant and another. It seems that many in the "present time" thread can not comprehend an ongoing present without the "duration" of time elapsing. It's like writing in water with your finger. It happens in the present, without anticipation or leaving a record.

 

...Stcherbatsky, who has written extensively on Buddhist presentism: "Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental… is unreal… Ultimately real is only the present moment of physical efficiency [i.e., causation]."

Same here regarding his religion. I agree without being religious.

 

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Presentism is the view that only present objects exist. More precisely, it is the view that, necessarily, it is always true that only present objects exist.

 

One version of Non-presentism is Eternalism, which says that objects from both the past and the future exist just as much as present objects. According to Eternalism, non-present objects like Socrates and future Martian outposts exist right now, even though they are not currently present.

 

So in what sense if not total nonsense is the above statement true... existing right now but not currently present?

 

Wikipedia:(my bold)

Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally "real", as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real.[1] Modern advocates often take inspiration from the way time is modeled as a dimension in the theory of relativity, giving time a similar ontology to that of space ...

This would mean that time is just another dimension, that future events are "already there", and that there is no objective flow of time. It is sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional "block",[2] as opposed to the view of the world as a three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time.

Count me among the opposition. The above denies presentism, that the future is not yet here and real and that the past is not still here and real.

BTW, my assertion that the present is universal is simply that “now” does not depend on location; not limited by any spatial boundaries... that time is not an entity interwoven with space.

"It" (no entity implied, as in "It is raining") IS now here, there, and everywhere, not depending on observational frames of reference.

Edited November 7, 2011 by owl

[JustinW]

Owl,

 

Have you read the thread opened by Daedalus on a theory of Temporal Uniformity? I'm not quite sure I wrapped my mind around the particulars but it called for some interesting reading on the subject of time and why it is impossible to travel in.

[owl]

Owl,

 

Have you read the thread opened by Daedalus on a theory of Temporal Uniformity? I'm not quite sure I wrapped my mind around the particulars but it called for some interesting reading on the subject of time and why it is impossible to travel in.

I have only read the opening post so far. There he said:

 

The physical nature of time seems to be one where motion is the only attribute inherent in the phenomena and it is restricted to moving forward along the temporal dimension.

 

I agree that motion of objects is the only basis for the concept of time. As any object moves from point A to point B, we say that "time elapses.” I agree that this does not make it an entity, some medium to be "traveled through.”

I presume* that "...moving forward along the temporal dimension...” simply means that “the future”(not yet present) constantly turns into the present, not some kind of travel forward through a medium, time.

* He goes on to say...”then how can we expect to time travel to a past that only exists as a memory or to a future that will exist** as a memory?”

(**...but that does not yet exist)

[owl]

DrRocket, who calls the "universal present" "rubbish," has just posted the following in the "present time" thread (Physics), in which I am not allowed to post.

He said:

Spacetime is a curved Lorentzian manifold. There is no global chart for that manifold. There is therefore no universal notion of either "time" or "space". Both are local, not universal, concepts.

I agree that relativity's "spacetime" concept limits itself to descriptions of local, not universal phenomena. This, however, does not constrain/limit either cosmology or the ontology of time (including presentism) to local phenomena.

 

Here is an example from an 'old' Scientific American article (my bold):

Scientific American, "Is Space Finite?" [Jean-Pierre Luminet, Glenn D. Starkman, & Jeffrey R. Weeks, April 1999, pp. 90-97:

 

...”the universe could be spherical yet so large that the observable part seems Euclidean, just as a small patch of the earth's surface looks flat [a common idea in "inflationary" theories]. A broader issue, however, is that relativity is a purely local theory [!]. It predicts the curvature of each small volume of space -- its geometry -- based on the matter and energy it contains. Neither relativity nor standard cosmological observations say anything about how those volumes fit together to give the universe its overall shape -- its topology. [p. 92]

 

Likewise for "the present." In the big picture (cosmology and ontology of time), Relativity's limited scope notwithstanding, the present is not limited to reality as observed from local frames of reference.

[moth]

I've seen popular interpretations of the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment that suggest the result shows the past can be changed.

Would that be another argument against a universal "now" or is this just quantum bizaarness?

As I understand it this experiment involves a double slit experiment arrainged to either detect which slit a photon takes or allow the photon to interfere with itself as it would if no detector was watching. If the detector is set to determine the path the photon takes and removed after the photon passes through the slit(s) an interference pattern is observed.

This seems contradictory because at the time the photon interacts with the slits the detector is in place and the photon should appear particle-like, but after the photon has passed the slits and no longer can interact with them but before it reaches the detector, the detector is removed and the photon appears wave-like as if the past has been altered so the detector was never there.

This is all way above my pay grade so I apologize if it's off topic

[owl]

I've seen popular interpretations of the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment that suggest the result shows the past can be changed.

This is all way above my pay grade so I apologize if it's off topic

Not off topic, but the wave vs particle issue (when it looks like what in the experiment) does not in fact show that "the past can be changed."

Think about it in more everyday terms. Can an egg be unscrambled... or un-laid? No.

As to "the future", can an egg 'jump into the future' past the incubation period and become the future chicken it will be after the egg hatches? No.

Time travel, into either the past or the future is total nonsense.

[pantheory]

.......Time travel, into either the past or the future is total nonsense.

I agree. The closest possibility to a type of time travel into the future would be to become suspended in time via a slower or non-existent metabolism based upon medical equipment/ procedures for some purpose such as space travel to the stars, such as in a number of Scii-Fi movies. Of course the return trip would also be to the future via the same equipment.

//

Edited November 10, 2011 by pantheory

[moth]

I pooched the description of the experiment pretty badly and can't find the article that started me thinking this could be relevant(or even remember if it was online or in print).

I should have read the Wikipedia article BEFORE i started talking about it.

Sorry for mucking up your thread.

[owl]

I pooched the description of the experiment pretty badly and can't find the article that started me thinking this could be relevant(or even remember if it was online or in print).

I should have read the Wikipedia article BEFORE i started talking about it.

Sorry for mucking up your thread.

You didn't. No problem. It is good to raise yet again the questions, "can the past be changed (or even 'visited')?"... and "can the future be visited?"

I would really like to hear from those who say "yes" to either or both vis-a-vis my last post.