Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
So much for the gut feeling.
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Human beings and time
- Thread starter Beaudreaux
- Start date
EverChanging
Well-Known Member
So much for the gut feeling.
It is a gut feeling, as I have made it clear that this is not something I have thoroughly fleshed out.
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
EverChanging said:
It is only a gut feeling when your imagination is firing on all cylinders while contemplating what might be. In day to day reality, you know intuitively that time is real and can be measured. One only has to ask you a simple question and you reveal your unconscious "gut" feeling immediately.
EverChanging said:
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
I had a very strong gut feeling once. Turned out to be constipation.
EverChanging
Well-Known Member
I have never felt that time is real. Intuition doesn't indicate knowledge, at least not what is closest to what can be called empirical knowledge. And because my feeling is based more on intuition than study, I say it is a gut feeling. That is essentially what it is.
Even if I did feel intuitively that time is real, that is still not knowledge.
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Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Its so silly, though Theres no way your going to keep believing this.
Beaudreaux, you keep confusing words and reality, and your original question isn't exactly clear.
First of all, language is definitely time-bound. We express things temporally. It's built into the basic structure of language in the form of verb tenses. But when asking if HUMANS are time-bound, you have to clarify your terms.
No, you cannot do something before you've done it. But that's because of the SEMANTICS of the phrase. "To do" is a verb, meaning that it is an action. Actions are, linguistically, placed in time. To move that action somewhere before itself makes no sense. It is the temporal equivalent of the colorless green unicorn: a linguistic structure that parses but creates paradox. Now, paradox is a funny beast because most people are of the opinion that a paradox cannot possibly be. They take logic as that which demonstrates this truth. But that stems from a misunderstanding of what logic is and a tacit assumption that there is only one logic. But that's for another post.
Your statement that "there are actions that you have not yet taken" is also true in that the word "yet" forces a time distinction (if we assume continuity of the Self across time, which doesn't necessarily need to be assumed). If we re-construct this statement, aware of time as a space orthogonal to the three classic dimensions, it can be reworded as "There are actions that you perform whose location along the temporal axis is FURTHER FROM THE ORIGIN than your position."
But ALL OF THESE require and build on the idea that the individual is a distinct, cohesive unity moving through time. This is NOT a necessary assumption. If we turn around and look at the system mathematically, let us imagine a point in one-dimensional space. That point is, clearly, a single object. If we now erase that point and put another one right next to it, we have created a new, different single object. If we repeat this process quite a bit, we can end up, after many frames, with a point that is quite some distance displaced from the original. Now, if we do this process REALLY QUICKLY, we can build the ILLUSION that we have ONE point that is MOVING, when we know (because we're the ones who did it in the first place), that it's ACTUALLY many different points in very similar locations.
The metaphor can be extended, easily, to take this motion and create from it a one-dimensional curve in two-dimensional space. If we plot time along the y-axis, we can show our plot-erase-plot-again structure as a curve with y-axis measuring the original "frame" of the animation and the x-axis the displacement.
ALL THREE OF THESE UNDERSTANDINGS ARE IDENTICAL. We can understand our original process as a destruction and creation of new points very near each other in one-dimensional space, a single point moving in one-dimensional space, or a static curve in two-dimensional space. Now, add three more dimensions and you have the relationship between a human and time.
To understand humans as moving through time and, thus, time-bound is not incorrect. But it is also not a necessary interpretation, and it places certain very powerful limitations on our metaphysical grasp. We can also interpret ourselves as only existing in EXACTLY this moment, and in the next moment we are some new entity entirely, one that just happens to be rather similar to the old one. Under this interpretation, we are not time-bound because there exists no time. Only moments. We can also interpret ourselves as static and extending through time, occupying an entire span of space on the time-axis, and here again we are not time-bound because time does not move, nor do we move through it. Time is simply a background space, a static "it." A noun, not a verb.
First of all, language is definitely time-bound. We express things temporally. It's built into the basic structure of language in the form of verb tenses. But when asking if HUMANS are time-bound, you have to clarify your terms.
No, you cannot do something before you've done it. But that's because of the SEMANTICS of the phrase. "To do" is a verb, meaning that it is an action. Actions are, linguistically, placed in time. To move that action somewhere before itself makes no sense. It is the temporal equivalent of the colorless green unicorn: a linguistic structure that parses but creates paradox. Now, paradox is a funny beast because most people are of the opinion that a paradox cannot possibly be. They take logic as that which demonstrates this truth. But that stems from a misunderstanding of what logic is and a tacit assumption that there is only one logic. But that's for another post.
Your statement that "there are actions that you have not yet taken" is also true in that the word "yet" forces a time distinction (if we assume continuity of the Self across time, which doesn't necessarily need to be assumed). If we re-construct this statement, aware of time as a space orthogonal to the three classic dimensions, it can be reworded as "There are actions that you perform whose location along the temporal axis is FURTHER FROM THE ORIGIN than your position."
But ALL OF THESE require and build on the idea that the individual is a distinct, cohesive unity moving through time. This is NOT a necessary assumption. If we turn around and look at the system mathematically, let us imagine a point in one-dimensional space. That point is, clearly, a single object. If we now erase that point and put another one right next to it, we have created a new, different single object. If we repeat this process quite a bit, we can end up, after many frames, with a point that is quite some distance displaced from the original. Now, if we do this process REALLY QUICKLY, we can build the ILLUSION that we have ONE point that is MOVING, when we know (because we're the ones who did it in the first place), that it's ACTUALLY many different points in very similar locations.
The metaphor can be extended, easily, to take this motion and create from it a one-dimensional curve in two-dimensional space. If we plot time along the y-axis, we can show our plot-erase-plot-again structure as a curve with y-axis measuring the original "frame" of the animation and the x-axis the displacement.
ALL THREE OF THESE UNDERSTANDINGS ARE IDENTICAL. We can understand our original process as a destruction and creation of new points very near each other in one-dimensional space, a single point moving in one-dimensional space, or a static curve in two-dimensional space. Now, add three more dimensions and you have the relationship between a human and time.
To understand humans as moving through time and, thus, time-bound is not incorrect. But it is also not a necessary interpretation, and it places certain very powerful limitations on our metaphysical grasp. We can also interpret ourselves as only existing in EXACTLY this moment, and in the next moment we are some new entity entirely, one that just happens to be rather similar to the old one. Under this interpretation, we are not time-bound because there exists no time. Only moments. We can also interpret ourselves as static and extending through time, occupying an entire span of space on the time-axis, and here again we are not time-bound because time does not move, nor do we move through it. Time is simply a background space, a static "it." A noun, not a verb.