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Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 4:22:45 PM   
Arpig


Posts: 9930
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From: Increasingly further from reality
Status: offline 		On page 5 of the Predators thread up in General BDSM, I said the following:
quote:

You have exactly the same amount of time as anybody else, and its worth exactly the same as well. It's worth just what you paid for it...nothing."
and
quote:

Yeah, probably, because I just don't think time is all that valuable, I mean all I have to do is wake up and I have 24 hours. If I piss them away foolishly, no big deal because tomorrow I'll get another 24 hours just for waking up.


When challenged/questioned about it I mentioned that I had a warped view of time due to reading part of Aristotle's Metaphysics back in grade 10. I was asked to elaborate, and rather than derail that thread into a bizarre direction, I'm starting this thread.

So, here goes, be warned, I'm going to get all metaphysical on your ass...

The basic reason that Aristotle messed up my view of time (and by extension a person's time) was because he basically proved that time must exist and yet it cannot exist. Here's roughly how it goes...

1. Time exists, this is obvious from simple observation. There are things that are no longer, and things that are, and things aren't yet. So time exists.
2. Everything exists within time, and this can be seen as the defining aspect of existence. In order for something to be said to exist, it must have some duration within time, no matter how short. So time is essential for existence, without time nothing can exist.
3. Time is made up of three basic parts. Past, Present, & Future.
4. These three parts are essential to the existence of time, without all three components, time cannot exist.
4. Past & Future offer no problems, but the Present does.
    A. In order for the Present to exist, it must, by definition, not be Past or Future.
    B. If the Present has any duration, it must, again by definition, contain a Past and a Future within it, which would be impossible, since it is the Present.
    C. Therefore the Present has no duration within time.
    D. Therefore the Present does not exist.
5. If the Present does not exist, neither can the Past or Future, as they require a Present to divide one from the other. Therefore time does not exist.
6. If time does not exist, then nothing can have a duration within time, and therefore nothing exists.

See...it's fucked up. So I don't pay much attention to time, and I attach no real value to it, since it doesn't really exist, it's a fabrication of our minds that is inherently flawed.

Now, once again, this is not my theory of time, it is Aristotle's, well at least what I remember of it through the haze of 30 some odd years.

I'm not asking a question, I'm just answering one. Discuss or ignore as you wish.


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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 4:31:54 PM   
Termyn8or


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Status: offline 		Actually I believe that the present exists, and it is the only thing that exists. The past is for those who relish it, vucariously, and the future only exists for those who make it.

T^T

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 4:38:54 PM   
Arpig


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From: Increasingly further from reality
Status: offline 		Yeah, I agree, the Present is the only thing that exists. By definition the Past and Future don't exist, the Past did exist, and the Future will exist, only the Present does exist...but by definition it can't exist....see the problem?


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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:17:19 PM   
sunshinemiss


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Status: offline 		Hi Bob,
Well, I believe in reincarnation.  I may lose some time foolishly here and there, but I have a whole other life coming my way, so no worries!

Your piece reminds me of a (very complicated) Koan. 

For me it's like this:  All is suffering.  Everything changes.  Therefore, suffering changes.  *Is it still suffering then?  But ALL is suffering.

You got a spicy brain!  YAY!
sunshine


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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:22:09 PM   
kalikshama


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Status: offline 		/navel contemplation break/

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:38:22 PM   
HannahLynHeather


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Status: offline 		uh, oookaaay. ahhhhh.

heather!!!!


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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:43:24 PM   
LadyHibiscus


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Status: offline 		I heart your spicy brain, Bob. I don't agree with you, or at least *my approach to the finite amount of "life" I have is different*, but I want to lick your brain.

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:44:39 PM   
tj444


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Status: offline 		yeah, sure, you get another 24 hours tomorrow.... that is,.. as long as you are still alive tomorrow. Once you are dead, then you dont get any more time...

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:57:08 PM   
MasterG2kTR


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Status: offline 		Time was invented to keep everything from happening all at once......

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 6:58:39 PM   
HeatherMcLeather


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Status: offline 		Spicy stuff indeed!! I wanted to see for myself what Aristotle said, and discovered that it isn't in Metaphysics, but rather in Physics, (Book IV, sections 10 - 14). And Hanners won't let me read it now because it will take too long, so I'll have to read it tomorrow.

Hanners is a big meanie-pants bum-head!!

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:14:10 PM   
playfulotter


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Status: offline 		I think, like a dog, I will just chase my tail to respond to this post....... woof woof...smirk smirk......

< Message edited by playfulotter -- 7/16/2011 7:16:40 PM >

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:20:23 PM   
tiggerspoohbear


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Status: offline 		I don't want to even consider the time exists but doesn't thingie.  It's cunfuzzling my brain tonight. 

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:33:02 PM   
sunshinemiss


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quote:

ORIGINAL: tj444

yeah, sure, you get another 24 hours tomorrow.... that is,.. as long as you are still alive tomorrow. Once you are dead, then you dont get any more time...


Completely and totally disagrees with this.  100%.




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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:46:47 PM   
HannahLynHeather


Posts: 2950
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Status: offline 		regarding your little smiley, i think he explained in the op that he had no real point. try fucking reading.

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:50:17 PM   
cpK69


Posts: 1593
Joined: 5/9/2008
Status: offline 		I see a problem in trying to separate them.

The end is the beginning; so, at any given moment we are in the past and the future, and existence is the present.

Was that too vague?

Kim


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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:54:59 PM   
Kaliko


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Status: offline
quote:



ORIGINAL: Arpig

1. Time exists, this is obvious from simple observation. There are things that are no longer, and things that are, and things aren't yet. So time exists.



I disagree. (Oh yes, I am, in fact, disagreeing with Aristotle, it seems.) Simple observation is often misleading. We form assumptions based on what we observe and what we know, when the truth may very well be something we cannot possibly explain or even have an inkling of existing. "Time" is our explanation for what we observe. That doesn't make it necessarily true.

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:56:26 PM   
shallowdeep


Posts: 343
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From: California
Status: offline 		I'm certainly not going to argue against the notion that perceptions of time and its associated value are subjective, but I feel like the paradox here only seems problematic if you aren't comfortable with calculus (specifically, analysis).

The essence of the argument against the existence of time presented here could actually be just as easily applied to space – or, for that matter, any other continuous dimension. Keep splitting anything into small enough pieces, and you could claim nothing exists by the logic used. For Aristotle and Zeno, thinking about that might have been novel and interesting, but the apparent hang-ups on the infinite/infinitesimal have been mathematically resolved for some time now (meaning since the 19th century). Do enough epsilon-delta proofs and I'm not sure you'll really even be capable of seeing the problem anymore…

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 7:58:30 PM   
Kaliko


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quote:

ORIGINAL: shallowdeep

The essence of the argument against the existence of time presented here could actually be just as easily applied to space – or, for that matter, any other continuous dimension. Keep splitting anything into small enough pieces, and you could claim nothing exists by the logic used.



Exactly.

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 8:11:18 PM   
HannahLynHeather


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quote:

The essence of the argument against the existence of time presented here could actually be just as easily applied to space
ok, how? do so.

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RE: Time...the impossible essential. - 7/16/2011 8:21:16 PM   
igor2003


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My own musings on the subject:

I think the problem begins with #3.  The human mind tends to try to see and describe intangible things in tangible terms.  By giving the future, present, and past names we turn time into tangible things we can try to wrap our minds around. 

By giving the future, present, and past names we want to see them as three separate parts of a whole.  I think the only real parts are the future and past.  The present is simply the name we give for the transition from future to past.  An action more than a thing.  That transition flows along the time line.  We, in this existence, ride that flow.

So, to summarize what I imagine, there are actually only two parts to time, the future and past, with the present as the name we give the metamorphosis of one to the other.

Ok....now my brain hurts.

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