Time is only relative on an Earthly level.

This is the idea that though we exist at a specific "time" on earth, all earthly times are accessable at the same time.

I'll explain that better

Imagine this:

Past..........| |
..................| |
Present......| |
..................| |
Future.......| |

the line on the right represents the subconcious level that we are alive in. It exists on all levels (Past present and future)... so through use of this subconcious or perhaps for some the third eye or whatever psychic ability, we gain our knowledge based on the fact that it all truly exists on the same plane. Remove light from our world, and you would remove time. It exists based on physical movement, yes? Without physical movement or visual evidence, we cannot claim that time exists since we would not be able to witness it. Then again i suppose our senses would have to be removed. Example:
We exist as human beings.
We carry none of the 5 (or 6 or 7, however many you believe there are) senses
Do we still exist?
We would be forced to say we do, we still have thought but i argue that time would not exist.

_____________________________________
It exists based on physical movement, yes? _____________________________________

Yes, time to me is a measure of how things move through space.

_________________________________________________
Without physical movement or visual evidence, we cannot claim that time exists since we would not be able to witness it. Then again i suppose our senses would have to be removed.
_________________________________________________
Yep. Time is relative. It is made up by us relative to other things. Without other things, we cannot experinence time, ie time does not exist.

We carry none of the 5 (or 6 or 7, however many you believe there are) senses
Do we still exist?

senses don't determine if a person exists. A rock has no senses yet it is real. The question isn't if the person exists, but rather if it's alive?

Without the 5 senses the person would indeed still be alive. They would still be a breathing, functioning human being, even if his presence exclude these senses.

The person would still be alive but wouldn't be able to experience anything. This is like not existing.

The person would still be alive but wouldn't be able to experience anything. This is like not existing.

Why wouldn't it be existing. You're there, you're effecting every other living thing in existinance. To you it may seem like nothin more than a blackness and night overlapping you, but to other living things you are there and you are existing.

i didnt mean to make an argument out of this, i just wanted some insight...
I understand what Votorx is saying...
We do still exist... i suppose i meant it as a rhetorical question

I was just trying to help myself visualize (irony), a space or state of being without time.

In order for you to exist and to experience who you are, you need to experience the opposite of who you are. If there is no way to detect that thing that is not you, how long would you be able to exist in your own imagination.
Here is the situation:
You are in a white empty room, everything is white, there is nothing but whiteness. You are suspended in air as if attached to the ceiling by a invisible string. How long would you experinece you? Not very long. Now suddenly, there is a small black dot on the wall, and at the moment, you would suddenly know you are here, and the dot is there, you are able to experinence you as here and there. And if there is a bigger black dot, you will be able to experience bigness and smalless. This applies to everything. Without your senses, you cannot detect anything other than you, therefore cannot experience you since all experience are relative.

also very true...
I think i was thinking you'd "feel" yourself breathing, but you wouldnt... so no you wouldnt exist... sorry about that

Your mind would keep you in existence. The presence of the whiteness, or blackness will also keep you in existence. While you wouldn't be able to feel, touch, see, smell or taste anything. You will still be able to think. And just thinking will allow you to know that you exist.

Now you are moving onto detecting things around you. Originally this was a discussion on being alive and existing. No matter what, even without your senses you still exist.

If you restrict existance as being physical. But to me, existance is much bigger than that.

If you restrict existance as being physical. But to me, existance is much bigger than that.

I do not restrict existance as just being physical but mental, physical and emotinal. But what do you think existance is?

Your brain needs input from your senses to interpret things, without the senses, your brain wouldn't work. Therefore, there would be no mental existance.
To me, existance is being able to choose and be who I want to be, be able to experience whatever I chooose to experience. Without our senses, these just cannot be done.

So what you're trying to say is inanimate objects are non existence. They don't follow anything in your definition of existence therefore they must not exist right?

You're brain does not need the senses to function. If you cut off someone nose, ears, blinded them, dystroyed every nerve in their body, and ripped out their tongue, you will still be able to THINK. Regardless of what senses are missing your mental abilities will not cease.

You do have a point here. What I was saying was that existance with all the senses would allow me to do the things I wanted to do. Without the senses, existance would be less fullfilling and it's like non-existance to me.
I don't think there is any inanimate objects. Some may seem to be inanimate on the surface, but all things are made of atoms and subatomical particles which moves all the time. Things such as rocks, they do exist, but they don't have a consiousness, they do not have as much power over the ways which they choose to exist, but simply accepting our choices that allows us to experience who we are.

Well if you put it that way then yes existance would be alot less furfilling. Infact suicide would seem like a reasonable solution to such suffering. But never less they still exist. Now the question is, without your senses is it even worth existing?

Let me apply some Buddhist logic.

Everything that you experience at this moment is a subjective perception. It's not real, it's simply a projection of the ego, the self, all that you are all that you think all that you feel all that you see. Is YOU.

When you look at a lamp, you don't percieve the lamp, you percieve a mental projection of the lamp. The photons that hit the lamp are dispersed by the atoms of the lamp, these photons strike your retina and send electrical impulses to your brain which percieves, categorizes, sorts the information and projects it upon the 'conciousness'. Where we then perceive a lamp in our field of vission. The actual object that is lamp is never percieved.

The same applys for time. We have subjective perceptions about the course of time, based on the memory of the previous moment. However time does not exist. Think about this for a moment if you do not agree...
As far as the universe is concerned, the great objective absolute that is of no finite boundry, time is meaningless. What is now, was then, will be next and always has been. In the great absolute moment beyond all numbers and movement of energy there is the eternal now, and what would be the eternal now if not the infinte collection of all the subsequent 'nows' that are, that have been and that will be?


Another question arises, 'do we exist'?. Subjectively yes, objectively no, nothing does. Let me elaborate on this Buddhistic nihilism.
The statement 'that nothing exist' should be considered in this way.. What is it that we perceive when we look at a Table? We see legs, we see a top, we see a bottom. But when we see all these things, where is the thing we call 'Table'? Looking closer att a table leg we see a top a bottom, we see a surface we see wood, not even can we find this elusive object that is a so called 'leg'? We look even closer at the wood, it is comprised of billions and billions of atoms, not one of these attoms constitues wood. Looking closer at an atom we see protons, neutrons, elktrons, quarks, positrons, anti-protons and anti-neutrons. Between these mostly empty space and elctromagnetic forces. Not even can we find a single atom.... Where then is all that that we call reality? Is it perhaps all in our minds in the most literal sense of the word.

The actual object that is lamp is never percieved.

Complete nonsense unless you can tell us what the actual object is?

I think the question is what is this "actual object"? The object is constantly changing, the object we percieve now is different to the one we percieve later as it's atoms are always changing, it does not remain the same. I think we percieve things from different levels. From the physical level, we cannot distinguish betweent the differences, but from the quantum level, the differences are clear. When we percieve time in the physical level, it seemed to exist, but at a different level, time is only our imagination, made up to measure how we move through space.

The actual object that is lamp is never percieved.

Complete nonsense unless you can tell us what the actual object is?

My words were a bit self contratictory and unclear, I made a mistake in my formulation, I admit this, what I was trying to get at is that there is no object.

Please motivate your refutation, intellectualization is cognitive and true intelligence is intuitive however ignorance is simply repetitious.

I exist because I can reflect upon my thoughts and I am self-aware. If I don't exist I can't be reflecting upon my existance, therefore I know I have to exist.

A table is mearly a label we apply to a generalized description for convience. It would be difficult to state after all, "Please go and sit over by the mass of approximately 2 million atoms that are binded losely together (spend the next 2 hours describing how the atoms create an appears of legs)". Therefore a table is in our minds, though the actual objects that holds up my dinner are real. The atoms, also, all bind together to make one mass. So in a sense the object does exist, but it's the combination of many parts in one whole, which pretty much every thing, living or not, is. I'm me, which is composed of cells, which is composed of atoms, which is composed of subatomic particles, ect. I myself consist of many different living organisms. My neighborhood is also a living organism of which I am part of. And we can extend that all the way to the universe, and probably beyond, and say the universe is one living organism. So while a table is a description, there is definately a mass there, so it does exist. True that we can't directly percieve it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Just merely being composed of smaller parts doesn't make it less real, neither does an inability to directly percieve something make it not real. Reality doesn't change based on ones ability to percieve.

Same for time. Just because it doesn't matter to the universe doesn't mean it's not there. It may be meaningless to the universe, which has been going and will go for an infinite amount of time, but just because somethings meaningless doesn't make it go away. It's like a 2d cartoon saying the 3rd dimention doesn't exist because it doesn't matter to the paper in which they live in.

At any rate, all I have to go off of are my perceptions right now. That and my awareness. I remember my past, although I can't prove at any given instant that those memories are real and that I wasn't just now created. I am experiencing the present. And the future unravels before me. All of this is happening in a linear fashion. If time did not exist, then why do I have a past, present and future? If I was a 4th dimension being, I might be able to go backward and forwards in time at will, but it would still be there.

I would further argue that if we exist at a point in time, and that all other instants are "accessible" so to speak, what we are really doing is using a sense that allows us to view the 4th dimension, which allows us to see other instants.

So, what am I saying? Reality doesn't change because you can't percive it or because something has no point. Also I wanted to throw forward the idea that maybe the reason why some people (supposedly) can view the past and future is not because it all exists at once, but because they are using a sense that allows them to look "up" and "down" the 4th dimension.

Dear black stream,

You have very interesting view points. Consider this and see what you think: Reality is comprised of many layers, dimentions (physical, etheral, astral, mental, buddhic, atmic, nirvana, paran-irvana etc...). If you consider an onion and peel away the layers of reality you get closer and closer to the center the absolute. Consider that each of these layers was correspondent to a certain level of conciousness, each getting higher and higher with each dimention closer to the absolute. So the absolute would be a supra-conciousness, pure awareness of the essence of entirity. With each dimention getting closer to the center 'time' is of less and less significance. As it is obvious that we have conciousness, and if the presented model were true, then there would be a purpous for why we exist in the here and the now and why we are experienceing what we are. This purpouse would no doubt be to learn, as if the absolute was pure conciousness, our own would no doubt be part of it.

This is all hypothetical ofcourse, I don't claim anything of it. Do with it what you wish, but rather ignore it than tell me that I'm a loon.;)

Wow - they should rename this thread, "Imaginations Running Wild."

:rolleyes:

So, what am I saying? Reality doesn't change because you can't percive it or because something has no point. Also I wanted to throw forward the idea that maybe the reason why some people (supposedly) can view the past and future is not because it all exists at once, but because they are using a sense that allows them to look "up" and "down" the 4th dimension.

Objectivism in other words.

Objectivism?
(looks it up)

Hey whatta know, it looks like you are on the ball. Didn't know there was a word for what I believed, lol. What's the other side? Relativism?

Relativism, or subjectivism would be the opposite. If you dig deeper, Ayn Rand stole the word for her own cult philosophy, (but I would ignore her)

Wow - they should rename this thread, "Imaginations Running Wild."

:rolleyes:

That would be most appropriate considering that this thread and infact everything else is merely a mental projection. ;)

Describe the colour red to me. :p

Sure, and have someone hit you in the forehead with a baseball bat - it shouldn't hurt, after all, it's only a mental projection, right?

Describe the colour red to me.

That would be the color of the liquid oozing from your forehead after the baseball bat has worked its charms.

although i think that was hilarious, i believe exsto:

Reality is comprised of many layers, dimentions (physical, etheral, astral, mental, buddhic, atmic, nirvana, paran-irvana etc...). If you consider an onion and peel away the layers of reality you get closer and closer to the center the absolute. Consider that each of these layers was correspondent to a certain level of conciousness, each getting higher and higher with each dimention closer to the absolute.

this is what i believe on time, perhaps i put it in the wrong thread :(
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=32790

heres some of my idea:

it seems like time is a complex, multilayered dimension. perhaps theres multiple dimensions of time, who knows...
i believe time connects every single person, object, and thing to each other, and time connects each of those things to their physical location, direction, space, so to speak.- time also connects every object in the galaxy, in the same ways, physical location, direction, space, literally.
TIme links us to the past, present, and future, no matter what your beliefs are on the subjects.
Time also links us to our __insert_your_own_diety_here__. how do u think they interact with us? they are not physical in form therefore cannot come down and do anything. cant you see? they work on the other side of TIME.
thats how they interact with us.

I think therefore you are.

Does anybody here NOT believe in time? I have serious doubts that time exists. The universe is just matter, energy and space. Time is just a "human" description of motion of an object thru space. A meteorite that is moving thru space is not aware of itself or how fast it is moving relative to it's surroundings so does time exist for that meteorite? Why does time have to enter the picture?

And what about all the weird stuff about time travel? Say you are sitting with a friend in a coffee shop and you excuse yourself telling him you'll be back shortly. You then get into a time machine and go back in time about a week. You visit your friend at his job and shoot him dead. Meanwhile, back in the present, your friend is still patiently waiting for you at the coffee shop. You then come back to the present and go back to the coffee shop and tell your friend that you shot him last week. What's wrong with this picture? How could the present and the past co-exist at the same time?

And if it's true what they say that the past, present and future all exist at the same time on the same plane of existence or whatever...then we haven't been born yet, we are alive and we are dead all at the same "time".

It's all a bunch of bahloney.

mario,
I agree with you, time does not exist, merely just a measure of how things move through space - made up by us.
I believe everything is happening right now, ie. all happening at the same time. All the possibility is there, but we choose which one we wish to experience.

Mario. You are limiting your thinking greatly. You believe that time travel can be achieved, while im not saying it can't be, you aren't thinking far enough to what would happen if someone went into the past. This is a hard idea to explain but easy to understand once you get it into your train of thought. Lets try and set up a scenerio like you did.

You are sitting in the coffee shop with your friend. You see a man out of the corner of your eyes, he's a very fimiliar man yet when you turn around to see who it is, he isn't there anymore. You find this very unusual and decide to tell your friend you'll be right back, go back in time for around 5 minutes and stand where u last saw this man. You wait there for 5 minutes more and realize he isn't there then you go into the future once more, the split second before your past self realizes the familiar figure in the corner of his eye. If you couldn't follow what i was saying then here is a quick summary. That fimiliar figure in the corner of your eye was you when you went back into the past. It's basically a continous cycle. Another good example is the third harry potter book in which hermoine goes back in time and such.

Anyways, basically, if we were to go back into time we would never be able to change anything. The past is set and if we were to go into the past to change someone's destiny it would be impossible since the future cannot be altered.

But, back to the topic, if everything was to just stop, and i mean just the revolution of planets in which we set out days/hours/minutes to, then wouldn't time continue? What your problem may be is, you define time wrong, you think it is just the minute hand ticking on the clock or the sun setting and rising, meanwhile it isn't. Time is the motion, the dimension we live in. Time is what we define as the continous motion and the neverending sequence of events that happen everyday. It isn't just the revolution of planets, and when time ends so will everything else. There would not longer be significant events, motions or any other follow ups in the day. Everything will be motionless, uneventful, everything would be "Frozen in Time".

Zonabi didn't we have an arguement on time not to long ago :).

Too freaky vortox. I kinda get what your saying, sounds stephen hawkingish, but I have some questions. Like.....

1) In the "present" where I first notice this familiar person, how could this person standing in the corner be me when I haven't travelled back in time yet? Was it my "future self" since I'm still sitting at the table and haven't got up yet to go back in time? Am I seeing my "future self" in the past?

2) After I went back in time to catch this person I wait around for 5 minutes, right?. Ok what if I decided to wait another couple of minutes...long enuff for my "present self" sitting at the coffee table to turn around and fully see me?

3) What if I didn't just stand there waiting but casually walked up (during those 5 minutes in the past) to myself sitting at the coffee table with my friend and tapped myself on the shoulder and asked if I can join myself and my friend for a cup of coffee? It's possible right? I still have free will to move around and do anything I want instead of just stand there for 5 minutes. Can I exist in two places at the same time and place? With one of me being 5 minutes younger than my other me?


I don't believe in time travel or time. You say motion is time. Why can't motion just be energy being used up? If you were frozen in a block of ice out in space and not one tiny atom of you was moving or vibrating (I guess that would have to be absolute zero then) then are you frozen in time? If everything else around you is moving and travelling thru time would you be perpetually in the past?

My brain hurts.

1) In the "present" where I first notice this familiar person, how could this person standing in the corner be me when I haven't travelled back in time yet? Was it my "future self" since I'm still sitting at the table and haven't got up yet to go back in time? Am I seeing my "future self" in the past?

In you the present you notice youself because your "future" self has gone into the past. By seeing that familiar figure in the corner of your eye it triggers the need to go back into time to see who that person was. Its basically like a never ending cycle.


2) After I went back in time to catch this person I wait around for 5 minutes, right?. Ok what if I decided to wait another couple of minutes...long enuff for my "present self" sitting at the coffee table to turn around and fully see me?

This is where it gets confusing. The sequence of events is always set. If the guy in the corner of your eye is only there for 5 minutes then when u go back into time you will only stay there for 5 minutes before you leave. Now if u were to stay there a couple of more minutes untill your past self saw you completely, then when you go back in time you would have done the same thing. What ever happens in the present will stay that way even if you go back in time, it's always going to fit one way or another.


3) What if I didn't just stand there waiting but casually walked up (during those 5 minutes in the past) to myself sitting at the coffee table with my friend and tapped myself on the shoulder and asked if I can join myself and my friend for a cup of coffee? It's possible right? I still have free will to move around and do anything I want instead of just stand there for 5 minutes. Can I exist in two places at the same time and place? With one of me being 5 minutes younger than my other me?

There is belief that once you touch or come in contact with you past self you will be erased from existence. But im not going to use that as an asnwer to your question. Rather, to make full sense of all your questions, im going to set up another scenerio:

Lets say you are walking down the street and you see a guy in a hamburger costume. The guy in the hamburger costume decides to stop you and tell you not to go to a certain place at a certain time, but, since he is a complete stranger, you decide to go there anyways regardless of his warning. Something really bad happens there, like you set off a trap to kill one of your loved ones, therefor you decide to go back in time and stop yourself from going to that place. Thinking that coming in contact with yourself will have horrible consequences you decided to dress up in a near by disguise. This disguise just happens to be a hamburger costume. With this costume on you meet yourself in the street, stop him, and warn him not to be at that certain place at that certain, but your past self doesn't listen, goes to that place and is forced to go back in time to stop himself from going there. Does this clear this up anymore? Like i said it all has to do with whether u understand or you don't the concept is very hard to explain.


If you were frozen in a block of ice out in space and not one tiny atom of you was moving or vibrating (I guess that would have to be absolute zero then) then are you frozen in time?

When you are frozen in absolute zero where none of your atoms are moving or vibrating, are you aware of your surroundings? No. Can you think? No, you are basically unconcious and oblivious to what's happening to you or around you. You never age, you never gain experiance, knowledge or anything. If you think about it, this is a form of time travel. You are going into the future since time has frozen for you and not for your surrounding enviroment. If this is the case you can go hundreds of years into the future within a millisecond in your reality. Summary: This isn't being frozen in time, but rather a travel into the future since it is only effecting you, not those around you.

Huh??? You are really confusing. You know that don't you vortox? LOL

I haven't got used to this board yet. Can't reply with quotes but doesn't matter. Getting back to the person in the coffee shop. If I just walked in and sat down then you are saying that it is my future self that is who I get a glimpse of first. Ok, if it was my future self that came back for 5 minutes then why did HE come back? He must have seen HIS future self that he thought looked familiar. And that means for my "future future" self to come back he must have seen HIS future self (my future future future self) standing there which puzzled him. Do you see what I mean? If I see my future self waiting in the corner...then this future self MUST have seen HIS future self who MUST have seen HIS future self...and so on and so on. Now I sound confusing.

Ok now the hamburger man. If I unknowingly come across myself dressed as a hamburger (too funny!!!) then this hamburger man must have went thru the tragedy and came back to warn me. BUT... if I haven't even been there in my life yet, that is, this is the FIRST time that I will walk thru the door and set off the series of events leading to a tragedy, then how could it have already happened? Also, after ignoring the hamburger man and then later come back in time as a hamburger and watch myself ignore me again it would go on forever. I would be stuck in a time loop.

Hey that reminds me of a star trek:the next generation episode where they keep repeating a collision with another starfleet vessel over and over again. That was cool.

let's hypothesize that there is a continuum of discrete dimensionality.

we live in three, with the imaginary portion of mind being a hologram projected onto other dimensions by the configuration of our brains.

so i guess we really live in at least four.

I think "time" is how whatever it is that 'binds' that continuum (the 'common thread' to all of them) as it appears from the number of dimensions we inhabit.

You find me confusing because you think in a box. I told you its hard to explain and unless you stop thinking of things as you are then your never going to understand.

Ok, if it was my future self that came back for 5 minutes then why did HE come back? He must have seen HIS future self that he thought looked familiar.

Exactly, he say HIS future self.

I see my future self waiting in the corner...then this future self MUST have seen HIS future self who MUST have seen HIS future self...and so on and so on.

That's exactly what it is. You are getting it but since your thinking in a box your not fully understanding it. He can back into time because he saw his future self. His future self went back in time because he saw HIS future self and so on for all INFINITY.

BUT... if I haven't even been there in my life yet, that is, this is the FIRST time that I will walk thru the door and set off the series of events leading to a tragedy, then how could it have already happened?

This is where your progess just stops. Apply the idea that you had above to this idea. Your future self set off the events in his reality, and by coming back in time cause you to set off your set of events in your reality. Your future self's future self set off his series of events in his reality and so on. Just because it hasn't happened in your time yet doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Nor does it mean it hasn't already happened in your future self's time. I recommend you think about predestination. While this idea isn't based on predestination it is related.

Also, after ignoring the hamburger man and then later come back in time as a hamburger and watch myself ignore me again it would go on forever. I would be stuck in a time loop.

No you wouldn't. What happens to your future self ones he is done warning you? He goes back into his own time.

Hmmm, I was wondering where did the first hamburger man go after I ignored him. If he didn't go back to his future then there would be two of us hamburger men hanging around for me to show up. Wouldn't that be a sight for my past self to see? haha. Hey, what WOULD happen if the first hamburger man was still there when I came back in time to warn myself? He could visit the past as long as he likes right? Or what if his time machine broke down or got stolen? If that happened then all the other future future me's would be there too because it also happened to them. We'd all be stuck in the present. Dressed in hamburger suits. LOL Sorry, I have a weird sense of humour.

Also, what if I came back instead dressed as a cucumber man or a masked superhero? Maybe that hamburger man that I saw freaked me out too much that I wouldn't want nothing to do with hamburger suits. Or I'd simply forgotten about him when I decided to come back in time to warn myself. Would I be "forced" to dress as a hamburger just because my future self decided to dress like one? If so then we don't have free will. We just do whatever our future selves are doing right now...or will do.

One last thing, what if I freaked out at the sight of this hamburger man trying to warn me and I pulled out a gun and shot him? I just killed my future self. Then I would go back in time and my past self would kill me too. That would mean all my future future future selves met the same fate as well. And all my past selves would be killing themselves as well. Ad infinitum.


Where's my aspirin.

I think it can be best explained by supporting the idea that there is an infinite number of universes...When someone goes back into time they enter a different universe rahter than their own past. But rather this universe is an exact replica of yours and follows the same sequence of actions as you do. So rather than meeting yourself, their future self would be entering a different time/ a different universe than you are.
But this is getting rediculous, I do not believe in Time Travel, nor do i believe in multiple universes.

If you are alive, have all your senses working and are awake you will be able to tell that something is happening as opposed to nothing is happening. You will be able to see the sun rise and set, the day turn into night and your body get older. That is one way to actually tell time exists.

That is not time. It is just motion of matter and energy being used up. Our conscious makes comparisons of everything we take in with our senses. Even our thoughts are continously recorded as a movement or change from one to another. But it is not time that is being recorded...just physical or mental activity. We grow old not because of time but because of the motion and energy consumption of the cells in our body. Our body matter is changing because of chemical and molecular processes. Unfortuanately these changes are not very desireable.