Do we create time?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/nist-atomic-clock/

 

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If Lanza is just declaring the "flow" of time a specious illusion rather than the overall framework of events that the concept of time can otherwise encapsulate, then that's now a common or unremarkable view among physicists with background in GR. Which is to say, one doesn't have to appeal to just older and outright ancient philosophical arguments for such.

Robert Geroch: "There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as 'moving through' space-time, or as 'following along' their world-lines. Rather, particles are just 'in' space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." --General Relativity from A to B

Paul Davies: "Peter Lynds's reasonable and widely accepted assertion that the flow of time is an illusion (25 October, p 33) does not imply that time itself is an illusion. It is perfectly meaningful to state that two events may be separated by a certain duration, while denying that time mysteriously flows from one event to the other. Crick compares our perception of time to that of space. Quite right. Space does not flow either, but it's still 'there'." --New Scientist, 6 December 2003, Sec. Letters

Hermann Weyl: "The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

But discarding our commonsense interpretation of the cognitive transition from moment to moment as being a literal physical motion does not mean that you can get consciously liberated from the worldline of your body after death. Your corporeal identity and memories of being _x_ person still abides in that original matter structure (regardless of whether your body is the everyday 3D appearance in perception or the extended "worm-like" form of it arising from the extra dimension of space and time's union). The continuation of experience in general via other brains surviving would not involve your memories leaping to other skulls, and certainly not your face, gender, etc which are part of your current, specific identity. All you can say is that "consciousness" is not confined to you alone, it doesn't terminate everywhere on Earth when you cognitively reach the end of your worldline or "worm" (barring total extinction catastrophes).

Concerning our all having a more fundamental and pervasive non-human identity in common which we could return qualitatively to after death: While it's a speculative possibility that our phenomenal experiences might be local brain modifications of a field pervading space (like electromagnetism) or maybe something prior in rank to spatiotemporal conformity (pregeometry), such panprotoexperientialism will never be a part of science. Since measure-less manifestation itself can't even be given a functional role (there are always measurable public agencies or distinct objects and sub-systems in the brain that can instead receive complete responsibility for affecting and causing your thoughts and actions). Matter normally lacks even primitive, manifested flickerings of itself as anything (when not organized as a conscious system). In science, experience thus becomes a brute add-on correlated to whatever applicable neural activity. It lacks precursors or elemental versions of itself in matter for it to integratively fall out of or arise conventionally from (including none among that list of acceptable properties attributed to electromagnetism). Its ultra-strong emergence "just happens" in the context of the proper, dynamic relational configuration being the case in a biological or electronic substrate (which is to say, phenomenal manifestations are conceived to at least be "conjured" in reliable [natural] fashion rather than open to anomalously unpredictable origins).

Setting aside later mathematicians who misinterpreted that Zeno was exposing a flaw in older abstract models of motion and space, which was adjusted centuries later.... Ironically Zeno was instead round-a-boutly defending an ontological view which might be contended a primitive conceptual forerunner of the block universe. The former attributed to Parmenides, but probably just as much an interpretation of his poem by later thinkers. Today, physics actually does have limits to meaningful measurement or division of duration and space (Plank time and Planck length).

 

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Correct. One does not DOOO anything! In eastern philosophy of Theraveda and Mahayana Buddhism, there is no doer, only rest and motion. THE PHYSICAL BODY IS HERE.

Regarding the title question, I prefer, in place of saying that we "create" time, to say instead that we produce it. As creation implies god-like power that is not latent in us. And so the potential for time's existence is there whether or not we exist.

 

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I call it the timeless *permittive condition*

I agree, with a small caveat that it is not we or us, but *duration of change which produces time*, an inevitable mathematical side effect.

 

Do you, like me, believe that infinity is equivalent to this timeless, spaceless condition/ existence?

Yes, where change can be defined as the energy transference from one moment in time to another?

 

I visualize a *zero state* condition, with infinite potential for expresssion in reality.

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I see it as exactly the reverse. I see it as energy transferrence from one *position to another position in space*. The duration of this transfer is measured AS (not "in") as *time*.

Dynamic action *requires time* and in a timeless permittive condition such a request is logically and mathematically allowed and granted..

 

My original opinion and argument with regards to the sun's rise and setting was that we share time, however my current opinion is that time is within us. If we HAVE TIME then surely we can MAKE TIME. Anything that follows a logical pattern should do, however I am simply a philosopher and dedicate my time to dsicoveries rather than creations:

"I don't create the bodies, I erase them."-Snatch (alternative quote)

 

We create time; based on the movements of objects; and the ordering of movements; hence time zones on Earth.

 

Confusion arises amongst us due to casual or non-specialized language subsuming different meanings under the same word-labels or signs.

There's indeed "time" as the everyday conventions of our invented systems slash tools. But also (in the course of evolving models, experimental testing) "time" as whatever human-independent circumstance physics espouses and describes with a technical framework during a particular era. The latter thereby [despite the methodological and manufacturing procedures] tending to be regarded as less artificial or subjected to more of a realist stance.

Also the psychological apprehension of changing states of the world replacing each other in sequence, when objectified as a cosmos-spanning process, is popularly referred to with the word "time". The so-called commonsense "flow" itself (of these modifications) coupled with a presentism belief that only a globally coherent "now" fleetingly exists (devoid of relational problems). The extended complex or framework which other systems may feature as well as sometimes habitually reify as 'time" is discarded. What our everyday conventions categorize as "past" is then demoted to a surviving facade of mere environmental records / personal memories; and what is classed as "future" is yet to be outputted by whatever cyclical routine would be responsible for regulating those mutable events of an unfolding universe theme. [Even if said reliability of the process should be nothing more than an inherently brute or magical principle maintaining the consistency from annihilated / replaced moment to moment.]

 

Come again...less abstract CC. Explain again in clear and easy language.

 

The BB was an evolution of space and time [henceforth known as spacetime] as we know them.
Neither are absolute as we once thought, and are both real: The question that needs to be asked is are they fundamental.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-real/

 

IMO, Time is a result of duration of expression in reality. Time comes into existence as a *duration* of an event or sequence of events. i.e. It took (was needed) 1 year to build that bridge. Building the bridge created the timeframe (1 year) for that object, *bridgebuildingtime*

We say *spacetime*, but that phrase is specific to the duration of the existence of the universe. We might also say "humantime", for the duration of a person's existence. When the human dies, his "time is up". The duration of time created as duration of a human existence has passed and is no longer an issue, except as recorded dates (duration) of that person's limited timeline *in the past*.
Time is always associated with the duration of some physical existence or activity and does not, cannot exist independently as Time. Time itself cannot be measured, it does not exist as a thing. The *wholeness* (including this universe, with its universal spacetime) is a timeless permittive condition with the potential for physical change and its associated *durations* , which we have named Time.

 

While we're alive we "have time" and we can "make time."

 

I don't agree:Time can be measured. It's been 13.83 billion years since the BB.
And anything permittive to any change at all, is real enough...just as is the space separating you and I.
And of course the amount of time that you measure to be passing, can be different to the amount of time that I measure to be passing.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-real/

The debate or otherwise on whether time or anything else is real, is more a philosophical argument on the meaning of real.

 

Sorry that was poorly constructed. I meant to say "the wholeness in which the Universe (with it's own spacetime) is nestled" and is able to expand.

But I was not speaking of the universe itself is real and does have its own spacetime. I was speculatively speaking of the *nothingness* in which the universe exists. When there is nothing, it is by definition permittive of everything, IMO.

Which to my mind proves that time is a by-product of measurement and the relative position and method of this measurement can yield different time measurements, which are all relatively correct.
THUS, time itself is not a thing with measurable properties. Individual *time-lines* come into existence (emerge) as a result of the duration of existence of something else.

I agree and that is due to my limited formal education in physics and my reliance on intuitive logic (philosophy).

From your link;

Sounds to me, this question is still very much open to even "knowledgeable fellows" in the field of physics and cosmology.

 

We make time by existing as a person, but that is strictly an individual time-line. When you die, the time-line for your existence as a person ends and becomes only *past history of your existence*.

And if you think it through, how do we make time? Don't we make time by trying to pre-measure the duration of an activity and setting aside all other activities which would interfere with the anticipated time it will take to complete the planned activity. And when the activity is completed *on time*, the time for that activity halts. There is no additional time needed for that activity.
However, if "due to circumstances beyond our control" the anticipated timeline has to be extended into *over-time* a new pre-measurement of additional time will be needed.

None of this proves Time exists as a separate condition, IMO, time emerges simultaneously as a measurement of duration of change or of an existing object. When we speak of going through time, that only means we are inside and going through universal spacetime.

 

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....For whom? If during this time someone else is psychologically engaged, he does not create time, or does *time fly* under such circumstance?....

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On a more serious note: IMO, Time is an abstract concept similar to Mathematics. Both are dependent on processing of *information* (change) and every processing of information has two emerging results,
a) product of the mathematical process
b) duration (time) of that process.

A mathematical process requires:
*input* (start time) ---> *processing* (duration) ---> *output* (end time).

When we speak of "saving time" does not mean we store time. We merely shorten the duration of a process.

When we count 5 fingers and count an additional 5 fingers, we end up with the result of 10 (fingers), this process may take 10 seconds. However if we use a computer and enter 5F + 5F the result = 10F, but the processing of this information may take only 5 seconds, saving us 5 seconds in a busy 8 hr timeframe..

Thus we arrive at the same result (10), but one process has a shorter processing duration or requires less time to arrive at the same mathematical result. Both arrived at the same answer, but one process is faster, which may be advantageous to human goals, but nature has no such goal oriented incentives. It does not consider duration of process, it just does processes information..

This may seem trivial, but nature does not have a timeframe or reference. Time is a wholly human artifact.

 

To "make time" I simply commit the action. I have "made time" and it "took time".

 

I understand what you are saying but it is still a little too vague, IMO.

Perhaps a better way to state it is: Any action has a duration and we call that duration *time*. The only requirement for any action is a *permittive condition* and measurable time emerges along with the duration of the action".

A perfect example is the stop-watch which precisely measures the specific duration (time) of an action, by starting the watch at the beginning of the action and stopping the watch when the action is finished. The result is a measure of duration (time) which was needed for the action. This specific duration is wholly independent of other actions of near infinite variety and which each have their own duration or time-line.