Of course our reality is “timeless”, meaning without time, meaning no time.
Yes, we observe that things move, and clocks tick, and we have acceptable explanations for why these events happen as they do.
A clocks ticks, it doesn’t measure the passage of time. It just keeps ticking as a movement in pace with the movement of the sun. The ticking clock is real, and so is the moving sun across the sky. Those are the only two things I see. No time passing. If the passage of time is perceivable, then it is an illusion that cannot be detected by the senses.
Hey Bob, do you realize what we are doing here? I call it critical inquiry. To the Buddha, it would be considered insight meditation. No kidding. If we can crack this mystery of time, we can move on to tackle your conclusion on the binary entity.
Sree: “Would you also say that America is also a concept, an idea of a nation state?”
I think use of the term “America” to describe the United States of America is the most pompous thing I have ever encountered. We have two continents currently named North America and South America. Everyone who is in either continent is an “American”. I try to avoid using the term American and use US citizen or something similar when referring to a citizen of the USA. It would be much better if our founder had chosen a different name for our confederation. What brass it was to contemplate that those States would forever be “THE” only states of both continents.
Sree: " Following this line of thinking, one could say that everything, in reality, that cannot be detected by the senses is conceptual, an artifact of the mind."
I don’t see it as a mystery. My only concern is that so many accept that it is something physical, something real. Not that their wrong thinking causes me any problem - it doesn’t - but I don’t think it is helpful or beneficial at all. I’d like to believe that the effort spent in pursuing this wrong idea could be better spent in another direction.
Sree: ” Following this line of thinking, one could say that everything, in reality, that cannot be detected by the senses is conceptual, an artifact of the mind.”
Bob: Yes, I agree.
An artifact of the mind is a concept, an idea, a metaphor. A chair, which can be perceived by the senses, exists when it is seen and/or touched. Would you agree that it no longer exists but an artifact of the mind when you have closed your eyes and no longer touching it?
By “mystery”, I mean that even though our reality is “timeless”, we – including me – are all living in a time bound way. On the average, I check the “clock”half a dozen times a day, and the calendar more than once a week. To me, this is astonishing considering I quit my job more than 6 years ago just to get off the time-locked economic treadmill the rest of the world is on. I even bought a sailboat to get away from time-stuck humanity. No way. The sun, moon and stars entrapped me out there in the Pacific. And my provisions, that kept dwindling, reminded me to head for shore.
My only concern is that so many accept that it is something physical, something real. Not that their wrong thinking causes me any problem – it doesn’t – but I don’t think it is helpful or beneficial at all.
What good would it do even if the whole world saw that time doesn’t exist, or an artifact of the memory? As I told you above, it’s still the same old way of life. We would still live by the ticking clock.
I’d like to believe that the effort spent in pursuing this wrong idea could be better spent in another direction.
What other direction? Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that there is no benefit to realizing that time doesn’t exist. The implication is tremendous. It’s life-transforming.
Sree said; What other direction? Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that there is no benefit to realizing that time doesn’t exist. The implication is tremendous. It’s life-transforming.
Why do you say that? For our purposes nothing changes in any way at all. Time still accompanies change. And if there is no change, you won't know that time is also missing. Wherever there is empty space, there will also be time. Spacetime will not go away. It's just that time is not an extra dimension except as part of spacetime. Time will just not exist independent of space. It never has. And it is not testable.
Time is not measurable in and of itself. It is always connected to the measurable existence of something else.
Something, anything, concerning reality. I’d rather see people spend their lives studying something frivolous, like the ecological implications of 17th century French literature, than the fantasies of spacetime and time travel.
Notice how many, like Write4U, defend the notion that there are these things called time and spacetime. They treat them as if they are real and as if there is something we can do with them - a waste of their efforts.
Write4U: "Time still accompanies change. And if there is no change, you won’t know that time is also missing. Wherever there is empty space, there will also be time. Spacetime will not go away. It’s just that time is not an extra dimension except as part of spacetime. Time will just not exist independent of space.
I suggest you re-think spacetime. Spacetime is the idea that when we look at the night sky what we see is a collection of objects as they existed at various times. We accept that because we accept that light is not transmitted instantly. All we can know about those objects is how they appear at the moment we view them. We can not determine where they are, what their state is or even if they still exist at all.
We do not observe “empty space”; we observe only objects in space. We have nothing upon which we can base a description of what empty space is. We have no way to associate change in empty space with anything else because we don’t observe empty space and we cannot know if it changes. Therefore we cannot associate time with space as we can for objects. We have no basis for a history of space like we have for histories of objects.
I think of a photo of the night sky as a collage of photos of objects as they existed at various times.
Bob: We do not observe “empty space”; we observe only objects in space. We have nothing upon which we can base a description of what empty space is.
Brilliant! Great observation. Like time, space - in the absolute sense - also doesn't exist. (The illusion of) space materializes when objects appear in the field of sensory perception. Mind you, for space (illusion) to be perceivable there has to be more than one object if both are stationary.
Also, there is no such thing as movement of one object. The illusion of movement appears when two or more objects change positions relative to one another; otherwise, movement doesn’t exist.
Bob, the bottom line here is that the inherent nature of our object reality is essentially perceptual. If you get this, then you are free of the paradigm, of settled science, in which Einstein and Newton were caught. If you don’t get this, then our discussion is science fiction.
An aside, Bob, I am sure you must be wanting to post messages with block quotes highlighted but don’t know how to do it. You need to compose your post first, then highlight those paragraphs or sections of your post you want to quote and click on the inverted comas (") at the top before hitting the “Submit” button to post your message. Try it. I screwed up and had to experiment a few times before I got the hang of it. Otherwise, it’s ok; your posts, as they are now, are fine.
Say what? That the realization that time does not exist is life-transforming? I say it because it is true. Even though I live in timing with the common herd to get basic needs like food, clothing and shelter, I don’t march in tandem with lemmings mired in their hardships, conflicts and sorrows.
For our purposes nothing changes in any way at all. Time still accompanies change. And if there is no change, you won’t know that time is also missing. Wherever there is empty space, there will also be time. Spacetime will not go away. It’s just that time is not an extra dimension except as part of spacetime. Time will just not exist independent of space. It never has. And it is not testable.
Time is not measurable in and of itself. It is always connected to the measurable existence of something else.
If time exists, then you live in accordance with that reality. You rise at dawn and toil till dusk to earn your daily bread, raise your family, fight your wars, and seek security among those of your kind in rituals such as birthdays, marriages, and funerals.
Bob, the bottom line here is that the inherent nature of our object reality is essentially perceptual.
I'l go along with saying that reality is perceptual, but only because reality is in the mind. I accept that there must be an object and it must interact with its surroundings before it can be perceived. I accept that the object will have some inherent nature but the nature of the object does not depend on our ability to perceive it and we may not be able determine what it is. I guess what I'm saying is that I have to believe there is an objective reality which we share, but we may not actually know what it is.
Hal: Time is a reference point, a value for a metric named “time”. Everyone uses “time” to suit their purposes.
Of course. Time, in itself, as an existential thing, doesn’t exist. Scientists don’t see this and factor time as a fact of life and a fundamental dimension in objective reality.
In conventional life, we regard time as a matter of fact also. The reason is, life is not static. Life is essentially a complexity of changes starting with the changes in positions of the sun, the moon, the stars; then we have the change of seasons; and, most importantly, the changes in the human body as it ages from birth to death. All those changes are perceivable because of the memory which capture every relevant event. It is through comparison of events that the illusion of movement is perceived. This is how we perceive time when we look at the clock that has changed its hands’ positions from 1 pm to 2 pm. Or when we look at the sun overhead at noon and remember its position on the horizon at dawn. Thus, time is an artifact of the memory, an illusory temporal process that doesn’t exist; and yet, it forms our psyche and dominates every aspect of our lives.
Thus, time is an artifact of the memory, an illusory temporal process that doesn’t exist; and yet, it forms our psyche and dominates every aspect of our lives.
And so, in a realm which is timeless and where there are entities which do not change, we would not be subject to that structure. I don't see how it can be anything other than non-physical. I don't see anything in our experience which is comparable to that posited experience. Mysterious in the extreme.
Bob said; And so, in a realm which is timeless and where there are entities which do not change, we would not be subject to that structure. I don’t see how it can be anything other than non-physical. I don’t see anything in our experience which is comparable to that posited experience. Mysterious in the extreme.
It is truly confounding.
But don’t forget that existence and duration of static entities would be measurable by an observer. But in a static universe the observer itself would be unable to make measurement. Fact is that nothing can exist without change, including observation, thus the question is moot. In a purely static universe time would stand still and no new measurable time would emerge as a product of duration.
Time is a product of memory in the observer. No observer, no measurable time.
Write4U: Time is a product of memory in the observer. No observer, no measurable time.
Well stated! (If you didn't steal that from the Buddha.) I would add to that: no observer, nothing exists. But this is a logical deduction of no practical use.
The observer exists. It is its nature that is the bone of contention as well as the source of misery.