Questions tagged [time]
By Einstein's definition, time is what clocks measure – but how can we define “clock” without referring to time? This tag is for such philosophical questions about the many unresolved issues concerning time. Though this includes questions about the interpretation of physical theories and concepts, if your question is about what current physics can quantitatively predict or explain, it is probably not about philosophy and therefore off-topic.
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How does Ulrich Meyer treat of an "at eternity" operator in temporal logic?
Something called a "book of abstracts TELS 2022" includes a summary of one Ulrich Meyer's essay on a topic in temporal logic:
The challenge is to explain how eternal objects would differ ...
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An object exist means what? And what is the relation of it with space and time?
If something exist mentally & physically, in both forms it is understandable that we have a Idea of it in mind as well as in reality or physically but , what about things which exists in the form ...
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Does repentance absolve guilt? [closed]
Say you are a 55 year old man. You time travel back in time to when you were 15 to discuss with your former self a topic: The time you were arrested when you were 16.
Now, the 15 year old you has all ...
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Can timeless entities have properties that vary with time?
Can abstract and timeless entities, like natural numbers and sets, have properties that vary with time? I am inclined to think they do. For example, the largest known prime number keeps changing with ...
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Kant's remarks about the concept of time and the principle of noncontradiction
In the Transcendental Aesthetic he notes:
... I shall add that the conception of change, and with it the conception of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation ...
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Philosophy of time and intuitions about qualia being dependent on a distinguished present moment
When I’ve attempted to research philosophy of time I find that a lot of the discussion seems to be about how to give a logical analysis of tenses in language, but relatively little of it seems to pay ...
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What would it mean for time not to be real?
According to Kant, time is a pure intuition, meaning (in part) that its existence depends on the nature of human cognition. According to this doctrine, Other beings could in principle not experience ...
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What kind of physical complexity is related to the axiom of regularity for sets?
Augenstein's exploration in Links between physics and set theory mentions Ulam relating complexity and regularity:
There are several sources for appreciating Ulam’s ideas and interests. A collection ...
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Do I exist under the aspect of eternity?
Do I exist under the aspect of eternity?
The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the
good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis.
Wittgenstein on the unity of ethics ...
user67104
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Can we specify something vague with a definite time?
Can we specify something vague, e.g. without a boundary, with a definite time?
I am more satisfied with the idea that I became bald sometime in my 20s, I guess, than I am with the claim that I will &...
user66760
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Can something be logically necessary now but not in the future?
Can something be logically necessary now but not in the future? I probably always assumed it couldn't, that it followed from the laws of logic alone, and that these are immutable etc..
I don't think ...
user66760
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Reviewing Loschmidt’s paradox in the quantum case?
Boltzmann formulated the Stosszahlansatz :
Stosszahlansatz is the assumption that the velocities of colliding
particles are uncorrelated, and independent of position. This means
the probability that ...
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Neither Presentism nor Eternalism by Carlo Rovelli
The paper in question
Rovelli argues against both presentism and eternalism. Later he proposes third option in which the concept of "local present" is central.
The problem is I cannot ...
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Does time exist/is fundamental in such a scenario?
Suppose you have nothing, but only a thing X which doesn't change at all, is there time? How would you say how many seconds/units of time have passed when there is only the thing X i.e. static too, ...
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Are there examples in the literature of rigorous mathematical models of libertarian free will that take the laws of physics into account?
What I'm looking for is a detailed description of the decision-making process of an agent that possesses libertarian free will, when this agent is on the verge of making a choice, at some time t.
For ...
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How can god exist outside of time if exist is a connotation of time`
Some guy would probably tell me that [] your small human mind can't comprehend it, but it can comprehend some things; it knows 1 + 1 has to be two, so its not like it knows nothing. For example, some ...
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How is causal order not assuming directionality of time?
Hans Reichenbach argues for the causality and causal chain to define a topological coordinative definition of time order. Here is an excerpt from his textbook, The Philosophy of Space and Time, Dover(...
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Can the concept of antisets be used for a neo-mechanist causal set theory?
Background information:
"Causal Approaches to Scientific Explanation," sec. 1. My takeaway here is looking at individual existential quantifications, i.e. quantifying over individual causal ...
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What is the justification for Deleuze's 3rd synthesis of time?
In Difference and Repitition by Deleuze, he comes up with 3 syntheses of time. The first being habitus, which is the conditioning of actual experience through pre-existing material patterns for the ...
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If Something Exists Does Everything Exist?
Has anyone argued this? I haven't formulated a coherent argument so I'm just throwing this out there to see if anyone has thought about this already. Intuitively I think it makes sense that everything ...
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Time as a transition from a whole which is constitutable by each of many sets of parts to the set of parts that generates the shortest path?
Summary:
Any entity E which is constituted by extrinsically indiscernible parts A and B remains extrinsically the same, in all stages of the change, even if A changes to B and B to A (concurrently).
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Arguments against personal omphalism [closed]
Personal omphalism is, for a lack of a better term (let me know if you know of a better word), what I call the possibility of one's own mind having come into existence at any point, with one's ...
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The significance of the NOW
This is a final summary of my concerns. I've asked similar questions but this is a summary. I hope you clever people can alleviate my confusion and nervousness.
Special Relativity says there is no ...
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Does time ever go backwards in Special Relativity
If I move away from an obsverer at high speed, does that obsverer go backwards in time relative to me? Due to things like surfaces of simultaneity?
Or is this overinterpreting of coordinates and ...
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Andromeda paradox confusion
In the Andromeda paradox if I walk past you we have different ideas of what's happening now on Andromeda, does this lead to two versions of Andromeda? Do the Andromedeans know what they are doing in ...
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Does special relativity change how we should think of other people's consciousness alongside ours
Does special relativity change how we should think of other people's consciousness alongside ours.
I've been reading a lot on here and am not sure what to think.
It's pretty crazy really I didn't know ...
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Kant Critique of Pure Reason, how is time subjective to human intuition yet objective in regard to appearances?
I'm confused on a section in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant says "Hence time is merely a subjective condition of our (human) intuition (an intuition that is always sensible-- i.e. inasmuch as ...
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Special Relativity - Discussions I've seen online
I've seen some odd discussions on this forum that have stuck with me. But I've seen there are some very clever physicists and philosophers on here who actually understand relativity...
In relativity ...
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Ontology over time
Looking for any recommended references for this topic, I was recommended a good book on logic previously on here, and found it extremely enlightening, mainly how we deal with issues like the ship of ...
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Was Time invented or discovered?
Me and my elder brother were just talking about some stuff then he asked me a question: Was time invented or discovered and how we define time?
So I googled and it says this:
The measurement of time ...
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What to make of "time" and "time rightly spent" in the context of "the purpose of life"?
Friedrich Nietzsche in his Thus spoke Zarathustra told us a man should become a "overman" or "ubermensch" i.e. someone who believes in nihilism of universe (believing that life has ...
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The scale of decisions (Time and location) and chaos
Some ideas I am seeking thoughts on:
When I place a glass on the bench, how much was decision? I [presumably] did not decide to place it with atomic accuracy. What are the bounds of accuracy ...
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Difference between mental states and mental events?
What is the main difference between mental states and mental events in philosophy of mind? I heard from a lecturer that mental events are those entities which occur instantly or in short period of ...
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Special Relativity philosophical implications
If an observer on Andromeda moves forwards and backwards their notion of now here on Earth sways back and forth over hundreds of years
Why don't we constantly oscillate over hundreda of years whenever ...
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For Kant, why does temporal synthesis need to happen?
Taking our experience of time... this is how I understand what Kant is saying.
There's this non-temporal manifold of sensation. I am picturing it like the pages of a flipbook. Images in succession ...
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Finite and infinite temporal duration
I am trying to wrap my head around different philosophical concepts of 'forever'. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there to be three versions of 'forever' in terms of temporal duration:
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Why is Diogenes the Cynic's solution to Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox insufficient?
According to Wikipedia's discussion of Zeno's Dichotomy paradox (emphasis mine),
According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in ...
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Are we all in a state of existence and nonexistence?
Why?
Because if something exists it needs something that observes it otherwise it doesn't exist or...?
If this is true then at some point in this universe we all will very likely vanish (Big Freeze or ...
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Any modern context for Boethius' two types of now?
1,500 years ago the Roman senator & philosopher Boethius wrote of two types of 'the now':
“Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aeternitatum."
The now that passes produces time, the ...
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Please explain to me why it said that there is not only one present [closed]
Can you please explain to me in simple words why would the fact that time can go through different speeds imply that we don't share the same present? Because from where I stand it seems perfectly ...
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Does time have an origin? [closed]
First I want to assume that time exists most probably in present and nowhere else. Time is more a concept to evaluate how fast things go if you think about it...
Then I want to consider that if the &...
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Do preceding events cause subsequent ones in a four-dimensionalist world?
I feel like this question has a good chance of having been asked here before, but the first ten-odd "similar questions" listed by the site when I composed the title didn't cover what I'm ...
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I have a premise about infinite timeline, how is it?
I think that in an infinite timeline without a start, if such a timeline could exist, the only way things could work is like this:
The only things that can happen are those that already happened an ...
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Is being non existent the same as being zero in quantity
For instance,
There does not exist unicorn on earth. There are zero unicorns on earth.
How are these two different?
One could argue being zero in quantity is a temporal property. The number may change ...
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If all things come to an end, then wouldn't all things coming to an end itself end?
I saw this question here https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/18991/translating-all-things-come-to-an-end-to-latin and immediately I thought "if all things come to an end, then the action of ...
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Can changing the past ever be a coherent concept?
First, let me emphasize that I'm talking about changing THE past. Accounts with multiple timelines, say where travelling back in time causes a branching timeline, don't have this problem.
Here is the ...
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Anyone claim that the future begins before the present ends?
Who, if anyone, claims that the future begins before the present ends? I will spare you the tortured reasoning behind the (implicit) claim someone might. I'd be especially interested in any ...
user62727
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Can God change the past?
St. Augustine famously said that God is outside of time. And it is said that Peter Damian thought that God can change the past (I did not find the original source for this. If anyone knows and can ...
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Do "things" that are present depend on Dasein?
Do "things" that are present depend on Dasein? I have read Being and Time, but a very long time ago. I am not sure if I mean present at hand, but I do mean in general anything that exists in ...
user62727
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Does the bounded event constraint mean we cannot talk about events that occur now ending?
Carlotta Smith in the paper Reference Time without Tense in Recent Advances in the Syntax and Semantics of Tense, Aspect and Modality volume imposes the following condition.
The Bounded Event ...
user62727