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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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 ...
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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
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Is time fundamental like space or only a tool for measurement? [closed]
Time is to distance or acceleration what progression is to space. Time “exists” like distance as a measurement but is not ‘real’ like me, you or the earth that we stand. Time is a measurement of ...
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If there are abstract cases of space and time, then why wouldn't all the other abstract objects be located inside of them?
As per the SEP article on abstract objects:
Some of the archetypes of abstractness are non-spatiotemporal in a straightforward sense. It makes no sense to ask where the cosine function was last ...
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Do we exist in the same dimension as time?
For the past few week I’ve had conversations with many forums about this question that’s very pertinent to me. Is time fundamental just like space, or is it simply a property of the progressive nature ...
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How do we know (i.e. justify our belief) that time exists without "proving too much"?
How do we know that time exists?
This is a complex question.
First, we cannot make sense of a question like this without first establishing what we mean by knowledge.
For convenience, let's pick the ...
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Kantian things in themselves not in space or time. How do we locate them?
I have one nagging question about things in themselves being outside of space and time. How do we locate objects in space and time? Why are some objects in our vicinity and others far away? The ...
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Time Travel and conservation of Energy! [closed]
As of physical laws we know today there is no way either to create energy or mass not to destroy it and it behold true for specific space time continuum (i am trying to not use term universe here) . ...
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Space as being "cardinal-like"?
I was thinking about Zermelo's critique of Cantor's reasoning for the well-ordering principle, how Zermelo characterized it as an appeal to temporal intuition, whereby time itself does the well-...
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Is the moment of change numerically identical with the time it occurs?
Is the moment of change numerically identical with the time it occurs?
If the moment of change is today at noon, is that the exact same time as today at noon, whatever it is else happens then?
It may ...
user62133
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What is McTaggart's vicious circle problem with the A series?
In The Unreality of Time (1908), J. Ellis McTaggart identifies a fatal vicious circle in the A series of time. What is the problem? The sun rises every day and ever-finer measurements of time are ...
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Do irreversible thermodynamic processes CONSTITUTE time, or do they MOVE IN time?
This question was closed as being opinion-based on the physics site. So I thought, time being a popular subject in philosophy, to ask it here and find out about some philosophical opinions.
Time can ...
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Copernican Principle defended using Algorithmic Information Theory?
Imagine a chronologically-ordered list of all the n humans who will ever live. I am already assuming that time is linear rather than say a branching structure.
Can the Copernican Principle be defended ...
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Is "infinity" simply an accident of brains/turing machines?
As far as I know, no actual "infinity" exists in the universe. For example, the age of the observable universe is thought to be 10 - 15 billion years, while its size seems to be about 93 ...
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Are the A and B theories of time meant to describe actual/ontic/physical reality?
I know this question has been asked many times before but I'm honestly not capable of fully understanding all the many answers that have been given for questions like this. Basically I'm wondering ...
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Is it possible to ascribe a value to time? Is time valueless?
Some argue that it has no inherent value, while some believe that it has limited but valuable worth. Some theorists argue that because time can be measured and quantified, its value as an object can ...
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Does time have a changing speed?
Based on my own personal experiences and responses from other people I have questioned time is more than numbers.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that it is a fact that pleasure speeds up ...
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I might have found a fundamental problem with Novikov's Self-Consistency Solution principle?
I was thinking over Novikov's principle, trying to explain it to some younger people interested in the topic when I had a realisation. This is probably easily explained, but its stuck in my head now ...
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How does the cited passage of Aristotle imply that what exists sempiternally cannot age?
This article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy indicates Aristotle's position as "what exists sempiternally cannot age. (Physics 221b30)"
The Hussey translation of the cited ...
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Graham Priest's "escape from Hell" puzzle
The gist of the puzzle is that every day, the Devil offers to flip a coin to see if you escape; one loss and you're guaranteed to be stuck forever, but each day the probability of a winning toss ...
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What is the basis for a b theory of time?
I am trying to better understand the B theory of time. It doesn’t make sense to me to deny tenses and say that every spot in time exists. Can someone please provide a basis for adopting the B theory, ...
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Is there any good argument that time moves?
We all experience that time moves, and most people just assume that it is the truth.
However, I see no solid ground behind it, since our perception would not change if it does. Our perception of ...
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A new challenge to physical reality
So recently I was thinking about Zeno's paradox (of infinite sum of 1/2^n in motion). Although I love calculus, I still don't get how it could possibly solve the paradox in Physical world, because ...
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