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.
355
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McTaggart's infinite regress
McTaggart argues that the A series (a series of events being past, present, and future) is contradictory because an event cannot be past, present, and future, yet any event in the A series will be all ...
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Does limited time constitute maximum effort?
Have there been any philosophers who have emphasized or spoken about/around any of the following ideas?
The idea that our limited time on Earth does/doesn't constitute a responsibility to 'make best ...
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Is Time? (more than just a memory of a series of events?) [closed]
Tl:Dr:
Is time really something that can be traversed or manipulated, or is it just an idea, a perception, a memory, a measurement of a series of events?
Question Detail:
In response to a ...
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New Year's concept [closed]
How does the New Year's concept works? I mean, is it necessary for the masses or can we live without it?
Assume that the Earth takes a billion years instead of one year to go all around the Sun. Then ...
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Is time neccessarily excluded from mathematical platonism?
That time is unreal has been an observation of objective physics since Newtons time, and more paramountly since Einstein; and its most outspoken partisan, now, is Julian Barbour. Its also been argued ...
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The thermodynamic arrow of time and information asymmetry
Its an obvious observation that we know the past, and in an idealised situation we could know all of the past; however we can never know the future, empirically or in any idealised situation: it has ...
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Did time begin? [duplicate]
I'm still circling around this quasi belief that ends and beginnings are somehow problematic.
Suppose that physicists or philosophers could show that we cannot know when time begins. Would that mean ...
user6917
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Does information paradox in the Many Worlds interpretation cause a problem?
I'm taking a philosophy of time travel class. In one of the lectures, the teacher was discussing problems with the Many Worlds interpretation. He talked about how since anything that can possibly ...
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Passage of time on a superluminal vessel [closed]
Physics SE and Space Exploration SE thought this was off-topic for them, so I'm trying it here. Sorry if I'm doing it wrong.
As I understand, within an event horizon, spacetime gets rotated so that ...
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My thoughts on time [closed]
I'm not sure if this belongs here or the physics section but I'd like to hear your opinion on this.
I've recently thought about time and what it actually is, and I'm battling between two arguments:
...
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Can we doubt that we are conscious? That we are not dead?
Obviously Descartes would suggest that we can't doubt that we think, because doubt is a cognitive attitude. But is it one that occurs when we think it does, i.e. can I doubt that I am typing this now ...
user6917
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A series and B series of time
I'm still fishing for help I guess with the unreality of time.
A theorists are said to think that the A series is not reducible to the B.
Are there different forms this rejection of reductionism ...
user6917
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Avoiding McTaggart's infinite regress
Can a proponent of the A series avoid McTaggart's infinite regress by locating the time t at which something is past present or future along the B series?
From the SEP's entry on Time
McTaggart ...
user6917
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Do durations really end?
Leading on from this question here. I am trying to construct an understanding of why Husserl and Derrida in Aporias might believe in immortality (though perhaps neither do.)
Do any of the ...
user6917
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Mula madhyamaka karika part 7-3
I started a new thread, based on others.
A thread to discuss this apparently [to me] startling passage by Nagarajuna
:
If birth, abiding and perishing had an other characteristic of being ...
user6917
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What is an infintely small unit (of time)
Is there a philosophy of the infinitely small?
Does anyone apply it to qualitative experience, and ask if that is divided up into instants?
It seems to me that the infinitely small could not be like ...
user6917
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522
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How should we understand the oracle's dilemma in making a prediction?
Let's look at a thought experiment:
There is an oracle who has exact knowledge of the state of a deterministic universe, so her predictions about the universe's future have always turned out to be ...
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Could a finite time universe exist "eternally"?
In a world of one spatial dimension and one time dimension, we can, as physicists working on relativity do, consider world lines in space-time. That is, consider the xt-plane with t as the horizontal ...
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Can logic be without time?
I think logic is dependent on time.
My reasoning is that all of the basic logic concepts are based on axioms that are observations in time (so basic that they do not require proof). This then leads ...
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How is "time" defined in modern philosophy?
We know the definition of "time" of Augustine of Hippo:
"If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not" (Conf.).
What is time? Philosophically, what can be ...
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Self determination in non atomistic time?
I am reading the book Perspective in Whitehead's Metaphysics by Stephen David Ross. On page 182 he says, "whiteheads theory of events is atomistic-primarily to allow for self determination, but the ...
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Problems with backward time travel
In the beginning of this SEP article is the discussion of contradictions a backward time travel may bring (e.g. the classical grandfather paradox) and possible ways to "eliminate" them. My question is:...
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Can a time-travel paradox prove self sustaining universe?
I was thinking this is more a philosophical question and not regarding the physics.
Can a time-travel paradox prove self sustaining universe? Let's say, I create a time machine where I can send the ...
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Time traveler's paradox [closed]
If people were to travel back in time, change something, and return to their original time, this would create a paradox for the time traveler.
To give a completely hypothetical example, consider ...
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Why the difference is measured in the absolute units (but not for time)?
I am successful at asking challenging questions. My latest victory was to ask why does python language has a special type for the time difference? I am familiar with phisics a bit. I therefore ...
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Is time travel only possible if the world is deterministic?
Let's say that true free will (and not only the impression of free will) is only possible if the world is not deterministic (meaning that the future of universe in not determined by its state at an ...
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Is the cosmological principle empircally compativle with the concept of relativity?
OK...before everyone blasts this with references to the relativistic invariance of the physical laws, time dilation, etc let me add some context. Also, I am an amateur with an interest in physics, so ...
user4634
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Can encrypted information be sent back in time while avoiding the Unproven Theorem Paradox?
Background: The Unproven Paradox involves sending a mathematical proof to individuals in the past that is obtained from the fact that there is a recipient in the past that publicly reveals the proof. ...
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What fallacy or branch of philosophy is this?
I've recently been critiquing some fluffy answers on another stack exchange and I been encountering this type of fluffy evasive answer:
The question asks about the future; all future is ...
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Can an event without a cause take place? [duplicate]
I am sure there must have been several philosophers in history who have investigated this question. However finding any specific and good research on that topic is not easy.
In our everyday life, ...
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Why do all consciousnesses seem to be in the present?
We exist across time, but have this special place in time called the present. In my naive thinking about the present, it doesn't seem to have any special significance except that all consciousnesses (...
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Temporally stable determination of value in consequentialism
If one is a consequentialist, one at least implicitly makes decisions based on how good or bad the consequences are. As such, you must implicitly have a function f that maps from the set of ...
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How can one in principle distinguish causality from observed regularity?
Hume showed that one cannot infer cause & effect in nature by induction alone. We only notice that when event A occurs then so does event B.
If event A always occurs before event B we are still ...
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Is time "Unreal"? [closed]
In 5th century BC Greece, Antiphon the Sophist, in a fragment
preserved from his chief work On Truth, held that: "Time is not a
reality (hypostasis), but a concept (noêma) or a measure (metron)."
...
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Transcendental Idealism and past time
According to Kant, time is part of the phenomenal realm. What would Kant say about past events such as the big bang when no minds existed? Would he say we can't know such things?
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Can anything truly be simultaneous?
I was looking at a discussion about simultaneous causation and something that came up was that all physical processes take time. So nothing can truly be simultaneous.
And yet, we have philosophers ...
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Concepts of state and transition as used by Kierkegaard
While reading Søren Kierkegaard's "The Concept of Anxiety", I asked myself how much of the temporal interpretation of dialectic and the interaction between state and transition (leap) are original to ...
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Philosophical implications of supplemental "time-like" dimensions?
Philosopher John G. Bennett proposed the idea that there are actually three time-like dimensions, in addition to the usual three spatial dimensions.
I would be curious to learn what the ...
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If I am infinitely old , can I have a father?
If I am infinitely old , can I have a father ?
And can I have a brother that is infinitely older than me but younger than my dad ?
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Are the experiences of the "flow of time" and of "cause and effect" qualia?
Physics and biology have no answer why or how we personally experience the color red and we say that the experience of the color red is a quale.
Physics also has no answer why or how we experience ...
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Is the notion of a "speed" of time a logical one?
Most of out time-measuring instruments are based on repetitive physical phenomenon. These phenomenon repeat and every time their state matches the one in our recent memory, we tend to acknowledge, ...
user2411
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Must the present be instantaneous in a non-deterministic universe?
The special relativity theory teaches us that simultaneity is relative to the motion of our reference frame. This seems to contradict the intuitive notion of the present to be instantaneous. Some ...
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Does Bergson view symbols negatively or only as a secondary source of knowledge?
In the Introduction to Metaphysics, metaphysics is defined as "that science which claims to dispense with symbols." Bergson contends that the human mind operates discursively, or by taking snapshots ...
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Does Asharite atomism affirm that space & time must necessarily be atomic?
I've read (probably in wikipedia but can't track down the reference now) that the Asharite strand in Islamic theology couldn't accept that substance necessarily exists pre-eternally as the Quoran ...
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Is there a point in universe that is observable at present? [closed]
We know that we can see distant galaxies only billions years before now. We can observe the nearest stars just several years before the present. Something on the Moon can be observed only some seconds ...
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Is time a physical factor or just a concept?
When thinking of cycles and myths, one cannot pass the idea of Kronos or Kali. That brought me to form some questions about the nature of time.
Three definitions for time:
Time is a measure of the ...
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6
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Does there necessarily have to be a beginning to time?
Although, I can conceive of a potentially infinite amount of time ahead of me, for it is not actual as it remains to be experienced, I can't conceive of a potentially infinite amount of time behind me,...
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How is knowing that I am going to die influencing my life?
Does the fact that I know I am going to die make me superior in a sense to all the other living creatures that have no understanding of this event? Is the fact that I know that one day I am going to ...
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3
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Does thermal time hypothesis finally resolve Zeno's paradox?
Is Time Just A Trick Of The Mind? (read article)
Carlo Rovelli, one of the founder of Loop Quantum Gravity theory likes to think so. Furthermore wikipedia entry highlights:
This position has lead ...
user1207
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3
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If something is permanently forgotten, did it still exist? [closed]
I have a question related to the philosophy of time. If something happened, but all memory traces and records of it has been wiped out, with not even indirect records left for forensic experts to ...
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