Does time pass? | Julian Barbour, Tim Maudlin, Emily Thomas

Are we deluded by experience into imagining the present is real?

Past and future are worlds we can never inhabit. We live of necessity in the present. But physicists and philosophers with very different outlooks, from Einstein to Derrida, claim that the present is an illusion. Is time not a river at all, but instead a static dimension? Are we deluded by experience into imagining the present is real? Or are Einstein's spacetime universe, and Derrida's attack on the metaphysics of presence, fundamental errors?

Julian Barbour is a physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science.

Tim William Eric Maudlin is a philosopher of science, whose influential work focuses on the metaphysical foundations of physics and logic.

Emily Thomas is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. She has published widely on the history of metaphysics, especially space and time.

#time #physics #philosophy

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[TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

What did you think of this debate? Leave a comment below.

[anthonyvossman]

The deeper problems of Number Theory can perhaps shed some light on this debate. When you view the bilaterally symmetric numberline of left and right negative and positive integers and then switch your viewpoint to absolute value and positive natural numbers only, the bilateral symmetry of the former is carried to the latter via Goldbach and Riemann conjectures which suggest that every individual natural number is a midpoint between at least one prime pairing in every successive 2N interval. The distribution of primes effectively preserve the symmetry. This recursive conservation of bilateral symmetry can lead to the posit that time asymmetry is both real and an illusion of a sort.

[kpunkt.klaviermusik]

"Now" is the point in time where (from all the infinite possibilties) only ONE possibility is manifesting as reality and instantly turns into the "past".
Future is to some extent predictable, the lower the time difference to "now" is - the bigger the chance to predict it correctly. But it will never be 100%.

[nrosko]

I always thought of time as side effect of consciousness even i remember thinking this at school & debating with my science teacher. What i don't get with Barbour is when he says movement is an illusion.

[stephencarlsbad]

We can feel time moving from causality toward an outcome and we can often predict the outcome which makes us good at sensing time and time duration and in that vein this makes us good at sensing time itself as the equivalent to any particular measurable causality.
One of the major measurements that we rely on is the measurement of the day.
Because of our local position in our solar system being at a particular local gravity, we have become very good at predicting the flow of time at many different measurements within the current local gravity.

[TonyProctor]

The conclusion is clear-cut, IMHO, but we are hampered by an intransigent belief in the fundamentality of experience. Conscious experience can be explained in the context of a block universe, ... surprisingly to many.

[pekkavirtanen]

when a clock strikes, does it strike everywhere in the world (space) at the same time?

[BugRib]

I think uni-directional, "flowing" time is just a logical necessity for any coherent and actualized reality, so naturally, that's where conscious organisms are going to find themselves.

Personally, I think consciousness is necessary, too. Any universes or realms without those things wouldn't be actualized, so they would basically either be "dead", meaningless universes or Platonic realms of pure, mathematical forms.

Or something like that... 🤔

[Stuartgerwyn]

I think of time as the witnessing of ; The movement of things or particles through space... Am I wrong?

[trevorjames]

"Kaalah Pachati Bhootaani Kaalah Sanharte Prajaah. Kaalah Suptesh Jaagarti Kaalo Hinduratikramah." - Chanakya Neeti

Translation : "Time devours the beings and destroys the creation. It remains active even when the beings are asleep. No one can check its incessant flow. [Time is all powerful and ever active. Its ruthless counting continues even if we may be asleep or not conscious. No one can check its flow. All are helpless before time.]"

[techteampxla]

Great I love all of you ! I am following all of you ! Question, if there is a “now” then there is also a “past now”, a “ now now” and a “future now”, it seems like it’s a uni directional flow. I am still studying more thanks for the information you guys are amazing, and inspiring ❤

[dennisgalvin]

"Time is a system we invented for keeping track of our daily and yearly passing's. Time passing is an illusion created by the harnessing of our planet's rotations for time's invention.
Bruce Dillon.

[KaliFissure]

Time is a compactified dimension one single Planck second in size. Space is loosely coupled so we can use Kuramoto synchrony to evolve a hyperplane of the present. All actions having within the span of a Planck second. This gives us chirality as well some an inflow from one side is an outflow from the other. Clockwise here is counterclockwise there.
Compactification
This is why there are limits< limit theorem
This is why there is conservation.
And of course why we can't move in time

[francisduffy]

Good luck convincing your landlord that time is yet another illusion, when the rent is due.

[pairadeau]

There are no thoughts without time and vice versa. "You" are a construct of your thoughts. Hence, you iff time.

[donaldcatton]

We are born, we age, we die....so unreal...

[spiritualanarchist]

If time and movement are illusions created by our brains, how can we know where illusions and limitations begin or end. If you follow this logic, the same limited brain can by definition not be trusted to theorize on it's own flaws .

[midi]

The past and future are constructs of our imaginations. They have effect on us, but aren't real in the sense that the present is. The present is reality - all that exists. Like a film movie that is a series of static images, appearing continuous on the screen due to the frames passing across the beam of light fast enough, the universe is coming about and dissolving away at an incredibly fast rate. (This is on the experiential side of the coin, as opposed to the existential side of the coin, where you transcend duality and everything is one indivisible whole.) The experience of the passage of time is due to the present moment fading away as it's replaced by the new present moment. That gives us an impression of movement or flow. There is change and there are many periodic cycles that all give the impression of "time", but it's not anything that exists apart from our imaginations. I think when we are little and are taught about numbers and the number line, we apply that concept to time, where the 0 is now and the negative direction becomes past and the positive becomes the future. This also gives rise to the concept that eternity is an infinite amount of time. Eternity is not an infinite amount of time. It's something altogether different. It's like the field upon which the game of time is played. The field is there whether a game is being played or not.

[anthonyvossman]

The quantum double-slit experiments seem simply to confirm Noether's theory of the continuity of symmetric phenomena across space-time. Not really a number-theoretic surprise and not unlike the Goldbach or Riemann conjectures. And so, with these physical and numerical conservation laws in mind, one can ask "Is the passage of time just an illusion?", or is this question just another recursive illusion in itself due to symmetric preservation? The asking of a question with the expectation of an answer seems to confirm the reality of temporal flow.

[CarmQ]

Instead of a “timeline”, I prefer to think time “stacks” upon itself.