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Michio Kaku: Believe it or not, a clock on your head beats at a different rate than a clock on your foot. We can now measure this and it has practical importance as well. First of all, Einstein said that time is a river. It's a gigantic river were all swept up in the river of time and it can speed up and it slows down. For example, on the moon; did you know, that time beats faster on the moon than it does on the earth and we can measure this? On Jupiter, time beats slower on Jupiter that it does on the Earth. So time beats at different rates. When an object moves very fast, time slows down inside that rocket that is moving very fast. If that rocket is then placed on the Moon, time beats faster. So we have to do competing effects. This has a direct implication with regards to your cell phone.
Your cell phone has GPS which allows you to locate objects on planet Earth by focusing in on satellites orbiting the planet Earth. Satellites travel at 18,000 mph if they’re in lower earth orbit; therefore time slows down for those low-lying satellites. But if satellites go farther and farther away, gravity gets less and less and less so time speeds up. So in outer space we have two competing effects. Fast satellite slowdown in time, very faraway satellites speed up inside and in fact, at one radius you could calculate time beats exactly at the same rate as it does on the planet earth. So what does it mean? Your GPS system would totally fail without Einstein's theory of special and general relativity.
This also means that the top of your head because it is farther from the center of the earth, beats at a faster rate... time beats at a faster rate then your feet. So you can actually show that even within your own body now—our instruments are so accurate—that you could show within your own body the fact that time beats at different rates within your own body.
In my humble opinion, time is an abstract concept created to rationally organize thoughts and events on a personal and social level; to establish a point to point reference used to communicate with others.
Clocks and other measuring devices are used to calculate this abstract concept. I have no problem with these devices, in fact they are very necessary for human interaction, but they are not founded in the concrete reality of the universe. Math is abstract in that it is our way of understanding reality, it does not dictate but defines. Time does not have these qualities, it is not defining reality, it is our own way of putting experiences together in our own mind.
One possible answer is that time passing is a quale, which is a little different than saying time is a quale. To say time is a quale is a bit like saying length is a quale - not that I want to close a book on that argument except provisionally. So we have a subjective experience of 'moving' through time and 'change' when in fact stuff is just there, already finishing. Instead of traveling through space, over the length of some table, say, we 'travel' through time, or really our limited perspective (locked in a seeming now) 'travels' through time, forward, and notices 'changes', when in fact it is just like seeing more of the table, we see 'the future'. So 'time passing' and changes are really similar to qualia, but time is objective, its just not what we think it is.Amorphos wrote:The quale of time, ...?
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One possible answer is that time passing is a quale, which is a little different than saying time is a quale. To say time is a quale is a bit like saying length is a quale - not that I want to close a book on that argument except provisionally. So we have a subjective experience of 'moving' through time and 'change' when in fact stuff is just there, already finishing. Instead of traveling through space, over the length of some table, say, we 'travel' through time, or really our limited perspective (locked in a seeming now) 'travels' through time, forward, and notices 'changes', when in fact it is just like seeing more of the table, we see 'the future'. So 'time passing' and changes are really similar to qualia, but time is objective, its just not what we think it is.

if we can measure change "out there" during certain intervals, what's to say that is not "time"? So now we have an objective, and subjective way to measure said "time".
Furthermore, quale is a sort of sensation. Can we call time a "sensation"? Now we are getting deep into our first axioms we decide to take. Are we going to have our heads to far in the clouds? Our heads to deep in the sand?
Quale is something felt--what seems to be. Please correct me if I'm not accurate in my definition.
If time is a river, is it a placid river or is it a river with rapids, eddies, and/or quiet whirlpools?
Does time need dimension? If so, isn't that spacetime?
In all my questions, one thing is common--time is measurement of some sort. This why the leap second was added to the atomic clock to compensate for earth's rotational bobble (probably due to the molten core of the earth slowing its rotation.)
Time is also movement, as we all know. However, time isn't an object. Can only objects have qualia
if qualia are specific properties of 'things,' because you cannot touch, see, or feel the mind any more that you can time.
couldn't you say that the quale of time is movement but the movement isn't necessarily movement from past to future.
But I think we also move in time. Our sun and all the other observable stars are also moving through space. We can see that movement; we use time to measure that movement. Does that make sense?
If a 'thing' can be measured, does that give it dimension? Time can be measured.
If a 'thing' has motion, does that give it entropy? ??? Matter has dimension and entropy--Does time? Time has measure-ability and motion without mass, so there is no entropy. And so I go around in circles.
Time is still a something with some dimension and motion. The effects of time are inherent in all 'things' on earth--beyond the effects of time, there are genes within living things on earth that act as signals--to grow, mature, reproduce, go into hibernation, wake up, die, morph (through evolution) into something better able to sustain life within changing environments. All that activity has time as a basic.
I worked with a definition of time in my post.Frankenstein wrote:Has anybody defined the term "time" yet?

moreno
I worked with a definition of time in my post.
I can't say I have any clear belief what time is, but I explored one way of looking at time, and not one I came up with.
joe
Time for me, is progression.
Amorphos wrote:I like to think of it as a kind of propulsion, it is within the context of mass and energy driving it or is the driving force of that. equally it is also without, driving the entire mass of the universe. so I think in our own terms we kind of agree here.
Its also unlimited, but that’s quite another debate.
I think we feel both, and that is the qualia of time for us, relative and general. At least that’s how I experience it, don’t you?
I think that if you or something else moves the pendulum on the clock, then time for it has sped up.

When a pendulum moves faster than another pendulum, it is because it us under different affects.

Amorphos wrote:if we can measure change "out there" during certain intervals, what's to say that is not "time"? So now we have an objective, and subjective way to measure said "time".
Here I am not going to entertain idea about everything being subjective, so we cannot know what’s out there [we have many posts on that and its become irrelevant to me at least]. I will just jump straight to the idea that the brain is a worldly instrument designed by nature to interact with and understand nature, so yes it can know what’s out there.
I’d say change is time, somehow we have to find a way to embed it into energy forces and matter, for me we must consider time, energy and matter at once ~ within the same thing [I‘d say that means energy and matter are aspects of time and information].
Lets now say we have some sense of an objective time [or jump to that regardless], and the brain is made of the same stuff though translates the objective time into subjective time.
So now we can get onto what that subjective experience means as a perception [arent all perceptions kinds of mental qualities?]…
----------p2---------------------------------------------Furthermore, quale is a sort of sensation. Can we call time a "sensation"? Now we are getting deep into our first axioms we decide to take. Are we going to have our heads to far in the clouds? Our heads to deep in the sand?
It should be illegal for philosophers to stop! Lol
Hmm, well colour is a sensation in our experience but also a quality without sensation in and of itself.
Thoughts and perceptions equally aren’t all sensations, we can think conceptually, linguistically or in terms of visualisation ~ these are not sensations.
However, time is when considered a sensation - no? when we are not really thinking about it, then the quality of time is kinda there in the background, and hence not a sensation. There are probably many ways we can think without noticing time e.g. meditation, sleep.
Hmm it does get a bit deep doesn’t it, maybe consider this latter part of the post before we worry about objective time ~ which is possibly irrelevant anyway.
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If time is external to us: To say time is "quale" may be analogous to saying that the sun is a sunburn.
If time is subjective: To say time is "quale" may be analogous to saying that you can "feel" an idea, like Pi, or infinity.
Time, in special relativity, however, isn't constant. As a 'body' approaches the speed of light, time slows. Would it mean, then, that, if a body reaches and/or exceeds the speed of light, time ends?
Amorphos wrote:If time is external to us: To say time is "quale" may be analogous to saying that the sun is a sunburn.
If time is subjective: To say time is "quale" may be analogous to saying that you can "feel" an idea, like Pi, or infinity.
Well time probably doesn’t exist as a thing, but we experience it as a thing.Time, in special relativity, however, isn't constant. As a 'body' approaches the speed of light, time slows. Would it mean, then, that, if a body reaches and/or exceeds the speed of light, time ends?
Does time slow or do things slow? If things then go faster why does time go slower, I don’t get how time itself ‘is something’ that is somehow within things going slower or faster, what does that mean?
This gravitational pull slows time as it speeds up the movement of particles captured by the gravitation of the black hole
Amorphos wrote:LizThis gravitational pull slows time as it speeds up the movement of particles captured by the gravitation of the black hole
I can understand gravity slowing time because it can slow particles and objects. I cant understand it speeding up the movement of particles, AND slowing down time ~ kinda like an anti-momentum. That would make time ‘something’ like a force [like gravity].
I guess that’s what it does though, so time is something ~ where people are always saying things like; ‘time does not exist until you look at your watch’ [which makes it a qualia].
So if time exists does that mean that our perception of it is not a qualia, but the perception of time as a thing which is making effect upon the mind? …there is no subjectivity to it.
I would imagine that even if objective time exists, our perception of it comes through the filter of the brain. The experience of time is thus not the experience of objective time!
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