• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Does the present actually exist?

This video demonstrates quite nicely how there is the present is dependent on the observer. There is not universal present.

 
Nilly said:
This video demonstrates quite nicely how there is the present is dependent on the observer. There is not universal present.

Click to expand...


Only when the observer is moving at sufficiently high speeds. Stationary observers experience the same "present."

By the way, if time is in fact a dimension that has no absolute start point or end point (such as absolute zero for temperature) . . . then what happened before the big bang?
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Only when the observer is moving at sufficiently high speeds. Stationary observers experience the same "present."
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as stationary. Movement is relative, so being stationary compared to one thing does not make you stationary compared to another. The prospect of 2 observers having precisely the same frame of reference is a non-issue, considering that gravity also warps your frame of reference. 2 people standing next to each other may have 2 close enough frames of reference to not be discernible to human senses, but that just means that human senses aren't accurate enough to notice, not that the universe is doing things the way we perceive them.

DifferentDrummr said:
By the way, if time is in fact a dimension that has no absolute start point or end point (such as absolute zero for temperature) . . . then what happened before the big bang?
Click to expand...

Temperature is not a dimension in the same sense space and time are. A more accurate analogy would be to ask what happens beyond the edge of space? And the simple answer is we don't know. Before time and beyond space are simply undefined.
 
Last edited:
Dittohead not! said:
We live in the present time, or do we? What is the present? Think about it: One nanosecond ago is the past. A nanosecond from now is still the future. The present actually has no time dimension at all.

So, all of time is actually either past or future.

The present, then, doesn't really exist except as an intellectual construct, right?
Click to expand...

Surely only the present exists.

It is the past which nolonger exists and the future which has yet to exist.

Just because the image in my head is that which my eyes "took" a tiny moment ago does not stop it being the image in my head now.
 
Tim the plumber said:
Surely only the present exists.

It is the past which nolonger exists and the future which has yet to exist.

Just because the image in my head is that which my eyes "took" a tiny moment ago does not stop it being the image in my head now.
Click to expand...

If that's so, and if the present occupies a moment that is infinitely small, does time actually exits at all?
 
Dittohead not! said:
We live in the present time, or do we? What is the present? Think about it: One nanosecond ago is the past. A nanosecond from now is still the future. The present actually has no time dimension at all.

So, all of time is actually either past or future.

The present, then, doesn't really exist except as an intellectual construct, right?
Click to expand...

all of our perceptions of time only exist as an intellectual construct.
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Our perceptions of anything exist only as intellectual constructs.

However, many of the things themselves have existences independent of our intellects.
Click to expand...

If our intellectual constructs have an existence outside of our own intellect, how are we to prove it?
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Someone else is going to have to answer that. :)

(TBH, it's not a branch of philosophy that I ever got into very deeply.)
Click to expand...

I didn't either, but it is an interesting concept, don't you think?

If time exists only in our own intellects, does it exist outside, in the real world?
What is the "real world", anyway? We have only the stimuli reaching our brains to go on, after all.
 
Dittohead not! said:
If that's so, and if the present occupies a moment that is infinitely small, does time actually exits at all?
Click to expand...

Yes.

It's kind of coverd in the mathematical idea of tends to.

The very old riddle of how you actually arrive at your destination; You walk half way there, you are half way. You continue and all you do is reduce the fraction of the distance you are away from it. There is always a fraction remaigning.....

Except there is not, you do get there. The time period of the last fraction has tended to zero just as the fraction has tended to zero. You are there.

Time exists as the record of the past and the prediction of the future. That which is is the present.
 
Dittohead not! said:
I didn't either, but it is an interesting concept, don't you think?

If time exists only in our own intellects, does it exist outside, in the real world?
What is the "real world", anyway? We have only the stimuli reaching our brains to go on, after all.
Click to expand...

So how do we know that Morpheus' world of Zion vs. the machines wasn't just another matrix within the matrix? :)
 
Dittohead not! said:
We live in the present time, or do we? What is the present? Think about it: One nanosecond ago is the past. A nanosecond from now is still the future. The present actually has no time dimension at all.

So, all of time is actually either past or future.

The present, then, doesn't really exist except as an intellectual construct, right?
Click to expand...

Yes it does, and is easy to prove.

Just LOOK, oops there it goes.... NOW look, oops there it goes....Wait one...LOOK! Oops there it goes... ;)

We perceive the moment as it exists in the present. Kind of like a freeze frame in a celluloid movie, and just like the movies it must exist in order to allow continuity between the past and future. If it did NOT exist there would be no start, middle or end.
 
Captain Adverse said:
Yes it does, and is easy to prove.

Just LOOK, oops there it goes.... NOW look, oops there it goes....Wait one...LOOK! Oops there it goes... ;)

We perceive the moment as it exists in the present. Kind of like a freeze frame in a celluloid movie, and just like the movies it must exist in order to allow continuity between the past and future. If it did NOT exist there would be no start, middle or end.
Click to expand...

So, the present is like one frame of a video, and the frames going by produce the moving image. The video can be replayed, can be frozen, fast forwarded, and reversed. Perhaps time can do the same.

And how can we be sure that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end to time?
 
Dittohead not! said:
We live in the present time, or do we? What is the present? Think about it: One nanosecond ago is the past. A nanosecond from now is still the future. The present actually has no time dimension at all.

So, all of time is actually either past or future.

The present, then, doesn't really exist except as an intellectual construct, right?
Click to expand...

There are several schools of philosophical thought on this...

One is that there is no direction of time on the quantum scale, and thus no past or future, everything is the present. Such is the counterintuitive weirdness of quantum mechanics. However, the human macro experience produces perceptions of past and future.

Another says there are directions of time but that they can be reversed, that is, nature doesn't favor one direction of time over another.

The subject of time and the universe is related to some pretty deep and heavy physics... Yet, always fun as a thought experiment.
 
Dittohead not! said:
We live in the present time, or do we? What is the present? Think about it: One nanosecond ago is the past. A nanosecond from now is still the future. The present actually has no time dimension at all.

So, all of time is actually either past or future.

The present, then, doesn't really exist except as an intellectual construct, right?
Click to expand...

The present is not infinitely short, if we believe quantum physics which indicates there is a "planck time"... the smallest unit of time. This is the threshold below which uncertainty dominates. It is of course theoretical and derives from planck's constant.

We could therefor say that our existence is "digital" in nature, the discrete bits are planck time, planck length, planck temperature.
 
Manny said:
The present is not infinitely short, if we believe quantum physics which indicates there is a "planck time"... the smallest unit of time. This is the threshold below which uncertainty dominates. It is of course theoretical and derives from planck's constant.

We could therefor say that our existence is "digital" in nature, the discrete bits are planck time, planck length, planck temperature.
Click to expand...
How is it possible to even measure a length of time so small?
 
Dittohead not! said:
How is it possible to even measure a length of time so small?
Click to expand...
It is many orders of magnitude smaller than we can measure. However, assuming it is real, indivisible, "atomic" if you will, those granules of time add up to become that which you perceive as passing... wait for it... right now.
 
Manny said:
It is many orders of magnitude smaller than we can measure. However, assuming it is real, indivisible, "atomic" if you will, those granules of time add up to become that which you perceive as passing... wait for it... right now.
Click to expand...

So, by the time we're aware of the present, it's no longer the present but the past.
 
Dittohead not! said:
How is it possible to even measure a length of time so small?
Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:
Surely only the present exists.

It is the past which nolonger exists and the future which has yet to exist.

Just because the image in my head is that which my eyes "took" a tiny moment ago does not stop it being the image in my head now.
Click to expand...

Just because we don't perceive the past 'now', or the future 'now', doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom