Thread: No such thing as time

Hi,I will make it really short, I have heard and read some people say
that there is no such thing as time. That there is no such thing as past and or future there is only the present. Could somebody who actually believes in this
explain to me the concept of how this works. I just wanna know what it is trying to prove. Thanks

I'm an agnostic on this one but McTaggert is generally considered to be the man to go to for this class of arguments. There are other people that have made this argument and I am planning on getting a book on the philosophy of time soon so one of them may convince me.

I dismiss McTaggert's argument by saying that the A-properties (defined in the link) are not intrinsic attributes of an individual time but merely relative locators. So I would be called an "A Theorist".

That being said, I'm open to a good argument that time does not in fact exist. The main obstacle that needs to be overcome, in my judgement, is that if we deny the existence of the past, then we necessarily(?) have something that does not exist affecting that which does, i.e. the present.

I believe in time because I am aware of myself passing through it.

Thanks for the link, PhiSto--interesting reading

I don't have a lot of time right now for a response to the OP, but for me a boundless present encompassing both past and future, as well as all possibilities, follows naturally from the recognition that all boundaries originate in perception, and the objects and events we carve out of our field of awareness with these boundaries have no fixed quality of existing on their own. That's a headful, I know, but for a simpler approach, answer this question:

When is now?

Is the beginning of this sentence in the past while the end is in the future until now?

I agree with Taosaur. There is no time because it is but a perception.

There is no real movement or "passing through", which is just illusory. In the infinite Reality, nothing is "going" anywhere as it is already everywhere present by its own nature. Ultimately, there is only Absolute Stillness. Perception hides it because it focuses on specifics and appearances and ignores the greater context in which it even exists.

See time-line below (everything in red is an arbitrary projection onto Reality):

Past<<<<-----<<Previous<<-----Now/Eternity--->>Next>>-------->>>>>Future

Same deal with space, really. The space in which anything can be known has no locality at all. If you point to an "over-there", from where are you viewing it? Void. Perception would steal the origin and claim that you are sitting in front of a computer, but after the fact that the computer is deemed "out there." That's just imaginary, like time. Of course, it is convincing at first, but there is still room for questions and inconsistencies.


Void/Omnipresence/Non-locality]--->>Locality/Point/Position

I think time is a construct of the mind. Your standpoint (perspective) determines your relationship to time. Time is relative to the observer. So in principle, and in my belief - time is happening all at once, it is the moment. Think about a computer, to the computer .000000000000001 0f a second is enough time to make a calculation, but that is relative to the speed of the information within. Time is really just a way to measure matter (imaterial as well, such as thoughts) over a distance.

I do not believe in time. The past is only memory, and the future is only prediction. Neither is tangible, only the present.