Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA18080 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 17 Mar 2002 19:42:54 GMT Message-ID: <005801c1cdeb$43e56400$18c2b3d1@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Cultural traits and vulnerability to memes Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 11:38:06 -0800 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0055_01C1CDA8.34A4CD20" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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> > > Time is not a mystery, it's a measurement of motion.
> >
> >And where do we find this motion? Is it a property of space? All the
> >space in the universe can't make motion. Take away time, and
> >everything freezes. Time isn't just the measurement of motion. It's what
> >motion is made of.
>
> Relatively speaking, everything in the universe is moving. What we call
> time is a comparison of the motion of one thing with the relative motion of
> another. Most things are compared to the rotation of the earth. Hours,
> minutes, days are all ways of comparing our own passage through life with
> the turning of the earth. Years compare the same thing with the movement
> of the earth around the sun. Give me an example of time that does not
> compare the motion of two objects and we may be able to come to some
> agreement.
As the universe cannot be compared to any other objects, its duration is absolute. The same could be said of any organism, including ourselves. The time we experience does not depend on its measurement or anyone else's experience. A mechanism for measuring time, be it natural or artificial, cannot tell us what time itself is. This is why the reduction of reality to mechanism eliminates time.
You're confusing the menu with the meal. That we describe time according to the earth's rotation on its axis or its revolution around the sun doesn't mean days and years are identical to the motion of the earth.
> > > Time is relative because all measurements are taken from the point of
> > > view of the measurer and no two measurers can occupy the same
> > > point in the universe at the same time.
> >
> >You're assuming the existence of time here. If it were an illusion, there
> >would be no such thing as "at the same time." Past, present, and future
> >would collapse into a fourth dimension of space. The "present" would
> >then be arbitrary, and "past" and "future" would be symmetrical.
>
> No. I'm assuming a paucity of other words with which to describe the fact
> that a moving point can't be seen by two observers from another same
> exact point. There is only room in a point for one observer. I used the
> word "time" because I couldn't think of another word at the moment, not
> because it more accurately described what I was talking about. Time is
> the fourth dimension of space and a dimension is a way of describing
> what we see, not the thing we see. When I see the moon moving through
> space, I describe it in terms of size (length, width, height) and motion
> (time). These features of description exist only in my mind, not in the
> moon.
Time can certainly be treated like any physical object whose existence is purely relative to other objects. However, unlike all the other objects of the external world, time is also found within our consciousness. Each of us has a direct line to time. To deny this absolute time is to deny ourselves, and it's no surprise that mechanistic philosophy does exactly that. Mechanism also denies the totality of the universe, treating it as nothing more than a collection of parts in relation to each other. In other words, there's no final reality, either outside or inside. It's the ultimate form of nihilism.
> > > Without someone to do the measuring, there is no spacetime.
> >
> >Agreed. And without time, there would be no act of measurement and
> >therefore no spacetime.
>
>Right. Things would continue to float around in the universe but the motion
>would not be called spacetime.
How could anything "continue" without time? Again you're covertly assuming its existence while overtly denying it.
Ted
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Grant
>
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