Ok this is related to our current discussion of time in davids idea i felt it merits its own.
Here is something that i have been chewing over.
herbie said that we cant be certain that time exists, and consequently cant be certain that causal chains exist.
Now it seems that what we experience, or rather label as time is nothing more then our perception of motion of matter. Imagine an hourglass, each grain changes position via a multitude of causes the chief of these being gravity. Now as we observer grains consecutively changing position it gives the appearance of a linear progression. It seems for some reason we are only able to perceive motion of matter in a linear faction.
But what if we look at time as being simply a manifestation of the causal chains, not a property in itself. Everything from what we perceive as time, to the way we measure it is just motion of perceived matter. A clock simply mimics the natural motion in a predictable pattern, and for us this pattern is most easily perceived as linear. Cause and effect could be viewed as synonyms for past and present, but again that is because we experience material motion in a linear fashion, perhaps in a different context there is nothing linear about cause and effect.
In fact maby this is what behind the seeming randomness on the scale of quantum mechanics. Perhaps the causal chains are just as true on that scale but the motion of the matter can not so easily fit our linear perspective so the events appear eradic and random simply because we lack the capacity to view events on this scale in a nonlinear manner.
I eagerly await your comment, particularly you herbie.
Discuss
HerbieP on October 11, 2009, 8:22 AM
Denys much of what follows is idle speculation and I’m not sure what I think about it myself yet.
Much of science is based on conservation laws, which basically mean that particular properties are conserved over time. This is what makes the time axis unique. We expect lack of conservation along spatial axes. These conservation laws are how we recognise continuity in time.
Consciousness also depends on a sort of continuity. Memory has to tie up with experience. We know that there are types of conscious continuity where conservation is not required for example in dreams or the imagination. In these types of conscious state we can suspend certain elements of conservation provisionally. But even in dreams we need to retain enough conservation for continuity to make ‘sense’.
We think that memory and sensation in the ‘real’ causal realm is absolute. This is how our consciousness functions how we are able to anticipate the consequences of actions even on a subconscious level.
In the quantum realm there can be causal discontinuity. Many of our conceptual problems with the quantum realm result from our inability to allow that it may be more non-causal than we currently accept.
I think that it is perfectly possible that there are many ‘states’ of systems that are not accessible to our consciousness because they are discontinuous in terms of conservation laws on a macroscopic scale. The discontinuities would apply to consciousness itself and hence there would be no consciousness.
Denys Artasevych on October 12, 2009, 2:57 AM
OK let me try to digest this. What properties exactlly do we observe to be continuous over time? Can these properties be reduced to the change of position of matter?
Do you think its at all plausible that the discontinuity that appears on the quantum scale could be due the fact that this very scale makes our local illusion of linear time break down? Would you say its possible that this is simply a different manifestation of causal chains then we experience? Would it be more likely that causal chains are inapplicable on the quantum scale?
HerbieP on October 12, 2009, 9:06 AM
One property that is conserved over time is the total energy of a system.
If you imagine a ‘snapshot’ of an arrangement of particles all you can tell from the single instant is the potential energy of the particles according to positions relative to whatever fields are present. At a later time the particles may be in a different arrangement with a different total potential energy. Energy is only conserved when one takes into account kinetic energy. However one cannot know from a single snapshot (a moment in time) how kinetic energy is distributed. In fact we rely on the assumption that we can extrapolate a continuous motion from a series of such snapshots.
There is a tautology going on here. We take for granted that any particles that move do so continuously between whatever instants of time we choose. In reality we are assuming the conservation of energy in order to deduce the motions or assuming motions in order to deduce the conservation of energy.
When we consider the distribution of particles in space we define ‘different’ particles as ones existing at the same time in a different place. When we consider the distribution of particles in time we use conservation to identify particles as the same when they occupy a different space and also as the same when they don’t (because they’ve moved). Our notion of time involves making many such assumptions. The assumptions seem to be more valid when the ‘particle’ is a tennis ball, less so when they are identical electrons.
How can we definitively say that an electron in location A at time t1 is the same or different from electron at location B at time t2? The truth is, on a quantum mechanical scale, we can’t and that’s where things become confusing.
Denys Artasevych on October 14, 2009, 11:54 AM
I think this view of concervation of energy is exctlly inline with my um shall we call it speculation. Because our entire conception of time is based on our limited linear perception of motion of these particles, motion that we cant trully be certain of as you said with the snapshots.
In a sense the system cant be confirmed to have constants over time its all due to the linear preception of causal chains (or so i assume).
But again my question, would you say its mathematically and logically plausible that causal chains can be constants at all levels of matter and may simply lack linear continuity of time on the quantum scale thus appearing erratic?
tim hall on October 14, 2009, 2:08 PM
So we are applying a rate of linear time to what is estimated happening to our particles?
Denys Artasevych on October 14, 2009, 10:10 PM
Nope just the opposite im speculating that the rate of linear time is a conceptual illusion that is a result of observation of causal movement of particles in space, which in our perception happens to be linear.
HerbieP on October 15, 2009, 7:08 AM
“But again my question, would you say its mathematically and logically plausible that causal chains can be constants at all levels of matter and may simply lack linear continuity of time on the quantum scale thus appearing erratic?”
I’m not sure that I understand you Denys. In our conscious realm it seems that the direction of time is significant and that causality only works one way. this is not true in the quantum realm. In quantum electrodynamics for example positrons can mathematically be described as electrons travelling into the past. It doesn’t seem to matter for quantum processes which way you run your clock. In my day a lot of the thought was still focused on trying to apply causal rules but it seems that that is no longer the case is much contemporary physics (at least that bit not wrapped up in string theory).
It is accepted that there are no causal chains for some quantum events. However my own feeling (and it is no more than that) is that many of our problems with quantum mechanics arise because we are trying to apply our marcoscopic notions of temporal contunity and causality where they don’t fit. I think that causality and the flow of time as we generally understand it only fuctions on a scale that we can imagine (the window between the quatum and the cosmic) and this is because our consciousness is a phenomena that is dependent on this scale.
Denys Artasevych on October 15, 2009, 2:48 PM
Ok let me see if i can describe this better. Lets say that our experience of pool bal hits another pool ball, that hits and so on kind of causation is not nessisarilly the basic nature of cause an effect, but perhaps it is an illusion of experience which is linear for us for inexplicable reasons.
And perhaps on the quantum scale the causal chains don’t really break down, but only our ability to perceive them in a linear fashion does thus making it seem like cause and effect no longer apply. I of course cant describe what would be the cause and what would be the effect, and what would follow hat in what pattern, so this is simply speculation. But again what im saying is that the experience that the cause has to precede the effect could be an illusion like time itself.
Musycks on October 16, 2009, 1:21 AM
Hi Denys… the skeptic strikes back! good to see you and hope you’re doing fine.
as for this idea, I’ll say the way time is described as a ‘succession of singularities’ has been very handy for my understanding of our perceptions. The ‘illusion’ of the linear aspect would be easier to take if the decay in the morning bathroom mirror over ‘time’ was a little less brutal?!
Hi Herbie… regards from NYC, we all had a nice little meeting, contemplating life in front of Dali’s ‘Persistance of memory’ at the MoMA on 53rd and exploring Indian Curries at Columbus Circle. As they say in the classics.. wish you were there.
HerbieP on October 16, 2009, 4:32 AM
Welcome back Musycks. Sorry to have missed it. Hope that you had a great time. You’ll have to give me a blow by blow.
I think that we’re on the same page Denys. Causality is a conscious phenomenon, the ultimate anthropic principle. I think that many of the problems of modern physics arise from our inability to see that our view of phenomena is necessarily a ‘consciouscentric’ one. It’s a little like the jump in perception that happened to see that it was not necessary to view the earth as the centre of the universe.
Einstein went some way in showing that reference frames were essentially arbitrary, quantum mechanics has unsettled us further by challenging causality and the ‘arrow of time’.
What interests me at the moment is exactly how we imagine that one event ‘causes’ another. It seems that there cannot be a satisfying answer to this question. How does particle A ‘know’ from one snapshot to the next that it has a velocity with respect to particle B? Since the motion is relative it cannot be a property contained within the particle itself. How then is motion continuous through time? If particle A strikes particle B what is passed between them with the transfer of momentum which is only relative motion?
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