8. The Nature of Time

Consider the three possible explanations of the nature of time:

(1) The dimensional view

The dimensional view of time is our normal, standard way of thinking about it. Seen as a dimension, time is a real and independent framework we move in and work through. This view is simply the idea that time is a dimension in the same sense as the physical dimensions of width, height, and depth. We say things like “At this point in time, …” and that means something like “At this place, …”, where a place is a point in space. In this view, time is something we measure just like we measure height. Though the dimensional view of time is our common sense way of looking at it, there are at least three significant problems with it.

(a) Dimensional time generates paradoxes of time travel.

One very common theme of science fiction is time travel, and all of the interesting and fascinating and intellectually complex scenarios that can be invented with a time travel story. The obvious problem admitted in every time travel story is that it necessarily involves a change in the series of events from what they would otherwise be. To travel back in time, for example, makes it that the series of events at that time is different from how it was, and that means that the events of the present would be different, but that means that the present wouldn’t be what it was, and so on go the problems. Many of these science fictional stories have characters who are concerned about “not changing the past too much," but of course they change the past significantly, no matter how little they may do.

In general, the paradoxes of time travel can be summarized in three cases when indexed to the present: Suppose (person or object) A is at time a, B is at time b, and C is at time c where times a, b, and c are sequential (a is past for b, c is future for b) and where A, B, and C are causally related (A was part of cause of B, B for C).

(i) If time travel is possible, then it is possible for B to travel prior to a, but that means that B can exist without A causing it, which cannot happen, and it is also possible for B to travel to a and/or between a and b, which would disrupt the process of causing B, which would then make B not exist as B, which is impossible. (This is case of travel to the past.)

(ii) And if time travel is possible, then it is possible for B to travel to c or after b up to c, but this would change the series of events leading to C, since to cause C requires B at b and at each point between b and c. But with the series of events being changed up to C, C would not exist as C, which is impossible. (This is case of travel to future; and by extension from past to present by changing the naming.)

(iii) And if time travel is possible, then it is possible for C to travel to point b in search of B, and yet also possible for B to leave b, which means B would not have been at b for C to have been looking for it, which was the only reason for C to have acted. So C would not have acted, and so would not have traveled, but this was assumed from the start. (This is case of travel from the future for purposes related to the present.)

Though it is certainly true that science fiction has made much hay from time travel possibilities, it has also made the paradoxes of time travel somehow acceptable; its stories just have it that time travel is difficult to understand. But ultimately the paradoxes of time travel are not difficult conundrums to figure out, they are “reductions to absurdity” of the possibility of time travel and, by extension, of the whole dimensional view. In any case of time travel considered there is necessarily a disruption of events which are required for anything to be what it is. Since the dimensional view allows this to happen, and all cases result in absurdity, then the view cannot be true.

(b) Dimensional time requires coexistence of time points, which negates cause and effect.

Related to problems with time travel is a similar problem also involving the nature of cause and effect. Consider a comparison to physical space: For it to be possible to be able to move from one physical point in dimensional space to another requires coexistence of those points. In other words, be to able to move from point M to point N it must be that points M and N are coexistent. But if time is a dimension, where it is possible to move within it, it must be that all time points are coexistent. But that is a big problem for cause and effect chains. The problem here is that for one thing to cause another it must be that it occurs before it. But if all time points are coexistent then none actually occur before any other, and so no events actually occur before another. To an observer caught up in a time series s, t, u, it certainly looks like s occurs before t and t before u, but that is only because of that observer’s perspective inside the series. That observer’s perspective however, is not really of what’s truly going on.

(Assume here as true that it is possible for time to move at different rates at different places, which seems to be a result of relativity theory.)

Saying that time can move at different rates in one place versus another under the dimensional view is like saying that space is bigger in some spots than in others, but that is impossible. Though its true that objects which are a meter long under one set of conditions are not a meter long under a different set of conditions, a meter is always a meter no matter where. So a three dimensional block of space, for example a cubic meter, will always be the same size any place or under any conditions. Even if we try to allow change in rate of time by bending of time, that gets nowhere too. For example, imagine a square and then imagine one of its sides bent inwards. When one side bends inwards the two sides next to that side bend inwards also; the total length of the perimeter of the square doesn’t change and neither does the total area of the square. So the square doesn’t change in any of its dimensions under bending. So long as we understand time with the analogy to physical dimensional space, it doesn’t seem like it could move at different rates.

(2) The projectional view

The projectional view is the idea that time is something we project on the world. The best way to understand this is by comparison to the quality of color. We normally say that objects "have" color but this is just a figure of speech that doesn't really mean what it says. Our current theory about color is that color is the result of the interaction of light with our senses. Light hits objects, then objects reflect some of that light towards the eye, and the eye processes and transmits certain kinds of information to the brain. The key to the color that we experience is the kind of light that objects reflect to us. The color the object "has" is actually what we have from it, based on what light reflects from it. For example, the grass reflects to us certain wavelengths of light and those wavelengths produce in us a green image, and so we see the grass as green. But the green of the grass is in the end something we project on it in the sense that we give it that color, the grass by itself has no color. We just see it as if it had color.

Note that this projectional character of color does not hold with all qualities, as there are some that belong to objects themselves without anything to do with how we see or perceive them. This would include qualities like mass and shape and size. Mass is determined by amount of matter, shape is determined by geometrical characteristics, and size is determined by volume of matter. All of these are independent qualities of objects. However, note that color isn't the only projected quality; there's also texture, which works by interaction with our senses. For example, to say that an object is slippery is to say that it reacts with our hands and the ability of our hands in a certain way; its not slippery outside of the gripping characteristics of our hands.

Now it is possible that time is the same sort of quality as color, that time is something that we project on objects and events in order to sort them out and distinguish them from each other. The way that this would work is something like this: The mind has a framework that it requires to be in place in order to understand the objects and events of the world, and part of that necessary framework is the ordering of experiences in intervals. If all experiences were presented to us for processing all together, the mind couldn't distinguish them one from another, much less understand them. So the mind therefore has to sort them in a way that arranges how they appear; and it does this by imposing time on them. So time is a means of mental sorting and ordering, an ordering that does not happen in things by themselves but is something that's necessary for us and so added by us. The best metaphor for this to say that the human mind's sorting of events by time is a mental version of blinking of the eyes. By blinking our eyes closed and then open we go from a solid black picture to a full color one and in a sense take a snapshot picture of objects around us. Then by blinking again we do the same again, taking in another snapshot picture. The key of the metaphor is in the interval between blinks. In sorting by time, the mind is putting one visual snapshot picture behind another and one ahead of another in an interval that works for it, just to keep them straight and distinct from another. Time, then, is our mind's self-determined interval between events.

The projectional view of time has a big plus in its favor, since note that under this view, there are no paradoxes of any kind with time travel. This obviously is because such travel is only possible in the dimensional case. However, there are at least two major problems with this view:

(a) The projection of time also undermines cause and effect connections.

The comparison of time to color breaks down when considering how objects cause and are caused by other objects. Objects can lose their color but that doesn't mean they lose their place in chains of cause and effect. A block of wood will fall on the ground and create a hole in the ground without any projectional quality involved, because the effects come about due to shape and mass, which are independent and which have nothing to do with any other quality. But time is essentially related to cause and effect, first because a cause must be prior to effect, and second because causal stages have intervals between them. But this means that if time is projected by the mind, then the mind also affects cause and effect connections; it would not control those connections, but would certainly influence them. But if cause and effect of objects and events in the world is influenced by us, then what is really happening in the physical world independent of us? Not only do we not know anything about what is happening in the world around us independent of us (for this see later issues regarding Immanuel Kant), but we can actually say that we do know that any causal connections between things on their own are at best only "partly formed." There will be some connections out there, but those will only be part of the story without our ordering input of time.

(b) The projection of time requires a “super-mental” type of ordering that we are probably not capable of.

There are at least three ways in which time projection would be really difficult:

(i) To make the projection of time work, the mind would have to order and sort change over long time spans and so do universally. Consider as an example what you see when you look at a tree’s growth over a long period of time. When you cut a tree down you see the annular rings showing each years’ growth, each year adding a small amount of wood over the entire circumference of the trunk. But that means that if you were to have looked at the tree each year while it was growing, you must have had the ability to give it the exact interval it needed each time seen. That year shown in the wood is the interval you gave it. But this ordering of change of the tree is not something that is happening with just the tree, its something happening with everything you see. So to make projection work, the mind has to make the exact sorting needed to account for all change, and this with each and every thing in the world of experience.

(ii) Similar to the problem of sorting universally, every mind would have to order things uniformly. You have to order the change to one tree the same as the change to each other tree of the same kind, and each kind as the same or as different as is needed.

(iii) And similar to the problems of sorting universally and uniformly, every mind would have to order the same way as every other mind. It isn’t just one of us who experiences the world with change ordered by time, but each and every one of us. But one person can’t have a time ordering different from any others, because then we would literally have different timelines for different people. We would all have to have the same time tracking. So every mind would have to have the same ability to the same level, which is not likely.

(3) The relational view

Another possible view of time can be called the relational view. A relation, in general, is a connection between two or more things that is separate from those things and appears only with them. Relations are created by objects and disappear when they are gone. For example consider, ‘x is above y.’ When x is above y we can see x and see can see y but there is no object that is the ‘above’ part. But even when there is no object that is the 'above' part, we can see that x is above y when it is.

In this view time is a relation between events in the sense that time is created by events, just like “above-ness” is created by objects. The idea here is that events do not occur in a fabric of time (as in the dimensional view) but rather time is the result of events in their own independent series. An example of how this would work on a large scale: The planet Earth starts at one point. The Earth moves around the Sun all the way around and then is found at that starting point again. That movement of the Earth in that space around the Sun creates one year of time. What we call one year is just that span of time from the Earth being in one spot and then moving around and coming back. The Earth doesn’t “take” a year to do this, instead it “makes” a year in doing it.

This view is entirely consistent with how we experience time the same as if time were dimensional; its just looking differently at which comes first, the events of our life producing time instead of being in time. Clocks and calendars still measure time, not as it is out there to be found (as in the dimensional view) but as it is created by events.

There are a number of reasons in favor of the relational view, dealing with its solutions to problems outlined above.

(a) This view does not generate any paradoxes of time conflicts.

There is no confusion of any kind with time travel problems, and of course this is so because the view precludes the possibility of time travel; you can't travel through time if it is a relation rather than a dimension.

(b) In this view there is no undermining of cause and effect.

Cause and effect connections go on about how they do and are independent of time, obviously since the events within cause and effect relationships are creating it.

It is entirely possible for time to have different rates in different places if it is resultant from events, which at bottom could have different fundamental change characteristics in different places.

(d) In this view time is a real and independent thing, with no dependence on the mind, so is not affected by any problems with the mind's projection ability.

In the end, note that there are at least two consequences to the relational view being the correct account of the nature of time.

First: It would show that, all our science-fictional interests aside, time travel is impossible not just in consequence but in principle.

Second: It would show that there is no essential relationship between space and time. It is common to speculate about space-time and how they may be understood as a block or as a unitary thing, but this only works in the dimensional case. But with time being an event-resultant relation, there is no such block.

(published 9/25/19)