Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Dr Jonathan Osterman PhD]

I personally do not hold a belief that time is something that moves.

I personally do know that time flies,
and this is the reason why I am always ahead of time
for every important meeting at my university in Zürich, Switzerland.

[HJCarden]

We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

At first hand, I believe that we only have evidence for the order of events in time, not their cardinality. So if we perceive A then B then C, what we can be certain of is that B is between A and C on the time scale, and it could well be the case that time is ACTUALLY flowing C to B to A. (McTaggart? A series/B series of time? unsure where this illumination comes from but its not original).

I then wonder if this understanding could be used to formulate experiments to then test what direction time is flowing. Maybe the sand in the hourglass is meant to "fall" upwards and our perception puts it in reverse. Imagining ourselves in a backwards flowing universe is daunting and counterintuitive, but it should be taken as a genuine possibility.

What explanation then could there be for our conscious experience of time being backwards? Posting now without an answer but hopefully I'll be able to come back soon when I've reflected and add more.

[Xenophon]

We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

Don't get hung up on a metaphor. Time moves. (Or maybe we're the ones moving.) Anyhow, time or ourselves pass. A 17th English writer whose name I don't care to dig up referred to this as "fluxion." As long as we're fluxing along, one need not get wedded to forward or backward. Change is going on. Aside from those (are there any left?) who adhere to a mechanical notion of progress, I don't think anyone much is invested in the notion of time necessarily being "forward." I'm not even sure that spatial notions contribute anything here. What led to your concern?