In response to the assertion that cosmological time is a fiction

This is in response to a letter published in Philosophy Now (Issue 121, August / September 2017) by Peter Jones. I know nothing about him except he lives in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.

Basically, he argues that claiming that science tells us that time existed prior to consciousness is 'scientism'. I will provide selected quotes to give a flavour of his argument.

"...the 'mathematical' continuum used by physics, which is a fiction, and famously paradoxical, and the 'intuitive' continuum: the continuum of experienced time. The non-fictional experience of time is dependent on consciousness."

And this is the fundamental premise of his thesis: that time does not exist without consciousness; which creates all sorts of problems for cosmology. I readily admit that time is one of the great mysteries of the Universe, yet I don't think our knowledge is so bare as to suggest that it's a mathematical fiction. I also acknowledge that it's probably the sticking point in our inability to find a compatible TOE (so-called Theory of Everything) which combines General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. Having said all that, Jones' assertion creates contradictions of its own. But before I address that specifically, more quotes:

"If we do not allow scientists to overstep their authority, then some reasoning here will lead us... to Nagarjuna, the Buddha and Laozi; and to the idea that time is a mental phenomenon such that by reduction, the only time is Now... We can dream of the past and the future, but nothing can happen 'in the past' or 'in the future'."

So, according to Jones, the only time is now and it's purely a mental phenomenon. Time external to the mind, as we all believe exists, because we all interact with it, along with the 3 dimensions of space, is a fiction. In fact, I'm not sure, but I think Jones may consider space to be a fiction as well, if one takes the following seriously:

"...it is very plausible that consciousness is necessary for time and space."

He argues that this was Kant's view, which, from my reading of Kant, I'd say is correct, but it's never made sense to me. Kant lived after Newton, but cosmology was not really a science in his time. In fact, cosmology is really a 20th Century science, arising from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and the discovery of an expanding Universe. I'm not sure Kant would consider the entire Universe to be a mental construction, which is the logical conclusion to considering space and time to be purely mental phenomena. If time and space, as described by the equations of physics, are both fictions, then the entire Universe must be a fiction, because the Universe has no framework and no structure without time and space.

But Jones considers religious texts to be more germane to this subject than science:

"If someone one day proves that temporal sequences of events occurred prior to consciousness, then we must dismiss the Upanishads as nonsense. Until then, we should pay it some respect."

I haven't read the Upanishads, yet I know that Schrodinger studied them, and they gave him the idea of a universal mind, if I understand him correctly. So maybe Jones believes that there is a universal mind in which the time and space of the Universe exists. That's the only way I can make sense of his assertion, but he never expanded on that specifically, so I'm guessing.

Given that context, I think Jones' last words (on the scientific approach to time) tells us everything we need to know:

"I wonder sometimes whether this approach doesn't deserve the title 'mysticism' more than the view it ignores."

So science, concerning time, is 'metaphysical conjecture', and religious texts like the Upanishads deserve more respect than our theories on cosmology, which are derived from Einstein's equations and observations based on discoveries like the Cosmological Background Radiation, which all but confirms the Big Bang.

Below is a letter of my own that I wrote to the Editor of Philosophy Now in response to Jones' letter. The arguments below are more specific than my discussion above.


I expect I’m one of many who found Peter Jones’ missive on ‘time’ (Letters, Issue 121) astounding, especially when he responds to Raymond Tallis’s claim ‘…that we know from science that there was a temporal sequence of events before there was any consciousness’, by saying: ‘We know nothing of the sort’.

Very few people believe that the Universe, which includes time, did not exist prior to consciousness. Even the use of the word ‘prior’ implies there was time without consciousness. So either there was no time in the Universe ‘before’ consciousness or there is no Universe without consciousness. Whilst these viewpoints can be defended ontologically, I’m not aware of any scientist who would. Roger Penrose has pointed out that there is no time without mass because photons have zero time. So the Universe requires mass for time to exist, which is a precursor to consciousness, if we accept that all conscious entities have mass. Therefore, logically, time existed before consciousness, yet Jones claims that everything I’ve just said is ‘metaphysical conjecture’.

Einstein made the connection between time and light, which allows time to be seen mathematically as another dimension. But we can actually see this dimension ourselves by looking at the night sky. Using telescopes, both optical and radio, we can literally look back in time; in fact, 100 million years using the Hubble space telescope. Life began 3.8 billion years ago, without consciousness, and the Big Bang is in the order of 13.7 billion year ago, according to current scientific thinking. Whilst I concede that all of these figures are subject to change, pending future discoveries and better understanding, which is the nature of scientific investigation, I don’t expect someone in the future to claim that the Universe started after life began on Earth. It’s a syllogistic contradiction.

Jones makes the point that ‘now’ is the only time we know, which he calls the ‘Perennial view’. I agree that consciousness exists in a constant now, which supports that view, and, like Tallis, I agree that without consciousness the terms past, present and future have no relevance. However, there is evidence that time existed in the past – one only has to take a photograph. But, even without photographs, we have memories. In fact, without memory (both short term and long term) we wouldn’t know that we are conscious, and there are cases where this has actually happened. People have been knocked unconscious but proceed to behave as if they’re conscious then have no memory of it. It happened to my father in a boxing ring which convinced him to give up boxing. I’ve heard anecdotally of other instances, like when a woman security guard shot a man after he knocked her out, but afterwards had no memory of it. So the fact that you know that you’re conscious means you have memory, which means there is a 'past' in time. We all know what we did seconds ago, not to mention years and decades ago, and we can often produce evidence in the form of photographs, letters and recorded conversations to substantiate it. None of this is metaphysical conjecture.

We also know that time is asymmetrical and there are a number of scientifically valid means of demonstrating this. Best known is entropy or the second law of thermodynamics explained very well by Erwin Schrodinger in his book, What is Life? and also by Richard Feynman in The Character of Physical Law. Chaos, which is a common phenomenon in the natural world, at a cosmological level, as well as at a biological level and even at a molecular level, also demonstrates asymmetry in time. It is described as ‘deterministic but unpredictable’ because minute changes in initial conditions change future outcomes dramatically. To determine the initial conditions, mathematically, requires calculations to infinite decimal places, which makes it impossible. This means that if you could hypothetically restart an event at those initial conditions the future would be completely different. And finally, quantum mechanics creates asymmetry in time because its outcomes are probabilistic, not deterministic. In fact, many people believe that every quantum event creates another universe following its own timeline. Now, that is metaphysical conjecture. But quantum mechanics itself is not; in fact, it’s the most successful theory in science.