This arose from a question referred to me on Quora. As part of my discussion, I wondered into philosophical territory originally posited over a century ago by a forgotten philosopher, J.M.E. McTaggart, thanks to A.C. Grayling (English philosophers seem to have a predilection for using initials). It seems to fit seamlessly into my own particular philosophy on the relationship between time and consciousness.
The original question on Quora, asked by Adriana Moraes (from Sao Paulo, Brazil):
How does the past, present, and future exist simultaneously?
I don’t believe they do. In fact, I contend that past, present and future are only meaningful concepts in some creature’s mind; which means that I don’t believe it’s a cognitive state unique to humanity.
We are only aware of the past because we have memories. In fact, without memory, you wouldn’t know you are conscious. Consciousness exists in a constant present, so time for us is always ‘now’. This, of course, applies to all sentient creatures. For all events that we witness or observe, ‘now’ is ephemeral – they become the past as soon as they happen - which is demonstrated every time someone takes a photo. We say it ‘freezes time’, when in fact, it records an event that would otherwise vanish.
Past, present and future require a reference point, and consciousness provides that reference point. We imagine futures, and curiously, the same part of the brain that imagines what might happen, conjures up memories of what has happened. This makes sense when one realises that we attempt to predict the future based on what we have experienced in the past.
Raymond Tallis, who has a background in neuroscience and writes books as well as a regular column in Philosophy Now, makes the observation that our ability to ‘imagine’ future ‘possibilities’, and select one to make ‘actual’, is the very definition of free will, only he calls it 'agency'.
In 1908, an Oxford philosopher, J.M.E. McTaggart published a paper titled, On the Unreality of Time in the journal, Mind (ref: A.C. Grayling, The History of Philosophy, 2019). McTaggart argued that there are 2 types of time: Type A, which is based on using the ‘present’ as a reference point for ‘past-present-future’; and Type B, which is just the ordering of events into ‘earlier than/later than’. He contended, in effect, that because ‘now’ is constantly changing, you get contradictions with Type A and Type B (which is perceivably 'fixed'). I’ve over-simplified his argument for brevity, and given it my own interpretation, which is that you can’t have both Type A and Type B. However, I contend that Type B time is just Type A time without consciousness, which resolves that particular paradox.
Most physicists, if not all, believe that the past, present and future are all fixed, because, according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, ‘now’ is totally subjective. This is the so-called ‘block universe’, which is a logical consequence of treating time as a spatial dimension, giving us space-time.
You can observe time as a dimension by looking at the night sky and seeing stars hundreds, if not thousands of years, in the past. This means that hypothetical observers in different parts of the Universe see a different ‘now’ and will observe events occurring in different sequences. This is a logical consequence of the finite speed of light. However, causally related events must happen in an objective sequence, irrespective of observers. This is Type B time, as defined by McTaggart. We are able to deduce causality of events that have happened in our past, which gives us theories of cosmology and evolution. This has to be compatible with Type A time, which is dependent on the fact that we all live in the present all of the time.
Whether our present is different to someone else’s present (somewhere else in the Universe) just means that their Type A experience of time is different to ours, but Type B time occurs regardless of conscious observers.
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The ship has a length (for each observer) even though different observers "measure" different lengths.
You're talking about relativistic effects.
Read my post on the twin paradox. Not only does the 'travelling' twin age less, but they also travel less distance, as determined by the Lorentz contraction (for both).
Here is a poem I wrote, placed here as prose, titled Everything.
About everything there’s not a lot to be said - so here goes. Imagined as a snapshot it’s constituents appear crisply together when in fact they are aeons apart. The synoptic story, stars in the sky, is vibration from distant objects which themselves may no longer exist. Even so things meet in us now. On a clear night it’s a compelling prospect, fair stab at a picture of everything, and projected into the future hangs together or falls apart according to taste. Which introduces other uncertainties. Heisenberg’s. The pathetic fallacy. Objectivity as the view from nowhere. Thought experiments which strain to include the thinker. We count from indefinite ground, everything in the cupboard or garden shed, to be sure; everything without constraint? Difficult. It stirs up the philosophical gremlins, paradox, contradiction, indeterminacy. ‘The world is all that is the case’ kicked off Wittgenstein. Can’t argue with that. But resting on what? The Big Bang? God? Nothing? We can’t think beyond everything - that doesn’t mean it’s enough.
One of the points I like to make, that most people never consider, is that even light from the earliest stages of the Universe (including the CMBR) is always in the future of whatever it interacts with. It's a paradox that is rarely considered, yet it's obvious. And when it hits your eye, or a photon detector, you have an instantaneous link to the very distant past. Stephen Hawking is one of the few, whom I know has talked about it, in his book, The Grand Design
This is a very lengthy discussion around that book, if you're interested.
https://journeymanphilosopher.blogspot.com/2020/08/did-universe-see-us-coming_26.html
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