Philosophy is arguably a sort of meeting place of poetry and math. It aspires, in many cases, to the rigor of mathematics, but this is impossible, as it is made of words.

Which ties into the issue of time. We can't have a rigorous conception of speed until we think of time in numerical terms. This also applies to dynamics in general. F =ma. If force equals mass times acceleration, and acceleration is the rate of change of speed, and speed is distance over time, then time-as-number becomes utterly necessary to conceive of force in Newtonian terms. If time were not a number in the context of physics, I don't see how we could understand gravity. And yet what is this number based on but memory and perception of change. A counting of sunrises and finally strange devices like atomic clocks.

hey when i think of what is time, i think well who made it....

resulting in the thought that IT is bigger than us, so we must ask what did we not create but can recognise that constantly moves us foward in itself.

perhaps the whole human conscience within itself? ie, belief that we are moving foward in time? like ever growing economies ?


thanks for reading

Adam

Time is irrelavant to the human conscious however as time existed before the human conciousness came into being; we can only recognise the concept of time and times passing:

Simply, I think it is a dimension of perception, much like height, depth and width.
Humans' brain-computers are capable of perceiving only these four dimensions of reality.
A goldfish has a 3 second attention span - it's brain is not as powerful a computer as our own - effectively limiting it's perception of time to just that: 3 seconds. Without a broader scale, the goldfish understands only two things: this and that. Now and next. Goal - achieved. Goal - achieved. And so on.
Time is relative.
A clock in the attic counts time faster than a clock in the basement because of the relative differences those clocks are experiencing in velocity and gravity.
What we, as humans, qualify as only 3 seconds, is the entirety of capable conscious conceptualization to the mind of a goldfish.

Maybe this will make what I'm trying to say more clear:

"onsider an alien race that lived on a massive planet that rotated every 7 earth days, so their day was a week to us."

On Earth, we humans would consider their single day to be a week. But, if a human lived on that planet, it would consider their single day to be just one single day, not a week (except that our biology is conditioned in such a way that we would become fatigued, both physically and mentally, after a certain number of relative Earth hours. But assuming that we could transcend biological limitations, our consciousness would not be any the wiser that time was "different")

I guess time is simply a rate of change.
If it takes a minute for you to run from point A to point B on Earth, it will take you a minute to run from A to B on Mars too, but, as your rate of change will be relative to Mars' gravity and velocity, so will your minute.

Dimension of perception.

Time the most fascinating cocept in the world, yet many people still claim that it's objective and NOT subjective.

I would like to see the perspective of this forum on time? Do you think it exists? Is it subjective or objective? Do you think the past and the future is real?

Do you think only the present is real or do you think there is no difference between the past,present and the future(my point of view).

Have a read of this article which goes in great depth in discussing time among many great philosophers from ancient times till modern.

"I would say a ratio of change. One change is compared to a change that is consider more constant, official etc."

Yes, I would agree with that. All rates of change can be compared to one another and a ratio could probably be determined for two set rates of change.
The time that we would consider to be 'more constant' would presumably be Earth time, as we would naturally compare all other times with our own.
Memory would be the natural way for a human to attempt to discern a rate of change, but with our technology, memory is really somewhat obsolete (when it comes to measuring a rate of change).

*From Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (p. 117-123)
As I have already said, Spinoza's system is the perfect incarnation of the absurd. (And that is why, when one tries to "realize" his thought, as we say, one experiences the same feeling of dizziness as when one is faced with a paradox of formal logic or set theory.)
Now, a particularly curious thing: absolute error or absurdity is, and must be, just as "circular" as the truth. Thus, Spinoza's (and Parmenides') absolute Knowledge must be symbolized by a closed circle (without a central point, of course): Figure 12. Indeed, if Spinoza says that the Concept is Eternity, whereas Hegel says that it is Time, they have this much in common: the Concept is not a relationship. (Or, if you like, it is in relation only to itself.) Being and (conceptual) Thought are one and the same thing, Parmenides said. Thought (or the Concept) is the attribute of Substance, which is not different from its attribute, Spinoza says. Therefore, in both cases-that is, in Parmenides-Spinoza and in Hegel-there is no "reflection" on Being. In both cases, Being itself is what reflects on itself in and through, or-better yet-as, Concept. Absolute Knowledge that reflects the totality of Being, therefore, is just as closed in itself, just as "circular," as Being itself in its totality: there is nothing outside of the Knowledge, as there is nothing outside of Being. But there is an essential difference: Parmenides-Spinoza's Concept-Being is Eternity, whereas Hegel's Concept-Being is Time. Consequently, Spinozist absolute Knowledge, too, must be Eternity. That is to say that it must exclude Time. In other words: there is no need of Time to realize it; the Ethics must be thought, written, and read "in a trice." And that is the thing's absurdity. [Plotinus, however, accepts this conse-
quence.]
This absurdity was already denounced by Plato in his Parmenides. If Being is truly one (or more exactly, the One)-i.e., if it excludes diversity, all diversity-and therefore all change- i.e., if it is Eternity that annuls Time-if, I say, Being is the One, a man could not speak of it, Plato remarks. Indeed, Discourse would have to be just as one as the Being that it reveals, and there- fore could not go beyond the single word "one." And even that.. . . For Time is still the crucial question. Discourse must be intemporal: now, if he has not the time, man cannot even pronounce a single word. If Being is one, or, what amounts to the same thing, if the Concept is Eternity, "absolute Knowledge" reduces for Man to absolute silence.*11
I say: for Man. That is, for the speaking being that lives in Timeand needs time in order to live and to speak (i.e., in order to think by means of the Concept). Now, as we have seen, the Concept as such is not (or at least does not seem to be) necessarily attached
to Time. The universe of Concepts or of Ideas can be conceived of as a universe of Discourse: as an eternal Discourse, in which all the elements coexist. [This is what Plotinus says.] And as a matter of fact, there are (it seems) nontemporal relations, between Concepts: all Euclid's theorems, for example, exist simultaneously within the entirety of his axioms. [And Plotinus insists on this fact.] Hence there would be a nontemporal Discourse.*12 The idea of the Spinozist System, then, is not absurd: quite simply, it is the idea of absolute Knowledge. What is absurd is that this System is supposed to have been fabricated by a man, who in actual fact needed time in order to fabricate it. [Accordingly, in Plotinus, this system belongs to the eternal Intelligence.] Or else, again: the System can exist outside of Time; but, starting from temporal existence, there is no access to this System. (The Spinozist System is Hegel's Logik, for which there would not and could not be a Phenomenology that "leads" to it; or else, it is Descartes' System, to which one could not find access through a Discourse on Method.)
The Ethics is made in accordance with a method of which an account cannot be given in human language. For the Ethics explains everything, except the possibility for a man living in time to write it. And if the Phenomenology explains why the Logik appears at a certain moment of history and not at another, the Ethics proves the impossibility of its own appearance at any moment of time whatsoever. In short, the Ethics could have been written, if it is true, only by God himself; and, let us take care to note-by a nonincarnated God.
Therefore, the difference between Spinoza and Hegel can be formulated in the following way: Hegel becomes God by thinking or writing the Logik; or, if you like, it is by becoming God that he writes or thinks it. Spinoza, on the other hand, must be God from all eternity in order to be able to write or think his Ethics. Now, if a being that becomes God in time can be called "God" only provided that it uses this term as a metaphor (a correct meta- phor, by the way), the being that has always been God is God in the proper and strict sense of the word. Therefore, to be a Spinozist is actually to replace God the Father (who has no Son, incidentally) by Spinoza, while maintaining the notion of divine transcendence in all its rigor; it is to say that Spinoza is the transcendent God who speaks, to be sure, to human beings, but who speaks to them as eternal God. And this, obviously, is the height of absurdity: to take Spinoza seriously is actually to be-or to become-mad.

Spinoza, like Hegel, identifies Man (that is to say, the Wise Man) and God. It seems, then, that in both cases it could be said indifferently either that there is nothing other than God, or that there is nothing other than Man. Now in point of fact, the two assertions are not identical, and if the first is accepted by Spinoza, only the second expresses Hegel's thought. And that is what Hegel means by saying that Spinoza's System is not a pan-theism, but an a-cosmism: it is the Universe or the totality of Being reduced to God alone, but to a God without World and without men. And to say this is to say that everything that is change, becoming, time, does not exist for Science. For if the Ethics is, in fact, concerned with these things, how or why they appear in it is not known.
With the use of our symbolic circles, then, the difference between Hegel's and Spinoza's Systems can be represented in the following manner:
Let us start with the theistic System. In its pure form, it is Plato's System. But in general it symbolizes possibility II (see Figure 13). For Aristotle, several small circles must be inscribed in the large circle to symbolize the relation of Eternity and Time (Figure 14); but these circles ought to have fitted together; in the end, there would again be the Platonic symbol with only one small circle. (That is to say: all truly coherent theism is a mono- theism.) As for Kant, the same symbol can serve; but the small circle must be drawn with a dotted line, to show that Kant's theology has, for him, only the value of an "as if" (Figure 15). In short, the symbol of the theistic System is valid for every System
that defines the Concept as an eternal entity in relation to something other than itself, no matter whether this other thing is Eternity in Time or outside of Time, or Time itself. But let us return to Spinoza. Starting with the theistic system, Hegel does away with the small circle (reduced beforehand, by his predecessors, to a single point): see Figure 16. Spinoza, on the other hand, does away with the large circle: see Figure 17.
Hence the symbol is the same in both cases: a homogeneous closed circle. And this is important. For we see that it is sufficient to deny that the Concept is a relation with something other than itself in order to set up the ideal of absolute-that is, circular-
Knowledge. And indeed, if the Concept is related to another reality, an isolated concept can be established as true by adequation to this autonomous reality. In this case there are partial facts, or even partial truths. But if the Concept is revealed Being itself, it can be established as true only through itself. The proof itself no longer differs from that which has to be proved. And this means that the truth is a "System," as Hegel says. The word "system" is not found in Spinoza. But the thing itself is there. Setting aside Parmenides, Spinoza is the only philosopher who understood that the principle of all or nothing is valid for Knowledge: either one knows everything, or else one knows nothing; for one sees that one truly knows something only by seeing that one knows everything. And that is why the study of Spinoza is so instructive, despite the absurdity of his point of view. Spinoza sets up the ideal of total, or "systematic," or "circular," Knowledge. However, his System is impossible in Time. And Hegel's whole effort consists in creating a Spinozist System which can be written by a man living in a historical World. And that is why, while admitting with Spinoza that the Concept is not a relation, Hegel identifies
it not with Eternity, but with Time. (On this subject see the Preface to the Phenomenology, pp. i9ff.)
We shall see later what this means. For the moment, I want to underline once more that the symbols of both systems are identical. They differ only in their source (which is not seen in the drawing): doing away with the small or the large circle. And again, this indeed corresponds to the reality. It is understandable that a temporal Knowledge could finally embrace the totality of becoming. But it is not understandable that an eternal Knowledge could absorb everything that is in Time: for the simple reason that it would absorb us ourselves. It would be the absolute Knowledge of Bewusstsein, which would have completely absorbed Selbstbewusstsein. And this, obviously, is absurd.
I shall stop here. To know what the identification of the Concept with Eternity means, one must read the whole Ethics.
Let us proceed, or return, to Kant. Kant agrees with Plato and Aristotle (in opposition to Parmenides-Spinoza and Hegel) that the Concept is an eternal entity, in relation with something other than itself. However, he relates this eternal Concept not to Eternity, but to Time.
We can say, moreover, that Kant defines the Concept as a relation precisely because he sees the impossibility of Spinozism (just as Plato had done to avoid the impossibility of Eleaticism). Perhaps he did not read Spinoza. But in the "Transcendental Deduction of
the Categories" and in the "Schematismus" he says why the Spinozist conception of Knowledge is impossible: it is impossible, because for us-that is, for man-"without intuition the concept is empty."

Thanks for the reading suggestion, when I have time, I will get to it.
I plan on continuing my self-education on this issue indefinitely, and as I am only a second year college student, I feel that I have plenty of time, luckily.
Before I try reading Hegel's analysis though, I should probably get the background information under my belt, don't you think?
I have a lot of philosophical reading to add to my foundation of understanding before I dive into what seems to be a very complicated issue.

If Being is truly one (or more exactly, the One)-i.e., if it excludes diversity, all diversity-and therefore all change- i.e., if it is Eternity that annuls Time-if, I say, Being is the One, a man could not speak of it, Plato remarks. Indeed, Discourse would have to be just as one as the Being that it reveals, and there- fore could not go beyond the single word "one."

When I compare that number to the number of hours I spend looking at a TV it seems insignificant.

well, ticktock, surely this is a thread you must feel some affinity with.



There is a similar understanding in Indian philosophy, to which this is related, which is that to even speak of a One, there must be another (namely, the one doing the speaking.) The key to understanding this type of discourse must be, surely, that it does not concern the 'realm of manifest existence'. It is referring to 'the causal realm' or 'the Spirit' - but with the important caveat that anything one says about it or thinks one knows about such a thing is bound to be completely incorrect. Of course these are matters most profound, even beyond the understanding of a Plato and many of the greatest minds in philosophy. I daresay from the viewpoint of secular modernism it makes no sense whatever and has been long relegated to the museum of ideas.
[/SIZE]

not at all. It is a very deep and profound issue. I mean, it is easy to dash off a few sentences about such things, but they are very deep issues. I have never really delved into the The Parmenides, but I am sure it is understood as one of the most difficult of Plato's works and is profoundly mystical. I have discovered a writer called Peter Kingsley who claims to have some kind of insight into it all, have bought one of his books on it, appropriately titled Reality, but haven't really gotten into it yet.

Sometimes I wonder if it's really as deep and profound as we make it out to be, or if all of the often Byzantine conduits through which the mystical tradition must travel is just a distraction, or a red herring, to conceal a truth that may be so remarkably simple that anyone could grasp it, yet so ontologically shocking that if everyone did grasp it our current paradigm would crumble like a mouthful of rotten teeth.

It's qualia. It just is.