Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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devans99
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by devans99 »

RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 1:10 pm
Devans99 wrote:Time has to have a start so there must something preceding it which is timeless.
Devan, this seems contradictory. How can something "precede" time, but yet be timeless? "Preceding" implies 'time'. To come 'before' and cause/create something implies time. Again, so the only possibility is that if time exists, it has 'always' existed. It cannot be created/caused without the prerequisite time to do so.
Something must proceed the creation of time causally I mean. Its impossible for time to always exist. Imagine an eternity; it has no start so none of it is defined. So once you accept time has a start; then there must be a timeless cause of that start.
RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 1:10 pm
Devans99 wrote:The big bang was the creation of time.
If there were no time to bang, then the big bang could not have banged (to then create time).
The Big Bang / start of time was caused by something in the timeless realm.
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RJG
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by RJG »

Devans99 wrote:Something must proceed the creation of time causally I mean.
This is self-contradictory. "Procede" can't exist/happen if time does not exist.

Devans99 wrote:Its impossible for time to always exist. Imagine an eternity; it has no start so none of it is defined. So once you accept time has a start; then there must be a timeless cause of that start.
I don't accept that "time has a start". Time can't pre-exist itself (so as to come 'before' and start/create/cause itself). If it exists, it therefore has always existed. It can't logically be started/caused/created.

Devans99 wrote:The Big Bang / start of time was caused by something in the timeless realm.
But nothing can happen in the timeless realm. If time does not exist, then there could not be a 'before' moment in which to cause something.
BigBango
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by BigBango »

Time is a human category of thought. See Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"

Reality does not change continuously(analog) but it changes discretely. What that means is that physical matter in its particle form does not move spatially without transmuting into a waveform that connects its original place to its new place. That is, the motion of particles must appear to us as changing only in discreet jumps. See Whitehead (Process and Reality).

That quantization of reality solves Zeno's Paradox. Real physical particles, in particle form rather than wave form, do not have an infinite number of places to move through. So, given any level of normal particle sizes, there is a discreteness with which we can see time changing. For the 10% of the mass of the universe that science is aware of(electrodynamic matter) that discrete pixelization is a Planck volume. Could there be smaller physical particles that we are not aware of? YES, and of course motion of particles through that level of reality would have a pixelization smaller than Plank's constant.

Therefore the real beginning of time was not at the BB for that was only the beginning of time associated with our familiar level of the electrodynamically sensitive matter that we are familiar with. The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles and the consciousness or "subject" for which the particles existed as objects. (Tamminen's ontology")
BigBango
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by BigBango »

Time is a human category of thought. See Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"

Reality does not change continuously(analog) but it changes discretely. What that means is that physical matter in its particle form does not move spatially without transmuting into a waveform that connects its original place to its new place. That is, the motion of particles must appear to us as changing only in discreet jumps. See Whitehead (Process and Reality).

That quantization of reality solves Zeno's Paradox. Real physical particles, in particle form rather than wave form, do not have an infinite number of places to move through. So, given any level of normal particle sizes, there is a discreteness with which we can see time changing. For the 10% of the mass of the universe that science is aware of(electrodynamic matter) that discrete pixelization is a Planck volume. Could there be smaller physical particles that we are not aware of? YES, and of course motion of particles through that level of reality would have a pixelization smaller than Plank's constant.

Therefore the real beginning of time was not at the BB for that was only the beginning of time associated with our familiar level of the electrodynamically sensitive matter that we are familiar with. The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles and the consciousness or "subject" for which the particles existed as objects. (Tamminen's ontology")
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RJG
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by RJG »

BigBango wrote:The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles...
Hi BB, sorry but there can be no "real beginning of time". Either time has always existed, or it does not exist.

If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain (without contradiction) how something can happen before 'happenings' can happen.

Happenings/events/occurrences are all dependent on the pre-existence of time. Without time, the 'happenings' (events/occurrences) of anything (including the beginning of time!) can't happen.

Since it would take time to make time, time therefore cannot be 'made' (created/caused/started/begun).
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Sy Borg
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by Sy Borg »

RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 10:52 pm
BigBango wrote:The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles...
Hi BB, sorry but there can be no "real beginning of time". Either time has always existed, or it does not exist.

If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain (without contradiction) how something can happen before 'happenings' can happen.
Certainly time at present relies on orbits, rotations and decays. However, what would have marked time in the early universe before the first atoms formed? Perhaps the spin or decay type or rate of subatomic particles.

How about before the big bang? Now it's speculative territory, of course. It's posited that there was the quantum foam, populated by self annihilating virtual particles - immediately dissipating ripples in the fabric of reality (or maybe those perturbations are reality?). Presumably there would have been a time frame for these self-annihilating flickers. However, the time would be completely subjective, with no discernible reference point.
BigBango
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by BigBango »

RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 10:52 pm
BigBango wrote:The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles...
Hi BB, sorry but there can be no "real beginning of time". Either time has always existed, or it does not exist.

If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain (without contradiction) how something can happen before 'happenings' can happen.

Happenings/events/occurrences are all dependent on the pre-existence of time. Without time, the 'happenings' (events/occurrences) of anything (including the beginning of time!) can't happen.

Since it would take time to make time, time therefore cannot be 'made' (created/caused/started/begun).
RJG, your analysis is very good and I would agree with you if I thought "time" was something that existed in reality that we were trying to grok in the same manner that we try to grok the nature of physical particles existing externally to us in space. The problem is that we are forced to try to understand reality in categories of thought that are available to us in the nature of our consciousness. It was Kant's brilliance, as expressed in "The Critique of Pure Reason", that the nature of reality was such that it permitted itself to be understood in the terms that were consistent with our innate categories of thought.

If you follow Tamminen's ontology the physical world "exists" only because we experience it. "happenings do not happen before happenings can happen. Happenings only happen after we are "consciousness" of ourselves as physical objects.
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RJG
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by RJG »

Greta wrote:Certainly time at present relies on orbits, rotations and decays.
Hi Greta, sorry, but this is backwards. Orbits, rotations and decays rely on 'time'. Without 'time', motions, events, or happenings of any kind, could not 'occur'.

Greta wrote:However, what would have marked time in the early universe before the first atoms formed? Perhaps the spin or decay type or rate of subatomic particles.
Atoms/particles cannot form, spin, or decay, etc without the pre-existence of time. NOTHING can happen WITHOUT time.

Greta wrote:How about before the big bang? Now it's speculative territory, of course. It's posited that there was the quantum foam, populated by self annihilating virtual particles - immediately dissipating ripples in the fabric of reality (or maybe those perturbations are reality?). Presumably there would have been a time frame for these self-annihilating flickers.
Yes. None of this could have happened/occurred without the pre-existence of time.

Again, time cannot be created. If time exists, then it has "ALWAYS EXISTED" (i.e. was NOT caused/created). Although this may be unpalatable to some, it is the ONLY logical possibility.

BigBango wrote:Happenings only happen after we are "consciousness" of ourselves as physical objects.
...and yet the "consciousness of ourselves" can only happen within the (pre-) existence of time.
devans99
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by devans99 »

RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 10:52 pm
BigBango wrote:The real beginning of time came with the appearance of the smallest level of physical particles...
Hi BB, sorry but there can be no "real beginning of time". Either time has always existed, or it does not exist.

If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain (without contradiction) how something can happen before 'happenings' can happen.

Happenings/events/occurrences are all dependent on the pre-existence of time. Without time, the 'happenings' (events/occurrences) of anything (including the beginning of time!) can't happen.

Since it would take time to make time, time therefore cannot be 'made' (created/caused/started/begun).
Look at it this way, could something of happened infinity long ago? No because there is no way for that event to link to today (-oo +1 = -oo). Infinity is marsh gas so infinite time is marsh gas.

Its really basic logic: if time did not have a start then it cannot exist. If you were not born, would you exist?

It agrees with science; the Big Bang was the start of time.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by Sy Borg »

Time IS change, it doesn't cause it.
BigBango
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by BigBango »

devans99 wrote: October 27th, 2018, 12:23 pm
RJG wrote: October 26th, 2018, 10:52 pm
Hi BB, sorry but there can be no "real beginning of time". Either time has always existed, or it does not exist.

If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain (without contradiction) how something can happen before 'happenings' can happen.

Happenings/events/occurrences are all dependent on the pre-existence of time. Without time, the 'happenings' (events/occurrences) of anything (including the beginning of time!) can't happen.

Since it would take time to make time, time therefore cannot be 'made' (created/caused/started/begun).
Look at it this way, could something of happened infinity long ago? No because there is no way for that event to link to today (-oo +1 = -oo). Infinity is marsh gas so infinite time is marsh gas.

Its really basic logic: if time did not have a start then it cannot exist. If you were not born, would you exist?

It agrees with science; the Big Bang was the start of time.
Devans99, there is nothing wrong with your logic. Your problem is your metaphysics. You cannot make any sense out of the world if every "noun" can be an "existent" in a logical assertion. While I do not subscribe to Whitehead's complete dismissal of Aristotelian metaphysics I do think his work in "Process and Reality" illuminates beautifully the way "logical constructs" are dependent on one's metaphysics.

He turns Aristotelian metaphysics on its head. That is, Aristotle's metaphysics, which is what we and Science generally use is that existents are aspects of substances that can carry different properties. Something about an object persists in time and then that distinguishes it from other things of a different type. In Whitehead's metaphysics the fundamental things of the world (candidates for the subjects of predicates) are "actual entities".

Because of that, his notion of "type" simply means that an actual entity relates to the world in some "habitual" way. Now I am not a pan(all) psychic and I reject Whitehead's metaphysics but only because I think it just applies to "living" things and not to the objects of physics.

Your logic must follow from your metaphysics. "Time" is not an existent even though it is a noun and you can mistakenly use it with a predicate, even though it cannot cause anything, as Greta said, and it cannot be dissected as can a physical object.
devans99
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by devans99 »

I’ve revised my views in line with the feedback. Timeless is impossible I admit so I've dropped that idea. Now have a very simple, consistent model of the universe:

I'm using three prior results:
- Can’t get something from nothing so something must of existed always.
- Time had a start (eg moment cannot of occurred infinity long ago)
- Actual infinity is impossible

Proof of Eternalism:

1. Assume only now exists
2. So before the start of (top level) time there was nothing
3. But creation ex nihilo is impossible
4. So more than only now exists
Or
1. And (top level) Time had a start
2. And Something has always existed
3. Implies Time must have always existed
4. IE Eternalism

A very simple model:

Everything has existed always (timelessly)
Everything is finite in time and space
start of time=Big Bang
end of time=big crunch

Where did all the matter come from for the big bang? The big crunch, IE time is circular (with a single set of time co-ordinates)
Eduk
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by Eduk »

I can trivially think of a potentially 'timeless' state. For example the heat death of the universe would logically cause a state of entropy approaching zero and therefore there would be no passing of 'time'.
Unknown means unknown.
devans99
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by devans99 »

Eduk wrote: October 28th, 2018, 7:54 am I can trivially think of a potentially 'timeless' state. For example the heat death of the universe would logically cause a state of entropy approaching zero and therefore there would be no passing of 'time'.
Its not as neat though; the only thing powerful enough to power the big bang is the big crunch. If the universe dies a heat death, there is nothing to power the big bang. Also I don't see why heat death is the end of time - there would still be quantum fluctuations and time in heat death
Eduk
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Re: Did the universe exist for ever or does it have a beginning?

Post by Eduk »

As I understand it QM requires energy.
Also what has neatness got to do with anything? Does the universe logically have to be neat?
Unknown means unknown.
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