Paper Three: Time
Part One:
In Avatars of the tortoise, Borges brings up the idea that space and motion are logically impossible. Borges shows this though Zeno’s paradoxes relating to the race between Achilles and the tortoise. In a pure logical sense, Achilles cannot catch the tortoise because he is always catching up. The only problem with this is that when you look at it from a practical sense, of course he can catch the tortoise.[1] It is just when you look at the situation from a mathematical viewpoint does this contradiction occur. What Zeno tries to do is negate our understanding of space-time with problems that supposedly contradict it. In reality, it is in the way the problem is set up is where Zeno gets his argument from. When Achilles’ speed is directly dependent on the tortoise’s speed, this is true, but a person’s speed is usually not dependant on the speed someone else. If I race someone slower than me, I do not run any slower when I measure my speed in miles per hour rather than based upon the speed of my opponent. If I can run fifteen miles per hour, I can still run that if I am racing someone that runs fourteen miles per hour or if I race a car that can go fifty miles per hour. When the measured speed of Achilles is based on the speed of the tortoise, Zeon’s paradox seems to be true but when a
At the end of Avatars of the Tortoise, Borges states that we have dreamt up the world and only through contradictory aspects of the world do we know this. Where Borges is going with this is very similar to the “fire test[2]” in another Borges story. The “fire test” relates to an aspect of the world that does not hurt you because of your own nonexistence. Borges is saying that the contradictions that come about are the clues that this world is the dream of a dreamer or something along those lines. The problem I have with this is that it is too simple to explain anything we find as unexplainable just simply impossible and not search for the true answer. There are many things in this world that are impossible to explain that are contradictory. One example is that there are stars in the universe that are older than the universe itself and the though process of what was before the Big Bang and many other questions that we are incapable of explaining at this point in time. To simply chalk them up as truly impossible to answer and as evidence that the world we are living in is imaginary is a poor excuse in my opinion.
In reality, the unknown is simply aspects of the universe that are far beyond our own human comprehension and to say that we created them to prove that we do not exist is just another example of the resounding arrogance and pride of man.
Part Two:
Is time real? Borges states in “A New Refutation of Time” that time is a delusion. Borges explains that time does not exist and that the only thing that exists is experiences.[3] According to Borges, the negations of idealism can be extended to time. Borges uses the Humean ideal that there is not anything that exists past the human recollection on senses. Hume states that man is nothing but a collection of sensations and that any shared perception proves time is nonexistent since the repetition would destroy its linear sequence.[4]
With all this in mind, can time truly exist? The problem with that question is that there are many aspects of time that have varying degrees of validity.
One view on time is questioning on whether or not it flows or passes. To say that time passes means that you need to have a kind of “supertime” for time to flow inside of. And then this “supertime” would need another “super-supertime” to flow in which creates a regression that does not truly answer the question.[5] This regression can be used to prove that time does not exist. If time cannot pass, how can there be time in the first place?
Another view of time is through J. M. E. McTaggart’s “A” and “B” series. The “A” series asserts that things move from the future to the present to the past; time acting as a treadmill. The “B” series states that things are either “earlier than,” “simultaneous with” or “later than.” The “B” series is completely dependent upon the “A” series to exist. The problem with the “A” series is that it is self-contradictory. Things are never everything at the same time, so time is unreal. And, if the “A” series is nonexistent, therefore the “B” series does not exist.[6] Horwich finds a hole in McTaggart’s theory.
Horwitch brings up a counter argument for the nonexistence of the “B” series. He states that the “B” series exists because time in it does not need the genuine change that the “A” series to exist. This is true because Horwitch states that time can pass without change. This brings up yet another theory on time that Shoemaker talks about.[7]
Shoemaker states that there can be time passing without change with say, a temporal time freeze. There are opposing views on whether or not time passes in a time freeze. If the world were to freeze for a million years, we would not experience a second of it because we would be frozen in time. The only way that one could feasibly know about the time freeze is if there was an outside party. Is this even true? It makes sense that there would need to be an outside party to see a time freeze, but isn’t describing it as a “million year time freeze” give it an amount of time? This is where problems and counter arguments come from.
To prevent the risk of further tangents, I feel I should present my side in the war of time’s existence. I believe that time does exist but only in the present now. The present is the only thing that I can be truly sure of. The past could or could not have happened and the future is uncertain until it is the present. In my own opinion, the treadmill theory of time makes a great deal of sense. We never exist in the past or the future. Our present turns into the past and the future turns into the present which ends up being the past. Does the idea of time freezes negate the existence of time? I don’t see why it would. The idea that makes the most sense to me is that time exists simply because we think it exists.
Before recorded history, time had no meaning. When a day passed and you were still alive, it was a day that was accomplished, but no longer mattered. I would speculate that every day that a prehistoric man lived would be about the same as the last one barring any lasting injury. To them, time meant nothing so I feel it simply didn’t exist for them. All they were interested in was living to see the next day and nothing else really mattered. Today there still survive a few groups of hunter-gatherers; do you think that time has any significance to them? To them it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t need to. It is simply not necessary for their existence. This same theory can be applied to pretty much anything. Take a higher deity, for example. There are many people that do not believe that there is a god who is watching over all of us. To them, the deity does not exist, but does it exist outside of their consciousness? It is still up for discussion if that even matters.
I feel that necessity is the ultimate question we should be trying to answer. If time exists, it exists only if someone is there to perceive it. It is the old “if a tree falls in the woods” question again. Time only exists if we make it, or need it to exist. Does that mean that if no one believed in time it would cease to exist? Sure it does, but then again no it doesn’t. Did time exist before people discovered it? If it didn’t, how could man have discovered it? This is where epistemology screws everything up. How do we know anything at all? We do not. All I feel that we know is the present. So, to me, the only thing that exists is the present. The past is subject to discussion and the future is not true until it is the present.
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