The vision of time...

What is “Visual” time?
Up to know we have dealt with time as either immaterial or at least trans-dimensional. There is however the school of thought championed by Aristotle that saw time not as a thing but an effect. To say some one has passed through time, we say they have aged. To age is to grow/decay. To Aristotle time was merely and solely the physical changes experience. If one could somehow be placed one twin into a “stasis field”, like mentioned in science fiction, a field were all physical operations were suspended, for a period of 150 years. The stasis twin would leave this field completely unchanged from the time entered whereas the other would be long since decayed. One could say, from this experiment that the stasis twin was timeless while in field.

The problem with visual time

As stated with our twin experiment, it appears that on twin is timeless. If we could replicate the effect but with a pill or some other thing such that the twin could interact with the world, would it still follow that they were timeless? If nothing existed in the universe but a lump of coal, does it follow that until the coal changes or some spontaneous creation occurs that the universe described is outside of or beyond time? It would seem apparent that if one substituted the coal with oneself that we would still “feel” time inspire of the absence of change.
Subjective to the non-stasis fielded twin

The Measure of Time...

What is “Measured” time?

Another way of looking at time is to see it as a relative relations between two arbitrary point. For example Monday to Sunday, we say the period of time they represent is a week. Further, we state that there is a progression of days such that we know Monday always proceeds Tuesday and is in turn followed by Wednesday. We can tell where in time these events occur independent of our personal sense of time. This concept can be extended to clocks, colanders or geological epochs. These measures can also be less technical; they can apply to the idea birth, growth, decay and death.

Science of time

The need to measure time can be seen as the quantification of time or time as science – Chronology. In order to study time; it is necessary to create some form of independent scale that non-self’s can understand. As stated in “felt” time is very self-centered; so giving each “time event” a label allows scientific study. For example we can say with pure accuracy that Augustus Caesar died on August 19, 14 AD and that five hundred years later, September 4 476 AD, his empire was gone from Western Europe. Very precise and it does not fall into the ambiguity one date meaning two things as we found with “past” in “felt” time. This being said, we do find that it has a skeleton in it closet.

Problems with “Measured” time

Dependency of the “Measured” time

Have said that we can create a system of labelling such that relationships between events can be reasoned independent of personal experience, we are left with the question; knowing that the Cambrian period is before the Holocene is meaningless or at least limited in meaning if we can not relate it to now. In order for the series or measure to have meaning we mush be able to apply the “felt” time standard. We must know if an event is a past event or present or future. If we lack that information, the scale that we use has no base of reference, no real meaning at all. If I were to state that the first moon colony was built on April 1, 2150 and that the 9/11 happened on September 11, 2001; could you by virtue of the dates know which was real or which speculation? No, unless you have a now, we are unable to interpret what was and what could be.
This realization that in order to understand what dates mean we must have an understanding of the now but in measured time there is no now; could not be. Each event is labelled with a relative term yet “now” passes over them all. The now can not be part of the scale. So for the scale to have any meaning we must affix it to something beyond.

Duck Time

Time is our river, and we can gauge it flow by having a friend place an infinite number of sequentially number ducks at regular intervals. We then sit back, at some point down river we observe the ducks pass by like sands through the hourglass. Our Duck Time, though, is seen to pass only because we are external to the river. If we were in the river, one of our ducks, we would see no time pass at all as the only duck would be ourselves. But if we are on the bank watching the ducks pass by, then we our outside the river of time; we are a form of hyper-time.
Lets continue this Duck Time experiment, let us say that the observer on the back change every dawn and dusk. So our observers are themselves measurable but only if we again introduce another fixed reference, the sun; resulting in hyper-hyper time. This fixed sequence can become quickly an infinite regression with no necessary termination - reductio ad absurdum.
Thus, “measured” time seems unable to account for time and ultimately rests on the presupposition of “felt” time. There, however another more physical sense of time; that found in causation.

The Feel of Time

What is “Felt” time
What do we think when we say we are “in” time? Often, when pressed, we say that time is felt as things that are past, present or future. If someone asks you about an event, your first instinct is to determine if it is in the past, present or future. Our language is predicated on “tense” wordage. That our sense of the past is what we remember. Our sense of the present is what we are experiencing and the future is what we will feel. This is a very primal way of seeing time; it requires no culture, no language or even a universe. It is the fundamental way we organize our life.
The future is man
We grant that most thinking things and even some not so thinking, have memory. Simple Pavlovian reaction or instinct shows most life has a “past”, and similarly to be classified alive it must in come way participate in a now, but it is, for the most part, man that we grant the special providence of for-sight. The ability to, not only plan, but to conserve of a present that is not “of the is-now” but “of the to-come”. Academic philosophers refer to this type of “time” as “A” series. It is the idea that time is seem only in terms of what it past, what is present and what if future. It is time as we feel it. This works for our internal conversations, but to transmit ideas of time to others we often use “measured” time.

Problems with “Felt” time

Incoherency of time
The problem with “Felt” time is two fold. First, the renowned philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart believed there an intrinsic contradiction in the idea of past present and future as terms to delineate time. The basic premise of his argument lies in the fact that all the terms can be applied to any event, thus rendering them meaningless or at least inconsistent. Any event, for example, in the present may also be said to be a past event in the future. Thus the label for this even would be a future past present event; thus the terms seem non-specific.
Relativistic nature of time
Another problem with “felt” time is the relativistic nature of it. Although many events may have a similar perspective with regards to past, present or future; this is a coincidence and not a necessity. The fact that my elderly neighbour eats dinner at 4pm. I eat at 6pm and the high school kids eat at 8pm. When I am eating, the neighbour’s dinner is in the past and the kids in the future, yet by their perspective, when neighbour eats, my dinner is in the future and yet the kid’s dinner is in a different future. Finally when the kids eat, as similar relativist effect occurs when my dinner is now past, and the neighbour’s dinner is also past but a different past than mine.
Mental convenience or irrelevant
We are left with two conclusions, first the idea of what is past or present or future depends on the observer. This idea of time is truly personal and as such looses meaning beyond the self. If we are to find a time beyond out own psychology then this concept seems to fail. Secondly, even if we somehow concede that this time may more than mental convenience, if is a term at best of negation not definition. To say something is past does nothing more than rule out it being in the others. We have shown that two events are “past” but not he same “past”, leading us to say that either the term is incoherent or irrelevant.
Either way, it seems “Felt” time is at best a mental convenience, not a thing of the universe but a construct of our minds. Perhaps is we apply a scale to time, measure it in such a way that it become common or independent of the observer. In this way perhaps we can find time.